Guild Wars 2

First:This isn’t a flame post or troll post.

When we watch sporting events or have any competition the idea is to have a somewhat level playing field. GW2 totally fails this test. Some servers are outnumbered by entire whole digits 2+times. Regularly 4 or 5 times.

So when you are on top of the charts know full well that it is completely meaningless…….and I can hear it now…“the top pop servers are balanced”…really? try fighting a low pop server with even numbers…They fighting much tougher fights than yourself probably will crush the “top” server. Top…ya right that is a good one!

There is no attempt at all to balance this problem.

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

Skeletor.9360:

First:This isn’t a flame post or troll post.

When we watch sporting events or have any competition the idea is to have a somewhat level playing field. GW2 totally fails this test. Some servers are outnumbered by entire whole digits 2+times. Regularly 4 or 5 times.

So when you are on top of the charts know full well that it is completely meaningless…….and I can hear it now…“the top pop servers are balanced”…really? try fighting a low pop server with even numbers…They fighting much tougher fights than yourself probably will crush the “top” server. Top…ya right that is a good one!

There is no attempt at all to balance this problem.

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

The problem is that ANet doesn’t seem to agree that it’s a problem. Devon Carter has flat out said as much, and he didn’t even bother to participate in the CDI thread on WvW population balance. I honestly don’t believe we will ever see it fixed.

Skeletor.9360:

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

Said everyone with an inflated ego ever.

Skeletor.9360:

First:This isn’t a flame post or troll post.

When we watch sporting events or have any competition the idea is to have a somewhat level playing field. GW2 totally fails this test. Some servers are outnumbered by entire whole digits 2+times. Regularly 4 or 5 times.

So when you are on top of the charts know full well that it is completely meaningless…….and I can hear it now…“the top pop servers are balanced”…really? try fighting a low pop server with even numbers…They fighting much tougher fights than yourself probably will crush the “top” server. Top…ya right that is a good one!

There is no attempt at all to balance this problem.

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

insulting the skill level of players who happen to be on servers that have better coverage thru out the day then your server does nothing to further the conversation on what can be done about helping servers with a coverage gap compete in wvw in such a way to make the game nor enjoyable and if anything makes people dismiss your post completely.

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

DivineBeing.2086:

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

I think one of the reasons for this is that we just don’t have the manpower. From what I can gather top tier servers have scores of dedicated players, while lower tier ones have much fewer players in them, and so have much less strategic potential.

Skeletor.9360:

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Not if He-Man and Battlecat have anything to say about it

zoidberg.7801:

DivineBeing.2086:

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

I think one of the reasons for this is that we just don’t have the manpower. From what I can gather top tier servers have scores of dedicated players, while lower tier ones have much fewer players in them, and so have much less strategic potential.

And I completely understand that.

I am not trying to belittle your server in any way. In fact, I made a lot of friends pretty quick in the short time I was on there. Smaller classrooms = stronger relationships.

Its just the misperceptions like the OP have in terms of coverage > skill is a flat out lie.

Take TC for example, they have little to ZERO overnight coverage, but yet they are tied for 3rd place. Why? Their NA coverage is honestly one of the best, if not the best.

Don’t blame lack of coverage.

DivineBeing.2086:

zoidberg.7801:

DivineBeing.2086:

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

I think one of the reasons for this is that we just don’t have the manpower. From what I can gather top tier servers have scores of dedicated players, while lower tier ones have much fewer players in them, and so have much less strategic potential.

And I completely understand that.

I am not trying to belittle your server in any way. In fact, I made a lot of friends pretty quick in the short time I was on there. Smaller classrooms = stronger relationships.

Its just the misperceptions like the OP have in terms of coverage > skill is a flat out lie.

Take TC for example, they have little to ZERO overnight coverage, but yet they are tied for 3rd place. Why? Their NA coverage is honestly one of the best, if not the best.

Don’t blame lack of coverage.

I think you are right. The problem is a lot of skilled wvw players left for the top tiered serves once they could before the season started, and so all of the lower tiers lost all of their best wvw players. Lower tiered servers like Kaineng aren’t used to fighting top tiered servers. Just look at the times we made it to T3 or T2, we couldn’t compete with the other servers there because we weren’t experienced enough.

