Guild Wars 2

DancingPenguins.9875:

Bunzy.8674:

LHound.8964:

Bunzy.8674:

Catisa.6507:

Bunzy.8674:

Paid Transfers are going to do more harm then good but you can wait and find out for yourself.

care to back that up with some well thought our reasoning?

The majority of people are going to leave low tier servers for high tier, I expect a big influx of people going to SoS.

Why would they make people pay money in a free game (Just make the lockout time longer like 1 month or something) THERE IS NO REASON TO MAKE IT PAID, it just seems like another money making scheme to me.

This i disagree…

Server transfer is a service not a commodity! I’m glad it is going to be paid, as now people will choose wisely if they want indeed to make that transfer. However, that transfer currency is in Gems that can be bought using in-game gold!

One thing different that i would like to see is different prices for different Tiers. Lowest Tiers even could be free to make players fill in those before anything else, and with a price increasing to the highest being on T1 tiers!

What is the logic behind making it paid apart from making more money?
They could just increase the lock out system and have the exact same affect.

It was meant to be paid, the game doesn’t pay for itself.

Perhaps you should tell this to LoL.. if you make a great game it will indeed pay for itself plus much more, you don’t need to rely on gimmicky mechanics.

Bunzy.8674:

LHound.8964:

Bunzy.8674:

LHound.8964:

Bunzy.8674:

Catisa.6507:

Bunzy.8674:

Paid Transfers are going to do more harm then good but you can wait and find out for yourself.

care to back that up with some well thought our reasoning?

The majority of people are going to leave low tier servers for high tier, I expect a big influx of people going to SoS.

Why would they make people pay money in a free game (Just make the lockout time longer like 1 month or something) THERE IS NO REASON TO MAKE IT PAID, it just seems like another money making scheme to me.

This i disagree…

Server transfer is a service not a commodity! I’m glad it is going to be paid, as now people will choose wisely if they want indeed to make that transfer. However, that transfer currency is in Gems that can be bought using in-game gold!

One thing different that i would like to see is different prices for different Tiers. Lowest Tiers even could be free to make players fill in those before anything else, and with a price increasing to the highest being on T1 tiers!

What is the logic behind making it paid apart from making more money?
They could just increase the lock out system and have the exact same affect.

Leveling the servers! If a guild of n members wants to move to another server they will first fill the lowest servers due to nonexistent/small server transfer fee. However, if it was monthly locked we would see a constant inflow of guilds every month to the highest tiers!

You honestly think they are going to go to low level servers because a low transfer fee.. if you are paying anyways you might as well make it count. So having an inflow/outflow is a bad thing now? Instead everyone is just going to be locked in the same server where the matchups will become boring and stagnant.

Depends on the fee actually. But yes, i think we will experience an increase in the lower level server populations, if the lower tiers have a transfer fee close to 0 gems.
I’ve seen this happening on other games, and this will be no exception!

Bunzy.8674:

DancingPenguins.9875:

Bunzy.8674:

LHound.8964:

Bunzy.8674:

Catisa.6507:

Bunzy.8674:

Paid Transfers are going to do more harm then good but you can wait and find out for yourself.

care to back that up with some well thought our reasoning?

The majority of people are going to leave low tier servers for high tier, I expect a big influx of people going to SoS.

Why would they make people pay money in a free game (Just make the lockout time longer like 1 month or something) THERE IS NO REASON TO MAKE IT PAID, it just seems like another money making scheme to me.

This i disagree…

Server transfer is a service not a commodity! I’m glad it is going to be paid, as now people will choose wisely if they want indeed to make that transfer. However, that transfer currency is in Gems that can be bought using in-game gold!

One thing different that i would like to see is different prices for different Tiers. Lowest Tiers even could be free to make players fill in those before anything else, and with a price increasing to the highest being on T1 tiers!

What is the logic behind making it paid apart from making more money?
They could just increase the lock out system and have the exact same affect.

It was meant to be paid, the game doesn’t pay for itself.

Perhaps you should tell this to LoL.. if you make a great game it will indeed pay for itself plus much more, you don’t need to rely on gimmicky mechanics.

So I see you’ve never played LoL. It’s a pretty interesting game if you ever want to give it a shot. Although you probably shouldn’t spend money on it, there are definitely more urgent things you’d need to spend money on.

Columba.9730:

I wish they’d charge $100 per transfer. Sick of the server hopping.

Agree. I wish they’d charge $100 per transfer. Sick of the server hopping. Causes far too much drama.

ET got screwed from mass transfers….

