Guild Wars 2

etsmith.9025:

waeren.9743:

Virchow,

It is not possible, people have tried and it’s not happening. There seem to be a bunch of reasons.

Lag, no population to play with (unless there’s a mass transfer), friends/guildies not interested in transferring, … If it was that easy it would’ve happened already.

What I fail to see is why the population can’t be balanced out? If server A has only 20 people in then server B & C can’t have more then 20 people in. Issue fixed. Populations will spread out unless they just want to sit in queue.

Thisw would not work. Here again you are given am opportunity yo exploit. huge pvp servers can get their GM’s totgether, create a godmode pvp team and control how many are able to enter against them.

You’re assuming that there would be no randoms. And who would care about that? They would be organised as you’re supposed to be.

Ramone

Hi Everyone,

All is fair in love and war – and as love, WvW is a battlefield.
There are exploits, I’ll give you that – but then there is coordinated effort to ensure your world or your team uses each and every resource they have to their advantage.

War is not fair, war is not pretty, war gets out the worst in us – and the best – and even if we have excluded open world pvp from the rest of the game, this is exactly what happens on the WvW maps: It is the ‘playground’ for strategists and great tacticians, it is the place for coordinated efforts and mean ideas in the middle of the night.

Night capping is one of those valid tactics to score some points in a lasting battle – to get your world the upper hand, or cancel out daytime supremacy by another well coordinated opponent.

As Guild Wars 2 will progress in time, so will world vs. world and core gameplay mechanics. But for now, night capping is one valid possibility to ruin your enemie’s days – pun intended.

So is this ANet’s official stance on this? Something tells me that it isn’t. I’d love to hear from the WvW team devs on their take.

In direct response to you however, I would point out that WvW is not War, it is a game. Games are typically considered fun because they are somewhat structured in that they have rules. Many games start out missing key regulation and as the game is played the rules are amended or added to.

The complaints you are getting from people that don’t play on one of the Top 4 servers is that one of the major game modes in your game is going to start emptying out soon. Keeping players interested at the guild level is getting more and more difficult. Eventually, after servers experience repeated blow outs to night-capping losses people will start to get fed up and stop trying at all.

This will lead to people going into WvW just to farm… farming either players, objective swapping, or piling up in the jump puzzles. Is that how you envision your game in a month or two?

The math is really simple here. You need to do something to keep the people that aren’t happy. Implementing the fixes necessary to make those people happy isn’t going to alienate anyone who is enjoying the system now. They will continue to play and stroke their kittens regardless.

It makes the most sense for you stop posting stuff like you just did… and fix the issue (and quickly).

A few days ago, Henge of Denravi took a substantial lead, one that quickittenurned into a statistical inevitable victory. Even people on the server realized this was due primarily to “night capping.”

Then a lot of people (mostly on these forums) said it would kill WvW, hurt the experience, cause people to quit trying, etc.

But then, something very different happened. The battlefields all stayed full – very full. Queue times didn’t go down substantially. Stormbluff and Eredon Terrace continued to push hard and, at many times, maintained the highest number of capture points (often by a huge margin).

This continued (and is ongoing as I write this) despite HoD having a literally insurmountable lead.

The people looking for an engaging experience in WvW continued to find it in WvW. The fighting was no less intense, no less massive and no less fun.

Yes, if you only look at the (mostly meaningless) final score, you may say “WvW failed.” But if you instead go into WvW and see that people are still having a lot of fun, still strategizing and still fighting with all their heart, then you really cannot make that statement. It is a huge success DESPITE these issues, and I don’t really see that changing anytime soon.

They stated from the beginning that WvW would be more casual than structured PvP – a place where you could hop in and hop out at will to have fun pvping. Based on the participation numbers even in the face of literally insurmountable leads, that is obviously working as intended.

I play on Sorrow’s Furnace and population size gives too large of an advantage. Our world just doesn’t have the population to keep up with other worlds, WvW in our bracket is a game of who has more people online.

During peak time, when all worlds’ teams are full and have queues, my world dominates. However our opponent, Darkhaven, has such a large population that it’s 3 to 1 at night time and they just take the entire map. Not because they are skilled, not because they fairly defeated us. They walked in during off hours when we can’t maintain half of a full team and took everything we had effortlessly.

I go to sleep during peak hours, our team owning 60% of the map through hours of strategic gameplay and wake up in the mornings to 10 people in our borderlands with Darkhaven pushing us back into spawn.

Arena Net you are rewarding quantity over quality. The teams should be balanced to some degree, at all times.

Enerjak.2475:

Besides… who says we cannot do the same to them? Each server without exception has late-nighters, people with odd schedules, etc. There is no 1 server doing this. That said, ours can retaliate in much the same fashion, perhaps even meet them and wipe them in the attempt.

Yes you can and you should do.

Actually if you want to win, what you should do is to delete that teamspeak, delete your alliance forum and only focus on getting more people up at 03-07 AM. If you can bring 60-100 people to WvW at 03-07 AM you win.