DivineBeing.2086:

zoidberg.7801:

DivineBeing.2086:

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

I think one of the reasons for this is that we just don’t have the manpower. From what I can gather top tier servers have scores of dedicated players, while lower tier ones have much fewer players in them, and so have much less strategic potential.

And I completely understand that.

I am not trying to belittle your server in any way. In fact, I made a lot of friends pretty quick in the short time I was on there. Smaller classrooms = stronger relationships.

Its just the misperceptions like the OP have in terms of coverage > skill is a flat out lie.

Take TC for example, they have little to ZERO overnight coverage, but yet they are tied for 3rd place. Why? Their NA coverage is honestly one of the best, if not the best.

Don’t blame lack of coverage.

yes i do believe we should not blame the coverage, it is with the population, also you should put into account militia morale, commander etc. if you have high morale and good commander no matter what happens people will show up next hour or day for wvw, and when we say coverage that also doesnt translate to ppt right away as there will be opposing force, its all on the commander and militia.

TC has good NA coverage but not the best, also they have the numbers they seem to be lacking good commanders.

OP has a 1 week fix but he ain’t telling what it is… Not buying it.

Anyway in case it wasn’t obvious, coverage and WvW population are what determine score and tiers.

Under tier 1 this is very obvious where some servers will consistently take everything overnight with less than a single map queue because they are fighting with 3:1 or 4:1 numbers advantage. It’s all relative to the population at any given time zone so coverage is worth much more than total WvW population.

I have not seen any great suggestions to fix coverage though adding a bloodlust-like effect to the “outmanned” buff would be something, at least to counteract the snowball effect of bloodlust.

If you want to measure player skill, it’s gvg or xvx or 1v1, right?… Because being able to sit on an AC in a tower for a 5 hour shift is dedication, not skill. On the other hand, if you care about PPT, tiers and all that, it’s dedication that counts the most in WvW. It makes sense that the most dedicated PPT players are going to be drawn to the highest tiers. Also that they might consider lower tier players who looking more for a good fight, to be casual.

Zeke Azul Falcon.5176:

yes i do believe we should not blame the coverage, it is with the population, also you should put into account militia morale, commander etc. if you have high morale and good commander no matter what happens people will show up next hour or day for wvw, and when we say coverage that also doesnt translate to ppt right away as there will be opposing force, its all on the commander and militia.

You just said don’t “blame” coverage and then listed a bunch of reasons related to coverage.

Population? That’s basically coverage.
Morale? Easy to have when you have coverage.
Opposing force? Not if you have more coverage.
Militia? They come out when you have coverage.

99% of WvW matches since the game was released have been decided by coverage. There is no meaningful “competition” in a game mode where having more people show up allows you to win. So unless you are talking about that 1% of actual close matches, there’s no meaning in “winning” or “losing” WvW.

This is why like half the posts in those silly T1 threads are people accusing other servers of stacking coverage. Do you hear people going “oh you guys are training your militia too hard! You guys are keeping up morale too well! Your commanders are too good!”. No, it’s always “you guys recruit too many guilds!” When servers start to struggle do people go oh lets go to Lion’s Arch and talk to our pve people and rally them for WvW! No, they recruit guilds from other timezones to fill their coverage gaps because COVERAGE WINS.

There isn’t even anything wrong with it. It’s just how it is. Just that when people deny it they look so stupid.

For fair combat you go to sPvP. WvW is totally another beast.

Just curious. Aside from capping the maps to about 60 per team per map, how could Anet control the bandwagoning effect, without limiting people’s right of choice to play where they want to?

I agree they should probably lock transfers once official leagues begin, but other than that, do you think it’s fair to lock people to a server? They could also make the transfer fees significant to dissuade server hopping, but again, if people really wanted to stack or jump servers, they’d find a way — and then people would yell about Anet charging too much and exploiting its playerbase.

Devs have indicated that WvW isn’t meant to be fair. It’s just the nature of it.

I agree that population disparity has bad effects on WvW itself, but this is really something the playerbase should be doing to fix as it’s within its power to do so. You’d think pv-dooring or steamrolling another server would get boring after a while and that players would repopulate the various servers to enhance gameplay. That hasn’t happened, sadly.

