Guild Wars 2

Think about it, if Anet actually listened to the constant bickering over free transfers and A) stealthily patched in paid transfers next build, or B) announced that free transfers would end in, say, a week’s time, then WvW would be ruined for sure. The servers aren’t even close to evenly populated, so if it was a stealth patch they would almost never be, and current WvW standings would be this way largely forever (given the disparity, low pop servers could never move up far to compete with high pop servers, taking a lot of the fight out of the dog).

If it was announced, low tier servers would empty and pack into as many top tier servers as possible because once the boatman starts charging for ferry rides, your fate is more or less sealed. This would create deathly long queues and unplayable invisible lag armies in the top tiers and absolutely no action in the lower tiers (with the result that eventually servers would be merged into medium-high pop servers if the influx of new players didn’t fill them up quickly enough).

Simply put, Anet won’t end free transfers at this point any time soon, because they can’t. They are looking at the bigger picture, as some of you need to start doing. Look beyond your week-long matches and down the road a few months to a year. Whether we “pioneers” keep at WvW or sit out the storm to see what happens in the coming months to change it, the game as a whole will inevitably see a constant influx of new players every day until likely a year from now half the population will be “new” to us. The balance won’t come this week or next week, but it will come – change is inevitable.

As for “Full” servers becoming “High” at night and accepting new transfers: this is simply a matter of efficiency. What is best, to have your servers maxed during primetime while all but a few taper off to nearly no activity during off-peak? Or to essentially eliminate off-peak by having people find a server that isn’t full during their free time to play? Sure there is such a thing as “off-peak” now, but eventually any competitive WvW server will have some decent 24 hour coverage. These “late night” transfers are vital in achieving this, as they have already greatly contributed to filling these timeslots in servers that are beginning to see real 24 hour coverage (when that server is actively participating in WvW, that is).

If there was a culprit to the current imbalance, it would be mass transfers allowed between servers that are currently matched. Too many matches saw an early victor during the first 24-48 hours and due to the frivolous nature of server hopping, anyone on the two losing servers that wanted to win that week simply jumped ship. Their incentive to keep fighting would have been much greater if the only servers they couldn’t transfer to were the two they were currently matched against. Sure some might have voluntarily switched to a “winning server” in another matchup altogether, but I am fairly certain given the actual numbers most of these occurred within their own matchups once an early lead was clear. Fewer people would voluntarily drop down a Tier to win that matchup one lousy time, when they could still be higher up than any of those servers at the end of the week by fighting for 2nd place in their current one.

Another measure that probably should have been taken (and if it is at all possible should be considered by Anet still) was to artificially lower the total population cap of all servers across the board from day 1, to perhaps -2,000 simultaneous players of that server’s actual capacity. This would force most servers to be crowded. Then, say, once most servers had an equal population (something considered “medium” by current standards), raise the limit by 500 across all servers until that mostly filled up, then 500 more, then 500 more. Essentially controlling the maximum amount of fluctuation and effectively eliminating mass exodus / bandwagoning / crowding of servers due to these high capacity servers allowing unlimited traffic between them without restrictions (being free or paid is not the only, nor the most important factor here).

TLDR: “Free Transfers” were never the real culprit, and must stay in place for awhile to come if the servers are ever to see any true balance.

Good post and excellent points.

I think the suggestion of preventing transfers between matched up servers could be an option, but people could still transfer from World 1 in Tier 2 to World 1 in Tier 3, then back to World 2 in Tier 2. (If that analogy makes sense) So, what about if you transfer out of your server, you can’t transfer back into yours, or servers matched up against you for a period of 7 days? (Length of a match)

The other thing to consider is with the transfers in place, it doesn’t just affect world vs world, but players who want to play with their friends. An example is in my case, I had a friend who played on one server but then his friends all quit, so he instead transferred over to where I was.

Time is still required to settle with the mass transfers.

I did hear of someone’s suggestion to link Tier 1 serves with bottom tier servers as “sister” servers, so that it would encourage high ranking servers to help out the bottom servers and give a bit of a distraction/rest form the same battles/tactics over and over.

Sister servers sounds good and could be a way out of high que times.

