Guild Wars 2

Hell, who doesnt love magic find? Right? Right?!

Hardvark.6572:

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.

Why does outnumbering exist ? because this game is played by HUMANS. Which live and work and sleep in different times of day and night, which have their own motivations or interest to play or not. That play as little or as much as they feel like when they feel like it. And sometimes change servers.

The point here is that this isn’t something that ANet really have any control off at all. So what are they going to do about it ? Take people OUT of servers and force them into new servers, and refuse people to change servers afterwards ?

Hardvark.6572:

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.

Nobody thinks numbers = skill. Numbers does however = PPT, and PPT is how you win a match-up, if not a fight.

And restricting anything at specific times is just really bad design and customer service. There are a lot of people that work strange hours and can only play at night (I’m one), or live in other nations like the Australians playing in the NA servers, are you saying that no Australians should be allowed to use golems ?

These two problems (Population + Coverage) are probably the two largest problems with the entire WvW system, and the reason they are so difficult, is because there are no clear cut answers on how to deal with them. They are considered “inherent problems with the real vs realm mode”. From what I’ve seen old DAoC players comment before, it was the same back there as well.

There have been several discussions and arguments over these before, and there are some ideas that could somewhat help. But just going “kill it now.” is not going to help at all.

Hardvark.6572:

….I also think that Golems should either be taken out of the game, or restricted to day time use….

Is that your daytime or mine?

Isn’t the Reason for outnumbering obvious?

The match capacity is to high.
4 maps a 100 people a 24 hours a 7 days is 67200 play hours per team and match.

No server is even close to use that, in mean the capacity is probably used to less than 10%.

You can only have balance at times where the capacity is used. And as it is never used you have never balance.

Dayra.7405:

Isn’t the Reason for outnumbering obvious?

The match capacity is to high.
4 maps a 100 people a 24 hours a 7 days is 67200 play hours per team and match.

No server is even close to use that, in mean the capacity is probably used to less than 10%.

You can only have balance at times where the capacity is used. And as it is never used you have never balance.

If I understand you right, you think that the map population limits, the 24h game system are parts of the problem. That as long as we can’t fill these up around the clock, the problem will remain ?

Then the obvious answer to that would be EotM style “server combiners” and “overflow maps” ? With the note that at the moment, EotM is not quite balanced for the numbers game either.

The more I think about the server system and population, I don’t think we can avoid either server merges or a “MegaServer” system along the lines of EotM. HoT might give a surge of returning players but that won’t sustain itself in the long run and something still has to be done.

Either a limited server merger, or making smaller EotM like alliances could work well if also moving all maps over to a overflow system. This would allow the servers and system to adjust the number of maps, thus the total “map population limit” to the number of players available.

The actual amounts of points doesn’t matter so much, since you can still add them all up and divide them up by the numbers to still get the percentage difference, which is what you need to make glicko ratings anyway.

While I’m still against actually messing with servers, and changing to either of these ideas would anger some of the server defenders. Not doing anything might be even worse in the long run, since the game is still losing players.

Server reduction (I would not merge, but delete all current and set up a lower number of new teams) may help a bit, but they aren’t the solution to the different demand over the 24h of the day. Even if you merge all 27/24 into 3 you will not use the available capacity at every hour, you will only generate horrible queue during 2-3hours.

EotM has the potential (if ANet stops to put all strongest teams together vs all weakest tems) to do better, map-capacity can be added on demand. E.g. just 1 map in the offest off-time, 20 in prime-time.
Here is a proposal based on that potential: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Proposal-for-a-new-competive-WvW

The problem today in WvW is that even the so called “overstacked” server aren’t really overstacked (they still have a lot unused capacity) and it is an advantage to be on an “overstacked” server not a disadvantage. The solution in current WvW, would be to make them overstacked, e.g. as proposed here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/2-12-2015-WvW-report-on-Unbalanced-Match-ups/4855676

The stuff being proposed here would kill WvW.

I’d rather lose the week because of coverage issues than spend more time sitting in a queue to “balance” coverage.

I’d rather face the same “stale” matchup every week with the same guild group and the same allies on my side than be thrown into an EotM-like random pugging environment.

ASP.8093:

I’d rather lose the week because of coverage issues than spend more time sitting in a queue to “balance” coverage.

EotM has a queue you were in?

Dayra.7405:

Isn’t the Reason for outnumbering obvious?