Actually the system that they have in place right now should eventually even things out. What they really need is a change in the nomenclature. Think about boxing. There’s a heavyweight division a lightweight division, welterweight, etc. The heavyweight champion isn’t “better” than the welterweight champion. In the same way, being the top dog in the T1 division shouldn’t be any more prestigious than being the top dog in the T4 division. Considering how the reward system is set up, a lot of the work for this has already been done, since the rewards for placing 1st, 2nd, 3rd in any division are already the same.

By normalizing the prestige between divisions, separating them completely, displaying them as their own entity rather than a long list with the T1 champ at the top, ANet can balance out server populations. Guilds in the bottom end of a T1 server would opt to move to a T3 server to push that server into the top spot of T3. This would also have the effect of dropping their previous server into T2 where it is most closely aligned with the server populations of competition. Eventually, the net result will be that servers will typically have closer populations.

I only do the daily achievements for WvW atm. If there will be a season 2 I’ll do season achievements and then after that every day only daily achievements for killing, capping. Then I’m off again.

If they want me to play more they need to offer more. ArenaNet needs to start fixing the WvW instead of introducing more imbalancing and crap which leads only to ruin and a lot of players leaving and uninstalling that game from their harddisk.

If ArenaNet does not start to take it seriously why should players take it seriously then? I don’t know…

Instead of everyone expecting WvW to be made fair to accomodate -them-, maybe each server needs to take time to sit down with their server/guild leadership and ask… “What can we do better?”

Thank you, DivineBeing.2086 – TC has indeed been working hard to achieve what we have. We have -not- recruited new guilds, in fact we lost some. Yet for the grumbling, we dug deep, and decided to redouble our efforts to recruit new WvW players from within our server’s population, and train those that participate to help them be more effective.

I would say our efforts are paying off. I think the key is to do what you can with what you have, and set realistic, incremental goals.

chestonu.8059:

Instead of everyone expecting WvW to be made fair to accomodate -them-, maybe each server needs to take time to sit down with their server/guild leadership and ask… “What can we do better?”

Thank you, DivineBeing.2086 – TC has indeed been working hard to achieve what we have. We have -not- recruited new guilds, in fact we lost some. Yet for the grumbling, we dug deep, and decided to redouble our efforts to recruit new WvW players from within our server’s population, and train those that participate to help them be more effective.

I would say our efforts are paying off. I think the key is to do what you can with what you have, and set realistic, incremental goals.

Indeed, and for TC, this has paid off by coming third in Gold tier. Congrats

This is also what BG has done. Regardless of all those SoR trolls claiming we bought guilds (woo! 1 60 man guild that fields around 20-30 a night apparently crushed them so bad they lost 2 guilds), we also lost a huge chunk of our players just before seasons. We recruited people from Queensdale, FGS, Lion’s Arch etc. and trained them up in WvW, got them used to following commands in teamspeak, got them interested enough to be dedicated to the server. You can clearly see this during our off hours, with a huge chunk of players being militia rather than guild groups. Our success in rallying pugs to wvw is the secret to our overall performance in wvw.

Seems like the OP got stomped a few too many times during this season. I’d say join your server’s WvW community by joining their forums and teamspeak, and then actually participate rather than sit on the side lines not knowing what’s really going on.

Who said it was supposed to be taken seriously like a sport?

WvW is meant to be like a war, that means all is fair. We don’t need to turn it into some nanny game where servers that don’t have leadership to bring numbers and coordination up need to be propped up to be competitive. Plus, they don’t give low ranked sport teams a handicap or money against the high ranked ones when some teams clearly have better players and more money to pay them with, why do you expect it here?

Everyone is talking about “fair” and never consider how much foot work guilds and leaders put in to make a server good and covered, and people just want to “balance” all that benefit so they can be competitive without any of the footwork and leadership.

Sorry not going to happen, if that makes you want to uninstall the game maybe you should consider switching to a server that better suits your needs, because all servers will never be equal that is just not realistic. Especially when you can have populations that don’t even participate in WvW in a server.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Who said it was supposed to be taken seriously like a sport?

No one except for people who fundamentally misunderstood what WvW is.

Cactus.2710:

Skeletor.9360:

First:This isn’t a flame post or troll post.

When we watch sporting events or have any competition the idea is to have a somewhat level playing field. GW2 totally fails this test. Some servers are outnumbered by entire whole digits 2+times. Regularly 4 or 5 times.