You don’t need to do anything else. Casuals will handle the rest for you at peak time. Perhaps you can put a commander for each map to help them a bit more, but I don’t think you need that either.

I really don’t want to demotivate you, however that’s the reality of current game mechanics.

Blaeys.3102:

A few days ago, Henge of Denravi took a substantial lead, one that quickittenurned into a statistical inevitable victory. Even people on the server realized this was due primarily to “night capping.”

Then a lot of people (mostly on these forums) said it would kill WvW, hurt the experience, cause people to quit trying, etc.

But then, something very different happened. The battlefields all stayed full – very full. Queue times didn’t go down substantially. Stormbluff and Eredon Terrace continued to push hard and, at many times, maintained the highest number of capture points (often by a huge margin).

That just isn’t something that is sustainable. It isn’t going to keep happening.

I’m on a T2 server and we drew JQ this week. JQ, due to its overwhelming population advantage blew DB and CD out of the water. Next time one of our servers draws JQ… many people just aren’t going to bother. The same will go for ET and SBI as they get rotated down into the lower tiers. Similarly, as T3 and T4 gets T2 flunkies they will get crushed.

They have to fix the system to make it competitive and somewhat skill based. Individual/group player skill and organizational skills of alliances. Timezones shouldn’t factor into this as heavily as they do because off-peak guilds are rare birds… birds that have decided to flock to a couple of servers and stay there no matter what.

They are anti-competitive and they are content to just sit there and win unearned landslide victories. The player base has decided that it isn’t going to fix itself.

Blaeys.3102:

---

I hope it will continue to be like this after a few months.

All serious WvW players should immediately and permanently move to one of the top 6 servers.

There are not enough of us to fully fill out every NA server. If you want consistently competitive games, you are going to need to group up with the top two tiers and help further populate their maps.

Maybe even top 9, but I doubt it. This is the future, gentlemen. If you want to WIN – you need to be in one of the top 6-9 servers. The rest will only ever dabble, and will NEVER break through the population barrier to the top tier where the real fights happen.

Sky.9347:

All serious WvW players should immediately and permanently move to one of the top 6 servers.

There are not enough of us to fully fill out every NA server. If you want consistently competitive games, you are going to need to group up with the top two tiers and help further populate their maps.

Maybe even top 9, but I doubt it. This is the future, gentlemen. If you want to WIN – you need to be in one of the top 6-9 servers. The rest will only ever dabble, and will NEVER break through the population barrier to the top tier where the real fights happen.

It needs to be the top four servers… not the top 6-9. The difference between the 4th and 5th server is massive. The oceanic guilds have made it this way permanently because they aren’t going to move to make things competitive… they are content winning during off-peak hours.

To summarize, anyone who enjoys competitive WvW should move immediately and subject themselves to ridiculous queue times.

Scoring should be adjusted with difficulty. You shouldnt be awarded as much for doing something difficult. A system like this will help guard against horribly impossible snowball scores of 400k+ vs 50k vs 40k. Thats just not fun.

People play games to have fun, and WvW is the most fun in contested matches so systems need to be in place to keep the match competative.

Basing scoring on difficulty (how hard is it to take keeps with current population numbers) is one step. And its fair because the system will award equal points to 10v10v10 as 166v166v166. If you find yourself playing when your server has a queue and the other 2 dont, maybe you should switch and even out the fight, and probably have more fun in the process, and the systems should be in place to encourage people hopping to disadvantaged servers in your timeslot to improve wvw competativeness.

If your server outnumbers 2 servers combined, what you hold should not be worth the same compared to when there is an even fight. I’m not saying what you hold shouldn’t be worth anything, just less proportional to the difficulty in taking it, clearly marked in the scoring system.

Second thing WvW needs is a way to win after your severely behind. It should be difficult but if you cant possibly attain a win, you are now in a lame-duck situation.

Lame-duck situations are bad bad situations to be in and is really not fun for both sides.

The scoring system can be revamped to both be fair and make sure no server truely snowballs out of control to an unbeatable lead where the other servers are in a lame duck situation.

The other bad situation that comes up is the current king-maker situation where either a server is so far behind, or another server is so far ahead, they get to decide who is in second and third place by forcusing their efforts on stopping the server in third, this is an equally dangerous situation to be in, while its fine if it happens on the small scale but i fear its going to have a more major impact causing the pairings to get mixed up and servers to not be properly ranked where they should be.

Kazim.2043:

Enerjak.2475:

Besides… who says we cannot do the same to them? Each server without exception has late-nighters, people with odd schedules, etc. There is no 1 server doing this. That said, ours can retaliate in much the same fashion, perhaps even meet them and wipe them in the attempt.

Yes you can and you should do.

Actually if you want to win, what you should do is to delete that teamspeak, delete your alliance forum and only focus on getting more people up at 03-07 AM. If you can bring 60-100 people to WvW at 03-07 AM you win.