The match capacity is to high.
4 maps a 100 people a 24 hours a 7 days is 67200 play hours per team and match.

No server is even close to use that, in mean the capacity is probably used to less than 10%.

You can only have balance at times where the capacity is used. And as it is never used you have never balance.

Which server? How many hours have you spent on each of the 24 servers in your region, that gives you the experience to make this claim?

With 20-50 player queues on four maps regularly on weekends on my server, I suspect your making uninformed and inexperienced assumption in my opinion, about other servers based on your experience on your servers. It is unfortunate that you would make suggestions that harm other servers, for the sole purpose of your personal gain on your server.

Keep in mind that your experience does not define that of others, so before you push for changes, it would be nice if you could look outside the context of your experiences first.

coglin.1867:

With 20-50 player queues on four maps regularly on weekends on my server

I am in EU, now in silver but long enought in Gold, no idea how it is in NA. But if you are outside NA-T1 I can hardly believe that you have queue on any map between 1am to 9am (we have 10-30 hopping over 4 maps). I can also hardly believe that you have queue on any map over the week between 1am and 6pm (we have 10-80 hopping over 4 maps).

And should you be NA-T1 and have queue in this time, these 3 servers aren’t representative for the other 48.

coglin.1867:

Dayra.7405:

Isn’t the Reason for outnumbering obvious?

The match capacity is to high.
4 maps a 100 people a 24 hours a 7 days is 67200 play hours per team and match.

No server is even close to use that, in mean the capacity is probably used to less than 10%.

You can only have balance at times where the capacity is used. And as it is never used you have never balance.

Which server? How many hours have you spent on each of the 24 servers in your region, that gives you the experience to make this claim?

With 20-50 player queues on four maps regularly on weekends on my server, I suspect your making uninformed and inexperienced assumption in my opinion, about other servers based on your experience on your servers. It is unfortunate that you would make suggestions that harm other servers, for the sole purpose of your personal gain on your server.

Keep in mind that your experience does not define that of others, so before you push for changes, it would be nice if you could look outside the context of your experiences first.

You also know that your server is the only server that produces those queues? Jade Quarry’s coverage so overwhelming right now that no one can even compare with those numbers. Your experience is not indicative of what’s going on in WvW. Neither is any server in T1. Perhaps get an alt down into T4 or T5 and see how the average WvW server plays without queues.

24/7 coverage doesn’t exist on any server so it stands to reason then, that map should become more dynamic based on population, perhaps with NPC events to try break down T3 towers and keeps. Siegeraiser simply isn’t sufficient enough.

Reverence.6915:

You also know that your server is the only server that produces those queues? Jade Quarry’s coverage so overwhelming right now that no one can even compare with those numbers. Your experience is not indicative of what’s going on in WvW. Neither is any server in T1. Perhaps get an alt down into T4 or T5 and see how the average WvW server plays without queues.

No my experience is not indicative of everyone, I agree. The difference is, I am not suggesting they make changes to WvW based on my personal needs for my server. The person I quoted previously is.

coglin.1867:

Reverence.6915:

You also know that your server is the only server that produces those queues? Jade Quarry’s coverage so overwhelming right now that no one can even compare with those numbers. Your experience is not indicative of what’s going on in WvW. Neither is any server in T1. Perhaps get an alt down into T4 or T5 and see how the average WvW server plays without queues.

No my experience is not indicative of everyone, I agree. The difference is, I am not suggesting they make changes to WvW based on my personal needs for my server. The person I quoted previously is.

You mean if WvW is working on 1 of 51 server this is a good reason to leave it as it is?

Dayra.7405:

ASP.8093:

I’d rather lose the week because of coverage issues than spend more time sitting in a queue to “balance” coverage.

EotM has a queue you were in?

What the heck are you talking about?

BladeBraverBureba.1052:

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?

So its required for lower pop servers to recruit (usually pay a large sum as well) to oceanic guilds to guard their assets while the normal server pop has actual lives and sleeps? Because what you’re basically saying is, either buy up oceanic or get rolled over and this equals fair play. Obviously you enjoy playing PVD more than you do skilled and tactical fights with somewhat equal numbers, and that’s fine. But it doesn’t make it ok or balanced in the least. A fix needs to be found that rewards both sides rather than rewards only the blobbers and punishes the ones without the means to do 100% coverage.

Hardvark.6572:

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.
…
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.

