Guild Wars 2

This is a long post. Sorry. Please read it all before you comment.

This solution restructures WvW using existing technology to address some of the issues in WvW today, including:

• Server Identity – keeping existing servers
• Guild Identity and purpose -whether fights, ppt or casual
• Different play styles
• Different time zones

The basic idea is to split WvW into four different leagues with different map population caps. Servers and Guilds (and players) are free to play in any league at any time, and gain score for their server and guild when they do so. Servers, Guilds and Players play for rank on GW2 Leader boards which are updated weekly to track score for each.
This frees up servers (and guilds and players) from set matches, and allows considerable variation in play.

Scoring:
Remove glicko for Servers, it would not be needed. Track the WvW experience gained by players. For player ranking, use this gain directly. For Guilds use the total from representing Guild members, for Servers use total from players on that server.

Some servers will be bigger and will gain more total XP. This is also true for certain Guilds. However any player who is active in WvW will benefit their Server and Guild (if they have one) in addition to their own status.

Servers will be able to compete against any server for rank position, and although it would be hard for a current bottom tier server to out score a top tier server they will be able to compete against their nearest competitors and work their way up if they wish. The top server will have to remain active to maintain its position. In this way server pride and server identity can be reinstated for linked servers and kept for current hosts.

Guilds will be free to compare themselves to other guilds from any server. If a guild transfers server it does not change their guild rank, and need not affect their play, so it may be that we will see guilds transfer between servers more.
Players would now be able to play with friends and family and guild members regardless of the server they are registered on.

The League system:
Diamond League: the “Epic battle” zone

• Uses a large single map, EotM or EBG would do initially until something specific can be produced.
• The idea is to have a large map, large map cap and the usual three sides (Red, Green, Blue) competing. This tier is where you can expect large groups and large scale strategy.

Gold League: Big fights in the Border lands

• Use large Borderland maps, and a central map (EBG would do until a specific map is developed).
• The idea is a mix of large groups at peak times and smaller groups off peak.

Silver League: Borderlands with mid sized fights

• Use Alpine sized borderlands with a smaller than EBG middle map (perhaps Desert BL until something specific is developed).
• The idea is to have a moderate map cap so groups are small to mid with small scale strategies and active roamers.

Bronze league: Borderlands fights

• Use Alpine BL, possibly with no central map.
• The idea is to have a low map cap so groups are raid size or less. Roaming and individual skill will be key parts of success here.

Map total population limits should be set to allow the average number of peak players to all be on a map somewhere at the busiest time.

Picking your fights:

• With servers and guilds fighting for position on a leader board, and NOT for position in tiers, it becomes possible to allow players to pick any map to play on. Under this new structure a player could decide one day to play on Red in the Diamond tier because he/she would like an epic battle that day. The following day the same player might decide to play in Silver tier on Green for a change of pace, or to roam in Bronze or Silver.
• The maps would have a population cap so that battles could not become too unbalanced. It would be possible to use an algorithm like the one used for Server population to show Red, Green, Blue maps as Full, High, Med, Low with respect to their maximum population so that a Guild group can look for a map with enough room for them to all play. If one map colour becomes too populated compared to the other colours for that tier start a dynamic queue to keep the populations within a reasonable range up to the maximum.

Part 2:
New concepts:

• It would be possible for players on the same server to play on a variety of maps in a variety of tiers. It would become possible for members of the same guild to duel simply by selecting different colours in the same tier, and still contribute to the Guild score while doing so. Guilds within a server could arrange competitions against each other in the same way.

• The WvW opening screen should show all four tiers and each map with its population indicator. This will help players see where the action is when they log in and allow groups to select a lower population map that they can all get onto.
  This would also help reduce the chances of an unbalanced match since these will only occur when players decide to create them, and even then the match would not be too unbalanced due to dynamic queuing.

Weaknesses:

• Diamond tier will need some serious computing power to avoid excessive lag if group sizes are 50+.
• Players will take time to understand they are no longer forced into anything but can choose which maps and team to play.
• Defending an objective needs to award decent experience.

K-training should not be a problem however once players and guilds realise there is good experience to be gained train-wrecking.

Thanks for your patience reading all this.

I personally like most of this, but I can see why some others might not like it.

• Other than just watching my server name on a leaderboard, what is my connection to my server? How can I meet up with more people from my server to play with ?
• You’re still planning a set amount of maps, but with a dynamic map-limit? What about when population dies out or peaks? I do realize you’re suggesting basing things on WXP and not PPT but still.
• How about a guild/group on one team, can they swap to another team in the same “Tier” ? One example being a fight/zerg-busting guild first beating the opposition, then swap sides and beat their former team-mates etc? [Vial-of-Salt]

My own guild would love this to bits, I think it would probably be better called a “dueling guild” than a “roaming guild” these days, since 50% of the time they sit in GH arena and duel each others. With this system, most of the guild would probably split up over 2-3 sides in Bronze and hunt each others down (And taunt each others in guild chat).

Love that this would let me play what I wanted, when I wanted. Great way to get everyone to play together.

