Guild Wars 2

with the current match ups, The more populated servers are winning over the smaller servers. So the WvW focused guilds on the smaller servers that, feel that to get that WvW experience. they are forced to do the bold and expensive move to transfer over to the bigger servers. so the small servers get smaller as the big servers get bigger. which seems fine in a sense. because the small servers get paired up with the small servers. but from my recent matchups matchups. this hasn’t been the case for me at all

i only really have one suggestion for this. don’t put people in a 500 gem barrier to feel locked out the WvW that they could very well have. the fact that there is so many WvW cultures around servers. player should have some freedom to invest time to find the right server that they want to play on without blowing a whole lot of gems down the drain

the day before the wvw reset, on that day, give players the free option to transfer onto a different server. on any other day they will still have to pay the gems to transfer over

GvG needs to somehow be “shoehorned” into WvW and by shoehorned, I mean implemented seamlessly and act as if it was always an official part of WvW from the start, thus creating the real esport that is GvG.

World linking then needs to somehow be tied according to what guild rankings are what on each server. Would be complicated to implement for certain, but it is guilds that decide what server wins (to an extent).

The GvG scene has been played out. Sorry.

I have no idea what the op is talking about but I’m pretty sure it isn’t GvG.

well no one is moving to hosts – they are all full. so must be referring to movement within guests ET-DR etc…

blackgamma.1809:

the day before the wvw reset, on that day, give players the free option to transfer onto a different server. on any other day they will still have to pay the gems to transfer over

Free transfers would also increase the problem of alt accounts spying on the enemy team via tag watching, wasting the tactivators, giving false intel in map chat, and destroying golems.

Zefrost.3425:

GvG needs to somehow be “shoehorned” into WvW and by shoehorned, I mean implemented seamlessly and act as if it was always an official part of WvW from the start, thus creating the real esport that is GvG.

World linking then needs to somehow be tied according to what guild rankings are what on each server. Would be complicated to implement for certain, but it is guilds that decide what server wins (to an extent).

GvG is not stack aoe and water fields…. install gw1 to see what gvg meants…. your is abit familiar duno why :\

Altoug it would be really really really really cool if they brough the GvG sheme to gw2, even i would try to bring IRL gw1 friends back to the game( they quited gw2 because low quality game on pvp/wvw).

Server linking was voted a success by all the servers that where linked and are now winning.

And this is now going to be a permanent fixture?

Every match we are constantly out manned by linked servers and it’s just boring.

Colly servers will be unlinked and linked to another servers…. this is what ive understanded how linking works….

Some links were actually amazing and well don, the issue ic is that some servers will be linked to a variable way to unstable called population and will not be a good experience for those on the linked servers.

Okamikazi.8652:

blackgamma.1809:

the day before the wvw reset, on that day, give players the free option to transfer onto a different server. on any other day they will still have to pay the gems to transfer over

Free transfers would also increase the problem of alt accounts spying on the enemy team via tag watching, wasting the tactivators, giving false intel in map chat, and destroying golems.

valid point. best my idea would do have to make it a day after the reset. also if people are already willing to pay the gems to spy on other servers. the free transfers probably wont affect it as much as we think it would.

back in relation to the main problem. its the major guilds of WvW that always plays
a major part in maintaining a healthy WvW experience for everyone. so when that guild leaves the server. other players outside of that guild either stop playing WvW, pay 500 gems to move. or if that person is a guild leader, pay a heap load of gold into gems to get their friends or their guild to transfer to another server. and the only reason why thats stressful its the amount of time need to constantly send gold to other players and talking to each individual person. probably not always the case but it has been for most of the guilds i’ve seen transfer to other server

and then what happens when those players that transfer into their new server and they dont like it? or when the server doesn’t like that guild? or when the sever start to die by guilds leaving that server. those players that just transferred into that sever just wasted time and gems

There are several problems in the current world linking.

1. Population cap halfed
This on one perspective, seems logical since there are 2 servers. On another perspective, it isn’t logical since all the host servers population differ from one another. To put it simple to understand, BG was a very high server, half the population cap, is full. DH/NSP/HOD are high server, half the population cap, is full too. Adding on the guest server that are not full, this create a unbalance population issue that can never be fixed as the high server can never ever catch up to the very high server while the very high server is very unlikely to destack from it.

2. Numerous server
In favor of server identity, world linking instead of world merging is introduced. There are numerous servers which are the primary reason of why population unbalance became worsen in the first place. There were never enough inflow of people to all the servers. Adding on problem #1, this further aggregate a greater unbalance issue. Furthermore, the more servers there are, the harder to control the flow of players and naturally, harder to solve balancing issues.

3. Full server
There are guilds with influence of their own, to their regions or great popularity which enable them to recruit players from the higher tiers, like T1. Ideally, these guilds are helping to destack T1 but the full servers are preventing them so and getting their members to a guest server seems like a unreliable long term solution due to possible relinking.

4. Players psychological
It is human nature to stack on greater populated server, there are many benefits to do so such as safety in numbers and assured gameplay at many timing. Like what OP mention, when one stack a server, it destack another and when you combine this with point 1, it become a big problem.

5. Relinking possible backlash
There are already players and guilds intentionally transferred to certain guest servers so they can join up their guilds or compete in that host server environment. Relinking will break those and result in possible backlash which then may cause players to quit.

There are possible solutions that base on world linking but the number of solutions and its effectiveness can be quite limited.

1. Let players choose their server ingame instead of start of the game. Players need to be given a chance to understand what they are choosing for and the dialog at the start of game does not do that. Also, its more beneficial for both the players and the guilds as guilds of players’ choice might be of different server and this will avoid that since they can choose after they chose their guilds. Guilds too won’t be heavily restricted by the nature of megaserver.

