Guild Wars 2

already tier 8 wvw is suffering from abandonment, boredom, and loss of morale due to the 300 point gap in rating trapping SF in tier 8 for far too long. thats already been discussed, noticed by at least the CCs, and sent away.

it is entirely possible (and highly likely) for our battles to be composed of no more than 20 people per server on a map for hours on end. when forces are this small, the current setting of 5 people creating an orange x is perfectly fine. major forces ARE composed of groups of 5+. if the threshold is raised to 25, we could fight an entire match without ever proccing orange swords. that just isnt right. when we have 5 or less people in a map, i know immediately where i am needed most and whether i should bother trying to save a supply camp or if a more valuable objective can probably be defended solo or not (because i cant exactly expect adequate help).

i see that its a good change for very populated servers, where a 5-15 man group CAN be considered a small group because you have 50+ people in all maps quite often. i understand that the current threshold is an annoyance rather than useful information in more populated servers. however, this will never be the case in at least tier 8 with the current system (i expect the same for tier 7 and probably 6).

thus i propose to anet:

scale the threshold for creating orange swords off of weekly man hours put into wvw by the servers in the match. total wvw man hours for a server is already a stat you guys need to be using to scale transfer fees. the current system is irrelevant to a servers performance in wvw, and wvw is the only reason to pick a server to transfer to. you will solve an issue for overmanned servers and create an issue for undermanned servers by flatly changing the threshold, driving more and more population away from too many of your servers.

make it 10 people problem solved.

insanemaniac.2456:

already tier 8 wvw is suffering from abandonment, boredom, and loss of morale due to the 300 point gap in rating trapping SF in tier 8 for far too long. thats already been discussed, noticed by at least the CCs, and sent away.

it is entirely possible (and highly likely) for our battles to be composed of no more than 20 people per server on a map for hours on end. when forces are this small, the current setting of 5 people creating an orange x is perfectly fine. major forces ARE composed of groups of 5+. if the threshold is raised to 25, we could fight an entire match without ever proccing orange swords. that just isnt right. when we have 5 or less people in a map, i know immediately where i am needed most and whether i should bother trying to save a supply camp or if a more valuable objective can probably be defended solo or not (because i cant exactly expect adequate help).

i see that its a good change for very populated servers, where a 5-15 man group CAN be considered a small group because you have 50+ people in all maps quite often. i understand that the current threshold is an annoyance rather than useful information in more populated servers. however, this will never be the case in at least tier 8 with the current system (i expect the same for tier 7 and probably 6).

thus i propose to anet:

scale the threshold for creating orange swords off of weekly man hours put into wvw by the servers in the match. total wvw man hours for a server is already a stat you guys need to be using to scale transfer fees. the current system is irrelevant to a servers performance in wvw, and wvw is the only reason to pick a server to transfer to. you will solve an issue for overmanned servers and create an issue for undermanned servers by flatly changing the threshold, driving more and more population away from too many of your servers.

The sad and cold true fact is that: Anet doesn’t give two hoots about your post or T8.

I agree, I wondered why they didn’t scale it.

Smart enough play can avoid the orange X’s already. No need to change it at a whim and make things more zerg-friendly.

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

Anet doesn’t care for t8. This change will help the majority of wvw players. Why would they care about the minority suffering down at the bottom.

As long as the masses are happy who cares mentality. I can’t really blame them though, they’re trying to keep what player base they have left.

I respond to white swords on ANY objective when I am commanding for Eredon Terrace, real threat or not. This change will only make map awareness more important to those that don’t utilize it, and make me a threat since I utilize map awareness in my strategies already, both on offense and defense.

This change isn’t going to kill T8, mate. It’ll make multiple commanders in T8 that much more valuable though.

Darek.1836:

Blix.8021:

Darek.1836:

EnRohbi.2187:

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

Kill yourself. kittening ban me from the forums already I can’t take this garbage you and ANet are throwing at us.

You had plenty of time to transfer, why stay on a crappy tier and then get mad at your own decision?

Because its my kittening tier? I’ve been here since launch? It’s not my decision that ANet canceled the only thing that may have fixed this (ranking reset).

a. Loyalty to a piece of plastic in a server room is silly
b. There are always going to be awful servers in tier 8, because most of the people who care about wvw will gravitate toward the higher tiers. A ranking reset would just waste all the other tiers’ time until you end up right back at where you started – the bottom.

And how did you come up with that wonderful assumption? The rankings told you? Learn about you’re kitteninf talking about before you say it. I’m done here.