You don’t need to do anything else. Casuals will handle the rest for you at peak time. Perhaps you can put a commander for each map to help them a bit more, but I don’t think you need that either.

I really don’t want to demotivate you, however that’s the reality of current game mechanics.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t agree with you to extent. I do see room for improvement on ArenaNet’s end. At the same time however, I do not want to see timed engagements, as that would only reward those of a particular schedule, which isn’t right or fair.

I don’t mind re-conquering territory the next day. It sucks that the fort we just conquered and added as [GODS], paid 5 gold in upgrades, etc was taken in middle of the night, likely with minimal defense… I am not contesting that at all.

Perhaps even create upgrades of automated defenses? Automated trebs, cannons, etc. This would not stop the outposts from being taken, but require a substantially larger force to take it over, and meaning a night raid of 30 late nighters wouldn’t be capable of turning the entire WvW around in a few hours by themselves.

Just a thought, though I highly doubt ArenaNet would actually read or respond to such a suggestion.

Mulitplex.2017:

Sky.9347:

All serious WvW players should immediately and permanently move to one of the top 6 servers.

There are not enough of us to fully fill out every NA server. If you want consistently competitive games, you are going to need to group up with the top two tiers and help further populate their maps.

Maybe even top 9, but I doubt it. This is the future, gentlemen. If you want to WIN – you need to be in one of the top 6-9 servers. The rest will only ever dabble, and will NEVER break through the population barrier to the top tier where the real fights happen.

It needs to be the top four servers… not the top 6-9. The difference between the 4th and 5th server is massive. The oceanic guilds have made it this way permanently because they aren’t going to move to make things competitive… they are content winning during off-peak hours.

To summarize, anyone who enjoys competitive WvW should move immediately and subject themselves to ridiculous queue times.

Large NA Prime Time guilds can move to #5 and #6 and turn them into competitors almost overnight.

We all want good tense matches. There is only one solution… everyone has to clump up near the top, and suffer slight queues.

If WvW is important to you, join one of the top servers. Queue times will generally improve the farther away from #1 you get, but that depends on your prime time.

Mulitplex.2017:

Blaeys.3102:

A few days ago, Henge of Denravi took a substantial lead, one that quickittenurned into a statistical inevitable victory. Even people on the server realized this was due primarily to “night capping.”

Then a lot of people (mostly on these forums) said it would kill WvW, hurt the experience, cause people to quit trying, etc.

But then, something very different happened. The battlefields all stayed full – very full. Queue times didn’t go down substantially. Stormbluff and Eredon Terrace continued to push hard and, at many times, maintained the highest number of capture points (often by a huge margin).

That just isn’t something that is sustainable. It isn’t going to keep happening.

I’m on a T2 server and we drew JQ this week. JQ, due to its overwhelming population advantage blew DB and CD out of the water. Next time one of our servers draws JQ… many people just aren’t going to bother. The same will go for ET and SBI as they get rotated down into the lower tiers. Similarly, as T3 and T4 gets T2 flunkies they will get crushed.

They have to fix the system to make it competitive and somewhat skill based. Individual/group player skill and organizational skills of alliances. Timezones shouldn’t factor into this as heavily as they do because off-peak guilds are rare birds… birds that have decided to flock to a couple of servers and stay there no matter what.

They are anti-competitive and they are content to just sit there and win unearned landslide victories. The player base has decided that it isn’t going to fix itself.

That’s where you’re wrong. I would argue that the reason SBI is staying on top is because we don’t get discouraged just because we aren’t winning.

Kittens, man, WvWvW is fun to play regardless of whether or not your work is undone by morning. We will continue to take kittens back and fight like hell to win. Nobody is unbeatable despite their powerhouse numbers at night.

Complaining won’t get your morale up. Head to Lion’s Arch and let people know you are pushing back. Find a guild that will focus on WvWvW and make your game fun despite what happens when you are offline.

Those of us in SBI who fought all week long (even after Monday night’s slaughter) did so because THAT IS WHAT WvWvW IS! It’s a 24 hour a day 7 days a week battle that will eventually last 2 weeks long. That’s what we want and that’s what we play. Getting demoralized only hurts your server and those who keep their heads held high.

Be the solution, not the problem ;-)

Sky.9347:

Large NA Prime Time guilds can move to #5 and #6 and turn them into competitors almost overnight.

We all want good tense matches. There is only one solution… everyone has to clump up near the top, and suffer slight queues.

If WvW is important to you, join one of the top servers. Queue times will generally improve the farther away from #1 you get, but that depends on your prime time.

This is seriously flawed.

DB and CD have large NA alliances which are organized. We held and and traded the lead in points multiple times throughout Friday and Saturday. It was a fun and competitive matchup for those two days.

However, once Sunday evening rolls around and people start to head to bed before work/school on Monday then we get trounced and no one has fun for the rest of the week.

These top servers need to stop thinking that they are winning because of superior players or organization during prime time. They just aren’t and the real reason is population issues during off-peak hours. These blow outs are NOT happening during NA prime time.

