Guild Wars 2

REALLY was hoping for a reasonably balanced WvW experience, but after 6 weeks of seeing one server controlling 95% of map (yes, I do mean 95%); I’ve about had it. My guildmates are already quitting or just pve’ing until something changes.

NCSoft either needs to force population balances, STOP the free servers transfers (since everyone just moves to the winning servers), or find some other way to fix this crapfest. Because when 2/3 of the players are being totally dominated by 1/3, guess what? You’re going to lose a huge part of your player base.

I’ll ignore the expected ‘l2p noob’ remarks, unless you’ve been on the receiving end of this travesty, you have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m sure if you play on a server who controls 95% of the map, you think you have l33t skillz, lol. Following a zerg when it’s 2 or 3 against 1, instead skill, that’s just /faceroll, anyone can do that.

Wanted to add an image for people who think I’m exaggerating.

Just transfer and save yourself the headache

your not exaggerating. one week, i think 2 weeks ago seafarer’s rest, the server i am on, had 100% of the map in our control, that was 1 day in 7, the following week we got our buts kicked, enjoy it while it lasts, get those PoI’s Vistas and Skill points you dont have while it lasts

Free server transfers need to end. It’s been long enough.

I do think the free unlimited transfers were a TERRIBLE idea, it does not reward server loyalty, it only rewards whoever follows the winning zerg-ing server. Unbelievably dumb idea.

I think it’s time for the grace period to end on server transfers. Stop servers transfers now, and if possible, give new accounts free transfers for a week or two.

I too agree. Stop the free transfers.

Issues have been discussed at length here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-Self-Balancing-System/first#post327649

With comprehensive solutions discussed here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/How-to-combat-folding-in-WvWvW-Constructive/first#post337466

It adequately covers everything the OP has raised.

After the wvw matchup shifted to anvil rock and furgs crossing, our darkhaven night crew apparently went full throttle. cheers to them, and im not by any means saying Darkhaven rules, but I guess that some of our WvW guilds have organized themselves enough to take advantage of the lonesome nights in WVW. All’s fair, etc… Solution?? organize your own night shift crew, and turn the tides.

@ahyokata.. not really. Darkhaven is bad at organization. If we were that good, we would have won last week. They are outnumbered greatly.

NSP has landed in a nice balance of matchups and we don’t have crazy server hopping. We are at the time of this posting all within 2000 points.

I agree with the original poster.

After the weekly reset servers all zerg out to grab land in WvW. Sadly once a side dominates the provided buff i.e. Karma, Experience, etc.. Are completely worthless unless you plan on avoiding PvP and farming Karma. Once the winning has all of the orbs you have zero chance to launch a comeback unless you “Stack Servers”

This is fixable if they add in the following:
1. Server transfers are limited for established accts, min. once a week.
2. When any server dominate WvW the game shall provide boons for the other servers that will balance out values as the WvW maps even out.
3. To slow down the zerg, all WvW fortification need hardening as do the supplys.

There are so many ways to fix the issue. The WvW area is awesome it just needs some balance to limit the ability to Chase the stacked PvP server and give valid justification for players to participate in WvW when the only thing a player can current look forward to is a repair bill when greatly out numbered.

They should make server transfers to high ranking servers cost money, while transfers to low ranking/mid-low pop servers (kn bp dr etc) are free.

It’s not just higher populated servers having others transfer onto them.

My guild recently went from SBI to SoR.

The big thing is losing all influence and upgrades a guild has worked on, and having to start back at 0 again. (Though it’s already been stated Anet is working on it.)

Someone in another post suggested not allowing world transfers if the other world is one of your wvwvw competitors, I personally think that is a brilliant idea.

I would take it one step further and suggest you can’t change to those particular servers until late Friday, to keep people from world hopping to bypass the lockout!

FYI ANet has confirmed the other day that free transfers are not the reason for this imbalance, so stop repeating this myth, it’s long busted. They got the data.

In my view, balance of power between worlds has not been addressed, because the stronger World is made even stronger by means of buffs, several types of upgrades, and accumulation of supplies and siege weapons. I expressed this view several months ago in the site Guild Wars 2 Ideas. I also considered that absolute lack of communication between Worlds was not good, please read also this message:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-Self-Balancing-System/first#post327649

I do not think that free transfers are a problem -think- I would like to play PvE in another world without changing my home server, and thus I would like the guest system to start.