So when you are on top of the charts know full well that it is completely meaningless…….and I can hear it now…“the top pop servers are balanced”…really? try fighting a low pop server with even numbers…They fighting much tougher fights than yourself probably will crush the “top” server. Top…ya right that is a good one!

There is no attempt at all to balance this problem.

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

The problem is that ANet doesn’t seem to agree that it’s a problem. Devon Carter has flat out said as much, and he didn’t even bother to participate in the CDI thread on WvW population balance. I honestly don’t believe we will ever see it fixed.

Easy fix delete low population servers till all servers are full. Why Anet didn’t roll out one server at a time is beyond me. That way all servers will have equal initial populations. People won’t be able to migrate to best server and equal population distribution. People of deleted server get free move.

Fafnir.5124:

Easy fix delete low population servers till all servers are full. Why Anet didn’t roll out one server at a time is beyond me. That way all servers will have equal initial populations. People won’t be able to migrate to best server and equal population distribution. People of deleted server get free move.

Fix fails because: players from deleted servers will stack on highest available server. If all good available servers are full, players will refuse to pick until a good enough server is available or will quit game entirely. System also screws over PvE focused guilds and servers. It’s a nice idea, but a lot of these schemes have serious drawbacks for people that are not WvW focused that take some time to work out. If all you care about is WvW, you might miss the problems.

I’m on Kaineng, and have been since the start. I’ve seen highs and lows in WvW. I’m primarily PvE, but have spent more time in WvW over the season. We’ve never came in higher than 2nd in any bronze league matchup, yet I’ve still had fun because the individual battles I’ve been in have been fun. Sure, they may have been ‘retake the Garrison on our Borderlands’ rather than ‘take the Garrison on the enemy Borderlands’ but the battles have been the same, even though the war (overall PPT score) has never been a contest for us.

The best comparison for WvW may be college sports, in that the different schools/servers overall may not be on an even footing, there is a slight effort to keep schools in competitive matchups which can’t always work.

I don’t even think the OP went any further then writing out his frustrations. Half of the post makes no sense and can be said about every tier, while the other half is self inflating knock against Anet’s staff.

#uselessThread.

WvW is not related to any sports – end of story. It’s not meant to be balanced, even or anything like that. It’s more like king of the ring or cage match. sPvP/tPvP is where balance is suppose to live.

Subdue.5479:

Actually the system that they have in place right now should eventually even things out. What they really need is a change in the nomenclature. Think about boxing. There’s a heavyweight division a lightweight division, welterweight, etc. The heavyweight champion isn’t “better” than the welterweight champion. In the same way, being the top dog in the T1 division shouldn’t be any more prestigious than being the top dog in the T4 division. Considering how the reward system is set up, a lot of the work for this has already been done, since the rewards for placing 1st, 2nd, 3rd in any division are already the same.

By normalizing the prestige between divisions, separating them completely, displaying them as their own entity rather than a long list with the T1 champ at the top, ANet can balance out server populations. Guilds in the bottom end of a T1 server would opt to move to a T3 server to push that server into the top spot of T3. This would also have the effect of dropping their previous server into T2 where it is most closely aligned with the server populations of competition. Eventually, the net result will be that servers will typically have closer populations.

The issue with this is that it commits one of the cardinal sins of games: potentially rewarding the players for intentionally choosing to play poorly. On Kaineng, we took some grief and some serious morale hits as we fell in rank before the season began, which only made the situation worse for those who stayed and more tempting to those who left. We had internal and external grief for those who thought we were intentionally losing to get into Bronze, as well as a few who seriously proposed throwing the matches to make sure we ended up in Bronze.

In league matches, we have had commanders deliberately sabotage defense efforts up to and including destroying golems to lose keeps so we can then score WXP for retaking it. This has also worked to kill morale.

Nothing hurts a game more than rewarding people for intentionally playing bad.

Civilis.2547:

In league matches, we have had commanders deliberately sabotage defense efforts up to and including destroying golems to lose keeps so we can then score WXP for retaking it.

Yep… Kaineng OP commanders could definitely take on t1 with that kinda tactic. No coding will ever be able to solve that. Not even giving the OP of threadextra 2 weeks.

o.O

Fafnir.5124:

Easy fix delete low population servers till all servers are full. Why Anet didn’t roll out one server at a time is beyond me. That way all servers will have equal initial populations. People won’t be able to migrate to best server and equal population distribution. People of deleted server get free move.