As is mentioned, outnumbering is a player demographics outcome. If you believe in free will you should oppose any suggestion to force population balancing. If you don’t then shut up and accept our overlords’ supreme dictum.

that said, the current ruleset works well when you have evenly matched participants and kitteny otherwise.
to make things work better we should have a ruleset which permits uneven participants to engage and all sides have fun. ( i have no clue how you’d do that specifically)

OP seems to be conflating golems with the overall problem. in general golems SLOW down structure capture largely due to transport problems. admittedly portals allow transport of up to 3000 supply in golems, but it takes some serious coordination to make that work.

the current problem with the current system is for any given server there are at most 4 servers which match up well. (based on typical tiering ratings by forumers) so for best performance servers would be stuck with the same partners until the power balances change. unchanging matchups are ALSO undesirable.
ergo. competition elements have to change.
a few suggestions:
-remove positive feedback loops.
-introduce negative feedback

possible implementations:
-remove point per tick, replace with points on cap based on completed upgrades
—exception: point per tick on defense. (introduces costs to tapping structures)
-remove structure reset on capture (inherit upgrades and Broken stuff)
—permit deconstruction of upgrades (tricky to avoid trolling/griefing)

what do ppl think of the silverwaste yaks? what if they were imported to wvw?

related question. are we shooting for an asymmetric warfare simulation? or a fair game in which case we should add more gamey aspects like methods to steal other servers score.
essentially
http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci211z/2.2/Arreguin-Toft%20IS%202001.pdf
or
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/mario-kart-8-wii-u-tipstricks-how-to-boost-drift-and-master-every-item
(mario kart reference randomly selected)

Outnumbered effect is simply useless in the current form:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

To be a little more meaningful I would add the following effects considering the outnumbered world is fighting for survival, all soldiers have the despair adrenaline power and all resources are used like there is no tomorrow:

Double supplies carry capacity
Permanent +33% running speed
-10% damage taken
+10% damage done
3 stacks of stability refreshed every 60 seconds (non stackable except with other skills)
Aegis refreshed every 60 seconds

RedBaron.6058:

Outnumbered effect is simply useless in the current form:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

To be a little more meaningful I would add the following effects considering the outnumbered world is fighting for survival, all soldiers have the despair adrenaline power and all resources are used like there is no tomorrow:

Double supplies carry capacity
Permanent +33% running speed
-10% damage taken
+10% damage done
3 stacks of stability refreshed every 60 seconds (non stackable except with other skills)
Aegis refreshed every 60 seconds

The reasons this is such a bad idea:

• If 2 roamers meet far elsewhere on the map, one will have this huge advantage
• If 2 havoc groups meet 5vs5 elsewhere on map, one group will have this huge advantage
• If a guild group of 20 meet a 40-60 map blob they can have this huge advantage
• This probably also affects siege…

And a few more I can’t remember.

This buff invalidates the “rough balance” we have between characters. There is a reason why ANet have never added stats to outnumbered, or much anything yet (people are still surprised the bloodlust buff gave stat bonuses).

I don’t mind the extra supply limit (helps against larger amounts of enemy = more supply), not really against the speed boost either, though it should be smaller than the speed signets, so less than 25%, to not invalidate options for players. I can see a 10% fitting.

Hardvark.6572:

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.

Risk-Reward, Challenge-Fun: You are correct!

Ok! back to play a Risk-Reward, Challenge-Fun game

RedBaron.6058:

Outnumbered effect is simply useless in the current form:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

If you want to make Outmanned-Buf useful, without hurting fights make it affect what really hurt the outmanning side: PvD

If you are outmanned you have:
Double upgrade speed for objectives
Half Supply demands for objective upgrades
+20 lvl for all NPC on the outmanned side
Twice as many NPC
Tripple life for walls, door and siege
no (5min) invulnerability buf for enemy lords
a 15min invulnerability buf for your lords (everything you turn lasts at least till tick)

Hardvark.6572:

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

If it’s outnumbered it’s not equal numbers. Where 1 party is with 80 and the other party is 20 it is easy to calculate who will most likely win.

Having the outnumbered buff it might change a bit, but I will not do miracles.

