Guild Wars 2

Kylden Ar.3724:

I vote no. I do not want what is in essence another EotM.

I vote to get rid of the links. Some of us want our small scale combat back and to never see BlackGate again. Kaineng didn’t sign up for this.

Please read it, this isn’t EOTM, this is similar to merging but instead of mindlessly merging, you delete everything and get everyone to choose new servers again while implementing a brand new system.

I gonna try summarize the main points which means it gonna skip most logical thinking explanations and if you are not an logical thinker, I suggest you to read the wall of texts.

What are major issues with current WvW servers now

• WvW Populations vs Base Populations
  • Base populations make up of not only wvwers but also pvers, pvpers and inactive accounts
  • WvW populations can never be more than the base populations thus bigger base is likely to have bigger wvw
  • Base populations aren’t equal between servers
    • Server full threshold wasn’t base on WvW population for first 2.5 years
    • Anet is known to increase individual server’s threshold during then
    • Megaserver didn’t exist at start, free transfer was open for first few months. Many players stacked at a selected few servers, not just wvwers.
• Fixed Full Threshold
  • What’s the problems with it?
    • Imagine WvW as a glass of water. This glass is 10% filled and if we want to fill it, we need find water from somewhere, we can take it from other glasses. That’s how fixed threshold permits stacking.
• Fixed Full Threshold vs Base Populations
  • Fxed full threshold only stops people from joining or transferring in. It doesn’t stop the people from its very own server to join WvW thus pushing wvw populations way over the threshold.
• WvW Status Algorithm (History)
  • First wvw algorithm was implemented after 2.5 years when both DB and DH hit full status due to their huge non-wvw populations.
  • WvWalgorithm is changed again about 6 months ago to include play hours as part of the mathematical formula, due to JQ and some EU servers being full because of their casual populations.
• WvW Status Algorithm (Play hours) vs Fixed Full Threshold
  • Using a really simple logic. If the formula is “Players*Hours” then “1000*1=1000” and “500*2=1000”. If the threshold is set at 1000, both are considered full. What happen if the 1000 players decided to put in an play an hour more?
  • Using the same simple logic. “250*4=1000”. 250vs1000 people. 4 map queues?
  • Refer to the post I have made 6 months ago @ https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/New-WvW-Pop-Algorithm
• Coverage
  • Coverage means just how many hours out of the 24 hours the servers can cover with decent amount of populations
  • What’s the problems with it?
    • Coverage between servers are not equal. Some servers have more PST, OCX, SEA, EU or Early NA
  • What was done to lesser impact of the unequal coverage?
    • Warscore is equalized via skirmish point system but does nothing to coverage imbalance
• Coverage vs Fixed Full Threshold
  • Fixed Full Threshold is an overall threshold, it does not consider the coverage differences between servers thus as long as the overall count exceed the threshold, it will mark the server full.
• Inflow of new players vs Numerous servers
  • New players are to choose an open servers at the start of the game
  • Do we have enough new players for 24 NA and 27 EU servers?
• Inflow of new players vs Fixed Full Threshold vs Base Populations
  • Closed servers lose players over time due to attrition
  • Servers with huge base populations will not “feel” that attrition immediately but borderline full servers will.
  • Borderline full servers will suffer defeats against huge full servers, demoralization lead to discontents lead to loss of players or more complains
  • New players will choose non-full servers. These servers will eventually fill up and become full but still won’t able to match huge full servers’ numbers.

What can we do to solve the issues?

• Deleting all servers
• Remaking the worlds while cutting down the number of worlds
• Redesign the threshold, change fixed to dynamic
  • Dynanmic check for disparity between servers, servers will grow and shrink comparable equally.
• Eliminate server base population design, adapt megaserver base population design
• Maintain server wvw population design, eliminate non-wvw active accounts from wvw populations periodically
• Improve transfer system, provide incentive to move from full to open server, like discount in transfer cost
• Timing to introduce the system is extremely critical, servers will be filled on first come first basis. Thus, should be implemented during NA prime.
• Additional safety net for coverage balance would be categorising players base on their playing time, personalising capping system.

I don’t want servers to be deleted! There are alternative! You are stupid! I hate you!

• This isn’t personal, it is extremely objective. It is only considered because I fail to find any possible logical steps to solve while keeping them.
• Can you fix the current imbalance with current servers?
• Does making servers all open for free transfer now helps?
• Will people be willing to unstack their servers? How many?
• Does having a dynamic threshold and evenly spread populations to 24 NA or 27 EU servers help?
• Will you be willing to break your community up due to spreading of population? (Affect the Full or Very High servers)
• Do we have enough off hours to spread to 24 NA or 27 EU servers?
• Do you want a immediate fix or a slow fix extending to many years by waiting for people to quit?

You can’t guarantee it will work!

• Can you guarantee that it will not then?
• Did anet guaranteed having canon, new big wvw map and linkings are good ideas?
• Why can’t you live test? All you have to do is to keep the current servers’ data and its list of players’ so you can revert it all back when need to. New players will still choose an old server at the start. Everyone will choose a new test servers ingame.

