Guild Wars 2

Thanks – I had read that one but it seemed to be talking mostly about displayed player names in game. I understand the simplicity of me having to be seen by opponents as “Jade Quarry Invader” and I’m not bothered by that (I don’t see it myself so I don’t mind). I also get the idea of not wanting to highlight players for griefing from the inevitable few who see us as to blame for some problem or other.

What I do want to see is my server name on a Borderlands selection button. I want a borderlands I can call my own and therefore feel motivated to defend.

Without this, just where exactly IS IoJ then?!

Honestly at least changing the score and tick indicators, BL names and capture msgs to say host land and guest land would be something. That might even be enough.

Our server was/is awesome. Just really small. Tier 7 but we still have a couple decent sized wvw guilds. A lot of pride there when we’re mowing down 50 with 30. Would like to keep our identity.

Name plates are already too big…. This could be the right time to fix that as well.

I’d suggest remove server name and have colour instead. Blue/Red/green rank

Below have a toggleable white server plate.
Below that have toggleable light grey title plate.

Job done

Just removing the PvP stuff from the names while in WvW would be a start.

Nidome.1365:

Just removing the PvP stuff from the names while in WvW would be a start.

Right? Why are our ranks a secret from each other but the pvp stuff shows up?

Despite the use of the term “linking” for this beta experiment, it still ends up feeling like a merging when the “guest” server — such as mine — doesn’t see it’s name anywhere. Many people from my server got the impression that we were merged. There were many question about this in map chat. Bear in mind, many people probably don’t read the forums. So the perception of merging, while not the reality, overrides the technical reality.

When I looked at millenium this morning to check our progress and saw the host server name and not mine….it felt a bit sad.

From my perspective — and I’m not a huge server loyalist — both servers are being linked, thus both servers should “loose identity” on some level. I would much rather prefer the game reports that “Red Team captured Hardened Rampart” or “Green Team captured Habib’s Encampment” etc. Much more neutral. After all, server name is really irrelevant. Half the time I don’t even see it. I just see enemy nameplates.

Or, from a more fun perspective, just conjoin the names. For example “Sea of Madness”, “Ehmry Denravi” ,“Blackgate Terrace”, “Magumma’s Rest”, “Stormbluff Desert” etc. That way both servers retain some connection to the overall team identity but the paring takes on a whole NEW identity, which is, quite honestly, what’s really going on.

Just some thoughts for down the road.

sirjarros.4107:

From my perspective — and I’m not a huge server loyalist — both servers are being linked, thus both servers should “loose identity” on some level. I would much rather prefer the game reports that “Red Team captured Hardened Rampart” or “Green Team captured Habib’s Encampment” etc. Much more neutral. After all, server name is really irrelevant. Half the time I don’t even see it. I just see enemy nameplates.

I love the idea of using colors for the server names instead. It’s been a little confusing so far. I keep having to remind myself that I’m the red map anyways.

Another idea to add would be to put a little house on your home BL’s selection bar beneath the scorelines.

any more feedback on this.. it’s a simple fix that would help alot with the identity issues happening

I thought it was weird too (my server is also linked to bigger server so we do not have home BL anymore). Actually, I would be happy if the home BL would be just called “Home”.

sirjarros.4107:

From my perspective — and I’m not a huge server loyalist — both servers are being linked, thus both servers should “loose identity” on some level. I would much rather prefer the game reports that “Red Team captured Hardened Rampart” or “Green Team captured Habib’s Encampment” etc. Much more neutral. After all, server name is really irrelevant. Half the time I don’t even see it. I just see enemy nameplates.

That sounds good idea to me.

I’m not sure I like the idea of nerfing the host servers representation of identity just to make us smaller servers feel better. Seems like that could add salt where we actually need less of it.

Not sure I want to be red team green team etc either. I’d probably be happy if scoreboard and BL names used both server names. Maybe same for capture msgs.

I think that would go a long ways without being too complicated. I don’t really care what the enemy sees.