Paid transfer are a good thing, stick to your server unless you absolutely can’t.

Here’s what happening already since they announced it- Tier 1 servers are getting a flood of new players which is making the queues at prime time a lot longer. They aren’t on the server wide TS and a lot of them aren’t even running lvl80 toons, not following commanders and generally it has become a mess. VERY noticable on SFR last night and it had a huge impact on the score.

My guild is actually thinking of moving OFF SFR as we foresee the main problem being not being able to get any of our raid team on to the wvw servers at prime time due to the influx of ‘pugs’ prior to the cut off date.

People who transfer to tier 1 after the cut off are going to be disappointed when they find 30 mins to an hour queues for all BL.

Victory.2879:

People who transfer to tier 1 after the cut off are going to be disappointed when they find 30 mins to an hour queues for all BL.

I’d almost say that’s nothing. We already have such queues in T4 (Piken). It feels like every losing server and his dog is transferring here. On the verge of unplayable as a guild at the moment.

On one hand, i’m mightily kitten off at those people ruining the server. On the other hand, i find it hilarious since they’ll be first in line to experience the queues they generated. Let’s hope they’re rich enough to transfer to whatever will be the next project server when it’s not free anymore.

Paid server transfers are long overdue, so fundamentally I disagree with the original post. However, if paying for it, I think you should be also able to move a guild so you don’t lose what you’ve built.

my turn to respond.

paying transfers is a good thing, it will convince people that instead of moving to a good server, to instead have some pride in thier server and participate in advancing you in WvW more.

yes there are issues with people not getting 100% map completion. but you know what? this game was never ment to be easy. it was ment to be a challenge. so if you in one of hte servers that is bad at WvW, take a moment to get a group of people from your server who also need 100% map completion together. form a zerg. and take it in WvW.

you need to stop relying on the people who WvW naturally to get stuff for you and instead WORK to get that 100% map completion.

i got the map completion in my server despite it takign a while because my server is JQ, a tier 1 server who is constantly fighting. it took 3 weeks yes, but the ammount of fun i had and items i earned doing it made me appreciate the map completion achievement.

Wasnt paying to transfer supposed to be in on release day anyway?

Out of all the new updates ive seen for January patch, stopping free transfers is the best one Anet have done.

Paying transfers will end some problems and create new problems.

For PVE the change is good because there will be the guesting system.

For WvW, it will probably make the tiers more inflexible AFTER the free transfers have ended.

Lol @ those “mercenaries guilds” who hop in and out servers to make some gold.
They think they are the best fighters :p (lamers)

Now you will have to include the fee for transfer to your commissioner or most probably you will be eventually stuck in 1 server lol

The only thing I wish they would add to this is that not only do you have to pay for transfers, but you can not transfer to a server that has an equal population to the one you are on. You must transfer to a server with fewer people (you still get to choose which one). If you are on a “high” server (daily average – not just when the server peaks), you must pick a server that is “medium” or “low”.

Ordibble.3092:

Convenant.7092:

I agree with OP. Server transfers has never been a problem. Most hardcore WvW players agree on this.

Ah yes, the ol’ hardcore player in bandwagoner’s clothing ruse!

Lol AoN has always transferred to losing servers to help them out. We enjoy being the underdogs. Please think before you write.

I welcome the transfers, lets lock down the communities and make people take a careful think about what they are building.

It might be news to some but those rankings and scores everday aren’t about winning, they are your score in server HR. They show that you crammed a ton of people onto a server, well done.

winning is about going out and fighting in the lakes man to man, and winning when you are outnumbered. those rankings are irrelevant and the free transfers just steal players from the lower WvW tiers which ends up forcing more of them to transfer so that they can at least have a few other gamers to enjoy wvw with on their servers.

there was no reason to transfer in the first place, it has always been the easy road. if everyone had just stayed put in the beginning the matchups would be a lot more fun.

Centrix.4065:

Xsorus.2507:

Paid Server transfer won’t fix the problem, It’ll just make already strong servers remain strong.

The only way to truly fix it would be to allow people to transfer to Red/Blue servers for free and require Green to be paid.

That makes no sense.

So if Server A is red now and drops 1 place to be green in a lower tier, it doesn’t mean that server A will still be winning that match…. They might as well still end up 3rd in that match up and then you’re still forcing people to PAY to transfer to that server, while the servers that are doing better are free…

Imo they should’ve implemented free transfers within the first 2 months of release already. This is way too late. There would be 68% less drama on the wvw forums if they actually did so.

ajm.2931:

Isn’t it true the cost of transferring will be based on how populated the server is? So a heavily populated server costs more to transfer to than a lightly populated one.

