I think this would be a fantastic and fresh change for season 2:
Where instead of 3 servers fightin the servers are split by 3 colours and fight each other with WvW guesting allowed to servers within your colour.
this please. excellent refreshing concept. ++++++++++++
This seems like the perfect solution to the issue. It would really level the playing field, give everyone a chance to see different aspects of WvW and probably eliminate queues on every server.
Win Win Win.
Try 2 since Anet doesn’t like it told bluntly, decipher this:
1) Guest to other server – siegelock them
2) Guest to other server – with a raptor slaying group!
3) Jumping puzzle heros – [JPH] – 20 man raid doing the JP on the server that needs defense.
4) Throw ACs on gates in the middle of the T1 group
5) Fake defense, call out gates are fine when a keep gets tagged
6) Spy other servers with 2nd account (costs less than 25 black lion keys) – Get VoIP – give that VoIP to other groups on your main account.
7) Wear berserker gear and die in AC fire to lure others in to rez you (and it works, trust me, trolls keep doing that to us)
Now, all these are doable now, I agree, but with only 1 server, the griefer’s name gets known fast, I am sure you can all name a few. Now with 6 servers into the mix, it becomes a whole other ballgame. If you didn’t like how WoW dungeons became (if you played that game) when they went cross-server, you know all about the problems that arose. It was no longer possible for a server to shun out griefers and with the added anonymity, even more popped out.
Sure, ANet could program a lot of anti-griefing stuff, but how would it affect regular players?
Perhaps they could lock siege throwing to commanders. It would punish all the tagless groups that try to have fun with friends though. On the bright side, It would also pave the way for Commander ratings, which would be good to give pugs a sense of who not to follow, like the JP-trolling commanders. Then who rates them? Cap taking? Siege taking? Wipes vs Kills? Player votes can’t work because every commander but me is a 0/10 obviously.
Remove JPs? Mobs?
Have each server give an “Official WvW VoIP” and only allow those to be publicized?
Show which gate is being attacked and its percentage in real time on world map?
Simple, it would demand so much effort to counter the side-effects of the system that there has to be a better, superior solution.
That idea just cannot work, other ideas in this thread are far better in terms of fixing the population imbalance problems.
(edited by ptitminou.6489)
One of the current problems with WvWvW right now is also the lack of alliances between servers. The 2nd and 3rd servers of a match should team up against the stronger one, so that they stand a chance. That’s why WvW is a 3-server fight and not just a 2 server killfest.
So, here’s my take and possible solutions.
Problem – The 2nd and 3rd server do not “tag up” against the 1st, which was not expected by the design team.
Analysis – How could servers ally even if they wanted? It is currently not possible to discuss, speak or talk to another server’s player. How could there be an alliance between servers if there is no means to communicate?
Also, all enemies’ players are colored RED by the game, aka – an enemy. When 3 zergs colide, all oponents are red and are “attackable”. Even if a commander tells his players not to attack a specific server, it’s a big big mess trying to tell players apart.
Logisticaly, it’s a nigh impossible to make server alliances – the colors, the absence of comunication channels, the all enemies are equally “red” and “attackable”.
Possible solutions:
1- Allow for servers to speak to each other. If not the whole population, maybe only the commanders, in a commander-specific chat?
For example, the Korean game RF online did this, there was a “server council” made up of 8 players, which elected a “server commander” and only that server commander could speak to the other server’s commanders, allowing for alliances.
If not exactly like this, allow for a solution for the players/commanders to talk to some players on the other server, to form alliances, to come up with strategies.
2-Change the server’s colors. Say, we have currently Red, Blue, Green colors on the maps, which matches a server.
Make the player’s tag from that server to match the Red, blue or green.
Or change colors if you will, but make it so that it’s easier to tell apart players from different servers just by looking at the color on their tag.
3-Design a new system that would make the 2nd and 3rd server from a match to automatically join forces.
Say, even the gap between the 1st server’s points and the 2nd and 3rd servers reaches a threshold, then those two servers would stop being enemies altogether and would team up against the more powerful server.
This “team up” could be done automatically or might need the agreement of both server’s leaders/commanders.
Other hypothesis would be allowing everyone on a commander’s team to see the “allied” server’s players as allies and not as foes.
