Guild Wars 2

Why oh why does outnumbering in WvW even exist?

All it does is give any side with more people to automatically win any matchup, which is quite obviously a ridiculous schoolboy error by Anet.

If anyone out there thinks that Outnumbering has anything to do with skill, please let me know what it is, because I can not see any good reason for it.

I also think that Golems should either be taken out of the game, or restricted to day time use, as a hard days work fighting to win towers etc can be overturned in an hour or so by just a few night-cappers! At least this would make them have to work for their auto win.

Come on Anet…lets make this a fun and fair game of skill, instead of just about which side can muster the most players.

Hardvark.6572:

which is quite obviously a ridiculous schoolboy error by Anet.

Thanks for letting us know that you spent all of six seconds to think about this, you clearly have a good grasp of the elements involved.

So, uh, what’s your proposed solution?

If the group I’m with is done for the night and logs out of WvW and there’s no queue of replacements, should the game kick out ten players from both our enemy servers to keep the match “fair” or whatever?

This biggest design flaw of WvW was adding a score.

Synosius.9876:

This biggest design flaw of WvW was adding a score.

What metric would you suggest determined a winner?

dancingmonkey.4902:

Synosius.9876:

This biggest design flaw of WvW was adding a score.

What metric would you suggest determined a winner?

I think RNG would be great here. Joke aside, WvW is not about even fights. If you (OP) want those there is structured PvP.

So far not one person has explained why Outnumbered is a sensible idea?

I don’t expect it would be possible to keep the numbers exactly even, but close should be.

My immediate thoughts on a solution would be to buff up the outnumbered side to equal the strength of the larger side. If outnumbered by 2 to 1, then your stats should double/equal out for example.

Also queue like we have to when the server is full. Yes a large group may go offline at the same time leaving an imbalance, but then the queue should kick in for the other side. As the larger side start to leave, the queue should stop others from replacing them until the other side has filled up again.

I am open to constructive comments.

Im a little confused here, are you talking about population imbalance or outnumbered effect.

If there was no population imbalance, then the buff would not be necessary. So, I am talking about solutions for both.

If it is not possible to make the numbers closer, then the buff should sort out the strength, which it clearly does not at present.

Unless of course WvW is just purpose built for a bit of practice before entering challenging and skilful PvP, and I am just being too exacting.

Well first of all WvW is its own gamemode, it combines large scale PvP with PvE elements on an open world map.

Outnumbered is not a buff, its an effect. It is there for 2 main purposes, to tell you when you have less people on the map and to give an incentive for players to stay on the map to do stuff. Again its not a buff because it does not actually add any real bonus to stats or anything like that.

Population imbalances happen to every server at some point, if its a problem the best solution is recruitment, not forum flaming. Forcing the other servers to have less people on the map because your side has less is impractical and unfair. Of course it sucks when your outnumbered and you lose stuff, but its not the end of the world. Recap, rebuild, recruit.

thought I would add this here if you wanna read it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outnumbered

Hardvark.6572:

If there was no population imbalance, then the buff would not be necessary. So, I am talking about solutions for both.

If it is not possible to make the numbers closer, then the buff should sort out the strength, which it clearly does not at present.

Unless of course WvW is just purpose built for a bit of practice before entering challenging and skilful PvP, and I am just being too exacting.

I disagree. At no point have they stated anything other then the WvW was not designed to be balanced. Why should my enemy receive an artificially strong buff because I play late at night and they do not?

Where is the satisfaction of beating an equal opponent there then?

There is absolutely no skill involved when you outnumber your opponent, so where is the satisfaction of a good challenge? I can understand why would be pvper’s may like to win this way, but skilful it definitely is not.

What may be a better idea is that those that have a larger group should have their stats reduced to equal the opponents strength…could be an option.

Numbers imbalances are inherent in a drop-in, perpetual game mode. The way to obtain more balance in numbers is to force queues with timed matches as in sPvP. The only issue there is that there are still number imbalances from time to time; and the bigger the total number needed for a queue to pop, the more frustrating it is for those waiting.

The real issue is participation imbalances, which are a different animal. It isn’t so much that one server is outnumbered over a given short time frame, it’s server A which fields an average of 90 players at any one time (across all 4 maps) versus server W, whose average is 35. Even that is hard to solve, because there are only so many servers.

What would you have ANet do? Change the mode so it’s no longer drop in, always on? Would you rather they lock servers into perpetual match-ups with servers with similar participation numbers (if that’s even possible)?