If so that could help stabilize overall server balance over time.

That would’ve worked a lot better asap after release, rather than waiting 6 months to let the servers get kittened up and then trying to fix it.

Yes, if they drop to the next tier they might end up as green, As long as their numbers hold up and they won’t need any extra people..However if its stagnated like some of the Tiers, the Red/Blue people won’t ever be able to get enough to fight the Green person.

the paid transfer will ruin some servers, but it will also help strengthen some servers. This is a needed step to stabilize each server’s population , and any remaining low population or deserted servers could be merged and get a fresh start.

Personally I look forward to paid transfers. The bigger problem is not people hopping to where the win is, but going to the T1 servers. I’m in a T8 server, and WvWvW is WEAK. The fact you can take 90% of the entire world just by hopping in a 10 man team because the maps are empty is lame. I’ve been seriously considering changing to higher pop servers (T2 or T3, losing side) so I can have actual WvWvW battles. However I would much rather have people come to us. I’m hoping the transfer ranks are extreme – join a T8 server for FREE to a T1 server costing thousands of gems.

wads.5730:

the entire point of the ELO rating system is so that eventually, with minimal population shifts, you’ll be fighting the same enemies every single week. and the only way to change your rating is to improve in strategy and skill, not population.

working as intended.

Except there’s such a huge disparity in populations between servers (seriously play one a tier 1 server and then a tier 3 server and you’ll see a massive difference) and since population and coverage completely determine your ranking, even if you did somehow manage to go up in ratings, you’d get sent back to whatever tier you came from in a week after getting destroyed since you can’t compete in population.

I read this topic and I wonder how people can be so naive. Does anyone really believe that the paid transfers will lead to equality of servers? No, it can only increase server imbalance. Why? Because anyone who wants to pay money for a transfer, wants to be sure that his money is not wasted. So he did not go to the server in the middle of the list. He will not go to the server in the bottom of the list. He will not go to the server that needs people. He will go to where it is confident in his good position – he will go to the top. And any transfer will take place only on the server that are already in the position of winners, more and more increasing imbalance, because no one wants to pay the money and be disappointed from the weakness of new server.

Rednik.3809:

I read this topic and I wonder how people can be so naive. Does anyone really believe that the paid transfers will lead to equality of servers? No, it can only increase server imbalance. Why? Because anyone who wants to pay money for a transfer, wants to be sure that his money is not wasted. So he did not go to the server in the middle of the list. He will not go to the server in the bottom of the list. He will not go to the server that needs people. He will go to where it is confident in his good position – he will go to the top. And any transfer will take place only on the server that are already in the position of winners, more and more increasing imbalance, because no one wants to pay the money and be disappointed from the weakness of new server.

I don’t know – if the difference is $50/100G for a top server vs free for a bottom server, I think cost will play a major factor in the decision towards lower pop servers.

Drawing Guy.3701:

I don’t know – if the difference is $50/100G for a top server vs free for a bottom server, I think cost will play a major factor in the decision towards lower pop servers.

There is one significant problem in whole concept of “low tier=low cost”. Problem in “price of returning”. What happens if someone decides to perform a transfer to a server with low cost and be disappointed? He will either have to go down even further in the hope of finding the better server in the bottom of the list, or… to pay for a transfer to a server that is higher on the list. And pay another price, much higher than those which he has paid for the first time.

This is nothing more then a way for Anet to cash in on bad game design. Paid transfers are not going to stop the problem. Take a step back and think about it for a second… Whats $5 , $10, even $40 a month to transfer servers ? It’s not going to stop the guilds , like the ones that took over Kaineng, from transferring to lower tiers once they can no longer hack it. Hell Anet is even encouraging that type of behavior by making it cheaper to transfer to a lower tier / population server.

The community should be outraged over this not praising it. Especially when you consider forcing people to pay for the the horrifically bad oversight , allowing people to play 1 and only one server, is really only punishing the people who may want to transfer servers for valid reasons.

I’m excited about them implementing paid transfers which is long overdue.

Being able to freely transfer across servers has created numerous issues in WvW as documented in these forums. Finally, communities will stabilize and the ranking system can actually begin to work properly. Transferring will still be available but will instead require serious consideration particularly for larger guilds.

Thank you ANet!

Rednik.3809:

Drawing Guy.3701:

I don’t know – if the difference is $50/100G for a top server vs free for a bottom server, I think cost will play a major factor in the decision towards lower pop servers.

