Guild Wars 2

TLDR I propose incentivising players to join WvW when their server has been losing consistently or is significantly outmanned and to grow WvW communities on low population servers over time.

We all know there are some ‘issues’ that need addressing and I would like to discuss one in particular, that of making the weekly match ups more competitive. This is on the simple premise that the more competitive the matches are the more fun everyone has.

I will start with a few general principles:
• Everyone that wants to play WvW should be able (avoid queues)
• No Player should feel ‘forced’ to play WvW (avoid Ascended gear/fractals)
• Match ups should be as competitive as possible (because its fun!)
• Avoid significant changes to server strength in short term (avoid chaos of free transfers)
• Reduce impact of being severely outmanned (because this is not fun)
• Incentives should not include buffs/debuffs to players attributes/traits (no one wants find themselves in a 1v1 or 5v5 where one side has boosts to vitality or power etc.)

My thoughts is that a series of buffs aka as incentives, should be applied to Players joining WvW when certain conditions are met, for example:

1. When a server places last 3 weeks in a row every Player on that server receives a buff whilst in WvW for the subsequent week and continues to receive that buff until they do not come last (e.g. 100% Gold from Player/NPC kills)
2. When one server has less than half the population on their Home Borderland of another server for more than 15 minutes; Home Players joining that map receive a buff whilst in WvW for one hour (e.g. 100% to Karma)
3. Players in lower tiers should receive buffs to encourage growth in WvW community on their servers
a. Tier2 5% Gold/Karma/XP
b. Tier 3 10% Gold/Karma/XP
c. Tier 8 35% Gold/Karma/XP

The stated buffs above are just examples and careful consideration would need to be given to incentivise, but not make Players feel forced to play WvW. Also the necessary controls would need to be implemented to avoid exploitation; such as everyone logging off and subsequently re logging to acquire the outmanned buff on Home Borderland.

The rewards for playing WVW are meagre in comparison to PvE so there is wiggle room to facilitate incentives and probably will be even after the March update.

I would like to hear constructive criticism on my proposals from the Community as well as suggestions on ways to modify it to help make match ups more competitive and fun for everyone.

Thx for reading!

So, punish servers for having great communities with hundreds of players working together with their own guild and with other guilds on their server. and with guilds from different timezones, just because other servers cannot do the same?

Ketharius.9018:

So, punish servers for having great communities with hundreds of players working together with their own guild and with other guilds on their server. and with guilds from different timezones, just because other servers cannot do the same?

No they would receive significant help. More competitive opponents.

Thought you were going to post something more radical after reading your general principles, but I don’t see the problem with a WvW rewards buff to struggling servers to bring in more players from PvE. Those on higher tiers really don’t have an issue with rewards because there’s always active play from all sides.

However, there really isn’t a need for an incentive for any tier near the top. I’m not sure where the cutoff should be, but the difference for tiers 2-5, and maybe even lower down in tiers, isn’t an absence of a WvW population. The difference is lack of coverage at off peak hours. Adding incentives won’t bring in more players from PvE at those hours.

These rewards/incentives should be brought in for servers with small, shrinking WvW populations to prevent a death spiral, but they’re really not needed elsewhere (otherwise they punish servers for being higher in tier).

This would make sense if you actually got something for winning or being in a higher tier… Which you don’t…

Xaenca.5361:

This would make sense if you actually got something for winning or being in a higher tier… Which you don’t…

Ok. What would you like to see for winning?

As a thief main, I think the problem is with personal rewards. I often have to suicide bomb siege to take the pressure off my server. What do I get for it? I get broken armor I have to pay to repair. All the rewards go to my server, even the individuals that were busy farming up gold the entire time and haven’t set foot inside WvW other than to complain that there is no mesmer to port them in the JP for their badges and they need them for their legendary. I do this almost every day. Its hard if I dont. Im a roamer and I run solo. I get no recognition from anyone and they usually dont even know I did it. You could say counter treb, but not possible with a bunch of eles protecting them.

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.