Community will still break apart
Of course it will. It just isn’t unfair as spreading to 24 or 27 servers, or merging. Everyone suffer the same fate. It will still keep majority of your community, provided that your communities are actually united as you think it is.

Not that deleting servers would be bad, might I suggest a better alternative. Unbind wvw from pve servers. Players still maintain their pve servers however make wvw separate from pve. Allow guilds to register as wvw guilds and add a wvw guild slot to the guild panel. These guilds can select a separate wvw server to represent. Anet can balance these servers solely based on guild member population rather than pve server population which should add more balance to each server. Well what about pugs or guildless players? Incorporate a system so that a pug joining a wvw map will be designated to a server lacking player base at that specific time. This increases map population for a weak server at this time and helps to balance some of the inequality associated with stacked servers. It also increases the chance for a pug to enjoy outnumbered pips reguardless of the pve server they’re on. A system like this would create more balanced matches throughout all time zones and prevent players on full pve servers to still play wvw with a reduced fear of a full map que. furthermore, a system like this would function most efficiently on a single map system. While some may say this would increase map ques what I see could result is more diverse fights. If you reduce map populations by increasing the number of wvw servers and make larger maps that can accommodate things like 5 servers fighting on one map the game changes from a blob fight to a more strategic combat system. Needless to say whether anets wvw server can handle a 5 server combat system even with reduced player population caps is another question that needs to be answered.
Tldr:
Unbind wvw from pve
Make guilds register for wvw servers so real wvw balancing can be made not based on pve population
Allow pugs to be assigned to servers on a daily/weekly basis based on map populations to help balance fights. If they want to be with a specific commander time to pony up and join that wvw guild. Building community one pug at a time.
Implement larger maps with lower player caps and increase the number of servers per map. 5 servers on one map increases variance play style and prevents a single blob from dominating a map.

SkyShroud.2865:

Snip

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Deleting worlds and redistributing players is something that has been considered and discussed. In the way described it is not an option that we feel works to solve the complex issue of world population balance. There are many factors involved many that are not immediately obvious without the data we have access to.

Jayne.9251:

SkyShroud.2865:

Snip

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Deleting worlds and redistributing players is something that has been considered and discussed. In the way described it is not an option that we feel works to solve the complex issue of world population balance. There are many factors involved many that are not immediately obvious without the data we have access to.

Different context, please elaborate “described”, mr or miss quoter.

WvW’s basic population control has always been Winning vs Waiting. All Anet has to do is create the correct amount of Tiers for their active populations. Problem is, they keep us locked down which prevents “Winning vs Waiting” from working. They also lowered World populations too low where “Winning vs Waiting” cannot work either.

Unlock the worlds, let the players sort it out. Link as needed.

SkyShroud.2865:

Jayne.9251:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Deleting worlds and redistributing players is something that has been considered and discussed. In the way described it is not an option that we feel works to solve the complex issue of world population balance. There are many factors involved many that are not immediately obvious without the data we have access to.

Different context, please elaborate “described”, mr or miss quoter.

Click on the dev name and you’ll see he was responding to your comments on the same proposal you made in that other thread.

For context, here’s your post that elicited his reply:

SkyShroud.2865:

Apparently my analysis on the server design is correct and likewise the issues, actually those designs and issues are common sense. Deleting and remaking worlds still the only way to go to balance servers but mehz, people want the gamemode to die instead.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Deleting worlds and redistributing players is something that has been considered and discussed. In the way described it is not an option that we feel works to solve the complex issue of world population balance. There are many factors involved many that are not immediately obvious without the data we have access to.

DeWolfe.2174:

WvW’s basic population control has always been Winning vs Waiting. All Anet has to do is create the correct amount of Tiers for their active populations. Problem is, they keep us locked down which prevents “Winning vs Waiting” from working. They also lowered World populations too low where “Winning vs Waiting” cannot work either.

Unlock the worlds, let the players sort it out. Link as needed.

Yes. The players have been very successful in sorting it out for four years now.

Jayne.9251:

DeWolfe.2174:

WvW’s basic population control has always been Winning vs Waiting. All Anet has to do is create the correct amount of Tiers for their active populations. Problem is, they keep us locked down which prevents “Winning vs Waiting” from working. They also lowered World populations too low where “Winning vs Waiting” cannot work either.

Unlock the worlds, let the players sort it out. Link as needed.

Yes. The players have been very successful in sorting it out for four years now.

Matches were FAR better balanced than what we have now. A stacked T1 and a fight T2 worked better for years than what we have now.

2 Tiers are enough
Better queued than lame

SkyShroud.2865:

Summary

I gonna try summarize the main points which means it gonna skip most logical thinking explanations and if you are not an logical thinker, I suggest you to read the wall of texts.