The specifcs might vary and would have to be worked out but it’s important to be able to tell opponents apart easily.
I belive that implementing easier and cleaner solutions and giving players the tools they need to make the adjustments for themselvers will be more profitable in the long run. And also, it would be a solution that’s has a good cost-benefit ratio.
There is no need for strange, counter-intuitive solutions. Just give to the players the tools they need and we’ll find our own balance and solutions.
Simplicity and elegance are usually better than complex, complicated solutions.
To further my thought on how to fix the population inbalance. Introduce overflows to WvW maps (Red, Blue, Green and Eternal Battleground). Just like the way it work in PVE, in WvW when you first log in, you join your home server WvW map, but once its queued, you automatically get moved to another server’s WvW map, in which you could help another server’s WvW matchup. The only 2 WvW overflow server that you won’t get thrown into is the server your current home server is currently fighting.
This allow guilds in higher tier to play in lower tiers server as well to help it out and guilds in lower tiers to also play in higher tiers without transferring. Eventually the massive queues in highters tiers will force guilds to move out. Guilds who move out could still experience the t1 battles as well via overflow, so its not a big lost to move to lower tiers
Addition thought, instead of moving people to random overflow wvw maps, allow people to pick which server overflow to move to (guest to).
Also make server tranfser free when this happen, but keep the 1 week limit in place
Let me remind anet of their game design philosophy of why overflow was introduced to the game in the first place. Noone should ever have to wait around to play the game
(edited by sil.4160)
Devon, too much credit is given to coverage, and not to killing individuals. Zergs destroy each other in open field, and little is given toward the points of a server’s success. We aren’t rewarding successful kills in such a way that it offsets just idling on points on a map.
I believe that all these posts suggesting score adjustments based upon population differences totally miss the point … which is that it is not fun to play when you are significantly outnumbered. In my opinion, the ONLY way to fix WvW is to come up with some way to roughly balance populations in a match. Otherwise we will get the situation where, in an extreme example, an undermanned server can keep the score close by mostly capturing camps or killing yaks. That’s not a full spectrum of the WvW experience.
At least on my server, the two issues are related. When we are winning in points, there are more players in WvW and activity across maps. When we are losing in points, participation drops.
I agree that for true balance populations would have to be closer than they are, which means abandoning the server v server model.
Many solutions suggested involve complex mechanic changes and balancing. Let’s assume the game mechanics stay as they are. Reset nights are still heavy populated on most servers. 95% of the matchups are decided on Sundays. The WvW is meaningless past there, whether you win or lose as a server.
Simplest solution: instead of one 7day matchup have 7 one day mathchups. Each night is reset night. Each night battles have meaning again. A server could be crushed 6 days but mobilize and win the 7th. Each day you get points.
Right now in NA silver there is no way any server will beat either FA or SBI over a week – so the direct matches are all that matters. With 7 1day matchups, losing points to a mid population server could still happen.
I know that the 7 day matchups were introduced back when siege and upgrades were very expensive. Not anymore. I’m sure all servers would like the “start fresh” each day since it brings a lot more meaning to WvW fights.
Which would be the difference with the 7 matchs or one week match? the peaks off hours would decide the matchup of 1 day. The only days that could be different would be the weekend, but the rest of days is the same.
What would be the point to win one of 7 matchs?
also, having seven resets day after day would be pretty stressful for dedicated guilds.
Many solutions suggested involve complex mechanic changes and balancing. Let’s assume the game mechanics stay as they are. Reset nights are still heavy populated on most servers. 95% of the matchups are decided on Sundays. The WvW is meaningless past there, whether you win or lose as a server.
Simplest solution: instead of one 7day matchup have 7 one day mathchups. Each night is reset night. Each night battles have meaning again. A server could be crushed 6 days but mobilize and win the 7th. Each day you get points.
Right now in NA silver there is no way any server will beat either FA or SBI over a week – so the direct matches are all that matters. With 7 1day matchups, losing points to a mid population server could still happen.
I know that the 7 day matchups were introduced back when siege and upgrades were very expensive. Not anymore. I’m sure all servers would like the “start fresh” each day since it brings a lot more meaning to WvW fights.