While the numbers (population) game is tantamount, organization during any hour of the day still holds great sway.

The more ground/score we buy during the day, the more we can stand to lose overnight. The more we’re organized during the day, the greater our potential at earning said ground/score. No matter what time of day, organization is still important.

Judas.5432:

Mulitplex.2017:

Blaeys.3102:

A few days ago, Henge of Denravi took a substantial lead, one that quickittenurned into a statistical inevitable victory. Even people on the server realized this was due primarily to “night capping.”

Then a lot of people (mostly on these forums) said it would kill WvW, hurt the experience, cause people to quit trying, etc.

But then, something very different happened. The battlefields all stayed full – very full. Queue times didn’t go down substantially. Stormbluff and Eredon Terrace continued to push hard and, at many times, maintained the highest number of capture points (often by a huge margin).

That just isn’t something that is sustainable. It isn’t going to keep happening.

I’m on a T2 server and we drew JQ this week. JQ, due to its overwhelming population advantage blew DB and CD out of the water. Next time one of our servers draws JQ… many people just aren’t going to bother. The same will go for ET and SBI as they get rotated down into the lower tiers. Similarly, as T3 and T4 gets T2 flunkies they will get crushed.

They have to fix the system to make it competitive and somewhat skill based. Individual/group player skill and organizational skills of alliances. Timezones shouldn’t factor into this as heavily as they do because off-peak guilds are rare birds… birds that have decided to flock to a couple of servers and stay there no matter what.

They are anti-competitive and they are content to just sit there and win unearned landslide victories. The player base has decided that it isn’t going to fix itself.

That’s where you’re wrong. I would argue that the reason SBI is staying on top is because we don’t get discouraged just because we aren’t winning.

Kittens, man, WvWvW is fun to play regardless of whether or not your work is undone by morning. We will continue to take kittens back and fight like hell to win. Nobody is unbeatable despite their powerhouse numbers at night.

Complaining won’t get your morale up. Head to Lion’s Arch and let people know you are pushing back. Find a guild that will focus on WvWvW and make your game fun despite what happens when you are offline.

Those of us in SBI who fought all week long (even after Monday night’s slaughter) did so because THAT IS WHAT WvWvW IS! It’s a 24 hour a day 7 days a week battle that will eventually last 2 weeks long. That’s what we want and that’s what we play. Getting demoralized only hurts your server and those who keep their heads held high.

Be the solution, not the problem ;-)

I was demoralized on Tuesday, I admit that. It felt bad having worked so hard, and wound up with so little.

By the time I got home Tuesday, I didn’t fight WvW because of some high-falootin (yea, I spelled it) idea of honor or fairness, I did it because those motherkitteners took my stuff away while I slept and would pay dearly for their mistake.

And I knew we weren’t going to win (even though we kicked major kitten on the weekend), but I also knew that every time I helped wipe an HoD group I would make them pay just a little bit more for their arrogance in stepping foot on SBI soil.

Judas.5432:

That’s where you’re wrong. I would argue that the reason SBI is staying on top is because we don’t get discouraged just because we aren’t winning.

Kittens, man, WvWvW is fun to play regardless of whether or not your work is undone by morning. We will continue to take kittens back and fight like hell to win. Nobody is unbeatable despite their powerhouse numbers at night.

Complaining won’t get your morale up. Head to Lion’s Arch and let people know you are pushing back. Find a guild that will focus on WvWvW and make your game fun despite what happens when you are offline.

I’m not referring to SBI, ET, or JQ with my posts. I’m talking about the rest of the servers without significant off-peak presence. The guilds that are all piling onto the top 4 servers have a skewed view on what is good and what is bad. They are submitting themselves to queue issues in order to win.

To clarify: complaining will hopefully get ANet to realize the problem. That is why people are complaining here.

Mulitplex.2017:

Sky.9347:

Large NA Prime Time guilds can move to #5 and #6 and turn them into competitors almost overnight.

We all want good tense matches. There is only one solution… everyone has to clump up near the top, and suffer slight queues.

If WvW is important to you, join one of the top servers. Queue times will generally improve the farther away from #1 you get, but that depends on your prime time.

This is seriously flawed.

DB and CD have large NA alliances which are organized. We held and and traded the lead in points multiple times throughout Friday and Saturday. It was a fun and competitive matchup for those two days.

However, once Sunday evening rolls around and people start to head to bed before work/school on Monday then we get trounced and no one has fun for the rest of the week.

These top servers need to stop thinking that they are winning because of superior players or organization during prime time. They just aren’t and the real reason is population issues during off-peak hours. These blow outs are NOT happening during NA prime time.

That isn’t what I meant. And I mean no offense, or passive aggression. I am being 100% serious.

I thought this population imbalance was a problem ANet could help with. They have said they are looking for ways to let guilds keep their influence, and they also said they will make no changes to the game for these population imbalances.

Well, okay then. Question answered. Let’s move forward.

The only solution is for most serious WvW players to play with each other. Since we are only 20-30% of the population, 30-40% of the top servers should be where we all go.