Terrible solution. I don’t want to play with the giant t1 zergs and skill lag. No thanks.

Civilis.2547:

Subdue.5479:

Actually the system that they have in place right now should eventually even things out. What they really need is a change in the nomenclature. Think about boxing. There’s a heavyweight division a lightweight division, welterweight, etc. The heavyweight champion isn’t “better” than the welterweight champion. In the same way, being the top dog in the T1 division shouldn’t be any more prestigious than being the top dog in the T4 division. Considering how the reward system is set up, a lot of the work for this has already been done, since the rewards for placing 1st, 2nd, 3rd in any division are already the same.

By normalizing the prestige between divisions, separating them completely, displaying them as their own entity rather than a long list with the T1 champ at the top, ANet can balance out server populations. Guilds in the bottom end of a T1 server would opt to move to a T3 server to push that server into the top spot of T3. This would also have the effect of dropping their previous server into T2 where it is most closely aligned with the server populations of competition. Eventually, the net result will be that servers will typically have closer populations.

The issue with this is that it commits one of the cardinal sins of games: potentially rewarding the players for intentionally choosing to play poorly. On Kaineng, we took some grief and some serious morale hits as we fell in rank before the season began, which only made the situation worse for those who stayed and more tempting to those who left. We had internal and external grief for those who thought we were intentionally losing to get into Bronze, as well as a few who seriously proposed throwing the matches to make sure we ended up in Bronze.

In league matches, we have had commanders deliberately sabotage defense efforts up to and including destroying golems to lose keeps so we can then score WXP for retaking it. This has also worked to kill morale.

Nothing hurts a game more than rewarding people for intentionally playing bad.

The problem you propose as it relates to my suggestion is easily resolved by basing leagues on server population rather than performance in a previous season. While various servers with similar populations may have varying degrees of WvW population, WvW players will quickly figure out which servers are serious about WvW and which aren’t, and flock to those that are.

I don’t want populations balanced.
I don’t care about the score, as far as it affecting whether I choose to play WvW or not.

But some people do, and that only adds to the population disparity that you see each week. So with that in mind, I am in favor of finding some way to alter the scoring (handicapping) so that the points aren’t such a blowout and people still feel the need to show up and play.

Skeletor.9360:

First:This isn’t a flame post or troll post.

When we watch sporting events or have any competition the idea is to have a somewhat level playing field. GW2 totally fails this test. Some servers are outnumbered by entire whole digits 2+times. Regularly 4 or 5 times.

So when you are on top of the charts know full well that it is completely meaningless…….and I can hear it now…“the top pop servers are balanced”…really? try fighting a low pop server with even numbers…They fighting much tougher fights than yourself probably will crush the “top” server. Top…ya right that is a good one!

There is no attempt at all to balance this problem.

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

We all know that there are population imbalances. We also know that anet wont do anything about it.

Either move to a server that has good population in the TIME ZONE YOU PLAY so you dont fight outmanned.

Or stay on the server you are on and fight small man combat. You will not change anets mind and worrying about ppt will get you know where.

Subdue.5479:

The problem you propose as it relates to my suggestion is easily resolved by basing leagues on server population rather than performance in a previous season. While various servers with similar populations may have varying degrees of WvW population, WvW players will quickly figure out which servers are serious about WvW and which aren’t, and flock to those that are.

I understand what you are saying, and I think this is a constructive discussion to have.

Why would a guild transfer to the number 2 T3 server when they could transfer to the number 1 T3 server? What incentive does the bottom T2 server have to work to retain population when it may do better to intentionally drive people away so it ends up in T3? What does your arrangement do to high-population WvW-poor servers that instead of fighting comparatively ranked servers now have to fight high-pop WvW-strong servers? What does your arrangement do to low-pop WvW-poor servers (like Kaineng, my home) that instead of fighting always WvW-poor servers have to fight always low-pop servers that may be better in WvW?

With any proposal of this nature, the first thing to say is ‘who loses on the deal?’