I think many would try to just game it, stack one side with a guild, and everyone try to just move over to that side etc. But that is nothing new.

Don’t agree with all the map choices, but looks decent enough. How are you going to deal with situations like: If 90% of the players decides to crash into the Diamond tier during NA prime at reset. And the last 10% split up over the 3 other tiers. You’d end up with 3 bronze effectively. And crazy queues on that single map.

The dynamic map limit is not actually a map limit but a temporary queue to prevent 50 players logging into one side when there are only 3 on the other two teams. The idea is simply to ensure each team is never too different from the others in that tier.

Server identity would be better than it is now for all the existing linked servers and the same for guest servers. TBH other than your WvW tier now, what is the connection to your server at the moment? At least this solution would allow each server to compete against every other server (regardless of tier). Players with server pride can still watch their server position, players who prefer to track their guild can watch that instead.

About swapping sides – yes. It actually makes more sense than you might think. A group of players who find themselves on at a time when there are few other players can still have an enjoyable game by dividing between opposite sides to play. In fact some guilds might like to train and practice this way. There would be no permanent swap so they could play for as long or short as they want, and any XP they gain would benefit the guild, their server and their own rank. It’s a win-win scenario and should mean there’s never a time when a group can’t play somehow.

The idea behind showing the map status on the selection screen is to give players some idea where the action is. If as you suggest 90% of the players want to queue for Diamond tier then let them. I suspect quite a few would play in Gold (with more maps and only slightly smaller battles) while they wait for the queues to sort out. Any who did so would still be earning score for their guild, server and personal ranks.

Map suggestions were made with current maps in mind so ANET do not need to develop anything new in order to make this work. Ideally I would like to see a dedicated set of maps for each tier based around the squad sizes in each; using existing maps gives time for these to be thought through, developed and tested properly.

I suspect WvW xp boosters may need to be disabled though? Or do we allow score to be affected in this way?

So Factions with free choice of color?

K-training should not be a problem however once players and guilds realise there is good experience to be gained train-wrecking.

What would prevent players all choosing red team, and then k-training otherwise empty maps? Train wrecking pales in comparison to all-maps-uni-color-T3-PPT.

Three things:

• Dynamic queues on each map. The queue starts if one colour has too many players trying to join. The queue reduces as players join the other teams. This keeps all three teams to fairly similar numbers up to the maximum map cap for that tier.

• Boredom. It was exciting to have 695 tick once but then there is no one to fight and nothing to capture. At least with this system players can redistribute themselves when they want instead of having to wait a week for different opponents.

• Players themselves. There are players who enjoy k-training, and they will continue to do this, but PPT wouldn’t exist so it would be less important. If a k-train has players from every guild then every guild benefits in score.

Don’t forget the scoring comes from WvW experience gained, not objectives held. Taking objectives and defending them will add to scores but simply holding an objective doesn’t generate WvW xp so it doesn’t score, so a uni colour T3 map is not helping anyone.

It would be important however to ensure that defending gives sufficient WvW xp – the same amount as taking an objective. This could scale with the level of the objective so a T3 keep gives more XP than a T1 keep. That provides enough reason to defend (gaining score) or take (gaining score) objectives no matter how reinforced they are.

So – a final post before this idea slips into the oblivion of the nether pages of the WvW forum…

…but seriously – were these two concerns the only ones? If so then it could actually work!

ok you asked for it, ill gladly help you on finding what you seek

what is the difference of the league system between the current tiers?
*Diamond League: the “Epic battle” zone to Tier 1
*Gold League: Big fights in the Border lands to Tier 2
*Silver League: Borderlands with mid sized fights to Tier 3
*Bronze league: Borderlands fights to Tier 4
(how may map instances on diamond or bronze or any other leagues?)
(limit per map?)
(population activity?)

Lets say my guild is one of 2 guilds on Anvil Rock, how can we compete head on, toe to toe vs the guilds on Blackgate which has approximately one billion guilds i think, whats our best chance on the leaderboards? our server on the leaderboards?

i won’t mention other timezone problems yet, just think this is only for NA prime so you can think of an idea how to solve that

Something that struck me when re-reading this. What is the “Competitive Goal” ? I mean, if you just play to get WXP to hit on a chart, and can ignore PPT etc, why would people defend ? What would be their goals and reasons for logging online and take a specific object ?

I mean personally I’m way to casual to care about that, so it didn’t strike me initially when reading through.

Well if going out on a limb, then I can imagine that the guild mission system could be used to extend this, to get more rewards the “harder” objective you take from the enemy, more for a T3 than a T1 etc, more for a Garri than your own t1 bay. But that would probably add too much extra development time to be practical.

And my connection with server mates now, is that they’re the guys I play with, and are at least part of the people I’ll find on my side in WvW. This idea would essentially spread all my server-mates out over 4 tiers and 3 sides. Unless we organize ourselves in guilds etc. Don’t think it is a bad idea, but server is essentially “removed”, same way as in MegaServer for PVE. After all, in this way there wouldn’t be a single reason to recruit players depending on server :p

Then again, I do agree that server is an outdated and faulty mechanic in the first place.