Servers wouldn’t be balanced without transfers, no – but servers will never be balanced with transfers open either.
Another route entirely needs to be taken if you want to have people spread out like it seems ANet would like with WvW given their answers.

So free transfers might not be the issue; but they helped create the issue IMO.

What is this – someone actually talking sense!? You nailed it. Arenanet need to come up with some way of distributing the player population across matches so that each server has a similar number of players to its opponents, 24/7.

You know what I think? Scrap the server vs. server mentality. Think differently.

WvW matches should be entered into tournament-style, either as a guild / group, or individually. The past experience and performance of that individual or guild will enter into their ranking, as will geographical location. Teams are automatically matched up every week, and placed into tiers (new players start low-ranked, etc). By taking into account skill and location of all the participants, a much fairer matching system can take place.

During the course of the week, extra people will obviously want to sign up to that weeks’ WvW match. By ranking the new entrants and assigning them to the losing team of their tier, this will help to ensure a relatively even match throughout the week.

There will still be competitiveness, because if you win your round or get lots of kills / capture lots of enemy territory, you can get into a higher tier of WvW the next week. Rewards (i.e., fancy armour) can be given for winning your match.

Yes, these match-ups may prevent you from playing with friends – well, if you wait for the next round to begin, just enter in as a whole group and you can be together in the match. The advantage – you can play with friends from other servers, without switching over. A fair trade-off I think for the holy grail that is balanced WvW matches.

Thoughts?

This is what I’ve been saying. However, ANET needs to limit free transfers. Not only should there be a time limit imposed on transfers in order to force players to play more than 1 match, but there also needs to be servers that you CAN NOT transfer to due to population. The reason why TA broke up is because people followed them to HoD and increased que time

I disagree with the poster above me though. Keeping it server related makes the system much easier to handle. Once guesting is implemented, ANET can try and spread populations around more evenly.

What people need to consider is that free transfers are a system apart from WvW that fulfill other purposes, but also left largely unrestricted in other ways impacts WvW in ways Anet never intended. I read another similar thread where someone stated how Anet had restrictions in place for transfers/guesting in their original design but for reasons they haven’t divulged abandoned them entirely when guesting wasn’t delivered upon release. Some of these restrictions are:

- No WvW participation while guesting
- No WvW participation for the remainder of current matchup if transferred
- No realm bonuses while guesting

I would also suggest something like a “first one’s free” system (something kicked around in BWE’s and then abandoned), but modified slightly for the long-term.

At the beginning of each week’s matchups, starting with the WvW score reset (when everyone is booted out of WvW and then let back in), all accounts are allowed “1 free transfer” with the only restriction that they cannot transfer to either of the two servers in their current matchup. After 24 hours, they are eligible for paid transfers as many times as they want for the remainder of the matchup. Once that week’s matchup is over, they are credited with a new free transfer. These free transfers can only reach a maximum limit of one, so no saving them up to get around the restrictions. Those who are transferring apart from WvW reasons are not affected: it benefits them to spend 6 days or less (depending on when they transferred) getting a “feel” for their chosen server before getting a free pass out (something reduced further when guesting does get implemented), but does not entirely stop them from paying for an “emergency transfer” if they simply cannot or do not wish to wait.

Those who are transferring for WvW reasons will have a large part of the typical reasons/incentives to do so removed, although “fair weather” transfers will at least be reduced to 1 a week, mitigating some of the rapid population shifts somewhat. Those who simply must transfer out of their current server or lose all enjoyment / reason to play can still get their “get out of jail free” card for this purpose as well.

The end result is most if not all legitimate transfers won’t be affected, while “illegitimate” transfers will be far more restricted (though not entirely prevented), and most importantly, for the good of both Anet and the diehard WvW community, taxed.

If Anet was looking at the bigger picture, free transfers would have been disabled before WvW match-ups started, in my opinion. I think their failure at looking at the bigger picture is what led to the current mess.

I don’t need a big wall of text to explain the problem.

1. The scores update every week.
2. Server Transfers are available every day.

Do you think (1) can keep up with the changes of (2)? No. They can’t. That’s why there’s a lot of problems.

Asilion.9213:

Simply put, Anet won’t end free transfers at this point any time soon, because they can’t. They are looking at the bigger picture, as some of you need to start doing. Look beyond your week-long matches and down the road a few months to a year.