Not a terrible idea really. Though I think maybe two or three day match ups more than one day. That way if you get a good match up then you get more play time.
why not make the fights themed?
monday tuesday = server with most player kills wins or most objectives captured wins etc.
wed thursday = classic ppt victory
friday = karma train days, server which karma train the most wins / most jumping puzzle completed wins ( this will lead to mayhem in jumping puzzle which is awesome imo)
weekend = zerg fights
How about tying the maximum number of players on a map to the lowest number of players? So the maximum number of extra players a server can have cannot exceed a certain fixed value.
For example, suppose servers A B C are playing one another. A has 20 people on the map, B and C have 10. If the maximum number of extra players is 10, then A is maxed out and new players will have to queue, but B and C will have no queue. If another 10 players join B, then B will also be maxed out. If 20 players now join C, then C will be maxed out, but A and B will be able to bring in more players, etc, all the way until the server can’t handle the population.
With a well-chosen number of extra players, the weaker servers would never be outnumbered to the point where they can’t do anything. Of course this would need to be fine-tuned, e.g. if A have 20 people while B and C have 10, and then five players on B leave, then A’s players shouldn’t be forced to leave. Instead new players can’t enter the map. A certain minimum of players should be fair as well, so e.g. if B and C only have 5 players on the map, A should still be able to field a minimum of, say, 20. The 15-man advantage would still be greater than the maximum number of extra players, but one does need roughly a 20-man team to be able to do something like take keeps in a reasonable amount of time.
If this is implemented then queue times on the most stacked servers will get incredibly long, especially against significantly weaker servers, so in that case it would be nice to have a grace period of free server transfer.
Summary: have a maximum player advantage number, say 10, above which new players cannot enter the map. Have a minimum player number, say 20, to which the first restriction does not apply.
Are the devs still reading this? Seems devoid of developer posts/opinions/suggestions. Doesn’t appear to be much collaboration going on aside from the usual playervsforum stuff we usually get.
(edited by bradderzh.2378)
Are the devs still reading this? Seems devoid of developer posts/opinions/suggestions. Doesn’t appear to be much collaboration going on aside from the usual playervsforum stuff we usually get.
There are quite a few dev posts in the thread.
It was also made quite clear in the first post that they will take time between posts, since they have other things to do than sitting on the forum the whole day.
I don’t expect this to be either popular or ever implemented but this is my opinion so I may as well give it.
I honestly don’t think that the current system of WvW matchups will ever be possible to balance. The existence of server transfers and the fact that people can and will simply stop playing as and when means that getting stable populations for a period of time in WvW is virtually impossible. With all the best intentions, neither the original Glicko system, nor the expanded matchups nor the leagues have proven to bring balance and blowouts are a common experience.
At this point I think the best chance for balance would be to scrap a lot of the current WvW and restart on a much more time-limited basis, more akin to sPvP but with some significant changes.
I’m sure this would not be a perfect solution but it’s really the only thing I can think of to try to fix it.
Read this thread.
Lots of good ideas. It reminds me ArenaJunkies before pvp in wow completly dies.
Are the devs still reading this? Seems devoid of developer posts/opinions/suggestions. Doesn’t appear to be much collaboration going on aside from the usual playervsforum stuff we usually get.
From what I can understand, the WvW team already has something they are working on and aren’t willing to discuss. This thread was added as a courtesy since they have one for the PvE but they have no real intention on paying any attention to it. According to Devon, the population is not an issue it’s the game mechanics. He is partly right. There is a problem with the mechanics as well but population is still an issue. Pretending it isn’t doesn’t change the fact that it is. Whether ihe effects can be mitigated by tweaking the mechanics is the question.
The game could use a revamp of its supply line modeling in the borderlands and EB.
I have attached a picture of what the current supply lines are like, as well as a proposed revamp of those supply likes from the perspective of the Blue force and Green force on the Red Borderlands.
The issue with the current supply lines is that it is very easy for a zerg to dominate all needed supply points and not need to stay and defend them thanks to the recap timers on the camp boss being longer than what it takes for a zerg to obliterate a smaller defense force at nearby towers, plus the camps generating supply out of thin air even when isolated from friendly control points.