2. Dynamic capping and dynamic gem transfer costing
As mentioned in the problem #1, current full servers have different populations and problem #4 where stacking continues on the guest server. Thus there is a dilemma, is it faster to reduce the population like what half pop is doing or is it faster to raise the population? How can we get players to move willingly to redistribute the population?

What I suggest is to slowly and dynamically reduce the highest populated servers over time instead of a drastic approach like half cap. To do this, implement a dynamic costing for transfer to determine the appropriate cost for every single server instead of a generic cost like what we are using now. Doing this, some servers (depending who they paired with and how much total population there are) will be low cost or even free of charge which encourage people to move to. At the same, accompanied with dynamic capping to slowly reduce the cap while giving a chance for the lower higher populated server to balance its population against the higher tier populated server.

This involve a lot of maths which is slightly complicated. Even then, this proposal isn’t foolproof and in long run, world linking will still end up being more problematic than now due to problem #2.

@skyshroud – some form of what you say is indeed required for linking to ever work. It is just silly to have all perm/host servers full. Not only is the population way different, but how would someone or a guild ever move down to another host home? I’d cant see myself leaving a host for a guest….

For the person that prefers smaller scale, how do they move to a T4 host server? They can’t because the hosts are locked. Current guests that are empty (T4 linked) could be the next T1 link. The stackers on ET and DR will complain when they find out they are BG / Maguuma and must re-link possibly more frequently than they hoped and possibly for more gems…..

Liston.9708:

The stackers on ET and DR will complain when they find out they are BG / Maguuma and must re-link possibly more frequently than they hoped and possibly for more gems…..

There was full disclosure by ANet that server links are not permanent. They moved knowing that.

The real problem is the chilling effect server links have on WvW guild recruitment. Players hesitant to join a guild on the linked server, etc.

blackgamma.1809:

with the current match ups, The more populated servers are winning over the smaller servers. So the WvW focused guilds on the smaller servers that, feel that to get that WvW experience. they are forced to do the bold and expensive move to transfer over to the bigger servers. so the small servers get smaller as the big servers get bigger. which seems fine in a sense. because the small servers get paired up with the small servers. but from my recent matchups matchups. this hasn’t been the case for me at all

i only really have one suggestion for this. don’t put people in a 500 gem barrier to feel locked out the WvW that they could very well have. the fact that there is so many WvW cultures around servers. player should have some freedom to invest time to find the right server that they want to play on without blowing a whole lot of gems down the drain

the day before the wvw reset, on that day, give players the free option to transfer onto a different server. on any other day they will still have to pay the gems to transfer over

Devs:

If you look, even just casually, you will see the same people moving over and over and over.

We on Yak’s Bend are still fighting most of the same people/guilds as JQ (which is where most of them “were”) was abandoned and TC and BG were stacked, sometimes with people from the same guilds as active spies and saboteurs.

That said, locking people to their servers for a quarter or six months is absolutely not unreasonable.

You’d lose money?

Ok, but the integrity of WvW is now at stake.

What’s even more “telling” about the state of NA WvW is that the EU teams aren’t all linked – which shows in the more even scores, some very much nailbiters to the end. (Mos Millennium shows it very plainly)

Not like :

BG/ET 416 035
TC/Kan 317 450
YB/AR 257 114

Riverside: NOT LINKED 344 635
Gandara & Ruins of Surmia: 330 056
Elona Reach: NOT LINKED 275 152

Can you see the difference?

Why can’t Anet?

And when we asked for alliances, we didn’t expect nor want servers to be attached at the hip no matter what the populations do or did. We asked, like in EU, for the servers to be more equally spread – but the “set” part of the EU doesn’t seem to matter anywhere NEAR as much as NA and the horrible inequities in populations between the first server and all others under it.

BG should never have been linked. Giving it a strong ally, and they did, absolutely destroyed tier 1.

The scores above just aren’t right. Most of the EU was pure competition.

By comparison NA was a joke whereby many aren’t even going into T1 – go look for yourself, even me, a hardcore WvW player is opting out this week as dying just to take a sentry ten times isn’t funny and it doesn’t exhibit skill of the players or the gamemakers when they know that 10-50 go after a single player.

WvW was supposed to be the ultimate competition and on EU it looks like the populations were carefully measured.

But in NA it seems that no WvW only player populations were considered, just the “positions” and thereby making a monster where EU has a no-brainer real fight because it’s going to come out pretty darn close on almost all EU servers.

Moving at will from server to server destroys WvW. They can just move far too often.

EU’s nailbiters were a lot more fun than the SMUSH that a quad-teamed (four against two) is happening when BG and TC are on each side, not harming one another and this is what WvW was supposed to be? A pure numbers game without any skills?

Oh, and to those who are calling out “siege”, you know you can clear siege easily IF you aren’t lazy, and that said, siege nerfed enough, thank you. Learn to play and stop being lazy.

Chaba.5410:

Liston.9708:

The stackers on ET and DR will complain when they find out they are BG / Maguuma and must re-link possibly more frequently than they hoped and possibly for more gems…..

There was full disclosure by ANet that server links are not permanent. They moved knowing that.

The real problem is the chilling effect server links have on WvW guild recruitment. Players hesitant to join a guild on the linked server, etc.

I thought so too, but another thread made it sound like some people who moved to dr thought they were on mag until they decided to move…. The reason given is that not everyone reads the forums. Others probably think they were linked for 3 months minimum as well. I just see any poll on the frequency of linking being a big issue because some will want what is good for them and not the game…..

Recruitment is tough indeed. Either you are recruiting the linked world or people who have moved on from their previoUs guIld – their is no new pipeline on the host worlds….