While it was a nice detailed thought out long post the one missing a piece of the bigger picture is you i am afraid.

The reason we have free transfers now is because the much promised and touted feature of “guesting” is not working. Nothing more nothing less

Anet made it clear long ago one the the things they will be using for revenue stream is transfers so they will, probably the day they get guesting to work, start charging

ps: and you will not be able to “guest” in WvW

Why do you think there would be a problem if ANet simply stopped free transfers to certain “full” servers.

The free transfer criteria doesn’t need to have anything to do with the status that’s on the server select screen.

It’s easy enough with 22 servers to build a list of servers that are free to transfer to. Pick the bottom 4-7 and done. Change the list every week. This keeps people from nighttime switching to high pop servers.

The sister server idea is brilliant!

(hehe it was my original idea :P)

Leave free transfers and make each server start up a queue if you try to join when your server has X more players logged in than either of the two servers.

Time does not heal all ails. I don’t understand how future players will balance servers and not just repeat the same server hopping shenanigans that occur now. Also, and this is a big problem when talking about population, general server pop != WvW server pop. However, there is no way for ANet to control players who transfer solely for WvW. There is in the short term, but they haven’t given any indication that they care about it whatsoever.

I think the greater picture ArenaNet needs to see is the damage done by their EU-US server division.

Think of WvW throughout the day like a big map with left and right sections. Suppose you jam every player you have on the right side of the map, you’ll win by brute force but lose badly because your left side has no one.

This is what EU-US servers division is doing to WvW. It is limiting EU presence in the US and vice versa, to the point that players have to go out of their way to promote transfers from other continents.

You can’t expect servers made up of players from one continent and timezone to fight a global 24/7 war. You need a cooperative effort from people around the world, but quite simply, the game does not encourage this.

Free xfers should be disabled to allow the matchmaking to pair up servers accordingly without inflation.

End of story.

Free transfers are fine, the feeble 24 hour limit is not, it should be at least a week probably more.

Free transfers are not fine. They do impact things and wreck havoc on servers. They aren’t the only reason for the mess, but they certainly ARE a factor. If they insist on keeping transfers open until guesting is ready they absolutely need to raise the lockout time once you transfer to two weeks.

If we believe that score is mostly dependant on timezone coverage than transfers definitely impact the scores and therefore the ratings and thus the matchups. So transfers are precisely what is messing up Anet’s GLICKO system. There is no settling of ratings if people can up and leave every 24 hours to servers with different ratings.

Yes, free transfers is not the issue, but it does catalyst the accumulated problems. Eventually, pay to transfer will be institued, but that will not solve other contributors. The question that sums the issue is, “Can relatively smaller groups achieve enough to make playing worthwhile.” The way gameplay is funneled increasingly makes that answer NO as the dominant force takes control.

Additionally, isn’t it conspicuous that ridiculous downed abilities aid an individual player rally, but no thought about WvW server rally options were given. Maybe siege in the entry area was part of it, but that was removed to cater to spawn campers. Hmm.

secret brotherhoods

Free transfers are not the problem in and of themselves. What players do to abuse free transfers is the problem.

There are three types abusing the transfers…
1 – players that want to be on the winning team and don’t particularly care about queues.
2 – players that could care less about WvW but want the economic advantages from being on a winning server.
3 – Griefers and trolls that want to jump to opposing servers and wreak havoc.

All types hurt over-all server community. And they might not even be bad players per say (except for type 3). They are just being opportunistic while they have the chance.

The OP assumes leaving transfers during high pop windows okitten good for 24hr WvW coverage, but isn’t considering the troves of people coming in that could care less about WvW and just want realm buffs or mist completion. These people are bloating server populations and keeping players that may want to legitimately join to play with friends from transferring over. They are also keeping people that want to transfer off to play with those said friends from easily being able to get back. So the only people moving around are the ones taking advantage these windows and could care less what server it is they are on.

The OP also assumes somehow the opportunistic players are going to wake up one morning with a complete change in mentality and join low pop servers, or servers with less of a WvW presence out of the spirit of competition, fair play and good matches. And that server balance will magically come from this massive awakening. …That will never happen.