Don’t see the point of having 4 tiers over 3 myself. Might even be enough with 2. I’m again more concerned about the number of maps relative to timezones and number of players.

Another idea around this could be to bind the tiers to the maps. So you have 3 tiers, one for each map. Gold/Ebg for large size. Silver/Alpine for medium size, and Bronze/Desert for small size (example). And just use a variant of EOTM’s system of creating new instances when/if one is full enough that at least 2 sides are reaching the map cap.

Then ANet wouldn’t need to make new maps either. And you wouldn’t need to make some strange mixes of maps for each tier etc. Alternatively open up EBG/EOTM for gold, and mix Alpine/Desert for bronze, and who knows for silver. EBG/ALpine ?

Norbe – good questions!

There’s not much difference in action compared to the existing tiers overall, but there is a big difference for players because you wouldn’t be tied into a fixed tier – you would be free to choose where to fight each time you enter WvW.

I wasn’t proposing multiple map instances, although I can see that Diamond tier (top) might benefit from EBG map and EotM to allow enough players. This would be the only tier that doesn’t have “home” borderlands maps. Think of EBG action on a larger scale.

How does a guild on AR compete toe to toe with a guild on Blackgate? The scoring system totals WvW xp gained by all guild members, so you could have direct competition on the leader boards if the two guilds have similar activity. If the two guilds had very different active populations then you would be looking to start competing against a guild of a similar activity, recruit and work your way up.

In terms of servers, Anvil Rock is a linked server at the moment. Everything players do on AR benefits YB. Under this new system your server would regain its own identity and a position on the leader boards. This gives you a chance to recruit more active players and work your way up the list. In time there’s no reason why you can’t eventually displace Blackgate if you can build the community to do it. In the mean time you would be able to compete against other servers with a similar WvW activity.

Time zones and population: At prime time I would expect players to be spread across all the tiers (or queued to get into a tier they decide to wait for). At off peak times when there are fewer players they have the freedom to select a tier and map that has other players on. The only time anyone should be on a map on their own is if they chose that situation (or there really is only one person in WvW across all the servers!).

Joneirikb
The competitive goal is rank position on the leader boards. It might be a good idea to break each leader board into three divisions so that there are three sublevels of competition – top of division 1, top of division 2 and top of division 3. This would give intermediate targets.

At the moment the only competitive goal is position in the tiers, and that only works for host servers. The new system would provide competition at three different levels:

• at a server level ( server leader board),
• at a guild level (guild leader board)
• at a personal level (player leader board).
  This should give enough chances for everyone who wants to be competitive to find something to compete for.

Being able to select the tier and map you want to play in does not need to spread mates across all the maps – there is no forced option. If you want to play with mates (server, guild or otherwise) all you need to do is press Y, see which map they are in and join them. If you decide to make two teams and fight between you then that’s possible too. It’s your choice.

I agree about the maps. My original solution uses existing maps, although I would like to see new ones developed eventually if ANET have time. The combinations I suggested were supposed to offer a map area appropriate to the intended map population.

• Diamond tier needs one big map, or two big maps perhaps.
• Gold would have large borderlands and large central map
• Silver would have a smaller borderlands and a mid size central map
• Bronze would have smallest borderlands (and maybe a small central map?)

Yuffi.2430:

There’s not much difference in action compared to the existing tiers overall, but there is a big difference for players because you wouldn’t be tied into a fixed tier – you would be free to choose where to fight each time you enter WvW.

A free transfer in any tier to fight any opponent, but the transfer is not free for whom you want to be allied with, this my friend is a flaw on this system to the server side issue

Yuffi.2430:

How does a guild on AR compete toe to toe with a guild on Blackgate? The scoring system totals WvW xp gained by all guild members, so you could have direct competition on the leader boards if the two guilds have similar activity. If the two guilds had very different active populations then you would be looking to start competing against a guild of a similar activity, recruit and work your way up.

this also applies to the flaw i stated above, its not free to recruit, why would people pay in-game to balance the game-mode, they already paid for the game
(think of it as you were a citizen on BG, then think again on a perspective of AR citizen)

Yuffi.2430:

In terms of servers, Anvil Rock is a linked server at the moment. Everything players do on AR benefits YB. Under this new system your server would regain its own identity and a position on the leader boards. This gives you a chance to recruit more active players and work your way up the list. In time there’s no reason why you can’t eventually displace Blackgate if you can build the community to do it. In the mean time you would be able to compete against other servers with a similar WvW activity.

So this system is still dependent on the Linking System, and the bandwagon lives on

1 billion guilds across all leagues for 1 server vs 1 billion guilds on all leagues for all other servers

the activity of the 1 billion guild on a server will skyrocket that server to the top and can never be shot down

Yuffi.2430:

Time zones and population:

We cant jump on this yet

Will be bandwaggoned. Game it so all your friends take all the spots in Diamond league then just run in circles all day backcapping and hey presto, you and your friends are top of the guild ‘leaderboards’ and all top ranked Diamond whatevers without showing any skill at all.

