Guild Wars 2

Everything that has released recently has encouraged people’s desire to stack onto specific server for either WvW victories, or completions of the LS events. I don’t get it, having the various servers so unbalanced makes huge parts of this game much less fun, especially WvW.
The new EotM map makes the population disparity between WvW servers much worse than it was before so gives even more incentive for guilds to move to “better” servers. Now the “qued” servers have an overflow area to play on, but the “non-qued” lose what WvW players they had to EotM, no change for the “qued”.
Complicated large LS events also the same thing, maybe just guesting but it still makes the game less pleasant for those of us who don’t want to server hop.
And while I really am enjoying the Escape from Lion’s Arch, I really wish there was a way I could get an actual completion and have all the civilians saved, the most I have seen is 900, and what is really frustrtating is I have no way, or idea of how to get into an instance that will take saving the civilians seriously… Spoon
PS I am not sure exactly how to sold the server balance problem, but I know that EtoM has made it much worse for my server in WvW…

For PvE:

Anet does not know how to scale content based on number of players participating. No developer will ever really find the perfect scale number. It is difficult to decide when the content should increase in difficulty based on the number of players so Anet simply made the base number a zerg.

I have to disagree with you.
For World Versus World, the low tier and high tier are extremely boring and more important often with a fix outcome. For the low tier cause there are some near-dead servers (where it comes to WvW). for the high tier cause everyone wants to be in the No.1 world. In the mid range the fights are actually surprising and balanced. You win some and you loose some. Being better then average means you can help your world to bring up the average.

As for PvE.
My server is doing 1200 civilians every single time when I’ve been in the zone. It doesn’t matter if it is the middle off the night or early morning or prime time. There is some overflow, but if you manage to be in one of the bordering maps before a LA cycle misses, you get 99% certain in to main. And even after a cycle was ended, I got into main through one of the neigbouring maps. overflow only really happens in gendaran fields due to the keep there and in bloodtide cause of the wurm. Lornar pass is almost always good to go.

Now, the key to succes is udnerstanding that 1200 citizens is a group effort. You can’t do it alone, and whining in mapchat won’t do you good. What does help is convincing people. It actually is worth it to do. Explain that the loot is better then when you zerg around. convince commanders to tag down and convince zergers to leave the zerg. Explain that the 1200 bag has a higher then usual change on ascended armor, and precursors, explain they can get the jetpack skin or a jade weapon ticket.

Also explain the number. So often, When it is 10 minutes in, we get 350 citizens and people start saying we will never make it. That is wrong.
You got over 40 minutes. So if you reach over 300 citizens in the first 10 minutes you really have a good change of making it. if you got 600 at the half hour mark your good.

Also keep in mind AND make people udnerstand that after the 45 minutes mark things go faster cause the big zerging events are over AND the rubble-hunters have joined in by then.

But going into the map with the attitude, ‘we are not going to make it’ and starting to spread that atmosphere in map chat will be a selffullfilling prophecy.

Easy. More $$ for Anet.

Transfers => gems => income => bonuses => Tesla S in the garage

ANet is not a non-profit

because transferring to a winning server (coverage/ppt wise) makes you a winner logic

mercury ranique.2170:

I have to disagree with you.
My server is doing 1200 civilians every single time when I’ve been in the zone. It doesn’t matter if it is the middle off the night or early morning or prime time. .

Oh I see, since your server is completing every time, you never have to deal with the situation I am in. Lucky you. I have at least 25 runs, with one, and only one run with 1200 citizens saved. Thank you for providing more evidence as to the huge server balance problems we have here. As far as WvW I am not sure you realize that you are agreeing with me completely, that in the middle tiers where things are balanced, the game play is the best. EotM has made it much more difficult for servers with lower WvW population to compete with mid to high pop servers, making things… wait for it!!! more unbalanced.

I think you’ll still see many guilds transfer pre season, but the combination of EoTM and the Swiss matchup system will cause the players to make WvW matches more imbalanced.

Since you can now get your season achievement in EoTM, you’ll see more PvE players flock there and season 1 taught us all that unbalanced matchups get boring quickly. If the second weeks matchups are T1/T2/T3 winners, T1/T2/T3 second, and then T1/T2/T3 third, we all know who is going to win those matches and the T3 players will instead move en masse to EoTM, followed by the T2 players a couple days later. It could end up that there will be more players in EoTM Monday-Friday than in WvW for season 2.

Even though EoTM was created as a way for queued players to play WvW, it will end up being used by players looking for a more balanced matchup. If only there was an easy way to get your entire guild on the same EoTM instance.

Chris.3290:

Transfers => gems => income => bonuses => Tesla S in the garage

ANet is not a non-profit

Really, a Tesla? You might as well say Tata motors

Teslas are very popular in Bellevue (where ANet is HQ’d). It’s their largest market in the country/world by a ginormous margin.

T1 provides the optimal benefits in the shortest amount of time for some people.