There is one significant problem in whole concept of “low tier=low cost”. Problem in “price of returning”. What happens if someone decides to perform a transfer to a server with low cost and be disappointed? He will either have to go down even further in the hope of finding the better server in the bottom of the list, or… to pay for a transfer to a server that is higher on the list. And pay another price, much higher than those which he has paid for the first time.

This is dictated by WHY you want to change servers. If you’re looking to get off a zerg server and help a lower server, you are helped by a lower price. You are discouraged from going to a zerg server by a high price.

I don’t have a problem with paying for server transfers – Every single MMO I’ve ever played has had paid transfers. The only exceptions is free to lower pop servers, forced transfers for balancing, or I knew someone that worked there. Heck, pay to play games like WOW have paid transfers, and they aren’t supported by a service system like GW2 is. For F2P games like GW2, I see it as a means that they support their development and servers, so I see paid transfers as needed. I just see that putting tiers on those paid transfers as a tool to help low pop servers, which ArenaNet obviously also thinks.

Its only an issue if you regularly server hop.

pot.6805:

WvW is a numbers game, good luck to servers with coverage gaps of ever filling them when paid transfers hit.

You do not need every tier having 24/7 coverage, you simply need 3 servers with the same gaps in coverage. The problems come now when one server gets a bunch of can’t hack it guilds transferring down and PvDooring the win.

Eventually servers will get smaller. Most people want to log into WvW and find instant even battles. When that doesn’t happen, they stop playing. Look at SoR or BG for example. SoR was getting hammered last week by BG. They barely could fill 1 Borderland. This week during primetime, there are queues. It isn’t server transfer, it is because people just don’t play when it isn’t fun. This week it is BGs turn. They were full last week and now there pop is down. It isn’t server transfer, it is people do other things.

Now fast forward a couple of months from now. You were on a great WvW server that had a lot of fun doing your thing. People got bored and quit for whatever reason. It just isn’t the same as it use to be. Now when you play you always have out-manned buffs. Are you going to wait till you fall to the bottom tier? Are you going to be happy there when a few months ago, you were fighting 100 vs 100 vs 100 at any time of the day. Now at the bottom tier it is 10 vs 10 vs 20 during primetime? Doubtful.

Will people pay to transfer? Some will, but I believe most will just quit the game and not look back. That will make the problem even worse.

Yeah, it sucks when a guild transfer to another server, but overall the game doesn’t lose. When that same guild just quits the game all together, the game suffers.

Even at the end of the day, if you say “screw matchup variety/balancing” lack of server loyalty is a big detriment to the people that actually reside on a server that’s getting stomped because the bandwagon left their station.

Even if they aren’t having such problems, the lack of incentive to actually try is greatly diminished knowing nobody really cares because if they’re losing, instead of rallying to get better, they’ll just jump ship to a “good” server.

Ljiona.9142:

Yeah, it sucks when a guild transfer to another server, but overall the game doesn’t lose. When that same guild just quits the game all together, the game suffers.

If you think people haven’t left wvw/the game because of the massive imbalances caused by transfer guilds you are kidding yourself.

Realistically.. this is going to cut the WvW population in game by half within a couple of months.

Cosmos The Cat.2954:

Realistically.. this is going to cut the WvW population in game by half within a couple of months.

based on what? I see nothing realistic about that prediction at all.

I’d be fine with a compromise where players get 1 free transfer, say, every 6 months. If not, I’d still rather have paid transfers over free weekly transfers.

You think the main problem with WvW is that you’ve had stable match making? #tier2problems

wads.5730:

the entire point of the ELO rating system is so that eventually, with minimal population shifts, you’ll be fighting the same enemies every single week. and the only way to change your rating is to improve in strategy and skill, not population.

working as intended.

Except that population > skill.

What real cash do you need to spend in order to transfer? From what I recall there is this thing called the currency exchange to make your gold into gems and vice versa. Want to transfer? Pay the gold. This simply is adding another hurdle to get people to settle down. Those who still wish to transfer will still be able to.

Since I never plan to transfer, I am happy that they are making others pay to come to my server.

Convenant.7092:

I agree with OP. Server transfers has never been a problem. Most hardcore WvW players agree on this. Most of the people who complain about it are casual players.

The server balance has been getting better and better… why fix something that’s not broken? and ruin it in the proccess?

Are you serious? Most wvw players? If anything the truth is the complete opposite. If you are a kitten that enjoys an easy transfer-win, sure I guess it’s bad. For everyone else, it’s about time…