Guild Wars 2

Ever wondered why when you go to a movie theater, or a grocery store, every line is roughly the same number of people, without someone telling them to go to a specific line? Simple: the “invisible hand”, where if everybody went out to seek their own benefits (shortest line), society as a whole benefits from that (shorter average wait time).

Now apply it to WvW:

- Give REWARDS for transferring to losing/lower population servers, the lower the population, the more the rewards.
- Rewards should be dynamic and should stop when the server has reached a certain “average” population.
- Servers that have yet to reach that “average” population/level of WvW competence continues to receive transfers due to incentives.
- At the end, WvW population as a whole get’s balanaced.

It’s this or WvW dies slowly, so if you don’t have anything constructive to say, then shut up. Time to make a game-changing decision, ArenaNet. If you need specifics, let me know and I’ll give you ideas as to exactly how this can be implemented.

In reference to the original idea thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Server-Mercenary-Idea-healthier-pop-distro/first#post2904563

I really like this thought process and idea. I really hope this thread and/or the one that is linked here get some attention from the Devs.

There is little to no benefit to transferring down to lower tier servers besides reduced lag and queues.

Convenant.7092:

Ever wondered why when you go to a movie theater, or a grocery store, every line is roughly the same number of people, without someone telling them to go to a specific line? Simple: the “invisible hand”, where if everybody went out to seek their own benefits (shortest line), society as a whole benefits from that (shorter average wait time).

Now apply it to WvW:

- Give REWARDS for transferring to losing/lower population servers, the lower the population, the more the rewards.
- Rewards should be dynamic and should stop when the server has reached a certain “average” population.
- Servers that have yet to reach that “average” population/level of WvW competence continues to receive transfers due to incentives.
- At the end, WvW population as a whole get’s balanaced.

It’s this or WvW dies slowly, so if you don’t have anything constructive to say, then shut up. Time to make a game-changing decision, ArenaNet. If you need specifics, let me know and I’ll give you ideas as to exactly how this can be implemented.

In reference to the original idea thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Server-Mercenary-Idea-healthier-pop-distro/first#post2904563

+1

Thank you for posting this!

Also, as an additional reference, note that dynamic rewards would not be hard to implement, and could even be done manually. Competitive and fun matchups is the premiss of any WvW/RvR game.

+1
asdflkasjdf;laksjdf

This makes sense if the server population was only WvW. How do you differentiate PvE from WvW population? Until they separate PvE and WvW players, you cannot balance out population for WvW play.

arguably, WvW play is the only play that you need to worry about balancing, because WvW is the only game mode that doesn’t allow players from different servers to group together.

PvE has guesting so you can PvE with people from any server. and if you don’t want to guest, PvE supports ‘overflow’ maps.

I’ve heard that sPvP has something similar so that people from different servers can form premades.. and sPvP is instanced so population balance is never a problem.

but in WvW you are limited to playing for your own server only, and there are no overflow maps. since WvW is the only mode where server choice actually matters, then WvW population ought to be a key factor in incentivizing players to move.

incidentally, incenting players to move would be a good idea, but imagine for a moment lines in a movie theater where you had to pay to switch lines, and if you stood in a different line than your friends that meant you either wouldn’t be able to sit with them, or you would have to watch a completely different movie.

-ken

A couple of assumptions you make Covenant I would like to comment on.

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.
- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

Interesting ideas though, I am sure there are a lot of gamers that game for that carrot, Im willing to be most of them PvE.

Dese.1382:

A couple of assumptions you make Covenant I would like to comment on.

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.
- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

Interesting ideas though, I am sure there are a lot of gamers that game for that carrot, Im willing to be most of them PvE.

Your arguments are flawed. While reward is not the only reason people play wvw it is a very important one. You can chose to play with friends and don’t care about rewards but it is much more likely that you chose to play with friends AND get better rewards.

