WvW Population Balance
Of course, this would work better if EotM did not exist, or at least didn’t give WvW experience.
Just do this. EotM is a fine map. They need to just make it so that it doesn’t affect the WvW populations. More people go into EotM just so you can build WvW experience, karma, and gold. They already nerfed the champion trains. EotM will be next probably.
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It’s been my experience that the server in each bracket with the highest WvW population wins. There is very little real doubt about who is going to win week to week, or each bracket of the tourney’s. Five defenders have no chance of stopping a 20+ man zerg. Servers are buying and selling guilds in order to “load” their server with overwhelming odds.
Servers that have lower WvW populations are giving up. People who might otherwise compete either “join the bandwagon”, or find other content, or quit rather than become bags in an unequal “competition”.
I think it would be beneficial in the long run to incorporate sliding population caps on the borderlands portion or the WvW maps. Basically, each attacking side can only have as many people in a borderland as there are defenders in +5 increments. (the highest settings would last for 30 minutes so defenders could not just abandon their bl and force people off by going from 31 defenders to 5)
So, if blue has 5 defenders on their borderland map, red and green can only have 5 invaders each. If blue has 11 defenders, red and green could have 15 each. Blue might still be outnumbered by the combined forces of red and green, they still have a chance to defend at least a small portion of the home territory.
As it stands now, if blue (a small WvW population server) can only muster 5 defenders, either red or green can simply zerg in with 30 invaders and take over everything in a very short time.
Long term, if the green server can muster 200 people 24/7, while red and blue can only muster 10 people 24/7, green will still win by owning EB and their own BL, plus portions of red and blues BL’s.
However, there will be long ques to invade red and blue BL’s by green. 180 of greens WvW population will get little map time fighting. Green will complain a lot, spend a lot of time in EotM and get bored. Eventually, if they want to actually participate in WvW on a regular basis, they’ll need to xfer to the red or blue (less WvW populated) servers.
Of course, this would work better if EotM did not exist, or at least didn’t give WvW experience.
The same suggestion comes up time and time again. Doing something like this punishes players who do want to WvW, based on the actions/decisions of opponents who don’t want to WvW. This will never be implemented.
Just transfer to another server, if the one you’re on isn’t active.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
The same suggestion comes up time and time again. Doing something like this punishes players who do want to WvW, based on the actions/decisions of opponents who don’t want to WvW. This will never be implemented.
Just transfer to another server, if the one you’re on isn’t active.
How does this punish players who don’t want to WvW?? It does not affect them at all.
The loading of servers is adversely affecting the game as a whole. People complain on these boards all the time about how WvW is dying. If we are going to get new people into WvW, they need to have a positive experience. Getting constantly run over by the zerg train of the populated server in their tier does not make for a positive experience.
People will continue to load servers unless there are negative consequences. Not being able to get into WvW during their regular “playtime” because of long queues is a passive way for ANET to correct server loading.
Although there is some guilds that have been on server since day 1, a majority of guilds hop around in order to preserve their guild’s happiness. Most GvG guilds move quite often. Some have transfered for seasons etc. Basically, the majority outnumbers the minority of loyal guilds. Just merge everything like megaserver/eotm and revive wvw.
Doesnt matter if PPT suffers, and one servers loses towers more often because of this etc. Clearly the PPT only model hasnt worked out for WvW/gw2
Anet have had almost 2 years to fix the issue of population imbalance in WvW and done precisely nothing about it during that time.
It’s clear to me they don’t give a toss about competitive large-scale PvP and would rather just sit back and collect transfer fees instead.
Although there is some guilds that have been on server since day 1, a majority of guilds hop around in order to preserve their guild’s happiness. Most GvG guilds move quite often. Some have transfered for seasons etc. Basically, the majority outnumbers the minority of loyal guilds. Just merge everything like megaserver/eotm and revive wvw.