You are looking at this bleeding wound and trying to tell people to leave it alone and eventually it will heal, instead of bandaging it. That won’t happen. There is no sign of it happening. It will fester and rot before the miracle you are waiting for occurs.

Sure transfers could stay open until guesting is implemented. And server morale will continue to crumble, and medium population servers will continue to see guilds come and go, and low population servers will continue to lose twice as many people as they gain. All of which are horrible for individual server communities and player attitudes towards their home worlds. It will be like Florida. Lots of people move there, but everything in the state goes to kitten because too few call it “home”.

And that’s thinking bigger. Things rarely just “sort themselves out” for the better.

Are there other solutions? Yes. No transferring to opposing teams, two week lockout of WvW after transfer, guesting working as designed, limiting transfers to low/med pop servers, not allowing realm bonuses until you have been on a server two weeks…there are lots of possibilities. But we don’t know how long those would take to roll out or what other issues those solutions could introduce. So in the mean time, stop the root cause of the issue. Flip the switch on free world transfers so things stop getting worse while the final solution to make things better is ironed out.

I don’t think it’s free transfers between all servers whic is breaking WvW.

I DO think it’s people leaving the server they are on for the winning server they are matched against.

Perhaps if Power of the Mists was disabled in PvE, then carebears switching servers (strictly to PvE with awesome buffs) would think twice before transferring.

Players will never balance themselves out due to the nature of WvW, large guilds, small guilds, and randoms.

WvW is designed so that large, coordinated forces do the lion’s share of winning. Large guilds tend to have far more impact than an equal number of small guilds and randoms, even if those small guilds and randoms are skilled and coordinated. And on top of that, from what I’ve seen it’s usually guild leaders doing the coordinating of small guilds and randoms. They have practice, after all, and they’re good enough at it to have gotten leadership in a large guild, so they’re the natural choice.

So large guilds greatly influence a server’s success.

Problem is, large guilds want to play together. They’re more effective together, and most wouldn’t be in the guild if they didn’t also enjoy playing together. So when a large guild or group of large guilds helps bring a server to #1, what does that guild do when their queues become insufferably long due to new transfers?

Well, they move to a new server.

Then what do the solo players and small guilds do? They either start losing against servers that still have their large guilds, or they chase the large guilds to a new server in order to win again, or they transfer to the server that is beating them and fill those queues.

And then the large guilds move again.

And then the solo players and small guilds chase them again.

This is a foolish cycle that will continue until it costs a good deal of money and trouble to transfer. And you can’t stop it, because everyone is just doing what is in his or her own best interests.

Nor do I think you can alter WvW to make it so that large guilds won’t have this impact, nor can you blame them for wanting to play together, nor can you blame randoms for refusing to stay on servers where we get our faces smashed in every week while everyone runs around like a headless chicken.

Even JQ, a server known more for smaller and medium sized guilds working together, has this issue, and there are some servers that have almost no independent leaderships at all. The best a server can do is spread commander duties among many small guilds so that one guild or alliance leaving doesn’t crumble the server, but even those small guilds will be forced out if the queues are long enough.

Oh, and to add to that, the ease of spying and sabotage thanks to these transfers makes coordinating with randoms and small guilds that don’t have long established relationships even harder, because no one knows who they can trust.

Free transfers are a problem in the game. This is caused by peoples greed to always want to get everything handed to them on a silver platter. People are too lazy to actually work to get ahead… in this game it is all about numbers who will win to basically choose a top tier over populate it and dominate the other 2 as there is nothing in place to stop this.

A simple few solutions to this is

1: If you transfer you cannot transfer to a server that you have been fighting against for 2 weeks (forcing those that want to play the dominate game to move into lower tiers before being able to jump back up to “number 1”)

2: If you server transfer into an already high population server then there should be a waiting period of at least 1 week before such a transfer takes place. If you transfer to one of the lower population servers this should be as it is currently.. instant.

Most people don’t realise the impact it is having on the game. JQ server is loosing guilds that have been there since the start of the server as a result of over population and rely long extended QUE times. Is this in anyway fair to those people ? Of course not.