What are major issues with current WvW servers now

• WvW Populations vs Base Populations
  • Base populations make up of not only wvwers but also pvers, pvpers and inactive accounts
  • WvW populations can never be more than the base populations thus bigger base is likely to have bigger wvw
  • Base populations aren’t equal between servers
    • Server full threshold wasn’t base on WvW population for first 2.5 years
    • Anet is known to increase individual server’s threshold during then
    • Megaserver didn’t exist at start, free transfer was open for first few months. Many players stacked at a selected few servers, not just wvwers.
• Fixed Full Threshold
  • What’s the problems with it?
    • Imagine WvW as a glass of water. This glass is 10% filled and if we want to fill it, we need find water from somewhere, we can take it from other glasses. That’s how fixed threshold permits stacking.
• Fixed Full Threshold vs Base Populations
  • Fxed full threshold only stops people from joining or transferring in. It doesn’t stop the people from its very own server to join WvW thus pushing wvw populations way over the threshold.
• WvW Status Algorithm (History)
  • First wvw algorithm was implemented after 2.5 years when both DB and DH hit full status due to their huge non-wvw populations.
  • WvWalgorithm is changed again about 6 months ago to include play hours as part of the mathematical formula, due to JQ and some EU servers being full because of their casual populations.
• WvW Status Algorithm (Play hours) vs Fixed Full Threshold
  • Using a really simple logic. If the formula is “Players*Hours” then “1000*1=1000” and “500*2=1000”. If the threshold is set at 1000, both are considered full. What happen if the 1000 players decided to put in an play an hour more?
  • Using the same simple logic. “250*4=1000”. 250vs1000 people. 4 map queues?
  • Refer to the post I have made 6 months ago @ https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/New-WvW-Pop-Algorithm
• Coverage
  • Coverage means just how many hours out of the 24 hours the servers can cover with decent amount of populations
  • What’s the problems with it?
    • Coverage between servers are not equal. Some servers have more PST, OCX, SEA, EU or Early NA
  • What was done to lesser impact of the unequal coverage?
    • Warscore is equalized via skirmish point system but does nothing to coverage imbalance
• Coverage vs Fixed Full Threshold
  • Fixed Full Threshold is an overall threshold, it does not consider the coverage differences between servers thus as long as the overall count exceed the threshold, it will mark the server full.
• Inflow of new players vs Numerous servers
  • New players are to choose an open servers at the start of the game
  • Do we have enough new players for 24 NA and 27 EU servers?
• Inflow of new players vs Fixed Full Threshold vs Base Populations
  • Closed servers lose players over time due to attrition
  • Servers with huge base populations will not “feel” that attrition immediately but borderline full servers will.
  • Borderline full servers will suffer defeats against huge full servers, demoralization lead to discontents lead to loss of players or more complains
  • New players will choose non-full servers. These servers will eventually fill up and become full but still won’t able to match huge full servers’ numbers.

What can we do to solve the issues?

• Deleting all servers
• Remaking the worlds while cutting down the number of worlds
• Redesign the threshold, change fixed to dynamic
  • Dynanmic check for disparity between servers, servers will grow and shrink comparable equally.
• Eliminate server base population design, adapt megaserver base population design
• Maintain server wvw population design, eliminate non-wvw active accounts from wvw populations periodically
• Improve transfer system, provide incentive to move from full to open server, like discount in transfer cost
• Timing to introduce the system is extremely critical, servers will be filled on first come first basis. Thus, should be implemented during NA prime.
• Additional safety net for coverage balance would be categorising players base on their playing time, personalising capping system.

I don’t want servers to be deleted! There are alternative! You are stupid! I hate you!

• This isn’t personal, it is extremely objective. It is only considered because I fail to find any possible logical steps to solve while keeping them.
• Can you fix the current imbalance with current servers?
• Does making servers all open for free transfer now helps?
• Will people be willing to unstack their servers? How many?
• Does having a dynamic threshold and evenly spread populations to 24 NA or 27 EU servers help?
• Will you be willing to break your community up due to spreading of population? (Affect the Full or Very High servers)
• Do we have enough off hours to spread to 24 NA or 27 EU servers?
• Do you want a immediate fix or a slow fix extending to many years by waiting for people to quit?

snip – 6K body length limit

This is well thought out. Addresses our major problems. Suggests a way to maintain population balance over the long term. Is fair to all in its implementation.

Lets take another look at what maintaining the status quo is doing for WvW right now:

(credits: images taken from this site: WvWstats.com)

New system is needed, more than everything. By far the highest priority. Expansion will bring even more imbalance, solves nothing.

When one side can’t fight back: the game is over. It’s just as boring and pointless winning easily, than being wiped, with no chance to last a while. No CHALLENGE at all.

And that is what’s happening, and good fights, that can last a while, are extremely scarce. The skill balance doesn’t helping either. The whole system needs to become competitive. It is not. It’s very one-sided.

Delete, reform, change, doesn’t matter how: CHANGE is needed. But there is no answer, so what we can do? Play something else, right? Don’t be surprised if WvW loses players constantly.

Jayne.9251:

Click on the dev name and you’ll see he was responding to your comments on the same proposal you made in that other thread.

Of course I remember that reply but that reply isn’t made explicitly in this thread and what described in that thread is not even one bit as informative as this. Thus, I don’t even know if the devs actually read this thread.