@Hardvark
That is all irrelavent as I see it. WvW is not designed as a gratification from fight to fight. It is spread out over a week. The players transfer. Large groups take time off. Even battles occur. Uneven battles occur.

I see map queues when I play prime time. I hear the other 2 servers have them then too. That indicates equal battle options. I work a lot of night or late shifts. If I am playing at two in the morning, I do not want one player to have an artificial advantage if we meet on the way to flip a camp. How would an artificial buff I have, because he has more on the map, spread out elsewhere, make my win more gratifying?

There are a lot of issues in WvW but I dont think this is one of them.

Night Capping is a tactic used in real world scenarios.

Golems are just mobile artillery.

Also to let you know, night capping is less of a thing in higher tiers. While in lower tiers it is pretty devastating, Ive been in both.

While it sucks, you can define strategy as skill and well its a good strategy used in war itself.

Also understand its not sustainable if people are just pulling all nighters. In the end if they dont end up with real coverage during that time, they will fall back down.

As for Numbers, what I have noticed about WvW is the winners are those who recruit the best. Whether its guilds or servers. Strategic formation of people is a skill.

It has everything you want, just on a bigger scale. Youre asking for small scale challenge.

Now I do have a problem with no balanced arena for the 15 to 20 man team. Id love to see an arena that is in between WvW and sPvP.

I think they could certainly just get more creative with their scoring. Perhaps they split each week-long matchup into 7 single-day games or 14 half-day games. To be honest, winning the PPT game isn’t really that important, PPT is just there to give people something to fight over (which is the fun part).

dancingmonkey.4902:

Synosius.9876:

This biggest design flaw of WvW was adding a score.

What metric would you suggest determined a winner?

When there is a score ppl will want to have the highest number. They will stack to a few servers to win. Population imbalance occurs. We dont need ppt or glicko to tell us to fight.

Imagine if the score was gone? Would any of you stop coming to wvw? All the stacked servers would blob over the objectives because??? They wouldnt but there would still be fighting cause ppl naturally want to defend their turf and because red is dead.

Eliminate ppt and poplation imbalance will be much less relevant.

Making the scoring a daily thing would be a good idea yes! Excellent idea!

I agree winning is not the be all and end all, it’s more about having fun. If I lose against larger groups there is no shame in it, but on the other hand I am not keen to win like that, as it gives me no satisfaction whatsoever.

like I have already stated, where is the fun in taking an undefended tower/keep?

If the game was balanced I am sure that everyone would have more fun playing it.

Yes, night fighting is a good military tactic, but what you may be forgetting is that the places that are being attacked in RL would be populated with soldiers/people and therefore would have some defenders. As this can not happen here in game, it should be simulated with buffs or de-buffs to balance it out. They could even buff the guards and structures to make it somewhat harder to night cap, then that would give those folks that want to play at night more of a challenge, rather than just a walkover.

I do not believe for one second that I am asking for a small challenge, what I would like to see is a fair challenge for everyone. Winning or losing constantly is no fun, but a challenge is.

Actually it can happen, your server just doesnt have the coverage to make it happen. I said it before, in upper tiers its not as devastating and what I meant was the EU and Oceanic time blocks are covered.

Thus its still a challenge late at night in certain tiers. There is a huge coverage gap between tier 2 and 3 and any tier 2 server that drops for the most part absolutely dominates because of this coverage gap.

While lower tiers have less coverage and are more prone to night capping at the same time, they have to pull all nighters to do it and its not sustainable for them to rise in tiers.

Believe me, Ive seen 40k point comebacks in one night in lower tiers, I know what youre talking about and it does drive you nuts. Ive been on both sides of it. GOM used to be famous for thursday night all nighters before they collapsed.

And what I meant about small scale challenge was not that you were looking for something less challenging, youre just not looking at the bigger picture of things. Get involved with your server leadership, help them raise money to recruit for EU time blocks.

For good or bad, this is what servers do to win. Just like Guilds, they recruit, they pay for transfers to help build the server and they strategically do so.

It sounds like whatever server youre on has a minimal EU and Oceanic coverage.

That can be changed, Ive seen it happen. There is a bigger picture here besides night capping, top tier servers work on their server constantly to gain coverage. We all have the same availability of numbers, we all have the same queue to deal with, the biggest difference between top tiers and lower tiers is the 24 hour coverage.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Synosius.9876:

This biggest design flaw of WvW was adding a score.

What metric would you suggest determined a winner?