The top 30-40% (7-9) servers should be filled to the brim with everyone kittenally wants to play WvW to win. The other 60-70% of servers will dabble in WvW and hopefully will be relatively matched.

Queues might be a small issue, but that comes to each individuals preference.

If it is important to YOU, then YOU make a choice for YOU and move YOURSELF to a server that has a chance to be competitive. I’m not saying flock to HoD, I’m saying the top 2 or 3 tiers of matches.

It is a reasonable solution, given the current situation… is it not?

EDIT: r e a l l y becomes kittenlly?

Sky.9347:

That isn’t what I meant. And I mean no offense, or passive aggression. I am being 100% serious.

I thought this population imbalance was a problem ANet could help with. They have said they are looking for ways to let guilds keep their influence, and they also said they will make no changes to the game for these population imbalances.

Well, okay then. Question answered. Let’s move forward.

The only solution is for most serious WvW players to play with each other. Since we are only 20-30% of the population, 30-40% of the top servers should be where we all go.

The top 30-40% (7-9) servers should be filled to the brim with everyone kittenally wants to play WvW to win. The other 60-70% of servers will dabble in WvW and hopefully will be relatively matched.

Queues might be a small issue, but that comes to each individuals preference.

If it is important to YOU, then YOU make a choice for YOU and move YOURSELF to a server that has a chance to be competitive. I’m not saying flock to HoD, I’m saying the top 2 or 3 tiers of matches.

It is a reasonable solution, given the current situation… is it not?

I like your approach to discussing the subject… for starters.

My concern here is that we could all move our guilds to the top four servers… and it’ll bring them crashing to the ground. We’re going to ramp up the queue times during prime to the point of being ridiculous and none of us will be able to WvW at all. If everyone is serious about playing there like you say the queue times may never get to a reasonable points.

I couldn’t care less about guild upgrades at this point. The queue is the bad part. I also consider myself to be serious about PVP and I’m in a guild that does only WvW.

Sky.9347:

EDIT: r e a l l y becomes kittenlly?

“W.h.o. really”, first 5 letters. Rhymes with shore.

RamonDomke.9638:

Night capping is one of those valid tactics to score some points in a lasting battle – to get your world the upper hand, or cancel out daytime supremacy by another well coordinated opponent..

What are we debating here? Anet recognizes night capping as a valid tactic.

Spreading competition to several servers is always a better solution than joining in 3-4 one. And this won’t work on EU with several Language specific servers which are already full.

Again with this scoring system players playing on off-time will have huge advantage against players playing in peak-time. Why punishing peak time players more although they are getting beaten by queues already.

ANet can fix this issue quite easily with some adjustments to scoring system which will take current population to account. Why we have to leave our worlds, our accomplishments, our friend, our community and all the other things to fix their game for them.

If that was their purpose at the start, they could flag servers as WvW and non-WvW so we would know where to go.

Cyclonite.5786:

RamonDomke.9638:

Night capping is one of those valid tactics to score some points in a lasting battle – to get your world the upper hand, or cancel out daytime supremacy by another well coordinated opponent..

What are we debating here? Anet recognizes night capping as a valid tactic.

The German Community Manager recognizes it, does that matter? Is the CM part of the WvW dev team? Mike Ferguson recognizes it dating back a few weeks ago.

The hope is that Mike (who is the one that really matters here) will change his mind and fix the kitten game. Hope that sums it upf or you.

Kazim.2043:

Again with this scoring system players playing on off-time will have huge advantage against players playing in peak-time. Why punishing peak time players more although they are getting beaten by queues already.

There are no “peak” or “off peak” times. It’s 24/7. Go play sPvP, please.

Cyclonite.5786:

What are we debating here? Anet recognizes night capping as a valid tactic.

Night-capping is a valid tactic. However it’s too strong so we want it to get balanced.

Felix.3028:

There are no “peak” or “off peak” times. It’s 24/7. Go play sPvP, please.

When they implement 40 vs 40 sPvP I’ll do it. For now as I love Mass PvP I’ll stick to WvW. Thx for the suggestion though.

Kazim.2043:

When they implement 40 vs 40 sPvP I’ll do it. For now as I love Mass PvP I’ll stick to WvW. Thx for the suggestion though.

I love my wife and I don’t kitten about her every day to anyone who’ll listen. So I suspect you don’t love WvW as much as you think.

The entire problem is that there is a “winner” and 2 “losers” to begin with. The “magic” if you will of DAoC’s RvR was the fact that there never was a winner or loser. It wasnt’ about the points to win a match. The war in the frontiers has been waged now for 10 years and never has anyone “won”. That is what keeps people interested, you never lose hope you don’t wait on some arbitrary “it’s over, let’s reset”.

Do away with the point and ranking system as it stands and simply group servers into sets of 3. The queue times will be enough to eventually even out playerbases as there is no “winner” why not go play on the server with only a 10 minute as opposed to a 2 hour queue.