I think “absorbing” the smaller server in the pairing is not a good idea. You should not take away the identity of those players. This change should make the smaller servers’ players feel better and not worse.. feeling that they’re just some nameless mercenaries is not the right thing. Another solution that would rather reinforce that they’re allies would be much better.

Let’s face it, ‘absorbtion’ is the right word. Thankfuly it’s a beta so it’s not set in stone. Like the HoT beta…no, bad example. I said in another post, maybe linking the bottom six servers to make 3 paired to begin with and see how that goes. Not such a shock to the system.

I’ve seen many valuable suggestions in this thread so far. I hope the devs keep an eye on this too. Thanks for keeping the discussion civilised!

Also, I think I speak for most of the WvW players when I say the point of identity is not so much tribalism but rather distinctiveness. The difference may seem moot, but I think we can find a couple of rather widespread examples of ‘distinctiveness’ versus. ‘negative tribalism’. For example, before there was talk of server merges, within each server there are many guilds. Often between the guilds there is a sense of competition while still belonging to the same side. Players of different guilds can and do mix on occasion, but usually they prefer to play with their guilds. But on a server view, these guilds all cooperate to beat the enemy. Even enemy servers aren’t necessarily viewed in any other way. There have been historic ‘enmities’ between servers, and people from both sides descending in flaming. However, many players from opposing servers respect eachother. The common place where you find this inter-server respect is the dueling culture.

I think if you try to incorporate this sense of ‘distinctiveness’ between the host and guest, it will reap more positive fruits than negative.
Some suggestions: Have Guest servers appear as ‘Allies’ in the WvW UI? Right now it doesn’t show very clearly that there even is a Guest server involved. There could be an undertitle in the WvW UI saying “Desolation – Reinforced by Vabbi” Another idea is having a server tag and or a different name colour for allied server and people of the same server.

(These ideas are based on what I read in this thread, and there are more elaborate suggestions to be found)

With the new Linking I’ve seen a few concerns pop up and I think I have a way to fix the naming server pride issue while also fixing some other issue we have. Make a 4th home borderland. Since we currently have 3 borderlands and EBG you only have the main servers home as a borderland. Lets make a “guest” borderland that gives the 3 guest servers a home. This has a few different positives. It will alleviate map ques which are pretty substantial after the linking. It will give the “guest” servers a place to call home border. Most importantly this gives us an opportunity to not waste the desert borderland when alpine comes back. Make the guest border either desert or alpine map and have the normal borders be the same. Just an idea, but I think it may kill a few birds with one stone.

Mordayn.6198:

With the new Linking I’ve seen a few concerns pop up and I think I have a way to fix the naming server pride issue while also fixing some other issue we have. Make a 4th home borderland. Since we currently have 3 borderlands and EBG you only have the main servers home as a borderland. Lets make a “guest” borderland that gives the 3 guest servers a home. This has a few different positives. It will alleviate map ques which are pretty substantial after the linking. It will give the “guest” servers a place to call home border. Most importantly this gives us an opportunity to not waste the desert borderland when alpine comes back. Make the guest border either desert or alpine map and have the normal borders be the same. Just an idea, but I think it may kill a few birds with one stone.

There are 3 guest servers in every match (at least for NA). You want to add 3 more bl’s when the bl’s are already being ignored except for the occasional karma train?

Puck.9612:

Mordayn.6198:

With the new Linking I’ve seen a few concerns pop up and I think I have a way to fix the naming server pride issue while also fixing some other issue we have. Make a 4th home borderland. Since we currently have 3 borderlands and EBG you only have the main servers home as a borderland. Lets make a “guest” borderland that gives the 3 guest servers a home. This has a few different positives. It will alleviate map ques which are pretty substantial after the linking. It will give the “guest” servers a place to call home border. Most importantly this gives us an opportunity to not waste the desert borderland when alpine comes back. Make the guest border either desert or alpine map and have the normal borders be the same. Just an idea, but I think it may kill a few birds with one stone.

There are 3 guest servers in every match (at least for NA). You want to add 3 more bl’s when the bl’s are already being ignored except for the occasional karma train?

