Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone

Recently, there have been a lot of discussion going on about fixing one of the biggest issues that are ruining WvW – otherwise a fantastic game mode of the game: population imbalance.

I encourage you to join the discussion in this thread if you have any brilliant idea on how to fix this issue: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/first

In my opinion, most of the proposed solutions so far, while having their own merits, mainly focus on putting additional limits and restrictions or a serious overhaul to the current system, therefore might lead to negative feedback from people who would be affected by the changes and Anet could lose a significant playerbase as a result.

So in this separate thread, I would like to speak my mind and propose my solutions which provide opportunities for people to move around servers to even out between servers, eventually fixing the population imbalance issue we’re currently facing. That is, to focus on the positive rather the negative aspects.

However, I do believe that making people to move to different servers is not a hard part. The hard part is how to make them stay for as long as possible, especially on low-tier servers. The idea is to prevent the practice of server stacking as people flock to a particular server that is going to win the matchup to get more rewards. There should be incentives and greater rewards for people who decide to stay with their servers, through both ups and downs, for their loyalty, so to speak.

Below I will propose my solution to improve WvW that focuses on:
- Provide many incentives for loyal players who decide to stay on their servers for as long as possible
- Introduce Server-exclusive rewards and bolster server communities with the use of identity server logos.
- Provide many incentives for players who decide to fight against the odds of overwhelming numbers of enemies. Improve the fight mechanics in Outnumbered situations.

Warning: Its gonna be walls of text, but please read on

STEP 1: Implement the LOYALTY RANKING SYSTEM to reward WvW veterans on a particular server.
So how does it work?

Lets just say the system is implemented on a feature patch. Once the patch comes through, you go talk to an NPC and enlist and pledge your service to your server. This will activate the Loyalty Ranking System and you start at Rank 1.

As you gain WXP, you will also gain Loyalty Experience (LXP) (although at a slower rate). When you rank up, you will get a Loyalty Reward Chest. The max rank is 500. However, when you hit rank 500, you still continue to gain LXP and get reward chest every time the LXP bar fills up, but your rank stays the same.

Loyalty Reward Chest is similar to WXP Rank Chest with the following exceptions:
- You can get server-exclusive items in addition to the normal WXP Rank Chest loot table. More details on this later.
- Your Magic Find when you open Loyalty Reward Chest is added the bonus from your Loyalty Rank (+ 1% extra per rank). For example: if your current MF is 250% and your Loyalty rank is 200, your MF applied to your Loyalty Reward Chest is (250 + 200=) 450%.

When you have Outnumbered buff, you will have +100% bonus boost to your normal LXP. Also add a new WvW upgrade category called Hardship Training, to increase the Outnumbered boost to your LXP furthermore, for example, like the following:
Rank 1: +100% bonus LXP when Outnumbered
Rank 2: +200%; Rank 3: +300%; … Rank 8: +800%
So at max Rank 8: when you are Outnumbered, you get a +900% boost to your LXP, meaning you gain LXP 10 times faster than normal. The WvW ability points to invest into this category can be, for example, 5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40.

There should NO OTHER WAY to boost your LXP except from this Outnumbered mechanic.

Last but not least, when a player transfers to another server, their LXP will be reset (back to 0), and to compensate, they will gain karma based on their previous Loyalty Rank in the previous server (Each rank = 1k karma, so Rank 500 = 500k karma).

STEP 2: Introduce SERVER LOGOS and SERVER-EXCLUSIVE REWARDS that show the unique logo of each server.
There are many creative ways to go about this step, so I will just list some examples on top of my head and leave you guys to your imagination.

Firstly, Anet can host a logo design contest, at the end of the contest, the best logo for each server will be chosen to implement into the game and of course the designer wins a prize.

Or Anet can leave it to the server communities to run their own logo design contests themselves, and implement the logos once the winner is chosen based on player feedback.

The latter option would save Anet resources and manpower to run the event and give the server communities a great opportunity to come together.

Once the logos are all added to the game, server-exclusive skins that make use of these logos are then added. These items are similar to guild-exclusive items (like Guild Finisher, Guild Shield, Guild Chest Armor, Flying Carpet, etc.). The idea is for loyal players to show off their WvW dedication to their server and bragging rights ofc.

Now, the key thing here is that these server-exclusive skins can only be found in Loyalty Reward Chests and nowhere else, to make them truly ‘valuable’ of WvW-ers. The way you obtain them can be either 1) directly from the chest with rare chance or 2) trade Loyalty Tokens with NPC (similar to the current Badge of Honor and WvW Ticket systems).