Dayra.7405:

joneirikb.7506:

Outnumbered effect is simply useless in the current form:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

If you want to make Outmanned-Buf useful, without hurting fights make it affect what really hurt the outmanning side: PvD

If you are outmanned you have:
Double upgrade speed for objectives
Half Supply demands for objective upgrades
+20 lvl for all NPC on the outmanned side
Twice as many NPC
Tripple life for walls, door and siege
no (5min) invulnerability buf for enemy lords
a 15min invulnerability buf for your lords (everything you turn lasts at least till tick)

No idea how you managed to quote my name to the part of the post that was from the other poster.

In summary to your suggestions, I think it would make a whole lot of people really annoyed to get “more pve”. I would be more interested in a gradual scaling of NPC’s myself to even out things a bit. But dislike some of your ideas here, like the RI changes. And feel the upgrades would be largely useless outnumbered.

I think the point of the outnumbered buff isn’t so much to allow the outnumbered side to win … but to instead give them incentive to keep on fighting despite the aggravation that sometimes comes from being so badly outnumbered.

Right now, the outnumbered buff is so pitiful that it doesn’t make it worth it to be on the outnumbered server … so many people have abandoned those servers in favor of the much larger servers.

joneirikb.7506:

Dayra.7405:

RedBaron.6058:

Outnumbered effect is simply useless in the current form:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

If you want to make Outmanned-Buf useful, without hurting fights make it affect what really hurt the outmanning side: PvD

If you are outmanned you have:
Double upgrade speed for objectives
Half Supply demands for objective upgrades
+20 lvl for all NPC on the outmanned side
Twice as many NPC
Tripple life for walls, door and siege
no (5min) invulnerability buf for enemy lords
a 15min invulnerability buf for your lords (everything you turn lasts at least till tick)

In summary to your suggestions, I think it would make a whole lot of people really annoyed to get “more pve”. I would be more interested in a gradual scaling of NPC’s myself to even out things a bit. But dislike some of your ideas here, like the RI changes. And feel the upgrades would be largely useless outnumbered.

Currently in off-time zergs jump around on the maps to cap stuff without resistance i.e. they actively try to avoid each other. So they CURRENTLY do a lot PvE/D as PvE/D as this is faster and gives more points.

The idea behind my proposal is: If you make PvD more effort than fighting each other, people may fight each other more and do less PvD

Dayra.7405:

Currently in off-time zergs jump around on the maps to cap stuff without resistance i.e. they actively try to avoid each other. So they CURRENTLY do a lot PvE/D as PvE/D as this is faster and gives more points.

The idea behind my proposal is: If you make PvD more effort than fighting each other, people may fight each other more and do less PvD

Maybe the zerg you command or the ones you chose to follow do. Assuming you even actually know their motives.

When I am commanding, it has nothing to do with avoiding anyone. It has to do with attacking strategic locations. Busting hills or bay waypoints on various maps, or hitting a garri if we see they are stacking on a different map. All of which will guarantee a good fight when they come rushing to defend.

If your goal is avoidance, that is fine, but do not disingenuously claim that everyone else, or every commander has pure avoidance in mind.

Of you talk about searching a good fight you probably dont mean rushing over someone with outmanned buf, do you? And if the enemy hasn’t outmanned bug nothing changes.

Dayra.7405:

Currently in off-time zergs jump around on the maps to cap stuff without resistance i.e. they actively try to avoid each other. So they CURRENTLY do a lot PvE/D as PvE/D as this is faster and gives more points.

The idea behind my proposal is: If you make PvD more effort than fighting each other, people may fight each other more and do less PvD

I think this is more a player thing. Some people enjoy PvD and others light fights. Nothing wrong with that, both are valid play styles in this game. But people that enjoy PvD for PvD’s sake probably would get more fun out of EotM, with better rewards and how some of them coordinate to avoid each others.

In WvW I see PvD happen the most when one server has a huge advantage in a certain timezone, so the opponent just doesn’t have the numbers to fight back, so they just go back or go back flip camps. My own server tend to do this at night time, as we have higher night presence than most other bronze servers. And several of those PvD not because they enjoy it, but often for a lack of something else to do, or just to grind PPT for the server’s sake.

I’ve posted some suggestions regarding changes I’d like to see to the outnumbered buff before, probably buried a dozen pages back by now. But the gist of it was to give outnumbered players some tools to compensate for the number difference, but not the actual stats or strength of a character.

The main change to npc’s that I suggested, was to add scaling to champions, so they still took roughly the same amount to kill with 5 or 50 players. So zerging wasn’t the fastest and most efficient way to take everything, to make it very obvious that it would be faster to split and take multiple objectives instead.