As to how many people are now leaving the game until this gets fixed will always be hard to say as there is the possibility they also just joined the gravy train until it is addressed. JQ server gets destroyed by SBI during Prime time play but once that time passes JQ fields at least a zerg of 30-50 per map and pretty much takes out everything with no way to do anything about it. 3 weeks ago this was not the case and there was a pretty decent fight had by all (yes henge over non prime time then was doing the same but henge is a waste now with TiTan falling and most moved to JQ)

Server transfer is the root problem to this game in its current form. No Anet will not address it as they feel SPvP is where the core of the game lies. Unfortunatly this is not entirely correct. For SPvP to function there is a need of players to partake. With players just transfering around destroying others it is causing a lot of “distress” to people and this will cause people to start leaving the game till it is addressed thereby causing the collapse of SPvP as well (yes Anets baby will land up falling apart and then it will be too late to recover)

http://techland.time.com/2012/08/28/guild-wars-2-sales-one-million-pre-served-record-400000-playing-at-once/

really, not enough population?

You cannot have balanced server populations.

Unless you eliminate the ability to choose a server and do a merge on current servers.

yes they are the problem, if they didn’t have server transfers from the beginning or only had PAID transfers then the server hopping wouldn’t have happened.

what Anet should do is just say “you get one last free transfer and thats it and you have 48 hours to use it”

While I agree with many of the points that have been raised, I would just say that they have been raised a little late in the day. Most serious WvW guilds have moved to Oceanic servers like IoJ, SoS. They did this in part due to the QQ winners all going to HoD and wanting their free win.

ArenaNet is going to have to draw the line at some stage and I would just think that time should be soon. Otherwise all the QQ winners will leave HoD and head somewhere else and we’ll be back where we started. It doesn’t really matter when ArenaNet stops free transfers from now, it’s going to inconvenience someone.

I wish people would quite blaming server transfers for all their problems. In some cases like HOD yes it hurt them drastically when most of the guilds left to lower servers. I would like to see real number of all the people flocking to the winning server. I play on JQ and have from the start, I tracked the server for over 48 hours every 2 hours and we were constantly Full so transfers would be impossible. Could a couple people possibly get in at a few times when I did not check, sure, but nothing to make that large of an impact.

Has anyone ever thought thought that in these upper servers that are Full that some people now are just reaching level 80 and are queing in for WvW increasing the wait time. And it seems when your winning, more people want to play as well.

I would like to see some real numbers of these flocking transfers. Just assuming they are the root cause is just that, an assumption.

As others have said free transfers aren’t the only factor in messing up WvW balance, but it’s one of the most significant ones. The matchmaking system will never work properly until this gets fixed.

I support any change to server transfers that stops the meta games folks are playing with them in WvW. I personally don’t care if they become “paid”, or on a longer cooldown, or if the post-transfer limits on WvW are reintroduced.

But, as it stands now, the standings are quite literally meaningless. What is a “server” in WvW when so many folks are changing sides in the middle of every match?

Sorry but I 100% disagree.
You are trying to call 6mo-1yr down the line the big picture and in fact it is an absolutely tiny picture.
It is pretty simple with game ftp or ptp over recent history. People flock to a game, something the company does causes its collapse people leave the game in droves. It really isnt that hard to figure out
WvW is their foundation-their main draw, the reason pvp players are here. When this aspect of the game is going unattended, which it completely is, you have a major problem on your hands.
You have to constantly be on top of your main area, or people will leave plain and simple. You can even try certain things even if they fail, people will recognize that a company is trying. Communicate and people know you are trying. ANet disappeared
Do I need to educate people what happened to SWToR when their devs disappeared?
Do I need to tell the tale of the fall of Warhammer when devs decided they wanted to ignore their WvW and balancing issues?
You take care of the short term (of your major drawing point), so you have a long term
No one is asking them to retool every aspect of the game. We are saying your transfers aren’t working as you intended and they need to be addressed

people confuse not getting every complaints answered in the public forums as dev disappearance. They have given responses they’ve given their intents, some just are not happy with those answers or demand instant gratification.

Every game that come out “everyone” says the same thing… “if you don’t fix this thing I’m upset about, I will re-post, respond to me” over and over and my 100 other “cant wait till stuff is balanced according to plan will do the same and you will fail as a company”. So many times in life the answer is wait and see. They have pages and pages. They have your input already, they are not ignoring they have answered.