Lol TATAA boxes…

Fuzzion.2504:

Chris.3290:

Transfers => gems => income => bonuses => Tesla S in the garage

ANet is not a non-profit

Really, a Tesla? You might as well say Tata motors

I prefer brum brum

Why is server stacking encouraged?

Because like everything else in this game: More people = better results.

Can’t win a fight? bring moar people…. Can’t beat a server? recruit moar people.

Coverage Wars 2 is no longer a joke in these forums, it is a typical phrase that accurately describes this game.

Transferring is sometimes healthy for a group that might be seeking out of a bad matchup situation or is at odds with other guilds on the same server.

The whole ball of crap got rolling with the first season and stupid amount of transferring that led up to it. T1and SBI caniballized about 6-8 servers between the announcement and the start of the season.

The fallout between that, and two very populous servers imploding due there being no pot of gold for them; made the situation go all screwy. With two T1 servers FULL, and the third well on it’s way; we’ll be ok unless ANet proves how devoted they are to this system by raising server caps again.

I’ll be blunt here. There are very specific reasons.

1. The mass majority of people like to zerg. They feel safer in numbers and want to play that way. Upper tiers have the biggest zergs.
2. Upper tiers have much more well coordinated large group fights. This became much more evident when eotm launched. It is crazy how much lower the play quality is on eotm vs my regular server.

Bottom line… if you want to zerg, go high level. If you want to roam, go mid tier. Roaming doesn’t really exist in upper tiers. It is more small group fights.

I think if ANet opened up X amount of free transfers to the bottom ranked server in each tier, they could have a positive effect on overall tier balance. Certainly worth a try since it would likely require a minimal amount of programming.

style.6173:

Bottom line… if you want to zerg, go high level. If you want to roam, go mid tier. Roaming doesn’t really exist in upper tiers. It is more small group fights.

This has been a party line for many on the forums (including myself) for a while but when BP (T4) met Mags (T2) a few weeks ago Mag’s skirmish teams and roamers were VERY good… the best I have seen in a long time.

Roamers and small groups have been transferring upwards in tier for the last 6 months and will likely continue to do so.

Most share the same reason (with some slight variation), mine was the same, basically the lower tiers are turning into empty wastelands where 2hrs of roaming netted you seeing on average 1-2 roamers/20 random zerglings trying to get back to their pin/and the map zerg.

Beyond all of that, the maps were getting so empty that our 5 man team on SF was drawing 20-30 people just by taking camps because those people have nothing else to do.

your small man team draw 20-30 because SF doesnt know what else to do but zerg.

Mag got transfers to leave tier 3 for good because even t3 is a wasteland for huge swathes of the day. You can roam a good 6 hour block (“eu time” aka afternoon and Pst end to Oceanic start) and average maybe 1 fight every 20 minutes, and the rest is PvD. Too little fight to time ratio, so move on up.

souless.1935:

your small man team draw 20-30 because SF doesnt know what else to do but zerg.

10/10 excellent pvf would read again

+1

I would like to know which tiers have the best match ups. 3 weeks back my server were tier 6 and the variations in coverage & population were quite dramatic, regardless if you were matches against other tier 6 servers or up against tier 5.
Now we are tier 7 and its the only time in a year of world vs world the rounds have been close to being the ideal match up.
Guilds moved away from our server too, due to bad match ups.

souless.1935:

your small man team draw 20-30 because SF doesnt know what else to do but zerg.

Make them stop zerging then???

People will only get away with what you let them, seeing people complain about zerging just means your server sucks the big one enough that it won’t stop them from zerging….

Short of CoSA, no other guilds really field enough to make a Guild Zerg, so in fact you are most likely QQing about a PUG ZERG….If your guild/server can’t stop a pug zerg, well then enjoy T8 friend.

Bottom line is it makes Anet more money. The worse the balance & matchups are, the more people spend that $25 to transfer. The more guilds transfer together, the more money Anet rakes in via large sums on a weekly basis. So you see why Anet has little to no incentive to fix anything or balance anything. These companies always do things by the status quo.

For Anet to realize they have to do something, people will have to stop playing the game and stop paying for transfers. Since that’s not likely to happen, and Anet knows that, Anet will take their time to resolve these issues. That or a competitive game comes out that will draw their playerbase away, such as say, if TESO turns out to be successful, then Anet may work harder to fix WvW issues. This is why competition is always a good thing, it’s the only time when companies get a reality check and understand they need to do more than status quo to please their customers.

For the past couple of years, Anet owns the game that caters to the “RvR” crowd. Now that TESO is going to be released soon, and it’s built by one of the guys that invented RvR in the first place, Anet might finally have some competition and will finally do a bit more for WvW. This is why GW2 players should cheer TESO on, because a successful TESO will push Anet to do more for WvW.