TEEEEEEAM DEATHMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCH!

With several shouts of RAMPAAAGE! And, and, and KILLING SPREEEEEE!

I’d never leave WvW, ever.

Hardvark.6572:

Come on Anet…lets make this a fun and fair game of skill, instead of just about which side can muster the most players.

Did you even read or watch videos about the new WvW map? There are lots of ways they are trying to disincentivise zerging.

Whilst I believe their methods won’t work, you must acknowledge that they are trying something.

The Population/Coverage Imbalance issue is one of the main problems with WvW.

It has been talked about since shortly after launch. There have been multitudes of threads about it. There was a CDI about it. It was the Forum Specialist’s first report.

There have been many suggestions some good, some not so good. However, Anet either can’t or won’t address the issue.

I initially thought that the new HoT Map was their attempt to address this issue. But after watching the Ready Up I don’t see how it will.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to balance the actual number of players. What is left then is to attempt to mitigate the effect of the imbalance. There are several ways to do this. I think scoring changes along with incentives to attack the stronger server would be the best way.

Either intended or unintended, the net result is people jump to other areas of the game aka pve/pvp when WvWvW is a mess on their server due to population imbalance. Vice-versa, when your server facerolls the competition, you might discover many new faces running around WvW, and so too does the up-scaled characters make an appearance.
For all intents and purposes, this is a feature, not a bug.

I disagree with OP. I enjoy outnumbered fights with my 3-4 man roaming comp. We usually beat groups of 8-15’s depending on how bad they are. Granted, we have an OP roaming composition but we’re designed for outnumbered situations. If being outnumbered is a constant issue for you, then may I suggest changing builds or professions with your group to accommodate for that said situation?

Night cappers aren’t so much of a problem compared to the day cappers.

The idea of Night/Day cappers in a global environment is a joke.

Outnumbered does need work, but raw stats is the wrong way to go.
Raw stats leads to the siegerazer problem where in no matter how good you may be in fighting against them 1 mistake is game over (aka taking all of siegerazers binding blades to the face).

Hardvark.6572:

like I have already stated, where is the fun in taking an undefended tower/keep?

Busting down a door and taking a keep is satisfying. Whether or not a tower or keep is defended makes no difference in the feeling of pride I get for myself and my server/guildmates when I see another mark on the map turn to our favor.

Turk.5460:

Hardvark.6572:

like I have already stated, where is the fun in taking an undefended tower/keep?

Busting down a door and taking a keep is satisfying. Whether or not a tower or keep is defended makes no difference in the feeling of pride I get for myself and my server/guildmates when I see another mark on the map turn to our favor.

I agree with you this.

Turk.5460:

Hardvark.6572:

like I have already stated, where is the fun in taking an undefended tower/keep?

Busting down a door and taking a keep is satisfying. Whether or not a tower or keep is defended makes no difference in the feeling of pride I get for myself and my server/guildmates when I see another mark on the map turn to our favor.

I agree with you this.

I posted something in this thread I think would help balance the tiers to create more competitive play in lower tiers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Tiers-Question/first#post4936951

It just hit me, but queue priority would solve a lot of complaints. While the lower tiers are complaining about not having enough people, top tiers servers like FA are complaining that their queues continue to grow. Ive seen Chinese server complaints about queue times as well and how its driving the older dedicated players out of the game.

Queue Priority based on time and achievements in WvW for that specific server would resolve a lot of bandwagoning, allow long time players on a server to still play the game they love and not have to compete for time to play it with people just jumping on the next big thing.

Basically you would pass right by a new player in queue for that server if you are “older” than they are.

I think this would inspire more server dedication.

Rid the game of server’s completely imploding as DR, MAG, GOM, all have as of late. (though MAG is on the way back up.)

Distribute people more evenly amongst the servers and likely help with lag times (I dont know the whole technical set up there to actually say this would be true.)

It would also help resolve some of the cheating that occurs by players creating accounts on other servers just to drive golems off cliffs and spy unfairly.

nightblood.7910:

It just hit me, but queue priority would solve a lot of complaints. While the lower tiers are complaining about not having enough people, top tiers servers like FA are complaining that their queues continue to grow. Ive seen Chinese server complaints about queue times as well and how its driving the older dedicated players out of the game.

Queue Priority based on time and achievements in WvW for that specific server would resolve a lot of bandwagoning, allow long time players on a server to still play the game they love and not have to compete for time to play it with people just jumping on the next big thing.