In addition to this, a series of Titles related to your Loyalty Rank on your server can also be introduced, again, for showing off and bragging rights, for example:

- Loyalty Rank 100: unlock Title ‘Follower of <server name>’

- Loyalty Rank 200: unlock Title ‘Watcher of <server name>’

- Loyalty Rank 300: unlock Title ‘Defender of <server name>’

- Loyalty Rank 400: unlock Title ‘Protector of <server name>’

- Loyalty Rank 500: unlock Title ‘Guardian of <server name>’

STEP 3: Greatly improve OUTNUMBERED MECHANIC and ITS ASSOCIATED BONUSES/ADVANTAGES to players to even the odds in Outnumbered fighting situations
With the system in place in Steps 1 & 2, now Anet can now tackle the population imbalance directly.

Many others have suggested it and we all have our own ideas how to buff the Outnumbered bonuses. Here I will list some ideas of my own but I welcome any other awesome ideas regarding to this aspect.

But first let’s talk about how and why should we buff up the Outnumbered mechanic and its associated bonuses?

There are 2 aspects to consider:

1) Outnumbered buff grants bonuses for personal gain (more magic find, more WvW gain, etc.).But it is commonly agreed that the current bonuses are simply too little to give any real incentive for players to put up with Outnumbered fight scenarios.

2) Outnumbered buff grants players of the underpopulated server certain advantages to give them a fighting chance against overwhelming enemies. This is non-existent at the moment.

The first aspect should be buffed up considerably more if people are to be convinced to take the risk and get higher rewards. This is a case low risk/high reward vs high risk/much higher reward specifically aimed at players who play to optimize their personal rewards (It’s one way to play the game and they shouldn’t be judged, however, they should be given options to experiment and go out of their usual way to enjoy the game).

In Step 1 I already suggested with the Loyalty Ranking system, players will rank up much faster when being Outnumbered. However, I believe this will not be enough to win people over. Another example to reward players more that ties to the Loyalty Ranking system is: you get Outnumbered buff, you will receive a Loyalty Reward Chest. A player can only receive 1 chest per day per map.

The 2nd aspect is about giving the players the tools to effectively deal with enemies of much greater number, or at least delay them long enough for reinforcements to arrive and help. We’re talking about guerrilla tactics, supply stealing from stomped enemies, more mobility/building speed in small groups vs zerg, more prevalent use and more variety of traps. This addition of tools will open up lots of new way to WvW. Guilds and skilled roamers alike who are curious to try out new tactics to fight against zerg (without bringing a zerg of their own) will be interested to transfer to low-pop/low-coverage servers to test their mettle.

Examples of WvW abilities that only useable in Outnumbered situation that I can think of on top of my head:

- You steal supply when stomping an enemy (you cannot steal more supply than you can carry)
- Traps take 50% less supply to build.
- Traps that inflict long-lasting movement impairment conditions (cripple, chilled, immobilize) to many targets (10-20 targets). The idea to disrupt zerg movement/advancement or even pin them down.
- Summon extra NPCs to defend/assault objectives
- Faster deployment of siege in open field (+100% build speed for example)

Whatever ideas to implement and buff Outnumbered, however, in my opinion, it is equally important that Anet conveys the message super clear and in the most friendly (or least upsetting) to the playerbase. How to do that?

Introduce themed WvW Tournament. WvW Tournament with a particular theme and focus on specific aspects of WvW, in this case, of course, Outnumbered fighting.

Lets just say, soon after the Feature Pack adding the Loyalty Ranking System, Anet would announce the incoming WvW Tournament with a fancy name like Against All Odds, for example, adding a bunch of new WvW Abilities that players can only use when they have Outnumbered buff. Also, during the tournament, players get extra personal rewards whenever they get Outnumbered.

Now eventually, as the players spread out to low pop/low coverage servers and try to WvW at odd times to get the Outnumbered buff, the population imbalance will be resolved and Outnumbered could become a very rare occasion. Well, that means problem solved right? What about all the stuff that relates to Outnumbered? Yes, they will become obsolete and underused, but then Anet can then shift the focus of the tournament to something else, a different theme, like new stuff related to defending objectives or large battles (GvG), there are lots of ideas to explore when we get there, if we get there. But first, this population imbalance is top priority.

So that concludes my lengthy post. What are your thoughts? Please provide your feedback and own ideas to help us and Anet to improve WvW as it is such an amazing game mode of Guild Wars 2.