For WvW to remain as fun as possible for most WvW players, I believe the matches must remain as competitive as possible. The issue I see is that there are no servers competitive with the top and bottom ranked servers, and that the league structure didn’t separate out into competitive divisions, in part because there are not enough competitive teams at each level to evenly divide into leagues. For example, there is no way to evenly divide the 10 NA bronze league teams such that all bronze league teams will face only other bronze league teams; one bronze league level team ends up getting the shaft as the bottom team in silver league for seven weeks.

DivineBeing.2086:

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

Kaineng isn’t a great example either because most of the serious WvW players left. Kaineng was the most unorganized bronze server going into S1, although has shown improvement over the course of the season.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I don’t want populations balanced.
I don’t care about the score, as far as it affecting whether I choose to play WvW or not.

But some people do, and that only adds to the population disparity that you see each week. So with that in mind, I am in favor of finding some way to alter the scoring (handicapping) so that the points aren’t such a blowout and people still feel the need to show up and play.

The problem is, without reasonably balanced populations (and totally ignoring score), it means that the team with the lower populations is not able to effectively participate in the same breadth of play that the higher population does does. Running around killing yaks and road guards is a woefully lesser experience (even for me as a thief) than being able to mount a serious attack on a tower, or seriously defend it. For me, it’s an issue of fun and opportunity, not score.

A WvW rotation is nothing like a PvP match.

It’s long, and continuous.
A world may never sleep, another may old be really active 6-10 hours a day. A world may have lots of people interested in WvW and continuous queues, another may have tumbleweeds in their WvW bases.

You can’t really balance that. Even if you have the very same number of players on each world, there’s too many variables to have completely equal footage. All that can be done is addressing extreme cases and exploits, and let things develop on their own.

For balanced matches, there’s PvP.

MithranArkanere.8957:

For balanced matches, there’s PvP.

Everyone who says this clearly doesn’t get it. (I’m not picking on you specifically, lots of people have posted this sentiment on the forums.)

Johje Holan.4607:

MithranArkanere.8957:

For balanced matches, there’s PvP.

Everyone who says this clearly doesn’t get it. (I’m not picking on you specifically, lots of people have posted this sentiment on the forums.)

^

Skeletor.9360:

The solutions are easy and I personally could implement the coding change in a weeks time. (I’m giving myself 39 hours padding!)

Given this problem is so easy to fix yet isn’t makes a person wonder what the problem could be.

I doubt you even have a reasonable solution that everyone will be happy with, much less the ability to do this.

If your server is out manned, then get off your duff and recruit players to come to WvW and train them. It is not Anets fault they are not filling the space available.

Johje Holan.4607:

MithranArkanere.8957:

For balanced matches, there’s PvP.

Everyone who says this clearly doesn’t get it. (I’m not picking on you specifically, lots of people have posted this sentiment on the forums.)

It’s not that I don’t want them to be balanced. It’s just that I see how trying to balance WvW to make it fair is not possible.

What would yo do? Close the doors at night so insomniacs can’t score while the others sleep? Make it so only the same number of people can enter and the other two worlds have to wait if not enough people from one enters? Give scores based on number of players on each side? Make outnumbered compensate for power? Limit how many people can participate in each single event and push the rest away with some barrier? Limit to which worlds your world will be matched against? Replace entire worlds with NPCs to give an easier target to the other two? Add NPC mercenaries player scan hire to fill their ranks and follow them?
All those things and any other things people have come up with so far have their problems. There’s simply no way to make WvW completely fair. It’s just too big, and too variable, and that is shown even more the emptier worlds are.

I’d much rather have GvG back for big scale balanced matches.

Two keeps in front of each other, 2 towers to gain strategic advantages, 5 camps for resources, siege and repair tools, two lords, 25 players on each side, a little army of NPCs on the walls, a few neutral critters here and there, and a 45-minute timer. That’ll be glorious, and as balanceable as any PvP mode can be.

WvW… not so much.

WvW population is dynamic and cannot be monitored/controlled. QQ is pointless. There’s no reason why fewer people should be able to wipe a bigger group if both sides are equally skilled, unless you’re defending from walls and behind gates.

DivineBeing.2086:

zoidberg.7801:

DivineBeing.2086:

Tougher fights?

I have been on Kaineng when it was tier 8 in order to finish my map completion for my legendary. During the rest of that week that I was on that server my eyes were definitely given a whole new perspective on things.