Once again I will say in general, YOU DON’T HAVE TO DELETE SERVERS.
You just need to create a new pool of wvw players.

The current servers continue as the base server for every player, it’s the servers new players will continue to select when they first enter the game.

Create 12 new wvw servers where active wvw players will pick to play. Make each server have it’s own theme like name them after the gods and dragons, give those players finishers of those gods and dragons they are playing on, even make a version of the guild chest piece to display the god and dragon symbols, just some stuff to make people give a care about the server.

If an account does not play for wvw for like 6 weeks then reset them to no wvw world selected. You eliminate sleeper accounts that only come back for big events, they have to select a world again when they come back, at least they won’t be hibernating on just BG all the time.

You can control in the beginning of new world selections on how many will join the world, then raise caps when most worlds are at their soft caps.

You can even control off hours by designating 3 servers for ocx/sea and those servers will always fight each other, if ocx/sea players want to screw that up afterwards that’s their business. The other 9 servers will rotate on who they fight with 1u1d.

You can further encourage those players to play on those servers with the controversial action level scoring.

Or flow over to whatever crazy hair brained structure you want to control population with afterwards, but you don’t have to delete servers.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

What perspectives are missing?

SkyShroud.2865:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

What perspectives are missing?

Probably data that could be easily exploitable by the players. (Not discounting any current or past manipulations of course).

Or you know, the potential risk (money costs or player loss) of such an endeavor versus the potential reward.

At the end of the day, just praise Dwayna and hope for the best.

SkyShroud.2865:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

What perspectives are missing?

They have made it pretty clear in the past that if they were to give us all the data on population figures, movement, etc… which would clear up our limited “perspective”, it would also leave the system open to exploitation by us the players.

SkyShroud.2865:

Jayne.9251:

Click on the dev name and you’ll see he was responding to your comments on the same proposal you made in that other thread.

Of course I remember that reply but that reply isn’t made explicitly in this thread and what described in that thread is not even one bit as informative as this. Thus, I don’t even know if the devs actually read this thread.

I assume this has been answered now? It was in response to your previous posts/threads.

I’m just grateful the devs do read, do look at all sides, and make informed decisions. They have access to data we don’t.

And I believe the Anet mandate, specifically to WvW with the expansion announcement was that player driven community would be a focus and priority.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

We can’t help then and your post is very useful clearing that up. We can stop trying to propose solutions.

What we still can do, is to communicate our piece of the puzzle, and it’s up to you to find ways to assemble it into a whole.

Here is mine: WvW in my view is a competition, that is so one-sided at the moment, that there is no more competition – so it’s pointless. There has to be a challenge in acquiring a win, otherwise it’s not fun. That challenge has to be achievable for all teams. “Taking on achievable challenges is a secret of happiness”, let’s say fun. Of course just watching the in-game landscape can be “fun” too, but this is about the fun of improving, becoming better player, improving teamwork – these all need achievable challenges, including content for newbies, advanced up to highest levels.

This is why you have tournaments on hold – which is good decision by the way – until solving “team balancing”. This is the most important problem, by far.

There is no such thing as population balance because people are not static constructs. Players take breaks, do not all play at the same time, for the same amount of time, leave the game etc. You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand. In PvP it is possible of course because you have small teams in set matches with short timers. WvW is an entirely different creature. There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

Yet the battlegroup proposal came from the devs.

And if the system stays the same then clearly something like inactive players being purged from servers after 2-3 months needs to happen and I don’t see how that presents problems beyond you simply being concerned about whether players would be motivated to come back.

Serenity.6135:

You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand.
…..
There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

I would love for a Dev to clarify here. Is the below picture what we should always expect and satisfy ourselves with? Is this the best that ANet plans to do for WvW going forward, as Serenity has stated above, and Raymond may have intimated here:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

At some time, you have to stop driving on that flat tire and change it, or it creates even more problems. Fixing the flat tire with a spare tire may not be the ‘best of the best’ of tire solutions, but at least it gets you back on the road, moving toward a next step – new or repaired tire. Not fixing it puts you out, on the side of the road, with no way to move forward.

It appears that you are telling us we’ll be driving on this crummy spare tire until….? Cause, by the looks of things, the tire isn’t holding up very well and the road is pretty potholed and bumpy.

Serenity.6135:

There is no such thing as population balance because people are not static constructs. Players take breaks, do not all play at the same time, for the same amount of time, leave the game etc. You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand. In PvP it is possible of course because you have small teams in set matches with short timers. WvW is an entirely different creature. There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

You are missing the point here: it’s not about making it equal, but not having unsurpassable differences, and that is beyond just player numbers: it’s time zone coverage and quality of the players or groups too.

These have to be achieved by systems in place, that are simply missing: rating the value of each and everyone, keeping that rating updated, distributing it evenly. Long term realm loyalty rewards for loyal players and even higher, but short term rewards for those who volunteer in going where they are needed – just like PvP rewards, when you are asked to switch to the other team. There has to be systems in place for all these.