As long as games end and the world resets on a regular basis, there will always be the crowd that just gives up on a tough match and waits for reset, only further exacerbating the issue.

Kazim.2043:

Cyclonite.5786:

What are we debating here? Anet recognizes night capping as a valid tactic.

Night-capping is a valid tactic. However it’s too strong so we want it to get balanced.

America is not the only country who plays this game, there is no such thing as night capping. If there’s a possible way the points could be toned down if 1 server has a lot more players then the others, then I’d like that but as for off peak/on peak time, it doesn’t exist.

Cloud.7613:

America is not the only country who plays this game, there is no such thing as night capping. If there’s a possible way the points could be toned down if 1 server has a lot more players then the others, then I’d like that but as for off peak/on peak time, it doesn’t exist.

I’m playing at EU not NA.

Peak Time is the time when server population reaches it peak. And yes it exists. Though it might be different for different servers.

It’s easy to make a scoring system checking populations to make it even for all servers.

Kazim.2043:

Cloud.7613:

America is not the only country who plays this game, there is no such thing as night capping. If there’s a possible way the points could be toned down if 1 server has a lot more players then the others, then I’d like that but as for off peak/on peak time, it doesn’t exist.

I’m playing at EU not NA.

Peak Time is the time when server population reaches it peak. And yes it exists.

That is absolutely clueless and self-centered. That attitude makes me pray this doesn’t change, because the ones who have a problem with it, will go to sPvP or quit, dont matter to me. I’m Oceanic and if I’m penalized for being across a big ocean, I think this goes further then on peak/off peak time zones.

Mulitplex.2017:

Sky.9347:

That isn’t what I meant. And I mean no offense, or passive aggression. I am being 100% serious.

I thought this population imbalance was a problem ANet could help with. They have said they are looking for ways to let guilds keep their influence, and they also said they will make no changes to the game for these population imbalances.

Well, okay then. Question answered. Let’s move forward.

The only solution is for most serious WvW players to play with each other. Since we are only 20-30% of the population, 30-40% of the top servers should be where we all go.

The top 30-40% (7-9) servers should be filled to the brim with everyone kittenally wants to play WvW to win. The other 60-70% of servers will dabble in WvW and hopefully will be relatively matched.

Queues might be a small issue, but that comes to each individuals preference.

If it is important to YOU, then YOU make a choice for YOU and move YOURSELF to a server that has a chance to be competitive. I’m not saying flock to HoD, I’m saying the top 2 or 3 tiers of matches.

It is a reasonable solution, given the current situation… is it not?

I like your approach to discussing the subject… for starters.

My concern here is that we could all move our guilds to the top four servers… and it’ll bring them crashing to the ground. We’re going to ramp up the queue times during prime to the point of being ridiculous and none of us will be able to WvW at all. If everyone is serious about playing there like you say the queue times may never get to a reasonable points.

I couldn’t care less about guild upgrades at this point. The queue is the bad part. I also consider myself to be serious about PVP and I’m in a guild that does only WvW.

Not the top 4, the top 6 or 9. The top 4 are full except in certain time slots, so unless you fit into that time slot it’s best to move down the rankings a bit.

It doesn’t matter what rank the world is currently, only that they are in the top 6 or 9. Reason being is past performance is irrelevant, current WvW interest (participation) is critical.

As a parent and a professional, I assume that ANet has made their call and they are going to stick with it. I can respect that, and I do not have the time or inclination to argue with them.

The way I see it, we have three choices right now…

1) Selective, targeted recruitment to specific servers of specific guilds.
2) The entire WvW crowd spreads out evenly among all 24 servers.
3) The WvW core crowd clumps up in the top few servers (again, 6-9) in order to experience the best types of WvW games – close, contested, tense, with a heavy dose of strategy, planning, and cooperation.

So, my thoughts on each:

1) I do not represent a large guild, or any significant portion of the population. This option is beyond my reach, except for advertising spam on the forums and I don’t want to do that.
2) Recent history and a basic knowledge of human behavior in groups implies that this will likely never happen on any scale that would make any meaningful impact.
3) This seems like a workable solution. It has the drawback of queue times, but again that is something each person will have to experience and weigh for himself.

Cloud.7613:

That is absolutely clueless and self-centered. That attitude makes me pray this doesn’t change, because the ones who have a problem with it, will go to sPvP or quit, dont matter to me. I’m Oceanic and if I’m penalized for being across a big ocean, I think this goes further then on peak/off peak time zones.

You’re not gonna get penalized. You’re getting balanced so that you’ll have the same effect on score with rest of the world.

Felix.3028:

Sky.9347:

EDIT: r e a l l y becomes kittenlly?

“W.h.o. really”, first 5 letters. Rhymes with shore.

Heh… clever forums. Thanks for the insight.

Kazim.2043:

Cloud.7613:

That is absolutely clueless and self-centered. That attitude makes me pray this doesn’t change, because the ones who have a problem with it, will go to sPvP or quit, dont matter to me. I’m Oceanic and if I’m penalized for being across a big ocean, I think this goes further then on peak/off peak time zones.