How does this new system attract players to lower servers? People will always go towards the more successful guilds and servers so your system just accelerates this drift by making it free.

It’s a terrible idea that just won’t work unless there is some reward system that can’t be gamed to encourage people to join the roaming maps or lesser population ones.

And that’s before we even start on coverage.

Ahh. I think I see the misunderstanding.

• Servers would not be tied to a specific tier (Diamond, Gold, Silver, Bronze). There would not be any fixed match ups.
• There would not be any server linkings; the score for each server would be separate. No links are required because it would no longer matter if servers had different population sizes.
• There would not be a fee to pay to play in any tier or on any map Players who wish to change server would be able to pay a transfer fee just like they do now, but this would not limit the tiers or maps they can select to play on.

Some examples (none of which cam be done using the current system):
1. A large Blackgate guild decide to play in Diamond tier because they enjoy the big fights there. You have a friend in that guild and want to join them. You select the map and colour team they are on and play with them (queue permitting).
You do not need to transfer to Blackgate to do this.

2. Two of the players in this large Blackgate guild decide they have had enough of big fights and want smaller fights for an hour. They both select a Bronze tier map and play there. All the WvW xp they gain still gives score for their guild, and their server as well as increasing their personal score.

3. It’s a quiet off peak time and a guild group of 12 players want to play WvW. They look at the WvW select screen (press “B”) and decide which tier and map to fight in.

4. A guild from AR arranges a scrim against a guild from YB. The two guilds pick a tier and map that currently has low population, and they pick opposite sides so they can fight. Later on they want to try a different party combination, or one player wants to demonstrate a different tactic, so some of the players swaps teams and they can carry on with each side now a mix of AR and YB players.

There are plenty more I can think of.
The key points are:

• Servers are no longer tied into links or two monthly matches. They are not even assigned to a specific tier. They exist as a community of guilds and players just like the current system, but with their own identity again and the freedom to compare scores with any other server on the Server leader boards.
• Guilds are not tied to a specific server unless they want to be. If you have members on different servers you can finally play together. If you want to be server specific that works too. The guild cap at 500 members will stop everyone joining one big guild. Guilds can compete for rank position on the Guild Leader boards.
• Players can play with any other player they want to without the need to transfer server or guild. They would be free to join any guild on the leader boards that has space and will accept them. They would be free to pay to transfer to any server on the Server boards that has space and will take them.

This last point means that, yes, anyone can bandwagon to BG (or any other server) up to the limit of the server population. BUT it won’t unbalance fights because BG are not tied into a match against anyone, and dynamic queuing would prevent individual maps getting too unbalanced.

One final thought: Outmanned would actually become useful because it gives an XP boost and personal score (and Guild score and Server score) would be based on XP gained.

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope the idea is explained more clearly now.

so basically this is Diku’s modified WvG
the modification is the xp system as a score

tell you the truth im a no fan of removing servers to be like EoTM 3 colored theme
or the Hordes vs the Alliance of WoW or any other faction system

the Linking System is a modification of that stated above
imagine the linking system merges all servers into 3 different alliances
its basically the same as the linking system, just only 3 linked alliances instead of 12

if you can think of an idea that can push AR to the top of the leaderboards against BG on this system, then ill admit i underestimated your system

either way, this destroys the server system
and ill repeat here what ive posted on the other thread on what a server for me stands for

the server is the alliance of guilds

instead of creating sister guilds,
ex: BeastMode guild [BM]
BeastMode 2 [BMII]
BeastMode 4 [BMIV]

so the identity is the alliances and factions or the so called servers

I’m sorry – I don’t understand.

Servers would still exist. They would still be a community of guilds and players that works to a common purpose (top of the division on the leader board).
The only change is that servers would not be assigned to a specific tier or map. How does this destroy or remove server identity?

The switch to a 3 colour team system would be necessary to allow players, guilds and servers to choose which maps they will play on. From the map point of view it would be like three factions, but those factions could be a server, a combination of servers or any guilds or any players. It is this change – breaking the link between map identity and servers – that is the biggest change. It does not however mean the end for servers.

Each server would still be an alliance of guilds (and players). You would be fighting for rank on the leader board rather than map domination. You would gain positions on the leader board rather than go up or down in Diamond, Gold, Silver or Bronze.

The changes would not push AR to the top of the leader boards (sadly perhaps? ) BUT it would give AR your server identity back and allow you to recruit players and guilds with the aim of getting to the top if you want to. Under the current system this is impossible.

It would be easier to have a WvW tournament too – based on the Server Leader board, with rewards across the three divisions. Why not add a reward for Guilds based on the Guild leader board too.

It is very important to me that no-one has to leave their current server (unless they want to) and that each server has a fair chance to gain score based on the activity of their players in WvW. This system would do that, and allow players to choose the WvW play they want to enjoy each time the enter WvW.

Norbe.7630:

so basically this is Diku’s modified WvG
the modification is the xp system as a score

OP is trying to work out an idea that’s very different from WvG.