This combination makes it difficult for small mobile havok teams to have the impact they should be able to have in cutting enemy supply lines, forcing the enemy to spread out to defend captured locations instead of moving in a singular mass.
Alternate supply modeling should be used to help combat the natural inertia of mass numbers.
The overall goal of such a redesign of the supply route model would be to make it increasingly difficult to assault additional objectives as each side has a static amount of supply being distributed per tick to all available camps, towers, and keeps.
Each portal keep should be the sole supply generator for each side; and caravans should all originate from there and radiate outward in a web pattern that requires a drop off point to be friendly before the caravan can continue on.
There should be no recapture blackout timers at any camp or tower; either defend it or lose it. The timers disproportionately benefit the side with greater numbers as is.
This would allow small groups greater ability to disrupt supply availability to the current front line in each zone by either destroying caravans or capturing undefended objectives. This would force an assault zerg to reallocate a portion of its forces to guarding each successive captured point; allowing defense forces on the other factions much needed breathing room when outnumbered.
Supply camps under this would no longer generate supply; but rather serve as a lightly defended stockpile point with a respawn beacon that consumes supply per person spawned there. This would put greater emphasis on fighting efficiently; as poor tactics focused on brute force can easily drain your side of supply at those camps; which means greater travel time to rejoin the battle as well as making it more difficult to quickly bring siege to bear on remaining enemy objectives.
This is a very in-depth analysis offering a sound and possibly very interesting and tactical mechanism. Should there be some kind of capture points that are held clear of enemies at all times or the likes in order to make sure zergs have to split up?
I would suggest any spawn camp under this system be unusable for respawn or teleporting as long as the camp is contested (enemy in the capture circle).
A small force or even a wily individual could cut supply and reinforcement lines at a critical moment this way unless regular patrols are made, which would force a zerg to slowly fracture as it captured more objectives to defend them or immediately lose them to an even moderately persistent havoc squad.
Edit: and the reason I suggest this is that in order to cut down on “server stack to win”, you also have to address “zerg to win”.
this is a great idea. to make it work even better, a commander could “tag” an objective for the squad, and anyone in his squad participating in “defend” events along the supply line would get credit for the “attack” event on the front line as well (if it was successful).
It’s all about timezone coverage.
The big alliances that formed before the game launched had this all figured out early on, and as a result 2 servers sat at numbers 1 & 2 until their alliances finally disbanded out of boredom.
When people say “the other server has way more people than my server does!”, what they usually mean is one of two thing: either
1.) the other server has more people all in one place (their whole map comes together to zerg),
or
2.)the other server has more people on when most of my server is asleep.
Problem number 2 is what people are often talking about when they talk about “Population Imbalances”. It’s rare that 2 servers whose populations in every timezone are severely imbalanced would even meet each other in WvW. Most of the time, people get on at 2 am and see that the other server has their server outnumbered on 1 or more maps, and that is often referred to as population imbalance.
Broken record suggestion: turn 7 day matchups into 7 one day matchups with resets every night.
The following assumptions I consider true:
1. The population imbalance does not reflect the number of WvWers on a server, but the numbers of WvWers that are willing to do WvW. The same server (SBI in my case) can have outmanned on all four maps one week (the SoR matchup) and queues two weeks later (like right now at NA prime time). Therefore balancing the population is not done by moving people from one server to another but by getting people from all servers to come out and play.
2. When the score is closer people come play more. I think it’s common sense. Anet did a lot of things to bring casual WvWers into the fight, but most incentives treat players like kids or guinea pigs. Achievement points, Siegerazer, PvE content, Dragonite, Karma etc.
Human beings have higher levels of motivation. The best long term motivation for a casual WvWer to play is the hope for a server victory not PvE rewards. The best long term motivation for a dedicated WvW guild group is the hope for an opportunity to good fights against structured and motivated enemy groups.
That’s why people play more on reset night and maybe 1-2 days after. SBI fought well the first 2 days of our SoR matchup – we knew there was no real hope to win the matchup but we kept it as close as we could. Past Monday, when they had 50k+ ppt there were outmanned buffs everywhere.