While no published data proves that numbers is the singular reason for a servers success the combine experience of everyone who post here or anywhere GW2 related seem to indicate that it is the most important factor. Lets put it this way the evidence that superior numbers does NOT make a difference to a battle or match up doesn’t exist. On the other hand it is pretty easy to see that lower tier servers have less players in WvW just do a few transfers and you’ll see that for yourself.

Mogar.9216:

Dese.1382:

A couple of assumptions you make Covenant I would like to comment on.

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.
- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

Interesting ideas though, I am sure there are a lot of gamers that game for that carrot, Im willing to be most of them PvE.

Your arguments are flawed. While reward is not the only reason people play wvw it is a very important one. You can chose to play with friends and don’t care about rewards but it is much more likely that you chose to play with friends AND get better rewards.

And what rewards are you implying? I do not have a legendary, I do not have a character with full ascended, and I use a back piece from PVE. I can assure you the only reason I am playing the game is to pvp and play with friends. Do I enjoy a nice looking weapon skin, sure but that’s not coming from player drops so I buy them when I can. I am merely suggesting that giving people higher rewards (maybe more mf, or gold find) may not entice the amount of people the OP talks about. In other words the cause for people playing on a server go beyond what a small reward might offer.

As far as numbers go, I agree numbers count. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. But I am saying its not a solitary truth. However with out the numbers from arena net we will just go in circles.

I’m pretty sure most serious wvw players don’t play for the rewards….

The problem with your analogy of shorter lines is that in that situation the line/queue being shorter is it’s own reward. You get to what you want/where you’re going faster.

The closest that would equate to WvW is queues for access to a BL, i.e join a lower pop server = shorter queues. Yet this is already the case, and doesn’t happen. And in this regard (other than placing too much faith in players to do the sensible thing) ANet haven’t done anything wrong. That’s literally it.. players want to win more than they want to actually play.

As for players not playing for rewards, in beta every forum was covered in ‘give us reward’ posts and other such things.

I stay in Tier 1 because there are people there to fight.

I couldn’t care less about PPT, night capping, wvw ranks, or rewards. I’d actually prefer if those things went away because they continue to ruin my fights with imbalanced guard mastery lines, bloodlust buffs, and perplexity runes.

No incentive is going to get me to move away to play with less players, that would be completely opposing what I play WvW for.

Dese.1382:

Mogar.9216:

Dese.1382:

A couple of assumptions you make Covenant I would like to comment on.

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.
- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

Interesting ideas though, I am sure there are a lot of gamers that game for that carrot, Im willing to be most of them PvE.

Your arguments are flawed. While reward is not the only reason people play wvw it is a very important one. You can chose to play with friends and don’t care about rewards but it is much more likely that you chose to play with friends AND get better rewards.

And what rewards are you implying? I do not have a legendary, I do not have a character with full ascended, and I use a back piece from PVE. I can assure you the only reason I am playing the game is to pvp and play with friends. Do I enjoy a nice looking weapon skin, sure but that’s not coming from player drops so I buy them when I can. I am merely suggesting that giving people higher rewards (maybe more mf, or gold find) may not entice the amount of people the OP talks about. In other words the cause for people playing on a server go beyond what a small reward might offer.

As far as numbers go, I agree numbers count. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. But I am saying its not a solitary truth. However with out the numbers from arena net we will just go in circles.

:) all I’m saying is that playing with friends is not opposite to playing for rewards, in a good game you should be able to do both. I played DAoC for 6 year with same gp of friends . We also went out nearly every night to kill as many other players from other worlds as we can to gain realm pts so we can use them to get better abilities and cool titles. A good game should let you do both.