Doesnt matter if PPT suffers, and one servers loses towers more often because of this etc. Clearly the PPT only model hasnt worked out for WvW/gw2
You’re right that most GvG guilds migrate, however, Transfering tends to destroy guilds, except for those GvG guilds who are highly motivated to transfer up for “fights”. There’s more alignment among GvG players with how they want to play, so it makes more sense for them to tranfer.
Many guilds have really struggled as a result of server hopping, and getting bored of the game and community. Most recent example I can think of: Huge guild on CD, moved to HoD (when they could move everyone because of free tranfers). Season ended, and they decide to take the plunge and move up again. They transfer up to JQ, and they are now a shadow of their former selves. Their driver abandoned them for another guild, and they are no longer a huge guild. I’ve seen the same thing happen to guilds that came to and from my own server.
All in all, telling folks to transfer does not solve the problem.
Of course, this would work better if EotM did not exist, or at least didn’t give WvW experience.
Just do this. EotM is a fine map. They need to just make it so that it doesn’t affect the WvW populations. More people go into EotM just so you can build WvW experience, karma, and gold. They already nerfed the champion trains. EotM will be next probably.
they nerfed the champ trains for EOTM
Problem is that they is no incentives to stay on servers that have population problems. There needs to be some sort of lucrative incentive to play on those servers or WvW will remain insanely lopsided.
People will keep transfering from dying worlds because there’s nobody playing WvW on them and sometimes you won’t even see anyone from the enemy team for hours either (except for the ocasional roamer). And because these worlds are generally at the bottom of the leaderboard, people will transfer out of them since they don’t see a way to climb tiers/ranks without an active and healthy WvW population. And this creates a vicious cycle of server tranfers that never ends.
Free transfers to bottom servers wouldn’t help because nobody wants to join a dying server. There’s no reason to. I say just merge the bottom servers and be done with it. I don’t think it’s an extremely hard thing to do since a lot of online games have done it before, and they’re still alive and kicking, (just look at WoW).
I imagine Anet doesn’t want to go that way because then there would be even more “THIS GAME IS DYING!!” threads on the forums and that would probably be bad for the game and the company’s image. However, most competitive games at least give you a chance of winning. On Gw2 there is no possible way for a bottom server to ever recover, unless a miracle happens and 10 guilds decide to tranfer to a dying world… Good luck with that!
(edited by Davey.7029)
People will keep transfering from dying worlds because there’s nobody playing on WvW on them and sometimes you won’t even see anyone from the enemy team for hours either (except for the ocasional roamer). And because these worlds are generally at the bottom of the leaderboard, people will transfer out of them since they don’t see a way to climb tiers/ranks without an active and healthy WvW population. And this creates a vicious cycle of server tranfers that never ends.
Free transfers to bottom servers wouldn’t help because nobody wants to join a dying server. There’s no reason to. I say just merge the bottom servers and be done with it. I don’t think it’s an extremely hard thing to do since a lot of online games have done it before, and they’re still alive in kicking, (just look at WoW).
I imagine Anet doesn’t want to go that way because then there would be even more “THIS GAME IS DYING!!” threads on the forums and that would probably be bad for the game and the company’s image. However, most competitive games at least give you a chance of winning. On Gw2 there is no possible way for a bottom server to ever recover, unless a miracle happens and 10 guilds decide to tranfer to a dying world… Good luck with that!
I don’t think it matters at this point for people to transfer. T1 itself seems to be dying. I rarely go into a map that isn’t outnumbered, nor do I rarely see the enemy. If I do see a zerg, they are about the same size as I remember when I left T8.
The only real option at this point is, as you said, merging the bottom servers. I honestly think if we were to take all the players and placed them in as many servers as necessary to have decent coverage 24/7, I think we’d be left with 2 tiers (6 servers).
This problem will solve itself eventually… players will continue to move up until everything below T2 (maybe even T1) is a wasteland barren of all WvW players.
As for me, back to Divinity Original Sin.
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