If you want people to come to WvW, if you want server communities to grow and build solidarity – you need to give them the hope for victory in every matchup – even if it’s partial victory. Winning one day of the SoR matchup, or even getting close, would have been incredibly positive for our server morale. If last matchup YB would have won the first 1-2 daily matchups against FA, they would have been thrilled regardless of the total match-up score.
The only thing that solidifies the WvW community on a server is significant and hard fought victories. Look for “Robbers Cave Experiment” on wikipedia.
Stomping EB and NSP by 200k ppt was pointless and frustrating for all sides. If there was a new reset every day it would have been a lot better for everyone.
Server loyalty. If you guys ever get population balanced you need to start thinking of a way to keep community on servers. 1800 gems is kind of a punishment really, not reword. So it is also against Anets philosophy.
maybe a set of achievements in the line of wvw league achievements for guild that transfer to new servers, before they can start getting rewards for the fight last week. This also means you need to think of some kind of weekly rewards that are gonna be worth fighting for outside of seasons. pve buffs are not good enought. personnaly i am not even aware of those.
this way people that transfer know it will be for a longer period before their work starts paying off, and also they will grow some kind of commitment to server they transfer to.
The most obvious solution to me is a timezone-bridging capstone event somewhere on the order occurring every 12 hours that acts as a primary accumulator of points in WvW, and uses the number of controlled nodes as a multiplier for the number of points rewarded such that winning it and denying other servers it is the single most important thing to victory.
As it stands, ticking every 12 minutes for points leaves the mode subject to the most subtle of population fluctuations. Constant 24/7 activity is far too necessary, and the point system would be my first consideration for relieving that.
That’s certainly a different direction. My concern here would be that we put too much emphasis on a very specific time of day. It might be the case that we should try and put more emphasis on specific portions of the day, but the more focused it is, the more you encourage everyone to show up at exactly the same time, which makes the queue worse and just lessens the experience for everyone. I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.
Offtopic. Devon can you ask your WvW team to put the alarm/sound function on the WvW queue when the queue pop? So at least we can alt+tab and know when the queue is up =-=‘’’ Really simple fix, pretty please!
The only reason to transfer is for WvW since you can guest to do PvE and sPvP is not server based. A bottom tier server costs the same to transfer too as a tier 1 server. So the incentive to transfer is solely based on WvW ability.
Hello, I recently joined GW2 with my fiance and I would like to share my experience regarding this topic. I have only been playing for a month, so I obviously do not know all the intricate details of this issue, but I do have what I have seen and new player experiences should be especially important for the longevity of the game.
Upon starting, we joined Vabbi. There are people on this server, but it seems that most of the time they are all either in Lions Arch, or Queensdale farming champions. I think we hit 40-50 when this WvW Season began, but since then not so much.
In our borderlands, we are persistently outnumbered, and leaving the citadel in force results in us being wiped out by forces 3-4 times out size. We simply cannot gain any momentum or force or have any fun in this area. We can take the occasional camp/tower and once or twice I have seen us take a keep for a few minutes, but if we encounter our opponents, we die. Chat tends to be full of “stack” and various strategies, but it does nothing in a 20 vs 60 fight.
In Eternal Battlegrounds, things are a bit better and it seems to be the focus of our attention. Vabbi Overlook is held by us sometimes, and we tend to wander around trying to hold on to our 33% of the map. In the first week of the season we even managed to do some very memorable attacks beyond this. None of the attempts I was a part of worked, but it was fun. Since then, other than one or two keep defences that we managed it has been as one sided as our borderlands, with enemy zergs 3-4x our number ripping us apart.
I really enjoy WvW, even in this state, but week on week its getting harder to do anything. Me and my fiance have even been trying to do the jumping puzzles, but they are swarming with enemies too.
This issue goes beyond WvW, it is extremely difficult to do the world events due to lack of people. I have never seen the Scarlett invasion event go past the first wave, and many of the other world bosses I have yet to experience. I did see one coordinated group going through them the other day however, and we managed to take down Jormag, something I have previously tried to solo a few times as that zone (along with all the other none-queensdale zones) are just devoid of life.
Why is this?