Major differences:

WvW Ultimate – Each Server Do Not Own any Borderland
vs
WvG – Each Server Owns a Home Borderland

I’d encourage folks to discuss the OP’s concepts in this thread & not WvG.

Thank you,
Diku

@OP

WvW Ultimate solution – Interesting concept.

You’ve managed to maintain the “Tiers”, but you’re using it in a different way than how it’s being used now.

Servers “keep” their identity & basically funnel into your modified “Tiers” to fight on behalf of Colored Alliances…from what I can understand.

Servers & Guilds for that matter fight for Rank that is obtained by earning it through the battles that they do in your version of the WvW universe.

Hope I didn’t screw up & lose the gist of what you’re proposing…and gets your thread back on topic.

Yours truly,
Diku

Thanks Diku, I think you have the basic idea right.

The big change is disconnecting the tiers and the servers. I tried to find the best bits from the ideas others have posted and put it together in a way that I thought might work to help servers, guilds and players alike.

I wanted a solution that means server populations can change without affecting in-game play. I think the solution I came up with would do this, and allow for players to break free from being trapped in matches they have little control over.

The map system isn’t a megaserver because it would be one set of maps and not randomly assigned map shards. It would be closest to an alliance but one that is not fixed. It would allow players to play where and with whoever they want, with every players contribution being valued. It would even allow players to group and play on one tier only if there are few players on (for example off peak) or spread out if a map becomes too busy.

The idea restores a form of competition for all servers, and allows competition between guilds including GvG fights (up to the max map limit) if players want to do this. It even allows guilds on the same server to practice against each other if they wish.

Best of all it should require little work from ANET to implement. The big change would be to track player WvW xp, but that is done anyway. I don’t know how easy it would be to extract and total for Server score, Guild score and Player score but it should be possible since all the events are already tracked.

It would make it possible for the Leader Boards to include the EU and NA servers and guilds together since all they need to do is report on WvW xp gained. This would let EU and NA communities “compete” fairly without ever needing to actually face each other across a laggy Atlantic link.

I will be honest and say I expected more objections so the low number of posts is in many ways encouraging.

This video explains Server Linking, alliance sytem and faction system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9TpRfDdyU0

Diku.2546:

Norbe.7630:

so basically this is Diku’s modified WvG
the modification is the xp system as a score

OP is trying to work out an idea that’s very different from WvG.

---

Major differences:

WvW Ultimate – Each Server Do Not Own any Borderland
vs
WvG – Each Server Owns a Home Borderland

Yuffi.2430:

I tried to find the best bits from the ideas others have posted and put it together in a way that I thought might work to help servers, guilds and players alike.

its basically the same for me
but better due to included Guild recognition

back to topic, do a little more tweak on the Dynamic map maybe it’ll end the Bandwagon and population issues…. maybe

The dynamic map queue should help reduce population imbalance by queuing any map that becomes significantly more populated than the others in that match. This would prevent more players joining immediately until the other map populations rise enough to remove the queue.

It would be important to give an indication of the current map population. So for example when you press B to enter WvW you might see:

• Diamond: Red (high) / Blue (medium) / Green (high)
• Gold: Red (Q:10) / Blue (high) / Green (high)
• Silver: Red (low) / Blue (low) / Green (medium)

A large group wanting to join might join Diamond Blue team, or Silver Red or Blue because they know there should be space for all of them.
A single roamer could join any, although they would be 11th in the queue for Gold red team.
Two guilds looking to GvG against each other could join Silver Red and Blue, or if they were small guilds then any queue free pair of teams on the same tier.

Baldrick asked how you can stop players just k-training in a big circle. I’m not sure any system can prevent this to be honest, but the players can. I think there would be three things that work against such a situation:

• Guilds that like to zerg bust or fight may be happy to practice on large groups that they know will come round frequently.
• Players will get bored of circular back capping. If you did play like that to get a server to the top of the Leader Boards, you would have to continue to play like that to stay there. Most players have more exciting things to do.
• Defence rewards could be improved so players get as much XP from keeping an objective as they do from taking it.

Don’t forget there’s no PPT in this idea so dominating an empty map does not gain score. This reduces the impact of time based population imbalance too.

Finally, how does this system attract new players to smaller servers? Each server has a population limit – it keeps this. Some servers will hit their population cap – this is true, and they may well gain more XP overall and so be higher on the Leader boards. However the servers are no longer tied to a tier, so any player can play in any tier. There would be no need to bandwagon to a “top tier” server to play in T1 – you could just go and play Diamond tier if you feel like it.

I think it is important that players are still free to transfer to any server they want to join. I know that some players enjoy being on a lower ranked server and working to raise the status of that server. I think the new system would encourage this simply by making it possible for any server.

#openBlackGate2016

This isn’t going to solve the problem. Unfortunately this isn’t just a GW2 issue, or WoW, or any other game before such as DaOC. Anytime you have servers, time zones, population, or map population limits this will happen. No way around it.