Basically you would pass right by a new player in queue for that server if you are “older” than they are.

This…this is…
This is just a terrible idea.

Turk.5460:

nightblood.7910:

It just hit me, but queue priority would solve a lot of complaints. While the lower tiers are complaining about not having enough people, top tiers servers like FA are complaining that their queues continue to grow. Ive seen Chinese server complaints about queue times as well and how its driving the older dedicated players out of the game.

Queue Priority based on time and achievements in WvW for that specific server would resolve a lot of bandwagoning, allow long time players on a server to still play the game they love and not have to compete for time to play it with people just jumping on the next big thing.

Basically you would pass right by a new player in queue for that server if you are “older” than they are.

This…this is…
This is just a terrible idea.

It very well might be, but can you elaborate?

While its not fair to force population balances, look at the other side too. how is it fair for servers to deliberately wait until off hours to show up and flip the whole map? The core of the problem lies in both sides. and it has been an ongoing complaint since day 1 and its never going to change. might as well just save your coin and stop doing upgrades

dancingmonkey.4902:

Synosius.9876:

This biggest design flaw of WvW was adding a score.

What metric would you suggest determined a winner?

None. Which would be just as meaningful as what there is now.

The only thing I’ve ever been able to think up when my mind wonders to this topic is this …

If the player limit for a map drops from say 75 to 50 … and some of the servers still have more than 50 players on the map, the first X players to die can’t respawn on that map. This would be akin to your side no longer having the resources to support that number of reinforcements.

That being said, I could see that being a rage-inducing user experience at times.

Sebrent.3625:

The only thing I’ve ever been able to think up when my mind wonders to this topic is this …

If the player limit for a map drops from say 75 to 50 … and some of the servers still have more than 50 players on the map, the first X players to die can’t respawn on that map. This would be akin to your side no longer having the resources to support that number of reinforcements.

That being said, I could see that being a rage-inducing user experience at times.

Yeah this would deplete guild raids horribly. Make group roaming completely useless and only cater to the zerg mentality. It would destroy any organized attempts and leave everything as pug zerg only.

Now if you said that if they were not resed in a specific time period, that might be a little more doable but still frustrating.

I personally think bandwagoning is the main culprit of most complaints in WvW. Unfortunately its human nature and a very hard thing to stop because people want to be on the winning server.

Hardvark.6572:

So far not one person has explained why Outnumbered is a sensible idea?

I don’t expect it would be possible to keep the numbers exactly even, but close should be.

My immediate thoughts on a solution would be to buff up the outnumbered side to equal the strength of the larger side. If outnumbered by 2 to 1, then your stats should double/equal out for example.

Also queue like we have to when the server is full. Yes a large group may go offline at the same time leaving an imbalance, but then the queue should kick in for the other side. As the larger side start to leave, the queue should stop others from replacing them until the other side has filled up again.

I am open to constructive comments.

Yes, we need solo roamer to run into zerg & just start one-shotting people. Brilliant ~

what you’re suggesting would give a huge advantage to small groups because it is easier for 1 person to spike down an opponent than coordinate 3 people to do it, even if the numbers add up the same. conversely, if it buffed your defense/health you’d just have a zerg taking 10 minutes to whittle down one person. no fun there on either side. would you have to make that roamer immune to stun lock too, basically invalidating parts of opponents’ skill bars?

it would be impossible to balance something like that. how far away from allies would you have to be to activate the stat buff? & even if they could miraculously balance it, the lag would be terrible. the game would have to be constantly recalculating and modifying each person’s stats as opponents and allies drift in and out of the buff activation range. one minute you’d be a superhero thinking you’ve got ‘x’ amount of health then the next second some allies run up debuffing you & you die to a skill you thought you could withstand.

messing with the queue’s would artificially lock out paying customers from playing their game and having fun just because some people on another server didn’t feel like playing that night.

if you’re looking for fair, there’s pvp. wvw is basically war, and war aint always fair.

Would it not be a nice thought to see gates gain perma retaliation with outnumbered buff and watch the pvd kitten kill themself?

Offair.2563:

Would it not be a nice thought to see gates gain perma retaliation with outnumbered buff and watch the pvd kitten kill themself?

Nice? No, not to me. That would seem counter intuitive. If folks on a server want damage done to the enemy, then as far as I am concerned, they should log in and engage them. Rather then try to lobby for generic and lazy artificial tactics of this nature, in my opinion.