I believe the recent free transfers to other medium population servers screwed us. I have heard (again, in queensdale only) chat of guilds losing their key members, all of which went to Ruins of Surmia to get a better WvW experience. It feels like I have joined this game and been directed to a sinking ship of a server (when we joined there were only 2 mediums listed, Vabbi and Whiteside Ridge). I do wonder why transfers were not specifically for the servers that needed the infusion of players. If queues exist on the larger servers, it seems logical people would want to escape them. Instead it appears to me that all the serious players went to the same few servers, leaving the rest of us without a chance. Its not that we cant be competitive, its that we cannot even learn to be.
Vabbi WvW is full of friendly and helpful people. We have fun losing, however few of us there may be. But I dont think I can keep playing like this for long, we are missing out on a lot of WvW. Its not a war, its us running around in circles retaking 4 towers and 2 resources camps, then being killed by a ton of enemies and then losing our keep.
For those who say that we simply need to get better/coordinated, people are doing that and have been since I started. Theres a server teamspeak, forum, website, but none of these fix the issue of manpower. While the other servers have full forces on all 4 maps, we cant even put up a fight on 1. Its clear as day we do not stand a chance and that is not going to change, so why would people bother coming to WvW?
I believe the focus has to be on making us more competitive – making it easier for us to stand up to such odds. I had one idea about upgrades. We do not seem to have them a lot of the time. They take time to build and we simply dont hold on to anything for time. During the first week we had Vabbi Overlook built up a lot and that really helped, we had a base to strike out from, and when it was attacked everyone rallied around to defend it. It seemed that it meant something to us as a community, a symbol of our resistance. Then night fell, and it would all be lost during the night, and people gave up.
Proposal: Give worlds in our position some upgrades that affect the few points we own. It may help morale and raise player participation if we can hold on to our small corner of WvW and get back into our lost fights a bit easier. For example, if our keeps always had waypoints available, even when contested, our 20 players would be able to slow down the 60 players outside the gate a bit easier. Is it unfair? Yes. Thats why we need some help.
Other than that, please just open up free transfers to the servers that actually need it in future.
1) Tiers should be set and matchups should be permanent with no reset ever.
2) Transfer costs should be relative to the server pop within the tier, so for example it would free to transfer to the lowest pop server in kitten, T3, etc. but expensive to transfer to the highest pop server within any given tier.
This would accomplish 2 things:
1) with permanent matchups, rivalries and server pride would flourish.
2) if a given tier was unbalanced, people would move around to balance it because they know it’s never going to change on its own. blowout matches are boring for both sides and with no prospect of the matchup changing, people would transfer within the tier in order to find competition.
Why not introduce a new type of mobile siege.. kind of like a golem. Call it a titan or destroyer or something. Anyways make this mobile siege’s purpose to both smash down walls and doors, but also to zerg bust. Make it both offensively and defensively strong.
Give it 3 attacks that are strong against groups, and 1 attack capable of knocking down doors and walls, and the last button having it propel forward like a teleport. Make it so the attacks scale in damage with the more people clumped together. Have it so it’s like an HP sponge (like that legendary candy corn boss), so it could take a zerg quite some time to kill it off, but to do so safely, they’d have to do it from range.
Anyone can buy and build it, though it shouldn’t be cheap to buy or build. Have it so it can’t be traded on the AH. Allow no more than 2 per server, per map at at time.
As for when/how it can be activated? Perhaps when the population differential is at least 1.5 to 1. At least 10 people have to be on the server to activate it. If more people come onto the map evening out the ratio, the siege deactivates and auto-teleports back to the main base.
This could work in both evening out the population and creating a more fair match. I’d also allow free transfers as well, because it really should be in players best interest to find a server where the matches are even so they don’t have to deal with this siege on the map.
The game could use a revamp of its supply line modeling in the borderlands and EB.
I have attached a picture of what the current supply lines are like, as well as a proposed revamp of those supply likes from the perspective of the Blue force and Green force on the Red Borderlands.
The issue with the current supply lines is that it is very easy for a zerg to dominate all needed supply points and not need to stay and defend them thanks to the recap timers on the camp boss being longer than what it takes for a zerg to obliterate a smaller defense force at nearby towers, plus the camps generating supply out of thin air even when isolated from friendly control points.