Lower tier servers can’t even compare to top tier servers in terms of strategy, cooperation, willingness to fight, and just overall obedience.

Sorry, join a server like BG or JQ for a couple weeks than join the last place server. You’ll see how nonchalent the players in lower tiers are.

I think one of the reasons for this is that we just don’t have the manpower. From what I can gather top tier servers have scores of dedicated players, while lower tier ones have much fewer players in them, and so have much less strategic potential.

And I completely understand that.

I am not trying to belittle your server in any way. In fact, I made a lot of friends pretty quick in the short time I was on there. Smaller classrooms = stronger relationships.

Its just the misperceptions like the OP have in terms of coverage > skill is a flat out lie.

Take TC for example, they have little to ZERO overnight coverage, but yet they are tied for 3rd place. Why? Their NA coverage is honestly one of the best, if not the best.

Don’t blame lack of coverage.

It doesn’t matter if TC ticks for 695 PPT during the ~8 hours of NA prime if you tick at 100 ppt during the other 16 hours while the enemy server ticks at 595

Doomdesire.9365:

It doesn’t matter if TC ticks for 695 PPT during the ~8 hours of NA prime if you tick at 100 ppt during the other 16 hours while the enemy server ticks at 595

Explain that to TC’s current rank.

Fact is, nobody has absolute ZERO overnight coverage. Very rarely do you see a server ticking at over 600 ppt during any part of the day.

TC has extremely, extremely limited coverage overnight, I know because I was there for a good couple months, and still know people on that server. They are fighting servers like SoS who was deemed the “Oceanic” server.

Check out the match history right now, particularly the Income Evolution for 1d:
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/36/

If that doesn’t spell it out, then I don’t know what will….

DivineBeing.2086:

Doomdesire.9365:

It doesn’t matter if TC ticks for 695 PPT during the ~8 hours of NA prime if you tick at 100 ppt during the other 16 hours while the enemy server ticks at 595

Explain that to TC’s current rank.

Fact is, nobody has absolute ZERO overnight coverage. Very rarely do you see a server ticking at over 600 ppt during any part of the day.

TC has extremely, extremely limited coverage overnight, I know because I was there for a good couple months, and still know people on that server. They are fighting servers like SoS who was deemed the “Oceanic” server.

Check out the match history right now, particularly the Income Evolution for 1d:
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/36/

If that doesn’t spell it out, then I don’t know what will….

That data shows the SoS can pull a tick over TC for a few hours during oceanic, then get destroyed during SEA and EU. Either way that contradicts your statements. If TC had close to zero overnight coverage, they wouldn’t tick so high during SEA and EU. I can tell you right now if SoS ticked the same ppt as TC during NA, TC would still win due to superior overnight coverage.

Oceanic timezone IS only like 3-4 hours. That’s hardly “overnight” or off NA coverage.

WvW isn’t meant to be a sport – it is a spectacle.

Think roman coliseum, or WWW.

then you’ll understand that 2v1’ing, corpse-emoting, JP camping, spying, uneven playing fields, blowouts even, all make perfect sense and proper entertainment.

Removing the scoreboard would probably go a long way to keep it focused on the fun.

Alacrity.4312:

Think roman coliseum, or WWW.

.

In coliseum in 2VS1 the Group of 2 were given bad weapons and armors to prevent balance them

Mostly heavy helms with poor sight etc.

They were carefully balanced.

Nobody would have like to watch a fight with one of the parts totally dominating the other it would’ve benn boring.

Not commenting on real war since it has no meaning to be spectacle or sport or entertainment.
Its a thing that would better not existing.

Removing, League would be a start.
Also adding SMALL but interesting prizes only for the first.
So 2nd ad third will Always try to win.

PPT is all about numbers and 24/7 coverage. Bigger numbers/ coverage win. True story. Sure you can win a few outnumbered fights every now and then. But that barely makes any difference in the long run.

Anyhow WvW at least for me is not about the points, it’s about the fights. So for me WvW for sure can be taken serious. I do alot of solo roaming, just for the sake of fun. And it works. At least for me.

LordByron.8369:

Also adding SMALL but interesting prizes only for the first.
So 2nd ad third will Always try to win.

Correction: So 2nd and 3rd will be encouraged to transfer.