I would like that one or two weeks matches were interesting better than shortening matches to two or three days (that is another solution to the problem). And for this, at least, to take away buffs and upgrades and to limit the amount of supply. Instead of this, I suggest giving more advantage to higher ground and giving more advantage to players attacking from above a wall or tower, so that keeps, camps, towers, etc need to be guarded by players rather than to let them abandoned with NPCs and reinforced walls/gates and so that siege weapons are not so important.

Now, I think that there are other reasons that may make the unbalance even bigger, it is the big lack of information and of communication in WvWvW between a World’s players. There is only one means to know more or less certainly what is happening and it is the chat. There are the orange blades, that also help a little, but you do not know if orange blades signal a fight between Red and Green, between Blue and Red, etc, and you do not know whether it is a 1 vs 1, a 1 vs 30 or whatever numbers. You can see nearby allies as light green dots, but at longer distances you can see only Commanders if there is any and you can not see enemies as dots even when they are nearby. My suggestion is that at least you should be able to see allies’ dots all over the map and enemies dots when they are nearby, this would be a great help for all players as well as for commanders. I think, also, that enemies plate names should be shortened to avoid names messing so that it becomes easier to know how many individual enemies are you watching.
It might be interesting or it might be not, that if allies dots were visible all over the map, it were possible as well to know the name of each player by hovering the mouse over the dot, so that a whisper to suggest some action or a question about the area might be asked.
It might be good as well to give to commanders the ability to mark objectives on the map (not that I need this, but they may need it).

This is Drakkar Lake v Whiteside Ridge v Vabbi at the moment, it’s beyond a joke tbh, their just sitting in the towers nearest to the spawn, some even outside the spawns, last night it was a bit better 180 v 350 v 120 or so, and they pretty much nightcapped everything, this isn’t even high ranked were all in the bottom 8, yesterday we were having to defend on 2 fronts against Vabbi and Drakkar in EB, as it seemed like there was some invisible line in EB where they just wouldn’t attack each other.

http://imgur.com/7Cu8W

http://i.imgur.com/H8BWG.jpg

As of now were on 5 points.

I know this system seems like a bad idea at first, but in all honesty, it’s been apparent that WvW needs Elasticity in the scores.

What i mean by that is, if one team is falling behind, it needs some form of advantage that scales depending on how far behind your score is.

A Buff to attack and defense is the obvious one, it’d mean that the moral of the loosing team would stay high even if they were loosing so they’d be more inclined to attack, and the winning team would have to realize that if they have had a good game so far, it means that they will have to work at it now.

(I’d like to iterate on this, so edit:
Say that the leader was 10k ahead, this would kick in the first level of the buff, say +5%. ((this is an example, numbers can be changed)) for each 5 or 10k points the team falls behind, this buff increase by an extra +5%. If they take the Tally lead (as in, they hold the most locations kind) then the buff is halved. This will last for as long as the gap remains larger than the bracket. (for example, if they are 10k points behind, they would only gain the +5% for as long as their points stayed 10k lower than the leading server)

I suggest this because… well, the best fights have always been the ones that are close.. really tight matches that mean that you end the game with a 100 point gap. THAT would be a bloody fantastic game..

However, most of the games finish with a 200’000+ GAP between the top and bottom, with somewhere between 50’000 and 100’000 for mid and bottom.. 100 points is ridiculous, but most games should aim to be in the 10k-20k margin for them to feel like good matchups in my oppinion

So… yeah, that is what i feel would be the best solution, at least for the moment

The Orbs immense power makes it undesireable to play against those with all 3.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned is that the map looks like that almost all the time – it’s not just an off-hours population balance issue. One day, Ferguson’s Crossing took back their garrison, but it was lost again. Other than that, it’s mostly supply depot raids. It’s not really much fun on our side either.

From my understanding, there are 5 US servers at the bottom with low WvW participation. So whichever server gets bumped down to the next to last bracket will dominate.

This is a crazy match-up (i’m on Darkhaven). I really hadn’t done much WvW until the last few days, and this shocked me upon entering.

What day are the new matches starting? How long has this one been going on?

If they stop server transfers u think u gonna win? People who left won’t come back to a loosing server AND payed…but people would definitely pay2win = move to a wining server.