This combination makes it difficult for small mobile havok teams to have the impact they should be able to have in cutting enemy supply lines, forcing the enemy to spread out to defend captured locations instead of moving in a singular mass.
Alternate supply modeling should be used to help combat the natural inertia of mass numbers.
The overall goal of such a redesign of the supply route model would be to make it increasingly difficult to assault additional objectives as each side has a static amount of supply being distributed per tick to all available camps, towers, and keeps.
Each portal keep should be the sole supply generator for each side; and caravans should all originate from there and radiate outward in a web pattern that requires a drop off point to be friendly before the caravan can continue on.
There should be no recapture blackout timers at any camp or tower; either defend it or lose it. The timers disproportionately benefit the side with greater numbers as is.
This would allow small groups greater ability to disrupt supply availability to the current front line in each zone by either destroying caravans or capturing undefended objectives. This would force an assault zerg to reallocate a portion of its forces to guarding each successive captured point; allowing defense forces on the other factions much needed breathing room when outnumbered.
Supply camps under this would no longer generate supply; but rather serve as a lightly defended stockpile point with a respawn beacon that consumes supply per person spawned there. This would put greater emphasis on fighting efficiently; as poor tactics focused on brute force can easily drain your side of supply at those camps; which means greater travel time to rejoin the battle as well as making it more difficult to quickly bring siege to bear on remaining enemy objectives.
This is a very in-depth analysis offering a sound and possibly very interesting and tactical mechanism. Should there be some kind of capture points that are held clear of enemies at all times or the likes in order to make sure zergs have to split up?
I would suggest any spawn camp under this system be unusable for respawn or teleporting as long as the camp is contested (enemy in the capture circle).
A small force or even a wily individual could cut supply and reinforcement lines at a critical moment this way unless regular patrols are made, which would force a zerg to slowly fracture as it captured more objectives to defend them or immediately lose them to an even moderately persistent havoc squad.
Edit: and the reason I suggest this is that in order to cut down on “server stack to win”, you also have to address “zerg to win”.
Well it might actually work IF they so much as tried it. Don’t stop hoping hey?
I made 2 proposals to encourage new WvWers on a tier 1 server to transfer to a lower tier server. Please read.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-Priority-Based-on-WvW-Rank/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-Priority-on-Total-Time-in-WvW/28
IMO, new WvWers should be moved before veteran WvWers.
I would like to see that during Season 2 of WvW the prizes are based on the initial preseason rankings of the servers compared to their end ranking of the season.
For example in NA Silver League comprised of SBI, FA, DB, EB, BP, YB, CD, IoJ, and NSP,
the preseason ranking is as followed:
7th Stormbluff Isle
8th Fort Aspenwood
9th Dragonbrand
10th Ehmry Bay
11th Borlis Pass
12th Yak’s Bend
13th Crystal Desert
14th Isle of Janthir
15th Northern Shiverpeaks
If ANet really wants to balance out the servers, have the season set up base on those rankings and if IoJ or NSP pulls an upset and ends up in 5th-7th place in silver league, give those players a more valuable prize since those servers “improved” more so then the rest of the silver league, at the same time, since FA and SBI are already at the top of the league and predetermine to be placed 1st and 2nd, give those players a less valuable prized since those servers are consider to be stacked and the “top dogs” of silver league. But to ensure that potential servers are not “stacked” the day or week prior to the start of the season, have the transfer period of when the players can represent that particular server in order to gain credit for the meta achievement locked weeks prior to that of the start of the season.
The most obvious solution to me is a timezone-bridging capstone event somewhere on the order occurring every 12 hours that acts as a primary accumulator of points in WvW, and uses the number of controlled nodes as a multiplier for the number of points rewarded such that winning it and denying other servers it is the single most important thing to victory.
As it stands, ticking every 12 minutes for points leaves the mode subject to the most subtle of population fluctuations. Constant 24/7 activity is far too necessary, and the point system would be my first consideration for relieving that.
That’s certainly a different direction. My concern here would be that we put too much emphasis on a very specific time of day. It might be the case that we should try and put more emphasis on specific portions of the day, but the more focused it is, the more you encourage everyone to show up at exactly the same time, which makes the queue worse and just lessens the experience for everyone. I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.