Only way to fix it is to remove server constraint, open up the WvW maps to unlimited, and fix the client and network layers to handle the numbers. See EvE Online has an example of 30K + clients although they are not avatars dodging, spewing animations of golden bombs of light and love…

What I’m saying is that while technically possible you won’t see this in a free to play client anytime soon. Only one vendor on track to remotely do this is Amazon due to their cloud infrastructure and insane network bandwidth.

Ideas are welcome but this isn’t going to be something Arena Net can manage unless they go subscriber based and willing to invest in client side optimization…

Crapgame – when you say this idea won’t solve the problem, which one are you thinking of?

The changes I propose should:

• reduce the impact of population imbalance,
• prevent players being trapped in an uneven match for weeks,
• open competition in WvW up to Guilds as well as Servers,
• allow for duelling and GvG play within the WvW framework, even between members of the same guild,
• allow players to freely select a map to suit the game play they desire,
• restore some form of server identity for linked servers,
• allows servers to compete against any other similar server, unlike the current system that limits you to the two in your current match,
• allow Guilds members on different servers to play together.
  I can go on with the list if you like…

Best of all it uses current technology and so is possible for ANET to produce without having to make massive changes – in other words it is possible to do this! and Soon™

Each thing listed is something that a number of players find frustrating about WvW in it’s current form. I know they may not all be the most pressing issue for every player but they add up to what I believe would be a big improvement.

I’m not entirely sure what your objection was as none of the things I listed seem to be the problem you refer to.

Just a discussion Yuffi – not an assault

Birds of a feather flock together. Leagues, choices, populations, servers, limits/caps, and of course “SERVER TRANSFERS” to name just a few. That problem still isn’t solved. Furthermore, while I see you mentioned no ppt, there can only be one number one and everything else falls below n through last.

Remove servers and ranks. You need to start there and put the emphasis on the player and their actions. Then guilds and alliances. Finally, you build a system and portal around the players to represent a score and ladder. Then you can display:

Top “insert-number” guilds
Top “insert-number” alliances
Top “insert-number” players by class
Top “insert-number” players by rank/ladder
Most players kills
Most player deaths
Most yaks killed
Most towers taken
Longest tower, keep, castle, camp held
Most NPC’s flipped
Most sentries killed
Most ruins captures, held
etc…

Anytime a server or map has constraints (players, time zone, or total population) these problems will happen. Linking has helped but they still have it wrong because some servers are paired, others are tri, and on a rare occasion some solo. You also build a league system sort of like PvP – don’t you think everyone is going to want to be in diamond or insert any other choice?

At the end of the day there are caps. Someone is going to want to enter the diamond league and be told no…either by solo, by group, by guild, or any other factor. The door is shut once a limit is reached. Now you are right back to square one today.

I’m thinking you never played DaOC which invented this format of play. That is exactly why they initially didn’t allow server transfers and didn’t tie scores to servers. They focused on players. Having said that they still had population and realm issues. Thus my comment about other games or this not being unique to GW2. Even WoW has this issue…

Thanks Crapgame. Your ideas are close to what I suggested except I see a Server as an alliance of guilds and players. It has to remain this way so players who are not in a guild can play too.

The biggest change I am suggesting is removing the tie between matches and servers. This change alone would mean server population changes don’t affect the play in any specific match or tier. Players would still transfer, and servers would still rise and fall on the leader boards, but no one would ever be trapped in an uneven match just because one server has a much more active population than the others.

I would keep server population limits. They are important to maintain some competition and to prevent everyone transferring to one server. In the same way I would keep the guild population cap, so there can be more than one large guild fighting for the top rank in the Guild Leader boards.

Beyond this, everything I suggest makes player choice greater and puts the focus firmly on player activity to:

• gain personal WvW xp for personal rank and reward,
• work together in a guild, to gain more xp and so this xp adds to the guild score and rank,
• work together as a greater alliance of guilds and players for a server community so this xp adds to the server score and rank.

It all comes down to the individual player, just as you request.

Maybe I’ve not had enough coffee, maybe dense, but with transfers come balance and caps. Has the linking really spread out the top three and bottom three in the US just has an example? How are you going to handle Blackgate, Mag, and Jade? Or, how do we handle “full”. I mean full is full, we can’t put anything else in it otherwise it overflows.

They have the data. It would be interesting to dive into it and do some analysis since launch or whenever they started to collect it. Then we’d be able to see the actual numbers, servers rise and fall, etc. Will be of interest (data is beautiful) but probably of no help…

Anyway good discussion never the less.

It’s not the coffee.
You haven’t fully understood the consequences of disconnecting servers from tiers.

Under the current system servers are matched against each other in specific tiers. Stack Blackgate or Anvil Rock and you stack one side in a match. Under the system I suggest servers face off on the leader boards instead, so a stacked server affects the leader boards not the fights in game.

This is because the changes I’m suggesting would allow players to choose the tier they want to fight in, and they can make this choice every time they enter WvW . This means that the server you’re on does not force you into a specific tier or team.

Stacked servers can not affect the game play nearly so much because even if all the players for the highest ranked server decided to all play in the same tier on the same team, everyone else can either pick an opposing team and fight against them, or play in a different map. We’d have a choice.