Otherwise is a complete failure. Why do it when the “winner” is already decided? There is no fun playing this way, beyond a certain point, and that is until finding out that “it’s nothing here, move on”. That’s why players do GvG instead, because the fight system is fun, but since the rest is not, this can’t last for long.

There has to be a better way, unless the target of this product are new players only. This could have been more fun than anything in GW2, but was anything but fun (except the somehow even fights), and was even more frustrating because of the lack of explanation; that what is this game mode? I thought this was a competitive game mode:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/competitive-play/

But it isn’t. Again, not because all sides aren’t having the same “rating”, but because the rating difference is so huge that there is no competition at all. Can this be solved? Are the problems unsurmountable, because varied reasons? If not, let us know, so we can move on. Thank You!

Tiawal.2351:

Serenity.6135:

There is no such thing as population balance because people are not static constructs. Players take breaks, do not all play at the same time, for the same amount of time, leave the game etc. You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand. In PvP it is possible of course because you have small teams in set matches with short timers. WvW is an entirely different creature. There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

You are missing the point here: it’s not about making it equal, but not having unsurpassable differences, and that is beyond just player numbers: it’s time zone coverage and quality of the players or groups too.

These have to be achieved by systems in place, that are simply missing: rating the value of each and everyone, keeping that rating updated, distributing it evenly. Long term realm loyalty rewards for loyal players and even higher, but short term rewards for those who volunteer in going where they are needed – just like PvP rewards, when you are asked to switch to the other team. There has to be systems in place for all these.

Otherwise is a complete failure. Why do it when the “winner” is already decided? There is no fun playing this way, beyond a certain point, and that is until finding out that “it’s nothing here, move on”. That’s why players do GvG instead, because the fight system is fun, but since the rest is not, this can’t last for long.

There has to be a better way, unless the target of this product are new players only. This could have been more fun than anything in GW2, but was anything but fun (except the somehow even fights), and was even more frustrating because of the lack of explanation; that what is this game mode? I thought this was a competitive game mode:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/competitive-play/

But it isn’t. Again, not because all sides aren’t having the same “rating”, but because the rating difference is so huge that there is no competition at all. Can this be solved? Are the problems unsurmountable, because varied reasons? If not, let us know, so we can move on. Thank You!

I never said “equal” I said the idea of population balance is not possible regardless of what change is made because of the concept of WvW being a 24/7 game mode, balance is simply not possible. Short sighted ideas like blowing up servers and hoping for a better outcome might make some people feel better but will do absolutely nothing to fix the issue.

It might make more sense to focus on stabilizing server populations by shortening the time between links to one month to decrease the amount of bandwagoning, changing the way transfers work in terms of imposing limits and changes to costs, giving more reasons for players to stay on their current server etc.

Real problem is that WvW is one big mess where players do what they want and play how they want. It’s not really competitive when some tryhards with their meta battle builds fight against raid geared pip farmers.

Junkpile.7439:

Real problem is that WvW is one big mess where players do what they want and play how they want.

Essentially this.

In sPvP isn’t balanced either – but still, it’s better; there is something, beyond the semantics of that term, “balance”. Has to be here as well, otherwise giving up is the only option left.

I have said it before and I will KEEP saying it until the sense of it comes through to the devs.

The links, which are still termed ‘BETA’, are a total and absolute failure. We need megaserves AND the links to go. Not one. BOTH.

WvW was destroyed the moment the megaserver was instituted.

Further and worse damage was done when a bad implementation of ‘linking’ made it impossible for people to get to know one another and create communities that are stable and not moving as much as they have been and are now.

Without the ability to get to know players, to be able to group with others, WvW is and has been on a huge slide downwards. Elitists and trolls rule.

1. Undo the Megaservers

2. Undo the links

Let the servers fall where they may, even last place had its fun!

Tiawal.2351:

In sPvP isn’t balanced either – but still, it’s better; there is something, beyond the semantics of that term, “balance”. Has to be here as well, otherwise giving up is the only option left.

Because the mechanics of PvP are different. In WvW it does not matter how many people the other side has on the map, it does not stop you from playing like in PvP. The matches have a timer, teams are small, and can only have a fixed number of players.

Serenity.6135:

Tiawal.2351:

In sPvP isn’t balanced either – but still, it’s better; there is something, beyond the semantics of that term, “balance”. Has to be here as well, otherwise giving up is the only option left.

Because the mechanics of PvP are different. In WvW it does not matter how many people the other side has on the map, it does not stop you from playing like in PvP. The matches have a timer, teams are small, and can only have a fixed number of players.

WvW needs it’s “mechanics” as well. Whatever is called, that doesn’t matter. Just the end result matters: not having a game won, even before it started – as it is now. It’s not like failure is the norm.

Pensadora.9478:

Serenity.6135:

You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand.
…..
There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

I would love for a Dev to clarify here. Is the below picture what we should always expect and satisfy ourselves with? Is this the best that ANet plans to do for WvW going forward, as Serenity has stated above, and Raymond may have intimated here:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

At some time, you have to stop driving on that flat tire and change it, or it creates even more problems. Fixing the flat tire with a spare tire may not be the ‘best of the best’ of tire solutions, but at least it gets you back on the road, moving toward a next step – new or repaired tire. Not fixing it puts you out, on the side of the road, with no way to move forward.