You’re not gonna get penalized. You’re getting balanced so that you’ll have the same effect on score with rest of the world.

I’ve not seen anyone prove how a good method will help even out peak times, just people with issues. If anything it’s abuse-able. My server, would only WvWvW at our prime time, so it would be WvW. When it’s our prime time, we log in and dominant, then leave. ??? Beats the purpose really.

Or you know, just make the score clock be calculated based on the number of players in WvW…

Not number of players, but difference between the numbers, see my post above.

The point isnt to make nightcapping or off peak playing less valued. Its to make overpopulation undersireable, to try to push people to join servers without similar populations at similar times.

I see no difference between 50 on 50 on 50 vs 166 on 166 on 166, in terms of difficulty.

But when its 166 vs 10 vs 5, whatever the team with 166 is doing should be worth far less, because its easy.

Cloud.7613:

I’ve not seen anyone prove how a good method will help even out peak times, just people with issues. If anything it’s abuse-able. My server, would only WvWvW at our prime time, so it would be WvW. When it’s our prime time, we log in and dominant, then leave. ??? Beats the purpose really.

No, it’s more like you’ll get more points with 166 people online compared to 20 people online. So whatever your numbers is each men will have the same effect to overall score.

Right now 20 men getting online with a good timing, can negate all the accomplishments 166 men did through whole day. Even though I accept this is a valid tactic, I believe it’s too strong and should be balanced out.

Kazim.2043:

Cloud.7613:

I’ve not seen anyone prove how a good method will help even out peak times, just people with issues. If anything it’s abuse-able. My server, would only WvWvW at our prime time, so it would be WvW. When it’s our prime time, we log in and dominant, then leave. ??? Beats the purpose really.

No, it’s more like you’ll get more points with 166 people online compared to 20 people online. So whatever your numbers is each men will have the same effect to overall score.

Right now 20 men getting online with a good timing, can negate all the accomplishments 166 men did through whole day. Even though I accept this is a valid tactic, I believe it’s too strong and should be balanced out.

So, you think zerg > tactic? lol?

Lets just kill oceanic servers and put them together? sounds legit.

My server cannot accomplish to get 166 players, the only chance we have is to take advantage of what WvWvW is about, 24/7 PvP. There are no rules, maybe you’d be better off playing sPvP? no?

Cloud.7613

I’ve not seen anyone prove how a good method will help even out peak times, just people with issues. If anything it’s abuse-able. My server, would only WvWvW at our prime time, so it would be WvW. When it’s our prime time, we log in and dominant, then leave. ??? Beats the purpose really.

If you throttle the matchup so that no one can field more players than the lowest server in the group at any given time (give or take) then you would force the Oceanic guilds to spread out and improve competition.

Yes, its a kitteny thing to do but at this point the oceanic guilds have basically told everyont to screw off and they’ll do what they want. This forces them to spread out and make the environment competitive.

To be fair, you could also do the same thing to prime time NA guilds but you’ll find that it doesn’t have any impact since they are maxing out the zones anyway during this time.

Mulitplex.2017:

Cloud.7613

I’ve not seen anyone prove how a good method will help even out peak times, just people with issues. If anything it’s abuse-able. My server, would only WvWvW at our prime time, so it would be WvW. When it’s our prime time, we log in and dominant, then leave. ??? Beats the purpose really.

If you throttle the matchup so that no one can field more players than the lowest server in the group at any given time (give or take) then you would force the Oceanic guilds to spread out and improve competition.

Yes, its a kitteny thing to do but at this point the oceanic guilds have basically told everyont to screw off and they’ll do what they want. This forces them to spread out and make the environment competitive.

To be fair, you could also do the same thing to prime time NA guilds but you’ll find that it doesn’t have any impact since they are maxing out the zones anyway during this time.

And?

I do what I want, and I am not an Oceanic player. They SHOULD say “screw off, I’ll do what I want” because they aren’t obligated to you, or ANet, or anyone else here. (generally speaking)

Why do people keep talking about this issue like it is a tactical one? Sure in the old days of DAoC we did alarm clock raids, that was a tactical effort. Simply having a large portion of your server living in an alternate time zone that lets them play normally against no opponents, is not a tactical effort.

This is a population balance issue, not a tactical issue.

Cloud.7613:

My server cannot accomplish to get 166 players, the only chance we have is to take advantage of what WvWvW is about, 24/7 PvP. There are no rules, maybe you’d be better off playing sPvP? no?

If you can’t bring 166 players to WvW perhaps you should match up with servers which can not bring 166 players to there? Does it feel fair for you?

Sky.9347:

And?

I do what I want, and I am not an Oceanic player. They SHOULD say “screw off, I’ll do what I want” because they aren’t obligated to you, or ANet, or anyone else here. (generally speaking)

That’s fine and that’s what I’d expect that you’d say. That is why people are asking ANet to fix you regardless of your thoughts on the issue.