The best bit is that any server would be able to mount a bid for the top of the leader boards if it can recruit active players, and those players would be able to continue to play in whatever tier they enjoy while contributing to the success of their new server. This might even lead to more transfers.

As I said, I think it would be good to keep a server population limit. If, for example, Blackgate was full, and a group of players wanted to be in the top ranked server there is nothing to stop them transferring to another server (ET for example) and pushing upwards on the leader board to topple Blackgate. It wouldn’t even matter (to a guild) if only half their members moved to the new server, because the Guild can still choose where to play together, and still gains credit from every active member .

Competition would occur on three levels – player leader board, guild leader board, server leader board. The actual map instances and tiers are separate from this.
We could even, easily, merge the leader boards for EU and NA…allowing competition between EU servers/guilds/players and NA servers/guilds/players, all with current technology, and no change in ping!

I can see one major flaw. As your system has no ppt and is entirely based on player kills from what I can gather, there will be a bias towards trying to get solo players to leave the map and for the largest guilds to only attract and recruit the very best players. I can just see the abuse aimed at any players not in the guild being told to leave the map they are ruining the score.

Top guild groups could then jump into, say, a half full silver map which is mainly pugs, wipe them until they quit the map (no reason to hold anything, so no reason to attack a structure either), withdraw, pick next map, rinse, repeat.

In fact, a guild could organise around several different squad sizes so they can fit into any size map and fill it up – at which point they can rack up the points against less organised resistance. Add a couple more guilds in for good measure and call it a ‘server group’.

Eventually gold tier would mainly consist of one mega guild against another, with no other guild having a realistic chance of fighting their way near the top, as any good players and leaders are likely to be poached by the top two guilds. It’s exactly what happened in another game that I used to play.

So after a few months it’s back to stacked whatever and some gamed ‘leader boards’ which don’t measure anything except the ability to tag kills or the size of your guild or the size of your server guild alliance- which is pretty much where we are now.

I have a few questions:
What makes you think Arenanet are suddenly going to make such an enormous commitment of resources to developing WvW content?
Why would Arenanet make radical changes that they know might obliterate their current WvW population?
What happens when the population is spread so thinly that many of the modes aren’t used? Why develop them in the first place?
What happens when everybody wants to play one mode but not the others?
What about server pride? Home area? Despite what a lot of people think, people love this stuff.
What happens to whole teamspeak communities when they can’t join the same map together?
Where is the opportunity for Arenanet to make money from transfers and why would they give up their current money-making system for one that doesn’t?

I understand your concern, however it’s based on a misunderstanding – please let me explain.

I think you are still viewing the score as being per map like it is now, and have not fully understood that score would not be gained directly from tiers and maps.

Scoring would be based on WvW xp gained, not kills. It’s true that kills give xp, but so should capping objectives, and defending them. Anything that ANET decides to award xp for would therefore go towards scoring. So while there is no ppt as such, there is still a point to defending or taking objectives.

It really won’t matter if there are solo players on a map, or small guilds or low ranked players. Matches are not map dependant – a guild will get the same xp gain with all its players active even if they are all on different maps. I expect guilds will want to play together (that’s part of being a guild) but there is no advantage in trying to force players off a map to improve your score – because it just wouldn’t do that.

You need to realise that the idea I put forward means there are no fixed tiers for any server or guild. Players choose which tier they want to play in every time they enter WvW. Each server (and guild) could have members playing in any and all tiers.

It is possible that a guild might prefer to play in a specific tier – that’s fine. If all the members of this guild are on the same server (which they might not be) then you would in effect have a whole server playing that tier; but this would be by choice and is not fixed. You could equally have players from the same guild active in each tier, and all the xp they gain would still benefit the guild they rep.

Yes, you will get some large guilds with active populations that top the leader boards – why shouldn’t they?
Yes, servers will try to recruit the best players and guilds – again why shouldn’t they?
No, this doesn’t lead to the same situation we have at the moment because at the moment a stacked server affects a whole tier by default and the other teams must either quit or accept at least a week of pain.

The changes I suggest would allow a stacked server to spread across all tiers – and still be actively gaining score. Also while a server might try to monopolise a particular map/tier by filling it – they would have to do this 24/7 and I don’t think anyone has the player base to do that. The existing server population cap and guild membership cap would prevent servers and guilds becoming too large and too dominant.

Another big difference with the system I ’m suggesting is that any server or guild can recruit any player to help make a bid to the top. Active players will be more sought after, but all players would add to the score so an exclusive guild that only accepts players of WvW level 2000+ might find they are beaten by a bigger guild with less restrictive membership requirements.

So you game the system by only recruiting players who live in WvW six to eight hours a day. Coverage to allow Ryder most wxp gain per player. This just moves server stacking to guild stacking.

Sarika – sorry I don’t understand.

The idea is that every player who gains WvW xp contributes to their own personal score, and the guild score (if they rep a guild) and the score for their server.

Having more players that are active in WvW will help a Server or Guild reach a higher position in the leader boards. Is this not supposed to happen?