The only way to fix both is to clone the color model used by EoTM such that all servers are placed in one huge map/fight pit based by color based upon a variety of statistics like population density at certain time periods, individual server contribution/score, number of players engaged in WvW, etc.

Sad fact is that I doubt they’d do this. It would require an immense hardware investment for a mode which ANet pretty much has stated as being unworthy of fixing problems for, despite it being one of the biggest attractions to GW2.

sPvP is extremely far from balanced/technical. Play a meta build and you basically win any other fight unless it’s another meta build, in which case it usually boils down solely on match-up. The lack of diversity is so huge that it kills a lot of appeal.

WvW has been stagnant for a great long time.

I think a great idea to change things up is a new map similar to EB only an NPC faction defaultly controls the center keep. So it becomes a battle of defeating the keep, while also attacking opposing servers to stall their own progress.

They dont recieve a buff for having more numbers on a map. The server that is outmanned receives the buff.

Anet has been putting absolute zero effort in improving WvW for the past year, which is inexcusable.

Perhaps we need even bigger rewards for those that are outnumbered?

• Even higher +magic find
• Even higher +wxp
• Bonus chests from taking camps/towers/keeps.

The worse it is for your server, the better it is for you to be out there “manning up”.

If I can only take 1 tower an hour because I’m constantly running from the zerg blob and there’s hardly anyone on to help … it would be nice if I was rewarded at least the same (if not more) than the horde of people running in a zerg capable of dropping several towers in that same hour.

People go where the incentives are. There are incentives for your server winning. More points gives more passive bonuses. More people allows you to take part in more fights, etc. etc..

If the incentives for being on a smaller, losing server are not at least equal, then people have little to no reason to pick the smaller, losing servers.

The outnumbered buff needs a buff. Right now, it’s too weak to incentivize anything.

nightblood.7910:

Sebrent.3625:

The only thing I’ve ever been able to think up when my mind wonders to this topic is this …

If the player limit for a map drops from say 75 to 50 … and some of the servers still have more than 50 players on the map, the first X players to die can’t respawn on that map. This would be akin to your side no longer having the resources to support that number of reinforcements.

That being said, I could see that being a rage-inducing user experience at times.

Yeah this would deplete guild raids horribly. Make group roaming completely useless and only cater to the zerg mentality. It would destroy any organized attempts and leave everything as pug zerg only.

Now if you said that if they were not resed in a specific time period, that might be a little more doable but still frustrating.

I personally think bandwagoning is the main culprit of most complaints in WvW. Unfortunately its human nature and a very hard thing to stop because people want to be on the winning server.

GO……..ummm who won? Oh ya-GO DUKE! Where is Duke? I am so down with the Duke.

Fighting outnumbered is what makes WvW fun in an organised group, though with limitations. It’s not exactly fun fighting 20+ people as a 5 man group consistently for hours on end, because there’s no chance of winning.

I disagree with the outnumbered buff giving stat buffs, but I think the siegeraiser mechanic should be reworked to give servers active NPC allies to work with when you have the outnumbered buff. You still won’t have a chance in hell of winning any kind of fight against equal or more skilled players if they have more numbers than you, but perhaps maintaining some PPT on that map will be easier.

Give the outnumbered servers some more Siegerazer like NPCs … except some like the more difficult Bounty Mission NPCs … like the ones with large amounts of reflect and confusion … perfect killers of mindless zerging :-)

Now the zergs aren’t dealing with mostly PvDoor … they at least have an actual fight on their hands that isn’t mindless.

Now the outnumbered have something to hopefully buy them some time.

Hopefully the new keep lords mentioned in the expansion will be difficult enough and scale up when being zerged.

… probably why ArenaNet focused on them when talking about the expansion … new borderlands seem to be doing quite a bit to break up the zerg meta.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

While its not fair to force population balances, look at the other side too. how is it fair for servers to deliberately wait until off hours to show up and flip the whole map? The core of the problem lies in both sides. and it has been an ongoing complaint since day 1 and its never going to change. might as well just save your coin and stop doing upgrades

So it’s the fault of the attacking server that the defending server doesn’t recruit an SEA/Oceanic force to prevent the attacking server from NA night capping?

heartless.6803:

WvW has been stagnant for a great long time.

I think a great idea to change things up is a new map similar to EB only an NPC faction defaultly controls the center keep. So it becomes a battle of defeating the keep, while also attacking opposing servers to stall their own progress.

You know it’s stagnant when one can disappear from the game for a year, and come back to see that none of the meta builds from the previous year have stopped being meta.