Edit: wow, it sensored "as" followed by "50". that is pretty harsh.

splat.8169:

that said, the current ruleset works well when you have evenly matched participants and kitteny otherwise.

to make things work better we should have a ruleset which permits uneven participants to engage and all sides have fun. ( i have no clue how you’d do that specifically)…

…the current problem with the current system is for any given server there are at most 4 servers which match up well. (based on typical tiering ratings by forumers) so for best performance servers would be stuck with the same partners until the power balances change. unchanging matchups are ALSO undesirable.
ergo. competition elements have to change.

a few suggestions:
-remove positive feedback loops.
-introduce negative feedback

possible implementations:
-remove point per tick, replace with points on cap based on completed upgrades
—exception: point per tick on defense. (introduces costs to tapping structures)
-remove structure reset on capture (inherit upgrades and Broken stuff)
—permit deconstruction of upgrades (tricky to avoid trolling/griefing)

what do ppl think of the silverwaste yaks? what if they were imported to wvw?

related question. are we shooting for an asymmetric warfare simulation? or a fair game in which case we should add more gamey aspects like methods to steal other servers score.
essentially
http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci211z/2.2/Arreguin-Toft%20IS%202001.pdf
or
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/mario-kart-8-wii-u-tipstricks-how-to-boost-drift-and-master-every-item
(mario kart reference randomly selected)

Great post. Sorry I edited out the golem part because I wanted to focus on this statement:

“the current ruleset works well when you have evenly matched participants and kitteny otherwise”.

That in a nutshell is the issue. Its at the heart of all the arguments about population/coverage imbalance.

Its why you see people from T1 NA saying one thing while others in lower tiers saying something else – see this very thread.

The current ruleset works fine for T1 NA and whenever you happen to have relatively equal populations (which rarely happen outside of T1 in NA). But it does not work for the majority of the servers at the majority of the time periods.

To make matters worse, even if a particular block of time (say NA Prime) is relatively even it is still affected by the time periods that have come before it. This is why you hear all the complaints about "night"capping.

The solution is not trying to equal out populations. Populations cannot be equalized without having queues, its impossible. And I would say for the broader game it is impossible to equalize populations in WvW across all timezones and all servers.

Therefore the solution lies in the ruleset. There must be a ruleset in place that works for both equal populations and doesn’t totally break down when the populations are not equal.

There have been proposals to make changes in scoring and mechanics that would attempt to mitigate the effect of unbalanced population (splat makes some in the post). In other words, change the ruleset. I don’t know if Anet has plans for any changes in HoT but I sure hope so.

TLDR; It is impossible to balance populations in WvW. Therefore changes to the ruleset should be made to mitigate the negative effects of imbalanced population.

Johje Holan.4607:

TLDR; It is impossible to balance populations in WvW. Therefore changes to the ruleset should be made to mitigate the negative effects of imbalanced population.

When John Corpening jumped into “Solution to fix the population imbalance” at Sept 2014 (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437596) and “Scoring discussion” in Oct 2014
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-Discussion) at lot of interesting and good ideas came out.

A pitty that it had zero effect after half a year and it currently looks like it will have zero
impact at HoT-release. What a waste, all the effort for a new map in a game-mode that is broken and isn’t repaired.

Edit: I do not assume things about in HoT that aren’t announced (new WVW Borderlands is announced), and I assume it will not have much that isn’t listed in https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en/ , but as this is an assumption I wrote “it currently looks like”

Dayra.7405:

Johje Holan.4607:

TLDR; It is impossible to balance populations in WvW. Therefore changes to the ruleset should be made to mitigate the negative effects of imbalanced population.

When John Corpening jumped into “Solution to fix the population imbalance” at Sept 2014 (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437596) and “Scoring discussion” in Oct 2014
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-Discussion) at lot of interesting and good ideas came out.

A pitty that it had zero effect after half a year and it currently looks like it will have zero
impact at HoT-release. What a waste, all the effort for a new map in a game-mode that is broken and isn’t repaired.

Got a link to the changes they plan to make with HoT or what is in the expac itself? Or are you disingenuously making assumptions and stating them as declarations, to suit your agenda?

Because unless you have evidence as to what is coming with the HoT release that the rest of us are not privy to, your just blowing smoke.