EnRohbi.2187:

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

You might be right about the T8 reality check (although personally I would not belittle their problems), but this is not just a T8 problem. It will definitely a T7 problem, and I’ve heard T6 say the same thing.

So we are talking about 9+ servers. Anet would not ban night capping, to show equal concern for the minority. I hope they show the same type of concern for the lower tiers.

An easy solution would be to base swords on percentage of active players. Swords would then scale for time of day, and server tier, automatically.

Example: Orange Swords are active if both conditions are true
1) > 20% of active players attacking
2) > 5 players attacking

You don’t NEED orange swords to know where they are hitting, unless they uh, ninja something with 0 controlled things on the map. Otherwise you know that after tower A they will go for camp B or tower C

CrassBippy.4619:

You don’t NEED orange swords to know where they are hitting, unless they uh, ninja something with 0 controlled things on the map. Otherwise you know that after tower A they will go for camp B or tower C

Umm… I don’t know where you got that idea, unless you have been fighting against supremely stupid servers. None of the servers in T7 are that dumb.

Predictable = dead

All fairness aside, from a WvW perspective, the “customer value” of any individual is directly proportional to their potential for post-purchase transactions.

We do not have any published statistics on the ratio of player commitment to PvE/sPvP/WvW. This forum is WvW centric and biased.

Paragraph Context — WvW — T6-T8 simply needs to go away. There is no WvW in those tiers (being at best, ghost town skirmishes). I’ve invested substantial time there and the play is neither compliant nor actionable to the design. T6-T8 servers exist for two principle reasons: 1) to handle burst, overflow play, 2) brand equity and image integrity in the marketplace; that is, both technical and business risk management.

Paragraph Context – PvE — While the general presence of “others” is diminished, I’d posit that the lower tiers offer a higher “open-field” PvE challenge to potential non-casual gamers.

Paragraph Context – sPvP — I have nothing valuable to contribute on the subject of sPvP but felt to omit it would be a tragedy.

The dissatisfaction of a petty economic minority does not (and should never) constitute a crisis of conscience on the part of the plurality of semi-molified, economic contributors.

Blix.8021:

a. Loyalty to a piece of plastic in a server room is silly

True.

But loyalty to people you have played with and shed pixelated blood with since launch is not. I salute all my fellow FC players who have stuck it out through the hard times. It would have been easier for a lot of them to just bail when the going got tough.

The new changes will not improve WvW one bit for lower tiers. The population just isn’t there. But I guess the higher tiered servers believe their WvW experience is more valuable than the lower tiers.

titanlectro.5029:

EnRohbi.2187:

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

You might be right about the T8 reality check (although personally I would not belittle their problems), but this is not just a T8 problem. It will definitely a T7 problem, and I’ve heard T6 say the same thing.

So we are talking about 9+ servers. Anet would not ban night capping, to show equal concern for the minority. I hope they show the same type of concern for the lower tiers.

An easy solution would be to base swords on percentage of active players. Swords would then scale for time of day, and server tier, automatically.

Example: Orange Swords are active if both conditions are true
1) > 20% of active players attacking
2) > 5 players attacking

i like this a lot too.

just having a flat threshold simply isnt adequate for each server. any form of scaling so that people know where the major forces on the map are is completely necessary. and if youre in the major force you need to be careful about what you attack if you dont want to alert the enemies.

and to those arguing that anet should basically just shut down the lower tiers because their population is too small:
thank you for your bumps. anet can even out wvw populations across all servers by tracking man hours spent in wvw and incentivizing transfers into servers with smaller amounts of time put in. the rankings will then become a measure of skill instead of population, and suddenly the higher tiers will ACTUALLY have some kitten to lord over low tier fodder. until then (or until anet merges servers without looking for real solutions), please refrain from coming in here to say “haha t8 should transfer out”.

A couple things. Gem sales are based off of total server population, not WvW population. All servers that are “Very High” will cost roughly the same whether in Tier 1 or Tier 4.

There is no confirmation on how White Swords will be changed. There is also no confirmation whether this is 25 or more allied players or 25+ players from any server in one area. Without further details, these sort of claims are quite a bit premature. As it is, the map having swords at all probably gives away too much information. If anything, this change allows your small 5-10 man groups be even more deadly on a map.

insanemaniac.2456:

titanlectro.5029:

EnRohbi.2187:

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

You might be right about the T8 reality check (although personally I would not belittle their problems), but this is not just a T8 problem. It will definitely a T7 problem, and I’ve heard T6 say the same thing.