It’s not as if Anet doesn’t have any choices when it comes to WvW balance. Look at EOTM, by combining servers of higher tier with lower tier together in a cross-server instance, all of a sudden there’s more PvP activity, and there’s fun to be had for everybody, no transfers needed. A player on a server with little to no WvW participation can now have fun in cross-server instances. Anet could’ve made EOTM a part of the WvW matchups, but instead they’ve made it a side game, something that won’t affect the matchups other than some supplies drops. It’s what one would call a kitten attempt at helping players who are playing on 2/3 of the game’s servers that get bad matchups weekly and see little WvW participation.

johnnymiller.5968:

I would like to know which tiers have the best match ups. 3 weeks back my server were tier 6 and the variations in coverage & population were quite dramatic, regardless if you were matches against other tier 6 servers or up against tier 5.
Now we are tier 7 and its the only time in a year of world vs world the rounds have been close to being the ideal match up.
Guilds moved away from our server too, due to bad match ups.

Let the Season 2 and ESO launch play out and see how the lay of the land plays out. There is so much volatility right now and guilds flying between tiers that making a pick now might backfire badly.

In another year, I can bet that pretty much all of the remaining WvWvW community will be on a handful of servers because there it will suck less. Leagues 2.0 is just another bucket of perfume Anet is going to dump on WvWvW’s gangrened legs.

P.S People need to stop romanticizing mid tier servers. The one we transfered off had been getting weeks of awful PvDoor matchups and the third server just imploded.

Swamurabi.7890:

I think you’ll still see many guilds transfer pre season, but the combination of EoTM and the Swiss matchup system will cause the players to make WvW matches more imbalanced.

Since you can now get your season achievement in EoTM, you’ll see more PvE players flock there and season 1 taught us all that unbalanced matchups get boring quickly. If the second weeks matchups are T1/T2/T3 winners, T1/T2/T3 second, and then T1/T2/T3 third, we all know who is going to win those matches and the T3 players will instead move en masse to EoTM, followed by the T2 players a couple days later. It could end up that there will be more players in EoTM Monday-Friday than in WvW for season 2.

Even though EoTM was created as a way for queued players to play WvW, it will end up being used by players looking for a more balanced matchup. If only there was an easy way to get your entire guild on the same EoTM instance.

t3 players have moved en mass to t2 and t1 servers already. I don’t think there are many more people that can actually transfer off SBI and SoR.

DB got an influx of NA guilds a month or two back, I don’t see them breaking up before the season.

cortin.9174:

Bottom line is it makes Anet more money. The worse the balance & matchups are, the more people spend that $25 to transfer. The more guilds transfer together, the more money Anet rakes in via large sums on a weekly basis. So you see why Anet has little to no incentive to fix anything or balance anything. These companies always do things by the status quo.

For Anet to realize they have to do something, people will have to stop playing the game and stop paying for transfers. Since that’s not likely to happen, and Anet knows that, Anet will take their time to resolve these issues. That or a competitive game comes out that will draw their playerbase away, such as say, if TESO turns out to be successful, then Anet may work harder to fix WvW issues. This is why competition is always a good thing, it’s the only time when companies get a reality check and understand they need to do more than status quo to please their customers.

For the past couple of years, Anet owns the game that caters to the “RvR” crowd. Now that TESO is going to be released soon, and it’s built by one of the guys that invented RvR in the first place, Anet might finally have some competition and will finally do a bit more for WvW. This is why GW2 players should cheer TESO on, because a successful TESO will push Anet to do more for WvW.

It’s not as if Anet doesn’t have any choices when it comes to WvW balance. Look at EOTM, by combining servers of higher tier with lower tier together in a cross-server instance, all of a sudden there’s more PvP activity, and there’s fun to be had for everybody, no transfers needed. A player on a server with little to no WvW participation can now have fun in cross-server instances. Anet could’ve made EOTM a part of the WvW matchups, but instead they’ve made it a side game, something that won’t affect the matchups other than some supplies drops. It’s what one would call a kitten attempt at helping players who are playing on 2/3 of the game’s servers that get bad matchups weekly and see little WvW participation.

But this isn’t always true.

SBI moved up to tier 2, and then imploded after our first match in tier 2. We were standing strong in tier 3 before that, but once SoS got an influx of NA guilds, then the bandwagoners hoped off of SoR, SBI, and other servers onto MAG, FA, TC, and SoS.

Honestly, the reality is, once the Karma training stops, and the competition ensues, people leave. Now they are faced with more competition. Makes no sense to me.

EBay was the first server to suffer this exodus of players, then SoR and SBI followed.

Pretty soon these people will hop off of the t2 servers and move up to t1, and I doubt they will find what they are looking for their, either.

Honestly, I find ever since my world NSP went into Silver league, we came out much stronger. I was wvw lv 40, and we came near dead last. However, even though we are outnumbered often, we hit hard when we can, and our rank has been steadily rising because of it. In the long run, coordination and actual working together with the entire server encourages people to play, and play well. Because I was so inspired by our performance, I am now in the wvw 300s, and a surly commander

We don’t need crappy tactics like buying servers or looking down on PVE people. People naturally will come to us if we try, and have good commanders.