I think relying on rewards to “fix” problems with WvW represents capitulation to the fact that WvW fundamentally isn’t fun. I would MUCH rather see WvW changed to make it fun and entertaining for its own sake than to simply come up with a different way to distribute carrots. There have been lots of good suggestions from many players over the last several months on ways to possibly achieve this (all of which have been ignored). Mine has been the following:

If I had my way, I’d totally revamp WVW. I’d make matches instanced (more or less equal populations determined by dynamic queues), and I’d have matches start on a blank map … terrain features only, no structures. I’d scatter ore deposits randomly around the map (different for each match) so that the first thing each team had to do would be to scout for deposits and secure the surrounding land. Mining the ore would develop the camp, and the ore thus mined would be used as supplies to build towers and keeps anywhere on the map that players chose. Other gathering nodes (herbs and trees) could be incorporated and required for building (food for NPC workers, wood for walls, etc) as well. Towers and keeps would require a blueprint just like siege does now, with each blueprint costing Badges of Honor or some such non-gold currency. Siege (both offensive and defensive) would be pretty much as it is now, with possibly some changes (like backtracking on siege mastery) to address current grievances. Towers and keeps could be destroyed, but not captured … they’d have to be rebuilt, either in the same place or somewhere else. Supply locations (ore, trees, food) could be captured and recaptured, but would need to be redeveloped to be productive. Supplies could be stockpiled in keeps and towers by players.

I suspect that such a scheme would have some unforeseen (by me) flaws, but I think the general concept would entail much greater strategic play, require better overall coordination (possibly questionable in an instanced setting), broaden the contributions for a wider variety of players, and generate some much harder fought battles over key locations.

inb4 … it won’t take long before this thread ends up in the black hole known as the “Suggestions Forum” where all constructive ideas go to die.

Dese.1382:

A couple of assumptions you make Covenant I would like to comment on.

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.
- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

Interesting ideas though, I am sure there are a lot of gamers that game for that carrot, Im willing to be most of them PvE.

As much as I"admire your love for PvP, I think you are only seeing a small picture (or just posted to brag about your love for PvP). I’m pretty sure I PvP just as much, if not far more than you.

But the problem we’re looking at is stacked servers. If you stop punishing people for transferring to lower tiers (insane gem costs for a guild to transfer), then things will eventually balance out far more than it is currently. Nobody wants blowout matchups, and your argument is kind of invalid because if you do love PvP, then you’d hate to play as a server who’s completely destroying the other two. I don’t mind playing as the underdog (I love it), but playing as a server that’s overly winning is boring.

The majority of the population of WvW would be incentized about this. My guild would probably be far more willing to transfer to a lower tier if we didn’t have to pay, let alone actually get some benefits from it.

wvw isnt dying, they have numbers they wont let us see that say otherwise

insanemaniac.2456:

wvw isnt dying, they have numbers they wont let us see that say otherwise

Au contraire. If WvW was thriving, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

What do we have instead? Almost complete dev silence.

Sarrs.4831:

insanemaniac.2456:

wvw isnt dying, they have numbers they wont let us see that say otherwise

Au contraire. If WvW was thriving, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

What do we have instead? Almost complete dev silence.

This is true, they boast about every little thing they can, but we’ve heard nothing about WvW.

How about we first remove the punishment for transferring to a lower server (gem cost), then ask ourselves if we still need rewards.

First of all, WvW is not the same as buying groceries.

If you’re looking for a fair distribution of players, WvW is the totally opposite of this.
WvW resets weekly. Within that single week, there is no stoppage and no waiting for sides to even up. You can mercilessly pummel the losing team for an entire week, until they’re totally broken in spirit and morale.

This is WvW, if you want to talk about buying groceries, it’s more similar in situation where people quit WvW on Tuesday and farm PvE until Friday reset.

But, that’s the great thing about GW2, you can give up WvW and try again next week. It’s like the cycle of life. The PvE community helps build the WvW community and vis versa. Anet didn’t make WvW to compete with PvE. It’s just another game mode that people can switch back and forth.

People need to give up on the balance team/server fallacy. Open world pvp is never balanced in any game. DAoC RvR was never balanced in the entire history of that franchise.