Mulitplex.2017:

Cloud.7613

I’ve not seen anyone prove how a good method will help even out peak times, just people with issues. If anything it’s abuse-able. My server, would only WvWvW at our prime time, so it would be WvW. When it’s our prime time, we log in and dominant, then leave. ??? Beats the purpose really.

If you throttle the matchup so that no one can field more players than the lowest server in the group at any given time (give or take) then you would force the Oceanic guilds to spread out and improve competition.

Yes, its a kitteny thing to do but at this point the oceanic guilds have basically told everyont to screw off and they’ll do what they want. This forces them to spread out and make the environment competitive.

To be fair, you could also do the same thing to prime time NA guilds but you’ll find that it doesn’t have any impact since they are maxing out the zones anyway during this time.

So you’re telling me, Americans don’t stay up all morning? ok, interesting, I must be vsing nothing but oceanic players, moving on.

Screw off? Everyone I know joined GW2 to play WvWvW because it’s 24/7 fighting. Not whenever Americans feel like PvPing. There are 3 big oceanic presences, Sea of Sorrows(which isn’t doing that well compared to most American servers, I wonder why?), Isle of Janthir(again, not doing THAT well but doing better then Sea of Sorrows) and Henge. And I can bet you Henge isn’t winning because of the oceanic players, Americans are up playing all night too, screw off? When we WvWvW, we have competition. Must be the oceanic population again right?

Cloud.7613:

So you’re telling me, Americans don’t stay up all morning? ok, interesting, I must be vsing nothing but oceanic players, moving on.

Screw off? Everyone I know joined GW2 to play WvWvW because it’s 24/7 fighting. Not whenever Americans feel like PvPing. There are 3 big oceanic presences, Sea of Sorrows(which isn’t doing that well compared to most American servers, I wonder why?), Isle of Janthir(again, not doing THAT well but doing better then Sea of Sorrows) and Henge. And I can bet you Henge isn’t winning because of the oceanic players, Americans are up playing all night too, screw off? When we WvWvW, we have competition. Must be the oceanic population again right?

Nationality and time zone don’t matter to me. What matters to me is that the WvW zones are equally populated as much as possible throughout the day.

Kazim.2043:

Cloud.7613:

My server cannot accomplish to get 166 players, the only chance we have is to take advantage of what WvWvW is about, 24/7 PvP. There are no rules, maybe you’d be better off playing sPvP? no?

If you can’t bring 166 players to WvW perhaps you should match up with servers which can not bring 166 players to there? Does it feel fair for you?

This only proves there is a bigger issue at hand, Free, Transfers. We have had a lot of players, did really well, then they left to go to henge or another big server. A lot of them come back, but it hurts at least my server a lot. I’m sure it hurts others, fix this before fixing a problem that isn’t exactly a massive deal, actually, WvWvW was designed around being 24/7 anyway.

Kazim.2043:

Night-capping is a valid tactic. However it’s too strong so we want it to get balanced.

This is contradicting. Either night capping is valid or it’s not. I just don’t see why people keep complaining and coming up with suggestions to “fix” or “balance” something that has been stated to be working as intended.

RamonDomke.9638:

Higher server population and maximum player cap in world vs. world do not go hand in hand. Yes, there is a statistical advantage of this happening – since you can fall back to a higher number of players. But stochastics and ‘large numbers’ do not per se grant an advantage – since we are talking mere ‘probabilities’. It still could happen that you have a caped out world population – of which no one wants to (or can) play at night.

The free character transfer is NOT a core mechanic of the game – but instead a launch only initiative to balance out server population (to actually prevent the above mentioned ‘possible scenario’). It will go away at some point.

I didn’t read past this point really because it is evident where this thread is going to go. I do have one question. Before free server transfers go away, are there any plans to help guilds out that want to transfer? I.E. let them keep the buffs and such that they have earned so far. I have seen it stated that so guilds would transfer but they have decided not to because they would have to start over from scratch.

As much as some people hate “nightcapping” I am sure the people doing it are going to get very bored at some point.

Mulitplex.2017:

Cloud.7613:

So you’re telling me, Americans don’t stay up all morning? ok, interesting, I must be vsing nothing but oceanic players, moving on.

Screw off? Everyone I know joined GW2 to play WvWvW because it’s 24/7 fighting. Not whenever Americans feel like PvPing. There are 3 big oceanic presences, Sea of Sorrows(which isn’t doing that well compared to most American servers, I wonder why?), Isle of Janthir(again, not doing THAT well but doing better then Sea of Sorrows) and Henge. And I can bet you Henge isn’t winning because of the oceanic players, Americans are up playing all night too, screw off? When we WvWvW, we have competition. Must be the oceanic population again right?

Nationality and time zone don’t matter to me. What matters to me is that the WvW zones are equally populated as much as possible throughout the day.

Okay, so you only care about your day of playing? have you played during the morning yet? Because as I’ve said before, I’m very certain your server has players, just so happens your server lost.