It appears that you are telling us we’ll be driving on this crummy spare tire until….? Cause, by the looks of things, the tire isn’t holding up very well and the road is pretty potholed and bumpy.

The scores ALONE should be telling the devs that WvW is in dire condition and that many servers are being devastated by three, four, and five times their numbers at all times of the day and night.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Unfortunately we cannot give you all the details. It’s as simple as that. I’m not trying to be mean but there are details of the game and the studio we cannot share with players. Though… If you are really passionate about this problem we’re always looking for good people to join the team https://www.arena.net/#careers.

You seem to think that many can code.

Just because we can’t doesn’t mean we can’t see the issues. Worse, we know how to fix some of the issues but few if any times have players been listened to about anything regarding WvW, ever.

Starting with the Megaserver – which took away any way to call the COMMUNITY to WvW to the links which makes sure not one of us knows the others well at all, Anet decided to make WvW end game content without consistency.

Bad enough our tournaments were ripped from us – our communities were as well.

Long ago, not sure how long is that, maybe 2 years? A small group of players, including myself, advocate for something really simple and that is deletion of servers. We saw something many couldn’t and that is a inherent imbalance between servers, something that is pretty much impossible to fix without hurting everyone’s gameplay.

There was a few officers from some t1 wvw guilds opposing it greatly citing community reason but well, we all know that isn’t true since they always transfer around. However, many months down the road, those same officers asked for deletion. The reason being because the t1 servers they were in got affected by the imbalance. This make me realize one very important thing and that is unless the majority get affected by this imbalance, the majority will not care enough to know. In fact, they have no idea what is it all about. Realistically speaking, by the time for the silent majority to actually learn about what all these balancing about, the tiers would likely to be compressed to 2 by then which pretty much too late for any rectification.

Back then, I suggested deletion repeatedly over many threads and I am sure, really sure devs did read it because devs did drop hint that nuke is a option, with repeatedly nuking every few months. It was almost like what I suggested.

Of course, we all know linking is used in the end which I assume because is the least resistance change.

Still, months and years down the road, has the balancing improved? Not really. The only noticeable different is all of us get more people but imbalance still the same in ratio. Are people happy with the balancing? I don’t think so since we do have groups of guild leaders and officers across servers banding together talking about the imbalance. They plan to submit something concrete to the devs, honestly speaking, I have no idea how far they went since I stopped keeping up to the progress.

I personally wanted a more balance gamemode, I am not expecting perfection but at the very least, a fighting chance and not just a one sided gameplay. Unlike back then, now I have even better understanding of the servers and now thought up a slightly different approach.

Regardless, I ask of you all, do you all want balance or do you want to keep the current imbalance?

PS: I will talk about servers and the modified approach on the next two posts.[/quote]

I never see you playing on HoD…

1. That said, the issues absolutely started at the advent of the Megaserver.

2. All was worsened by links.

3. WvW hanging by a thread, it is now populated with real world mercenaries who are paid to be there – literally and not once has Anet addressed the fact that these are out of country people who are infiltrating other than their own area servers.

Not once.

All three issues are the causes, not the symptoms of all the rest of the issues laid out.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

Undo the links.

Undo the Megaserver.

Give us back our communities.

Give us back tournaments.

WvW, fixed.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Unfortunately we cannot give you all the details. It’s as simple as that. I’m not trying to be mean but there are details of the game and the studio we cannot share with players. Though… If you are really passionate about this problem we’re always looking for good people to join the team https://www.arena.net/#careers.

Here’s the details that the players do know.

Nightcapping has been a problem since the beginning of WvW. The players hate it. FIX IT. It’s like playing sPvP when you are 1v5 except that the results of a sPvP match don’t affect the next match.

Population balance has also been an issue since the beginning of WvW.
The players hate it when Anet locks a server so it can NEVER have the same number of players as certain not to be named overstacked servers. FIX IT.

The players hate it when Anet has tournaments where the winner is determined by population and coverage instead of skill. FIX IT.

The players hate it when they get into WvW Friday reset and know that every day afterwards is going to be worse then the day before. FIX IT.

The players hate it when bugs are not addressed, where unused PvE skills and traits become overpowered in WvW but are not addressed, where skill balance and WvW seem to be mutually exclusive. FIX IT.

I don’t care about the game details.
I don’t care about the studio.
I, along with a lot of players, are very passionate about WvW but feel that Anet doesn’t share that passion because of a lack of communication.

There’s been two dev suggestions to solve population imbalance, one was battlegroups and the other was having many small servers. Why were those dev ideas scrapped?

atheria.2837:

Undo the links.

Undo the Megaserver.

Give us back our communities.

Give us back tournaments.

WvW, fixed.

Without megaserver pve would be a ghost town for most servers on all but the newest or most wealth producing maps. Communities, as they were and are in wvw, never existed in open world pve to begin with. There is no “world” chat.
Tournaments steer the flow of ppt even further towards the servers with higher population, better off-hour coverage and only serve to burn people out and cause drama.
Without links many servers are basically dead on most of the maps, and all servers have fewer opponents to fight.