Servers that win will continue to win…servers who lose will continue to lose.

Stoping server transfers would be the very first and most basic step possible….next is fixing what they completely destroyed…and besides a handfull of winning servers..they literally destroyed everything else.

As i said..people will gladly pay2win and transfer to a winning server..but will never pay2lose and not have fun in their game.

Honestly, they just need to approach it with some form of better matchmaking system. I’m from Anvil Rock, and I’ve stopped WvWing as fervently now that we’ve hit the third or fourth week facing servers that – clearly – have full WvW queues around the clock.

There’s nothing engaging about looking at your WvW screen each week and seeing that some server has 90% control of the map. For most players entering a map where the enemy has almost complete map dominance, it’s a huge motivational drain. For my part, I don’t even enjoy WvWing in those circumstances unless one of our server’s better known WvW leaders is on and clearly leading some sort of effort somewhere.

Stopping server transfers is all well and good, but the big issue now is we still have severs with a -history- of maintaining near complete map control facing fodder servers, instead of appropriately matching servers like Darkhaven and Dragonbrand against each other and letting the quote “baddies” duke it out in their own league.

Every competitive online game has a ranked matchmaking system – whether visible or not – so why doesn’t this one have one for WvW?

Haha!! That’s my server bro, I like it this way! I say keep it up!!! Plus I’ll be honest the number on players in each server is about the same… Just it seems like noone in your servers are interested in WvW, if you want to you win, you gotta get more people in their. If you didn’t know green has a very large guilds that play WvW and always in a world to protect or take over. This is the lack of players interested in playing WvW for both blue and red as of right now Kaineng is much stronger than devonas rest…. I believe it is just lack of interest in WvW.

Why are you complaining about the other side owning 95% of the map ANET balances this out by giving you the undermanned buff!

20% magic find really helps in PvP.

I 358th that notion of FREE SERVER TRANSFERS NEED TO END.

They should throw in a voting system, if a world leads over the others by 100k or 200k points, the losing worlds can vote to let the winnig world win by W.O. thereby ending the pain early instead of forcing to suffer a week or 2. If people stop joining wvwvw might as well end it early. If several worlds forfeit their games maybe a amatch between the losers and a match with the winners until friday/saturday when the bracket matches start again.

Armo, that would result in teams giving up prematurely to fight for second against a single opponent instead of 2. That’s not a solution either.

I was one of the ones that helped make this happen in eternal… We put up good counter trebs after getting SM (vs both sides), then by 10:30pm that Friday we outnumbered the enemy had a full queue off and on until about 1:30am, when we owned it all.

A series of mistakes on the other sides let their keeps fall. They had enough on the map to defend them, they were just too busy trying to kill people running around while 25 people took them.

Not my cup of tea to be honest… getting 5 hours of good WvW before the enemy is defeated…

People need to start hopping to the low tier server. I know a lot of you wanted to do this, but your guild will lose all its upgrades and influence hence most of them refuse to do so.

Imo make the server transfer to a high tier server cost money, while to low tier for free. Plus, make sure the guild influence stays. With this two changes, I believe the population balance issue will be gone.

I played on a “low tier” / low pop server for a few weeks (4?) after transferring from my initial server.

I would recommend not doing that…

Not until they fix things that I outlined. You will be the only one out doing any WvW… and the way the game is structured at the moment, you will lose. Doing any WvW in a way where you “might” win will cost you a lot of money.

When you’re in good gear / group, the problem isn’t when they have 3x the people… the problem is 5x or 6x with the aoe limit, and siege only hitting 5 people etc…

If you give people starving for a fight the smallest hint of a fight, they will all show up.

The problem is that forts are too easy to kill. 30 players, reinforced door, ~60 seconds? That’s just dumb.

Once the population imbalance starts, it’s a slippery slope. Forts go down FAST, even fully reinforced. “You should stand there and defend” is a fine excuse when populations are balanced but when there’s 15 of you and 100 of them, you can’t be everywhere and anywhere you’re not at will go down in literally about 3 minutes. In some cases you hear about an attack and can’t even run there fast enough to get involved in the defense.

• Doors should take no damage from regular attacks
• Rams should cost 50 supply (to stop people from easily throwing down 4 of them on each door)
• Lords should have far far more HP