MAGpie.7962:

LordByron.8369:

Also adding SMALL but interesting prizes only for the first.
So 2nd ad third will Always try to win.

Correction: So 2nd and 3rd will be encouraged to transfer.

totally wrong…

That system is a strong handicap system.

It means that anytime you are first, you are totally supposed to have 2 opponents against.

It would be strongly against skill maybe, but for sure it would help smaller server against bigger.

Doomdesire.9365:

DivineBeing.2086:

Doomdesire.9365:

It doesn’t matter if TC ticks for 695 PPT during the ~8 hours of NA prime if you tick at 100 ppt during the other 16 hours while the enemy server ticks at 595

Explain that to TC’s current rank.

Fact is, nobody has absolute ZERO overnight coverage. Very rarely do you see a server ticking at over 600 ppt during any part of the day.

TC has extremely, extremely limited coverage overnight, I know because I was there for a good couple months, and still know people on that server. They are fighting servers like SoS who was deemed the “Oceanic” server.

Check out the match history right now, particularly the Income Evolution for 1d:
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/36/

If that doesn’t spell it out, then I don’t know what will….

That data shows the SoS can pull a tick over TC for a few hours during oceanic, then get destroyed during SEA and EU. Either way that contradicts your statements. If TC had close to zero overnight coverage, they wouldn’t tick so high during SEA and EU. I can tell you right now if SoS ticked the same ppt as TC during NA, TC would still win due to superior overnight coverage.

Oceanic timezone IS only like 3-4 hours. That’s hardly “overnight” or off NA coverage.

You half way are getting there. I will spell it out though.

No server, not even BG, has full 24/7 full queued coverage on every map. So what you’re suggesting (ticking at 695 ppt the other full 16 hours during the day) will not happen unless under extreme circumstances such as server implodes or a server like BG fighting the lowest ranked server.

That isn’t happening, at all.

The point is, MOST servers are like SoS or TC where they may have one or two strong timezones but that doesn’t mean their coverage alone wins them the match because the other servers they are matched against (TC vs SoS ex) are able to at least hold their own in the weaker part of timezones, ticker higher in their stronger timezones, than finally clash at NA prime.

And if you noticed SoS (king of Oceanics since beta release!) Only ticked at 350ish ppt during Oceanic timezone. Does this mean TC has great coverage in Oceanic too? No. Think about it, TCs towers were probably t3, loaded with defensive siege like the NA crew always does before they go to bed, so when the poor souls who have to defend against 30+ have a fighting chance, or slow them down if anything.

Bad overnight coverage means you lose everything overnight except maybe 1 garrison/keep. But usually everything. Just because when fighting at 1:3, 1:4 or worse odds it doesn’t matter how upgraded a keep or tower is or how much defensive siege is in it. The opposing force can just move to another tower or keep and block access to it with their 3+:1 ratio of forces.

TC has top 3 or 4 oceanic coverage. The difference between T1 and T2/3 is consistent coverage much more than numbers. All servers in these tiers have roughly similar power at NA prime times but at other times, varies greatly.

I agree that creating a level playing field should be number 1 priority, as it gives much more fun for all players.

The problem is that Anet do not have the courage to tell players on high WvW pop servers “You have to move.” They are casting around for some alternative fix, and because they cannot find one (because one probably does not exist), they will be paralysed with indecision.

I’m expecting this to bite them on the bum in the future. If WvW continues the way it is, it will become a much more niche passtime, and will contribute to general attrition of playerbase. They should take the bull by the horns and fix it now, even if that means they have to temporarily annoy people on high pop WvW servers.

Zephyrus.9680:

Bad overnight coverage means you lose everything overnight except maybe 1 garrison/keep. But usually everything. Just because when fighting at 1:3, 1:4 or worse odds it doesn’t matter how upgraded a keep or tower is or how much defensive siege is in it. The opposing force can just move to another tower or keep and block access to it with their 3+:1 ratio of forces.

TC has top 3 or 4 oceanic coverage. The difference between T1 and T2/3 is consistent coverage much more than numbers. All servers in these tiers have roughly similar power at NA prime times but at other times, varies greatly.

Top 4 oceanic is almost certainly T1s + SoS. I’m not even sure we can make 5th, have to face new FA/SBI to see what’s going on there.