How are any of those things a good idea?

~ Kovu

Serenity.6135:

I never said “equal” I said the idea of population balance is not possible regardless of what change is made because of the concept of WvW being a 24/7 game mode, balance is simply not possible.

Perfect balance no, but it can be a lot better than it is now, it has been better in the past and it is a lot better in other systems.

What about strictly WvW servers? Then these servers won’t fill up with PvE, PvP players, and inactive accounts are booted from that server after so much time.

You just copy your character to a different server dedicated to WvW. When you want to WvW, you log out and select that WvW character. When you log in, you must enter a map. If there’s a queue, you are taken to the open world or PvP lobby to pass the time. Any progress and loot gained by that character is copied over to your other copy.

There are probably a ton of details I’m missing here that won’t make this work unfortunately. This was just a spur of the moment idea that I wanted to write out. As I’ve always said, an idea can be bad as long as it gets the ball rolling for better ideas.

atheria.2837:

SkyShroud.2865:

Vote for Deletion!
Incoming Expansion

snip

I never see you playing on HoD…

oh my…..

It’s not a player created problem, it’s an Anet created problem, and it’s a problem centered almost exclusively around BG, and to a lesser extent JQ. Anet never should have opened these servers up. I’ve seen a good chunk of others servers field similar active numbers whereas the fights are relatively even. The problem arises when other servers end up in T1 showing the true issue of the population disparity. No server can field the same numbers as JQ, and JQ themselves can’t field the numbers against BG.

Honestly, the best possible case scenario at this point is to drastically lower the population on each map.. like literally cut them by 50%. It won’t affect any other server that much, but it will hit the top 2 quite hard. Send their map ques through the roof so they sit for 2-4 hours in a que. At some point if they hope to play regularly, they’ll need to move. It might even help diminishing the ongoing lag issue as well.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Unfortunately we cannot give you all the details. It’s as simple as that. I’m not trying to be mean but there are details of the game and the studio we cannot share with players. Though… If you are really passionate about this problem we’re always looking for good people to join the team https://www.arena.net/#careers.

Oh, I wish – especially on the design-level. I think I’d work myself to death programming for you guys though. I may be decent enough to do my job well, but your team’s on a whole other level when it comes to implementation considering your track record for nearly-flawless releases :P.

It’s likely you might not read this, but being a programmer you’d get this more than say WvW designers that may be focused more on quick and dirty fixes for short-term issues: Has there been any discussion regarding an AI using in-game player data to compose matchups rather than based on WL/Glicko? It’d give a much better composition of groups for servers and could adjust for things like transfers, play habits (blob/solo, distributions over time, etc.), and even transfers.

It’d be a big investment and a lot to process in terms of data, but just wondering if the thought ever came up as I think it’s the best approach to a permanent fix which doesn’t forcibly uproot any existing communities.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

Unfortunately we cannot give you all the details. It’s as simple as that. I’m not trying to be mean but there are details of the game and the studio we cannot share with players. Though… If you are really passionate about this problem we’re always looking for good people to join the team https://www.arena.net/#careers.

Unfortunately, I have no interest in a career in game industry or passionate about gw2, I am just happen to be competitive. I also find it more fun to play games than to actually make games.

Regardless, in that case, I guess our only option is to QQ and more QQ, no more talks on solution since any solutions will always fall short due to not able to fulfill all “perspectives”? Then wait for the game mode to be in serious crisis before devs decided to do another quick band aid?

Serenity.6135:

I never said “equal” I said the idea of population balance is not possible regardless of what change is made because of the concept of WvW being a 24/7 game mode, balance is simply not possible. Short sighted ideas like blowing up servers and hoping for a better outcome might make some people feel better but will do absolutely nothing to fix the issue.

It might make more sense to focus on stabilizing server populations by shortening the time between links to one month to decrease the amount of bandwagoning, changing the way transfers work in terms of imposing limits and changes to costs, giving more reasons for players to stay on their current server etc.

Population balance isn’t about equal which is why you think is not possible. Population balancing is about giving servers fighting chance and this fighting chance is not given in the current designs because full servers are not necessary comparable and if they are not comparable, why should they be full in the first place?

It will truly be short sighted if it is plainly blowing it all up and re-using back all the same old designs. Of course the main idea of blowing up is to implement new designs that is only possible after blowing it up. I will be really grateful if people don’t simplify the concepts to the point it lose all meanings.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Additional-World-Linking-Information/first

Elaborate solutions were mentioned before and it also include blowing it up, it is really the only logical option anyway because wvw is already too far off to balance. Ermm, oh, I hope the perspective is not about getting players to accept the elaborate solutions….that will be….hard.

atheria.2837:

I never see you playing on HoD…

It just means you rarely wvw and it says you are from SF, figures. I do vaguely remembered you was raging pointlessly on team chat on one morning (your time) and then offline before everybody else got the chance to flame you.

atheria.2837:

Pensadora.9478:

Serenity.6135:

You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand.
…..
There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

I would love for a Dev to clarify here. Is the below picture what we should always expect and satisfy ourselves with? Is this the best that ANet plans to do for WvW going forward, as Serenity has stated above, and Raymond may have intimated here:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

At some time, you have to stop driving on that flat tire and change it, or it creates even more problems. Fixing the flat tire with a spare tire may not be the ‘best of the best’ of tire solutions, but at least it gets you back on the road, moving toward a next step – new or repaired tire. Not fixing it puts you out, on the side of the road, with no way to move forward.