So we are talking about 9+ servers. Anet would not ban night capping, to show equal concern for the minority. I hope they show the same type of concern for the lower tiers.

An easy solution would be to base swords on percentage of active players. Swords would then scale for time of day, and server tier, automatically.

Example: Orange Swords are active if both conditions are true
1) > 20% of active players attacking
2) > 5 players attacking

i like this a lot too.

just having a flat threshold simply isnt adequate for each server. any form of scaling so that people know where the major forces on the map are is completely necessary. and if youre in the major force you need to be careful about what you attack if you dont want to alert the enemies.

and to those arguing that anet should basically just shut down the lower tiers because their population is too small:
thank you for your bumps. anet can even out wvw populations across all servers by tracking man hours spent in wvw and incentivizing transfers into servers with smaller amounts of time put in. the rankings will then become a measure of skill instead of population, and suddenly the higher tiers will ACTUALLY have some kitten to lord over low tier fodder. until then (or until anet merges servers without looking for real solutions), please refrain from coming in here to say “haha t8 should transfer out”.

Just be clear,
Never said tier 8 should transfer out.

Just that it is unrealistic to expect Anet to put any significant amount of effort (IE: Any new feature) into fixing tier 8.

Man why do people have to equate everything to T8 and have the whole poor me attitude. Doesn’t look good when every topic has to be compared to T8 and the system Anet has in place.

Here Anet is trying to make is so medium sized groups can run around and take objectives with out being noticed….seems like they are trying to brake up zergs a little bit. Just hope they increase party size next.

EnRohbi.2187:

insanemaniac.2456:

titanlectro.5029:

EnRohbi.2187:

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

You might be right about the T8 reality check (although personally I would not belittle their problems), but this is not just a T8 problem. It will definitely a T7 problem, and I’ve heard T6 say the same thing.

So we are talking about 9+ servers. Anet would not ban night capping, to show equal concern for the minority. I hope they show the same type of concern for the lower tiers.

An easy solution would be to base swords on percentage of active players. Swords would then scale for time of day, and server tier, automatically.

Example: Orange Swords are active if both conditions are true
1) > 20% of active players attacking
2) > 5 players attacking

i like this a lot too.

just having a flat threshold simply isnt adequate for each server. any form of scaling so that people know where the major forces on the map are is completely necessary. and if youre in the major force you need to be careful about what you attack if you dont want to alert the enemies.

and to those arguing that anet should basically just shut down the lower tiers because their population is too small:
thank you for your bumps. anet can even out wvw populations across all servers by tracking man hours spent in wvw and incentivizing transfers into servers with smaller amounts of time put in. the rankings will then become a measure of skill instead of population, and suddenly the higher tiers will ACTUALLY have some kitten to lord over low tier fodder. until then (or until anet merges servers without looking for real solutions), please refrain from coming in here to say “haha t8 should transfer out”.

Just be clear,
Never said tier 8 should transfer out.

Just that it is unrealistic to expect Anet to put any significant amount of effort (IE: Any new feature) into fixing tier 8.

a soft ranking reset would go a long way towards balancing out the t8 matches, wouldnt affect other matches much in a negative way, and wouldnt be a new feature since they were already planning to do a reset. all that needs to be changed about the idea is the number each server is set to.

insanemaniac.2456:

track man hours put into wvw for each server

make transfer fees to servers with over average man hours totally obnoxious
make transfer fees to servers with under average man hours low / nonexistent (or “pay” people to transfer in)

put in a feedback cycle for low fee servers – have it act similar to gems<->gold where transfer fees spike (but more drastically) when lots of people transfer in in short periods of time (prevents supermassive transfers, set the bar high enough for reasonably large guilds so they dont have issues).

if rewarding players for transferring to undermanned servers:
track hours they spend in wvw and hours spent playing. if you have a certain % spent in wvw after 2-3 weeks, give the reward. dont tell people what your quota is so they dont try to abuse cheap/free transfers to unbalance servers.

once average man hours in wvw per server levels out, make transfer fees less obnoxious, but keep the price spike system in place to prevent regression to the current problematic state.

admittedly, basing transfer fees to a server off of time spent in wvw on that server would be a new feature, but it would affect all servers in a positive way and not only t8. higher tiers would see reduced queue times. abandoned servers would see a healthy influx of players. and balanced populations are a very good thing for the ranking system in general.