No I’m suggesting adding 1 border for the guest servers since they are lower population servers to begin with. 3 would spread too thin. I’m suggesting bring back Alpine and make it the guest home servers. Now that I’m thinking about it this could also serve to fix the lower tier glicko problem as well. Have their glicko populate from this map and each guest server will have a home on this border.

As for the decision to make the “guest” server Alpine or Desert and vice versa another poll thread like they did with the post about if we want Alpine back would be a nice way to gauge how players want that done.

Mordayn.6198:

Puck.9612:

Mordayn.6198:

With the new Linking I’ve seen a few concerns pop up and I think I have a way to fix the naming server pride issue while also fixing some other issue we have. Make a 4th home borderland. Since we currently have 3 borderlands and EBG you only have the main servers home as a borderland. Lets make a “guest” borderland that gives the 3 guest servers a home. This has a few different positives. It will alleviate map ques which are pretty substantial after the linking. It will give the “guest” servers a place to call home border. Most importantly this gives us an opportunity to not waste the desert borderland when alpine comes back. Make the guest border either desert or alpine map and have the normal borders be the same. Just an idea, but I think it may kill a few birds with one stone.

There are 3 guest servers in every match (at least for NA). You want to add 3 more bl’s when the bl’s are already being ignored except for the occasional karma train?

No I’m suggesting adding 1 border for the guest servers since they are lower population servers to begin with. 3 would spread too thin. I’m suggesting bring back Alpine and make it the guest home servers. Now that I’m thinking about it this could also serve to fix the lower tier glicko problem as well. Have their glicko populate from this map and each guest server will have a home on this border.

As for the decision to make the “guest” server Alpine or Desert and vice versa another poll thread like they did with the post about if we want Alpine back would be a nice way to gauge how players want that done.

Then they would have to redesign the map or 1 server would have a huge advantage.
Which will make this solution extremely time consuming or more of a problem.

They’d be better off opening up 1 more tier and not merging the servers that have the highest populations. It would also help to bring back the alpine so people are more willing to play the bl’s again.

Yes it would take a little bit of redesigning to make the new guest server not advantageous to 1 of the guest servers but an Alpine border redesign is already being worked on. It wouldn’t take much for them to include this idea into that redesign and it would solve a lot of problems.

Alternatively, they could replace the current Desert border with the new Alpine which is probably the more likely case and redesign the Oasis area to be like the EBG style SMC. The only issue the old alpine had was being able to siege the East and West keeps from towers and the main garrison.

Mordayn.6198:

Yes it would take a little bit of redesigning to make the new guest server not advantageous to 1 of the guest servers but an Alpine border redesign is already being worked on. It wouldn’t take much for them to include this idea into that redesign and it would solve a lot of problems.

The redesign is just adding stupid things like tactivators and the holographic gathering nodes. We don’t need them taking any longer than they already are to bring that map back.
The queue is really only a problem because so many people still can’t stand the desert bl. Of course reset with the beta trials is going to have huge queues, but by the next day it was pretty much just EBG with huge queues while the bl’s were empty.
1 more tier would help deal with peak times, and provide a little more variety for different styles of game play. Bringing back the alpine is the other half of the equation.

Mordayn.6198:

The only issue the old alpine had was being able to siege the East and West keeps from towers and the main garrison.

That wasn’t an issue. That is what made the map work for WvW. It provided incentive to take or defend towers.
Keeps provide WP’s for better mobility. Towers threaten keeps.
Without this structures are stand alone entities that serve no purpose other than PPT (like on the DBL) and this results in the map being largely ignored outside of karma trains.

So they go with Alpine as the main server borders and redesign the Desert border as the guest home so that it doesn’t benefit any 1 server. I’d also like to see them redo the oasis area and make it something like SMC is for EBG with a central wp for the controlling server. Although they’d have to make some new Yak paths there to supply it.

Just pointing out the elephant in the room, but wouldn’t it be easier to link an extra copy of EBG for the "Allies" than another borderland map (with their slightly loop sided design) ? I’m not entirely sold on the idea, can see some issues with it either becoming just another map for the big server, or ANet having to code in specific stuff to make it only ally servers allowed to join, which is another problem with the general "everyone happy together" mantra GW2 follows.

