Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

I had a few ideas for some… drastic changes that I feel could move WvW in a better direction and would like to see what everyone thinks.

1. Separate the PvE and WvW Servers : As we already utilize the “Mega Server” system lets just make it that, a new server called “Tyria” is the landing pad for anyone who joins the game. Current players who opt in to WvW retain their “WvW Server”and upon entering WvW its business as usual. New players or players that previously opted out of WvW are presented with an options screen when first trying to enter WvW. This will give them a list of servers they can join but there will be a population lock put on the servers so that you cannot join a server that has X more players than the lowest population server.

Pros:

• In theory this eliminates the need for linked servers once servers begin evening out.
• Servers are no longed tied to their “PvE Population” meaning that in theory match-ups should even out over time given the population restrictions.
• Lower Tier servers get the chance for an influx of players as they become the only choice until things even out.
• The game retains the ability to make money on transfers to “WvW Servers” (though the first transfer after this change would have to be credited).

Cons:

• Someone who left the game and came back at a later date might find themselves no longer on the “WvW Server” they left on and are unable to quickly get back on it due to a high population.
• Initially match-ups could stagnate a bit due to the fact that lower tier servers would be the only options available for transfers until things balanced out. In addition to this it might become necessary to reduce the number of servers to account for the reduced WvW population.
• Probably more things I haven’t thought of

2. Balance skills in WvW without affecting PvE : Nothing new here, many have asked for it but needs to be done for both ends of the spectrum because nothing is more frustrating as a player than to have something changed because a game mode you don’t even utilize is “unbalanced”.

3. Lower the overall populations of WvW Servers : I would rather suggest getting more powerful servers for WvW but that feels like an unrealistic ask. That being said, skill lag and general performance issues in WvW tied to large groups clashing over an objective is a poison that will slowly kill the game if not addressed.

End of the day I am just looking to strike up a conversation on the topic so feel free to provide constructive criticism.

Interesting it could work

Sarge.9730:

Hi everyone,

I had a few ideas for some… drastic changes that I feel could move WvW in a better direction and would like to see what everyone thinks.

1. Separate the PvE and WvW Servers : As we already utilize the “Mega Server” system lets just make it that, a new server called “Tyria” is the landing pad for anyone who joins the game. Current players who opt in to WvW retain their “WvW Server”and upon entering WvW its business as usual. New players or players that previously opted out of WvW are presented with an options screen when first trying to enter WvW. This will give them a list of servers they can join but there will be a population lock put on the servers so that you cannot join a server that has X more players than the lowest population server.

Pros:

• In theory this eliminates the need for linked servers once servers begin evening out.
• Servers are no longed tied to their “PvE Population” meaning that in theory match-ups should even out over time given the population restrictions.
• Lower Tier servers get the chance for an influx of players as they become the only choice until things even out.
• The game retains the ability to make money on transfers to “WvW Servers” (though the first transfer after this change would have to be credited).

Cons:

• Someone who left the game and came back at a later date might find themselves no longer on the “WvW Server” they left on and are unable to quickly get back on it due to a high population.
• Initially match-ups could stagnate a bit due to the fact that lower tier servers would be the only options available for transfers until things balanced out. In addition to this it might become necessary to reduce the number of servers to account for the reduced WvW population.
• Probably more things I haven’t thought of

2. Balance skills in WvW without affecting PvE : Nothing new here, many have asked for it but needs to be done for both ends of the spectrum because nothing is more frustrating as a player than to have something changed because a game mode you don’t even utilize is “unbalanced”.

3. Lower the overall populations of WvW Servers : I would rather suggest getting more powerful servers for WvW but that feels like an unrealistic ask. That being said, skill lag and general performance issues in WvW tied to large groups clashing over an objective is a poison that will slowly kill the game if not addressed.

End of the day I am just looking to strike up a conversation on the topic so feel free to provide constructive criticism.

1. Segregation doesn’t work here. Everything in this game is mega server except for wvw, and linking has worked to boost participation rates.

2. The devs already started making balance changes between wvw, spvp and pve.

3. No thank you. It’s unnecessary and puts unneeded stress on players to cover 4 big maps. The devs are working on the lag stuff.

(1a) Half of this is already implemented. The PVE population doesn’t count for servers being full or empty etc, the medium, high, very high, full ratings are only based on man-hours in WvW.

(1b) I agree that it would be great to have all pve players on a single/multiple PVE servers, and have them choose a WvW server when joining WvW only. But unfortunately I suspect this is a whole lot of more work under the hood than we can imagine.

(1c) The problem with server lockdowns, is that it really kittenes off too many customers with valid concerns. Like having an entire family spread over multiple servers, one of them find a great community on a server and wants to invite the others, but full. And if ANet relents and opens up, 3-4 people with valic concerns move over, and 30-40 band-wagoners.

(2) Unless they have the resources to put own people in charge of overlooking and keeping up with this, I fear it would just become too much extra things to keep track of for ANet. Basically another thing that will be done once, and then abandoned.

Just imagine if they do this, make an overhaul and adapts skills for WvW, and then 6 months down in time we get a general GW2 update with skills and trait changes. Suddenly a few of the WvW changes conflicts heavy with some new traits, or other skill changes. And then they don’t have anyone to adapt and adjust this to the new changes? If they can’t dedicate at least a small team to this, it won’t work.

(3) I very much doubt that ANet will be able to get rid of the lag from the Engine, if they could, I suspect they would have done so by now. And I’d also guess that the problem isn’t in the servers themselves, but in the code. If it was just server hardware they probably would have fixed that long ago. And from what they have told about their server structure, it seems to shift loads over to other servers and clusters etc, so the servers naturally divide the load between themselves on the fly.

Some will obviously be very much against lowering the map caps for various reasons. Some love their large scale combats, some play this game for big zerg fights, etc.

Personally I’d prefer to see them go over to a dynamic map system. Where the system creates and removes/freezes maps as needed to the shifting population. That would work well with a reduction to map limit as well, if there would be a queue, it would spawn a new map.

I should have clarified some more on the first point pertaining to population in relation to the PvE players. While as several of you have stated, PvE numbers are not counted toward the full status of a server and instead this pulls from man hours in WvW, that does not account for a large number of players jumping into WvW for dailies and other activities that for a populated server can add a large number of “fake” man hours.

Sarge.9730:

3. Lower the overall populations of WvW Servers :

Anet basically already did this when they implemented the active WvW population calculation change.