Dev responses cause more drama than they help, once they have already given a public announcement on the topic. It will happen or it wont. People will like it or they wont. Repeating the same “you will fail because you didn’t respond to me”, just gets the others worked up and empowered to regurgitate the same thing over and over in stead of enjoying whats there already and providing constructive feedback, and more importantly accepting when their feedback wasn’t chosen for the changes.

I’d suggest 1 or 2 free transfers per month, reset with the monthly achievement (ie no rollover, use ’em or lose ’em). That would throttle bandwagoning a lot, but still leave open the option to switch servers longer term due to populations, queue times, whether you like the guilds on a server, etc.

Arani.9057:

<snip>

So many times in life the answer is wait and see.<snip>

Except in entertainment services where there’s loads of other services competing for your limited free time, wait and see is rarely a good choice for many.

ANET already made a statement on a different thread that addressed this that they have kept free open server transfers so that players can adjust their server to play with friends. This is an important aspect of the game.

However the mobile WvW winning team population jumpers has become such an unbalancing aspect of WvW I believe that ANET needs to take another look at free server transfers. Because of the winning server buff’s, more then just the hardcore WvW players have become “Jumpers”. I am on Blackgate, and this week i’ve seen such a huge influx of people its startling how skewed a server can become due to “jumpers”. As I am sure they do, ANET’s graph of population trends should show this.

I would suggest a 1 week server transfer option for a nominal fee of BLTP gems to be allowed on Saturdays. This would allow friends to play together as ANET wants, but also reduce the winning server “jumpers” incentive to move to a dominating server to get the free winning WvW buffs. Saturday is early enough in the WvW new match up that there is rarely a clear dominating server yet. A Saturday 24 server transfer period also allows just about every player a chance to move to a new server.
Thank you for listening to my opinion.

just increase the cooldown time on transfers to 2 match weeks, so if you change mid week it would end up being just over 2 weeks.

transfering should be a choice that you have to think about, at the moment it’s to easy to just up and leave.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to read and add constructive criticism as well as their own suggestions to my original post. Even those who replied after reading only the Title at least care enough about this issue to add their two cents.

I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that Anet will have to police server population and mass transfers per 24 hour period a little more than they’d hoped was necessary. While in an ideal environment, free choice with little-to-no consequence would lead to the betterment of all…

…this is the internet. It is not even close to ideal.

People need further restrictions and, perhaps more importantly, further incentives to make decisions that will improve the game, rather than make it unfair and unfun for everyone but themselves in the short-term, and even for themselves in the long-run.

Take all our opinions and suggestions with a grain of salt if they fall too far outside of the Vision which Arena Net has for their beloved game, but please don’t ignore the reasons for them.

Something must be done, that has not been done so far.

Thank you, and may Guild Wars 2 be better for it.

/end thread.

Asilion.9213:

What people need to consider is that free transfers are a system apart from WvW that fulfill other purposes, but also left largely unrestricted in other ways impacts WvW in ways Anet never intended. I read another similar thread where someone stated how Anet had restrictions in place for transfers/guesting in their original design but for reasons they haven’t divulged abandoned them entirely when guesting wasn’t delivered upon release. Some of these restrictions are:

- No WvW participation while guesting
- No WvW participation for the remainder of current matchup if transferred
- No realm bonuses while guesting
[….]

^ I recall reading this too. I’ve been on Desolation since the second beta weekend and haven’t changed since. (First beta weekend was chaos organising which server we would go to)

I think until the ‘hype’ of GW2 settles down though, free servers will have to stay. I say this because I am starting to see a lot of people quit/drop off now. I can’t remember if I mentioned it in this thread or another, but a friend transferred to Desolation because all his friends quit – and playing an MMO without someone else can be rather bland. Initially I thought guesting worked, so I asked him to guest over, but when we found out that it was broken/not implemented, he simply transferred.

I think free transfer will stay open for a while until the dust settles and we get to see who are the players here to stay, and once that happens, then we might see the guesting option.

Only thing anet needs to do is increase the cd of server transfer to a week or 2.