Another thing is that people are social and enjoy the safety of groups. You’ll see this with newer players and veterans that want to run with the blobs. Before GW2 even launched, there were already mega alliances stacked on JQ for WvW.

If you give special bonuses to lower pop servers, you’ll only encourage farmers to flock to those servers. They will not learn to pvp, they’ll follow the path of least resistance and will win trade for rewards.

Prime.8792:

\
If you give special bonuses to lower pop servers, you’ll only encourage farmers to flock to those servers. They will not learn to pvp, they’ll follow the path of least resistance and will win trade for rewards.

personally i dont see your issue with encouraging people to flock to where nobody is. and i do see an issue with not discouraging people from flocking to where everybody is.

Cactus.2710:

I think relying on rewards to “fix” problems with WvW represents capitulation to the fact that WvW fundamentally isn’t fun. I would MUCH rather see WvW changed to make it fun and entertaining for its own sake than to simply come up with a different way to distribute carrots. There have been lots of good suggestions from many players over the last several months on ways to possibly achieve this (all of which have been ignored). Mine has been the following:

If I had my way, I’d totally revamp WVW. I’d make matches instanced (more or less equal populations determined by dynamic queues), and I’d have matches start on a blank map … terrain features only, no structures. I’d scatter ore deposits randomly around the map (different for each match) so that the first thing each team had to do would be to scout for deposits and secure the surrounding land. Mining the ore would develop the camp, and the ore thus mined would be used as supplies to build towers and keeps anywhere on the map that players chose. Other gathering nodes (herbs and trees) could be incorporated and required for building (food for NPC workers, wood for walls, etc) as well. Towers and keeps would require a blueprint just like siege does now, with each blueprint costing Badges of Honor or some such non-gold currency. Siege (both offensive and defensive) would be pretty much as it is now, with possibly some changes (like backtracking on siege mastery) to address current grievances. Towers and keeps could be destroyed, but not captured … they’d have to be rebuilt, either in the same place or somewhere else. Supply locations (ore, trees, food) could be captured and recaptured, but would need to be redeveloped to be productive. Supplies could be stockpiled in keeps and towers by players.

I suspect that such a scheme would have some unforeseen (by me) flaws, but I think the general concept would entail much greater strategic play, require better overall coordination (possibly questionable in an instanced setting), broaden the contributions for a wider variety of players, and generate some much harder fought battles over key locations.

inb4 … it won’t take long before this thread ends up in the black hole known as the “Suggestions Forum” where all constructive ideas go to die.

This, dear sir, would be truly awsome!
but it would mean a total overhaul of the concept and dont see it happening, if we’re lucky in GW3 over 10years

Prime.8792:

First of all, WvW is not the same as buying groceries.

If you’re looking for a fair distribution of players, WvW is the totally opposite of this.
WvW resets weekly. Within that single week, there is no stoppage and no waiting for sides to even up. You can mercilessly pummel the losing team for an entire week, until they’re totally broken in spirit and morale.

This is WvW, if you want to talk about buying groceries, it’s more similar in situation where people quit WvW on Tuesday and farm PvE until Friday reset.

But, that’s the great thing about GW2, you can give up WvW and try again next week. It’s like the cycle of life. The PvE community helps build the WvW community and vis versa. Anet didn’t make WvW to compete with PvE. It’s just another game mode that people can switch back and forth.

People need to give up on the balance team/server fallacy. Open world pvp is never balanced in any game. DAoC RvR was never balanced in the entire history of that franchise.

Another thing is that people are social and enjoy the safety of groups. You’ll see this with newer players and veterans that want to run with the blobs. Before GW2 even launched, there were already mega alliances stacked on JQ for WvW.

If you give special bonuses to lower pop servers, you’ll only encourage farmers to flock to those servers. They will not learn to pvp, they’ll follow the path of least resistance and will win trade for rewards.