Something I’ve suggested before in regards to "Server".

To have a "/server" channel in the chat, this would be great for recruitment in WvW, to help people find players from the same server to join guilds etc, and not end up joining a new guild every time a Link is changed. Also good for calling for help in LA, or recruiting in PvE maps etc. It is still fully possible to disable it in chat options as normal.

A WvW home non combat map, similar to HotM map. Example pull out Citadel from Alpine and just make it into a small own stand alone map with all the features and functionality you would expect. Encourage people to use this as your "on call/demand city convenience" and encourage pve players to use it for TP, bank, crafting etc since it doesn’t affect queue’s on the actual WvW maps. This will give people a "home" place, a server specific place to recruit and look for people/guilds. And a place to Idle in WvW even during reset. Also good way for people to organize to run through portals at reset etc.

I would definitively want to keep name tags as our own server, and even see that "Kaineng captures camp!" instead of our host server, it would also give us a chance ot show them that we’re here and can do something (But yes I can see some of the issues there).

joneirikb.7506:

Something I’ve suggested before in regards to “Server”.

To have a “/server” channel in the chat, this would be great for recruitment in WvW, to help people find players from the same server to join guilds etc, and not end up joining a new guild every time a Link is changed. Also good for calling for help in LA, or recruiting in PvE maps etc. It is still fully possible to disable it in chat options as normal.

A WvW home non combat map, similar to HotM map. Example pull out Citadel from Alpine and just make it into a small own stand alone map with all the features and functionality you would expect. Encourage people to use this as your “on call/demand city convenience” and encourage pve players to use it for TP, bank, crafting etc since it doesn’t affect queue’s on the actual WvW maps. This will give people a “home” place, a server specific place to recruit and look for people/guilds. And a place to Idle in WvW even during reset. Also good way for people to organize to run through portals at reset etc.

Cool ideas. Really some of the better ones I have seen so far.

Sirendor.1394:

joneirikb.7506:

Something I’ve suggested before in regards to “Server”.

To have a “/server” channel in the chat, this would be great for recruitment in WvW, to help people find players from the same server to join guilds etc, and not end up joining a new guild every time a Link is changed. Also good for calling for help in LA, or recruiting in PvE maps etc. It is still fully possible to disable it in chat options as normal.

A WvW home non combat map, similar to HotM map. Example pull out Citadel from Alpine and just make it into a small own stand alone map with all the features and functionality you would expect. Encourage people to use this as your “on call/demand city convenience” and encourage pve players to use it for TP, bank, crafting etc since it doesn’t affect queue’s on the actual WvW maps. This will give people a “home” place, a server specific place to recruit and look for people/guilds. And a place to Idle in WvW even during reset. Also good way for people to organize to run through portals at reset etc.

Cool ideas. Really some of the better ones I have seen so far.

Requested many many times since Megasever.

First, let me say I am having some of the most fun in WvW again since this beta. Meeting new people is refreshing, even if they are enemies. I have already ran into some fun IoJ and AR roamers who were refreshing to fight as their tactics and builds were different from the YB/JQ roamers I knew.

To all who are requesting just the smaller servers being absorbed into the bigger ones, that is a terrible idea. Then you do literally kill those communities. At least, as it is now, ANet is able to have a matchup where T8 and T7 are paired together for a quarter while T1 is left by themselves for a quarter to break up stale pairings if they need to.

As for server identity issues… I am perfectly fine if next week, we are called “Eredon Terrace” and BG becomes the “secondary server”. I would encourage it even. I think, from the weekend alone and meeting ET, most on BG would agree. Can’t speak for other pairings, though. I am not sure how that will affect the ability for transfers into other servers.

Why did UW get put with FSP even though FSP is already full?