Thank you.

This is a very nice idea and I would love to see it considered by the devs (a few tweaks to balance issues here and there that we might not be able to see, etc), but I must admit, I have a major issue with it:

keenlam.4753:

Lets just say the system is implemented on a feature patch. Once the patch comes through, you go talk to an NPC and enlist and pledge your service to your server. This will activate the Loyalty Ranking System and you start at Rank 1.

Having been loyal to my server since launch, and being fairly certain that Anet would have some way to trace our server-hopping… I feel this should be retroactive. Plenty of servers have had rough times, and people just bailed – why should someone who ran away start off as loyal as someone who endured four months of being kicked to the curb? Why should someone who bandwagoned in every tournament be considered as loyal as those who simply fought their hardest for their server?

It’s definitely a really good idea to keep things more static in the future, potentially solving several issues, but it would be a kick in the teeth to some of us who have stuck through thick and thin to start off the same as those who did not. A small headstart, like with luck, would be appreciated.

Something like this should have been the game since launch or at the very least a lame little title track. Really any sort of world loyalty incentive would have been nice in the rampant free transfer era. A lot of us who have been on the same world since the BWE’s take great pride in that fact. ANET seems rather loath to add another form of currency so I don’t see anything this in depth happening without being in conjunction with a major overhaul of the whole system but it is nice to dream.

It can be rather sad and frustrating to consider all the lost potential for WvW when you look back over the last couple of years but such is life sometimes. I was begging for world icons and better community building tools before launch but I think the time crunch hit the WvW team too hard due all the hardware & optimization issues they had early on and they never did get their feet back under them. I get the feeling the Living Story crowd just chews through content without any real appreciation whereas if a fraction of that time was spent on positive WvW changes we would be happy to enjoy the real end game for a good long while.

Would be nice to see something from the outnumbered buff that allows people to defend easier without actually giving them a combat advantage. some examples would be:

- All yaks deliver double supply when outnumbered.
- Upgrades build at 2x normal speed when outnumbered.

I like the suggestion for the outnumbered buff. Generally people try to buff the outnumbered buff with stats, which Anet has stated will not happen for many reasons. But these ideas for the outnumbered buff help the outnumbered side, without giving game-breaking advantages.

As someone who has been on Eredon Terrace (Worst server NA) for nearly a year and a half now, I think i deserve a Guardian Of Eredon Terrace tittle :P. But I think the drawback with the tittles and exclusive rewards, is that some people may like certain server rewards better and stack on those servers. Its hard to give “exclusive” rewards and balance them so all of them are attractive.

Overall very unique idea, but also one that I think can help promote balance issues.

Not only would an individual loyalty rank system be great but what about a GUILD LOYALTY RANK SYSTEM as well.

only issue i see is the karma for lxp rank being abused, reach 500 for one server, jump over, get handed half a million karma, rinse repeat. other than that, love the idea, and agree with chameleon dude, it should be rewarded retroactively. i’ve been playing for a year, and no matter how bad it’s gotten, i still stick with Ferguson’s Crossing. retroactively awarding this stuff, or just giving us “loyalists” a head start like chameleon said, would be great.

Thanks for your feedback guys, really appreciate the ideas you all have stated.

@ Chameleon, Justicar: I’ve been playing on Eredon Terrace since i started the game almost 2 years ago, so like u guys I would love to be rewarded retroactively. However, while it seems fair and all, it might not be the best thing for Anet to do because 2 reasons:

- it might be technically challenging, high risk of introducing new glitches, bugs, etc.,
and simply require much more time and effort to do.

- the 2nd reason, which is even more important, is that: lets say when the patch comes thru, suddenly some people find themselves getting like 500 reward chests, while others get none or just a few. Imagine the QQ. This can potentially create a rift between two types of players in the WvW community as a whole, the backlash from the playerbase might be quite severe, and from Anet’s perspective, it is something to avoid. I do, however, think your idea of a head start for loyalists like us would be nice and justifiable.

Regarding to the abuse of karma farming, now as long as the time it takes to get to rank 500 is reasonably long, it wont be an issue as there are much more effective ways to farm karma than this (open-world PvE, EotM, etc.).

@ GrackFields: i like your ideas of buffing Outnumbered. Not many people realize a huge advantage in terms of supply flow a big zerg has over smaller roaming groups.

@ skyhawk: I just want to clarify that server-exclusive rewards are of same quality, the only difference is just aesthetic, specifically, the different logo for each server.

Again, thanks for your feedback and support of my ideas.