“First of all, WvW is not the same as buying groceries.”

Your failure to understand the essence of the topic is appaling. Why bother with such a long reply if you didn’t bother understanding the actual topic? The grocery is mearly an example of the invisible hand principle, which WILL balance WvW if applied. There is absolutely NO possibility that this would not help improve population and point balance. The rest of your reply have absolutely nothing to do with what I mean and absolutely does not address the issue.

It seems like it would be simple to incentivize transfer to lower population servers. Such as some kind of XP increase for a day or week, providing you limit the number of transfers allowed in a given time frame. But none of this is going to fix WvW because there is no guarantee that those transferring will even play WvW.

Dese.1382:

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.

Rewards absolutely do influence WvW play. You are making a false either/or here. People can play with friends and rewards will still influence them.

This video would not exist if rewards did not influence WvW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2vIoGp3R7ZI

Dese.1382:

- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

The developers DO have this data and do not argue this point. Instead they talk about trying to balance match ups and the issues with being outnumbered.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

Sarrs.4831:

insanemaniac.2456:

wvw isnt dying, they have numbers they wont let us see that say otherwise

Au contraire. If WvW was thriving, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

What do we have instead? Almost complete dev silence.

Complete dev silence, huh?

DevonCarver.5370:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If they did listen to us, it’s only because of drastically declining WvW numbers (as stated in Devon’s infamous alpha forum post).

To head it off at the pass, there have not been drastically declining WvW numbers, or even marginally declining numbers. WvW continues to be as strong as it has been over the past several months. We made some decisions internally and were able to accommodate changes that it didn’t seem feasibly originally and that’s why the changes that are going to be announced later this week happened.

Ok people, do some research before saying stuff…

Also, the OP has the right idea.

Dese.1382:

- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

The developers DO have this data and do not argue this point. Instead they talk about trying to balance match ups and the issues with being outnumbered.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

the devs dont acknowledge that there is anything they can do to help spread people out to all servers. its been talked about on these forums for months, and their current response is “oh look guise, were making leagues so you better pick your server before they start!”

they opened free transfers for a week with a simplistic attempt to help mitigate the issue and in the process allowed EU to stack on an already high tier server.

i cant tell whether the silence means they have something complicated in the works or if it means they really do think its an issue we need to deal with ourselves when weve proven over a year that we cant handle it.

they just deflect, avoid, or ignore this issue any time its brought up.

titanlectro.5029:

Dese.1382:

- People WvW for rewards only. I like to PvP and PvP with my friends, I could care less about the rewards. People of this nature tend to stick together.

Rewards absolutely do influence WvW play. You are making a false either/or here. People can play with friends and rewards will still influence them.

This video would not exist if rewards did not influence WvW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2vIoGp3R7ZI

---

Dese.1382:

- Population is the singular reason a server is succeeding or failing. No numbers have ever been published, you might be surprised what the actual data is.

The developers DO have this data and do not argue this point. Instead they talk about trying to balance match ups and the issues with being outnumbered.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

---

Sarrs.4831:

insanemaniac.2456:

wvw isnt dying, they have numbers they wont let us see that say otherwise

Au contraire. If WvW was thriving, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

What do we have instead? Almost complete dev silence.

Complete dev silence, huh?

DevonCarver.5370:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If they did listen to us, it’s only because of drastically declining WvW numbers (as stated in Devon’s infamous alpha forum post).

To head it off at the pass, there have not been drastically declining WvW numbers, or even marginally declining numbers. WvW continues to be as strong as it has been over the past several months. We made some decisions internally and were able to accommodate changes that it didn’t seem feasibly originally and that’s why the changes that are going to be announced later this week happened.

---

Ok people, do some research before saying stuff…

Also, the OP has the right idea.

WvW participation hasn’t declined, it’s just 90% of population is in T1&T2. Keep strong, brothers, and stack servers like nobody’s business!