Chris Barrett.3280:

The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

i would like to point out a few things that either i didnt agree with or made no sense at all to me.

this first one makes no sense to me. if the nameplate is red, then its an enemy.

i dont agree with this. instead of creating friction between players, which would probably be minimal, youre creating friction between the player and anet. plenty of people are very proud of their server and dumping the entire server identity is not so great imo.

you cant have the positive without the negative. im sure there would be instances of verbal altercations, but for the most part people are chill and just want to experience an enjoyable game.

thanks for reading. i would hope you guys experiment some more in the future, as this whole world linking thing is very exciting!

Stand The Wall.6987:

this first one makes no sense to me. if the nameplate is red, then its an enemy.

ok, let me try to explain how I understand that problem (I could be wrong too but it makes sense to me).

Currently you have 2 variants of enemies, they both red but have 2 kind of server names, let’s call them server A and B. Now in the current linking server A could be linked to smaller server C and all of those enemies are still marked to you as server A. Same, way, even when server B has another server D linked, they all still carry name B.

So, we now assume every player from each server will carry the name they are originally from.

2 enemy blobs arrive from different enemy servers, some of them start to fight, some stand back. There are now enemies from servers A, B, C and D around you. Who do you attack? Which group do you push first? Do you even remember who is linked to who, considering your opponents are changed every week?

In the end, does it really matter which enemy server from the combined 2 you are fighting against? One is A, other is C, they are allied, they both attack you. One is A, other is D, they are NOT allied, but still both attack you.

It has nothing to do with server identity, they all enemies to you and you do not belong to any of these servers. But it has much to do with knowing which enemy belongs to each side.

It is important, especially with the shorter linking time, we see who is from our allianianz.

The other servers from the MU I domt know, but our link, I want to see it. Who is from which server.

I think it’s important to see exactly which server a person is from. So many people are transferring back and forth now that it’s nearly impossible to tell by a guild name alone. It would be great to be able to give credit to certain servers for their effort at any particular time.

I don’t think it’s fair to a smaller server to lose their identity to the larger server, and can cause conflict and hard feelings. People like to have server identity. They shouldn’t have to lose it because they are small.

I agree with those who say to use a shortened acronym of 2 or 3 letters for the server.

As for rank, How about making it appear like a title only when you click the person? Another option might be to shut off seeing rank, like we shut off seeing names...

- Less to load unless you want to see it.

I’m glad to see this back at the top non server identity is a massive problem for lower tiers. Alot of users have survived post their guild and play for their server. These people have left /are leaving. WVW is about players , this is a massive loss.
As a lower tier we know everyone, post transfers changes we have alot of new people?
how can we tell? the few that have joined our guild (randomnly) as some new folk don’t understand the server concept have no idea , presumably those that joined to play upper tier will leave when we swap? no-one knows… Its really bad. I bought a name contract to add my server, a fair chunk of old timers are doing the same. shame on you anet

Considering how poorly fc has been treated in this linking being considered as dh is grossly offensive. If you want to keep it from getting confusing list the players server but color the text based on their team color. There is no reason they all have to be red names. It would take some adjusting to get used to but it would solve all these problems as far as what the enemies see.

As far as what the player sees just have all the text list their homeworld. Both servers know pretty quickly who their allies are. If I say help in fc bl even the server we are paired with is going to know that I’m talking about home bl. The names of borderlands for enemies can list both servers in equal sized text which would just lead to it being called blue or red bl

Sweet Sanity.8593:

Considering how poorly fc has been treated in this linking being considered as dh is grossly offensive. If you want to keep it from getting confusing list the players server but color the text based on their team color. There is no reason they all have to be red names. It would take some adjusting to get used to but it would solve all these problems as far as what the enemies see.

As far as what the player sees just have all the text list their homeworld. Both servers know pretty quickly who their allies are. If I say help in fc bl even the server we are paired with is going to know that I’m talking about home bl. The names of borderlands for enemies can list both servers in equal sized text which would just lead to it being called blue or red bl

Great idea. I would love to get our server name back.

I think this would solve a good number of the server identity issues and make gameplay easier overall. If two enemy zergs are fighting they won’t just be a giant mass of red names.

The server colored names will have to be brighter neon colors to not look like the other typical name text