It appears that you are telling us we’ll be driving on this crummy spare tire until….? Cause, by the looks of things, the tire isn’t holding up very well and the road is pretty potholed and bumpy.

The scores ALONE should be telling the devs that WvW is in dire condition and that many servers are being devastated by three, four, and five times their numbers at all times of the day and night.

Scores are not accurate enough to determine population. Some servers will intentionally tank for whatever reason, it does not mean their population is low, but if you only use scores as a basis for determining population you might think it is.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

Yeah the only thing we don’t have is how much money you’re making from server transfers.

morrolan.9608:

Serenity.6135:

I never said “equal” I said the idea of population balance is not possible regardless of what change is made because of the concept of WvW being a 24/7 game mode, balance is simply not possible.

Perfect balance no, but it can be a lot better than it is now, it has been better in the past and it is a lot better in other systems.

Game populations change over time. If the population was the same or near what it was in the past we would not need megaservers, linking, etc.

atheria.2837:

I never see you playing on HoD…

lol. I run with TIME and Skyshroud often. Shoutout to my TIME friends!! Favorite part of Saturday mornings when MAS isn’t out doing stuff together. They are a different timezone from NA, so wonder if that may explain it for you?

Serenity.6135:

atheria.2837:

Pensadora.9478:

Serenity.6135:

You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand.
…..
There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

I would love for a Dev to clarify here. Is the below picture what we should always expect and satisfy ourselves with? Is this the best that ANet plans to do for WvW going forward, as Serenity has stated above, and Raymond may have intimated here:

Raymond Lukes.6305:

At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

At some time, you have to stop driving on that flat tire and change it, or it creates even more problems. Fixing the flat tire with a spare tire may not be the ‘best of the best’ of tire solutions, but at least it gets you back on the road, moving toward a next step – new or repaired tire. Not fixing it puts you out, on the side of the road, with no way to move forward.

It appears that you are telling us we’ll be driving on this crummy spare tire until….? Cause, by the looks of things, the tire isn’t holding up very well and the road is pretty potholed and bumpy.

The scores ALONE should be telling the devs that WvW is in dire condition and that many servers are being devastated by three, four, and five times their numbers at all times of the day and night.

Scores are not accurate enough to determine population. Some servers will intentionally tank for whatever reason, it does not mean their population is low, but if you only use scores as a basis for determining population you might think it is.

Scores determining population was not the point.

Scores indicating, visually, easily, objectively that there is a serious malfunction in WvW that hasn’t been addressed, is what the comment was about.

It should be easy for anyone to look at the score variance in this week’s T1 matchup – a mere 4 days into the week (first image below) – and see that things are entirely out of control and out of balance. Notice also that one server has total coverage, around the clock, every day.

It is even more telling when you look at this same scenario played out over months as shown in the historical matchups (second image below).

Yet this behemoth server was opened in June for more guilds and more people to transfer on to it. Why? We don’t have an answer for that question.

It certainly appears that this server was not, in any possible stretch of the imagination, in need of more population or coverage. So, I for one, am incredibly interested to know what data we don’t have, that Anet has that convinced them that BG needed to be opened for even more players to move there.

I’d like to understand what could possibly be preventing a correction to the out of balance population problems, while at the same time NOT preventing decisions that make it worse.

We have been told we haven’t suggested the right solution. Well, then I continue to ask….what is the plan? How long will these already long-term, incredibly out of balance, unfair and non-competitive situations continue?

Anet said last year that the players would drive the direction of WvW, but frankly we don’t have the tools or perspective to do so properly. And the WvW polls stopped awhile ago.

I too think that Anet needs to decide on a direction for WvW, and let the playerbase know what that direction will be.

Caliburn.1845:

Anet said last year that the players would drive the direction of WvW, but frankly we don’t have the tools or perspective to do so properly. And the WvW polls stopped awhile ago.

I too think that Anet needs to decide on a direction for WvW, and let the playerbase know what that direction will be.

Annnnd this is where i get very obtuse about ANet awfull quality….

I think ANet meant with that as to making players able to choose to start ktrain from left or right and wich bl to move to ktrain faster.
Doesn’t it feel pro gamming man??
Doesn’t that makes you feel stay n’ far and avoid other games cause your gut at pvd?
Isnt what what most gw2 player just want…???

The direction they gave were links and servers to avoid working on some real fix solutions for long term if not forever.

They even failled on guild system and guildhalls, dont expect anything more complex than guilds halls to work on this game…. if they even failled on those…

Gw2 the most stacked game of useless content…..