WvW should have never been structured around server vs server; it’s a very precarious concept to begin with. What happens when servers are shut or merged? How do you retain server loyalty, population, and prevent the ‘bandwagon’ effect when server transfers are relatively inexpensive and non-punitive?

At the very least couldn’t ANet pro-rate transfer costs based on WvW points? Maybe flag a WvW transfer for a week or so as bonus Karma when killed in WvW? SOMETHING to dissuade? Instead, it’s just a free-for-all. And, seriously, the crux-of-the-biscuit, “SERVER LEADER BOARDS.” to stir the ‘Highlander’ blood up.
It begs to wonder if the whole system isn’t purposefully setup for endless transfers, hmmm?

I don’t see ANet changing the revenue stream any time soon.

I really hope future MMO’s move away from allowing you to pick servers and instead incorporate some kind of megaserver structure where you just log into a MMO without worrying about what server you’re on and instead only need concern yourself with which Faction/Alliance you choose. Factions/Alliances with some sort of traitor/turncoat system would work much better, that way there is no direct server conflict, only players. This would prevent bandwagon and endless server transfer…and maybe end of revenue stream…..DOH. So in other words, it will never happen, one can dream however.

Hands down, GW2 and WvW are still my favorites, but I can see WvW heading towards the same end as Warhammer Online and that makes me sad, since it’s easily avoidable. One big bonus is that GW2 still has healthy PvE so the game itself actually closing down is not going to happen any time soon, but I fear WvW will dwindle as time goes on unless changes are made, soon.

OK, done ramblin’.

Happy gaming.

Does WvW really needs a solution??

WvW was not ment to be played full time, just a place for pver’s well.. zerg fighthing, ganking, etc.

So WvW must be working like Anet wanted, they have done linking and some pseudo score adjustments, i doubt they change WvW more since it will contradict in what WvW was initially for

WvW was never about:
Server Identity
Guild Identity and purpose
Different play styles
Different time zones

Was about purelly on pvers taking break of pve and ktrain the thing out of it when they can, reason Anet never done strong changes on how WvW has beeen played.

Aeolus.3615:

Does WvW really needs a solution??

WvW was not ment to be played full time, just a place for pver’s well.. zerg fighthing, ganking, etc.

So WvW must be working like Anet wanted, they have done linking and some pseudo score adjustments, i doubt they change WvW more since it will contradict in what WvW was initially for

WvW was never about:
Server Identity
Guild Identity and purpose
Different play styles
Different time zones

Was about purelly on pvers taking break of pve and ktrain the thing out of it when they can, reason Anet never done strong changes on how WvW has beeen played.

Totally agree, except ‘WvW Tournaments’ and ‘Server Leaderboards’.

Uthrax.4975:

Aeolus.3615:

Does WvW really needs a solution??

WvW was not ment to be played full time, just a place for pver’s well.. zerg fighthing, ganking, etc.

So WvW must be working like Anet wanted, they have done linking and some pseudo score adjustments, i doubt they change WvW more since it will contradict in what WvW was initially for

WvW was never about:
Server Identity
Guild Identity and purpose
Different play styles
Different time zones

Was about purelly on pvers taking break of pve and ktrain the thing out of it when they can, reason Anet never done strong changes on how WvW has beeen played.

Totally agree, except ‘WvW Tournaments’ and ‘Server Leaderboards’.

That was the the placebo(as in excuse) content Anet did for the gamemode have something to be played for… if u take that out.. theres zero diference between eotm and wvw.

Aeolus.3615:

Uthrax.4975:

Aeolus.3615:

Does WvW really needs a solution??

WvW was not ment to be played full time, just a place for pver’s well.. zerg fighthing, ganking, etc.

So WvW must be working like Anet wanted, they have done linking and some pseudo score adjustments, i doubt they change WvW more since it will contradict in what WvW was initially for

WvW was never about:
Server Identity
Guild Identity and purpose
Different play styles
Different time zones

Was about purelly on pvers taking break of pve and ktrain the thing out of it when they can, reason Anet never done strong changes on how WvW has beeen played.

Totally agree, except ‘WvW Tournaments’ and ‘Server Leaderboards’.

That was the the placebo(as in excuse) content Anet did for the gamemode have something to be played for… if u take that out.. theres zero diference between eotm and wvw.

For the most part, but you still have entire guilds that do nothing but WvW and are out solely to tear down leading servers point-wise.

And all the things you listed could come to light if ANet put some effort into it. But you’re correct that they won’t waste any more time on it as it seems to fulfill their overall vision for WvW. It was never meant to be balanced or engaging; it’s a PvE gear-o-rama zergfest.

Hopefully there will be a MMO that gets RvR right at some point. /sigh

Ok, but doesn’t the “solution” I propose meet both sets of ideals?

It allows players free choice of tier and map so they can casually take a break, and also allows Servers, and indeed Guilds, to compete against each other (via the leader boards) if they wish. So dedicated WvW play is still catered for. It even allows for players to transfer between servers without this screwing up matches.

Maybe becuase WvW dont need solution?

We just expected to much from this gamemode…