Then change the ticking to be AT LEAST 20 minute and MAX 40 minute, a completely random value between 20 and 40 so you don’t know when is the “right” time to take a camp or a tower. Less ticks per day could be a patch for night capping / off hours.
The most obvious solution to me is a timezone-bridging capstone event somewhere on the order occurring every 12 hours that acts as a primary accumulator of points in WvW, and uses the number of controlled nodes as a multiplier for the number of points rewarded such that winning it and denying other servers it is the single most important thing to victory.
As it stands, ticking every 12 minutes for points leaves the mode subject to the most subtle of population fluctuations. Constant 24/7 activity is far too necessary, and the point system would be my first consideration for relieving that.
That’s certainly a different direction. My concern here would be that we put too much emphasis on a very specific time of day. It might be the case that we should try and put more emphasis on specific portions of the day, but the more focused it is, the more you encourage everyone to show up at exactly the same time, which makes the queue worse and just lessens the experience for everyone. I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.
Then change the ticking to be AT LEAST 20 minute and MAX 40 minute, a completely random value between 20 and 40 so you don’t know when is the “right” time to take a camp or a tower. Less ticks per day could be a patch for night capping / off hours.
Would be the same, how can compete a difference of ticks of 240ppt and 245ppt(5 points of difference, normally in PT) with a 400ppt and 100ppt(300 points of difference, normally morning/night)?
you need to make 60 ticks in PT to make the same diffencere in point as like one only tick at night/morning. Plus, there are more hours of morning/night that PT. So I think that scores on the hours which are full maps and is more fun to play are useless and ungrateful.
Actually, the server with more population along the day win the match because the differences that can be made when there aren’t any enemies are too large compared to PT.
All that can be made on the map with a small group is more easy to make it with larger groups. One only gruoup zerging can defend (not attack!) the whole map almost. Bigger group defeat smaller group easy, so the group having a number of people rather than others servers usually gains the map control.
Here are my thoughts on simple, no non-sense, and fairly easy to implement fixes:
Keep Eternal Battlegrounds as it is, more or less
Rotate borderland maps every few hours after first 24 hours of a matchup
Use statistics to re-balance player distribution
(edited by zen.6091)
I believe the population imbalance problem can be sidestepped altogether, if the scoring and reward mechanics were different.
Imagine if scoring and incentives were based on success in actual combat rather than purely on environmental objectives.
An outnumbered server could gather inside a single keep, and if they manage to skillfully defeat all attackers for the whole week, then that will give them the victory, rather than PvDooring empty castles.
I propose:
1. Points per tick of holding an objective is reduced to near zero (but still positive). eg. each tick is 1 hour long, and you get points for Castle (10), Keep (5), Tower (2), Camp (1).
2. Personal rewards for taking an objective are zero, if no players are defending it.
3. The majority of scoring and personal rewards are gained from Siege and Defense events, which occur when an objective is attacked. The score and rewards obtained from these events are proportional to the amount of combat occuring. (see below)
4. Defense events tick every 15mins. The more enemy kills and less friendly deaths, the higher the score and personal rewards obtained.
5. Siege events start when an enemy objective is attacked, and succeed when the objective is captured. They fail if no allied players are near the objective and the objective has not been damaged for 1 minute.
The score and rewards for a siege event scale up with any player deaths in the area (friendly and enemy.)
6. Bloodlust stat bonuses only apply when you are inside/near a friendly objective.
This is just an example, but a system of scoring and incentives like this will encourage epic battles to take place. The siegers are incentivised to never give up, throwing waves of attackers at an objective, and the defenders are incentivised to play efficiently and smart, killing as many enemies as possible whilst not losing allies.
Because scoring is based on combat, an outnumbered server can manage to take the victory if they can just hold one keep against overwhelming odds for a long enough period of time. This means coverage imbalances are less of an issue.
It also solves the problem of PvDooring and karma trains, etc.
I dunno if this has been mentioned, I’m not reading all 13 pages, but I think that, instead of a server merge, there’s a WvW merge. Take the 9 lowest ranked WvW servers, and combine them, like this 1, 4, 9; 2, 5, 8; 3, 6, 7. And then those 3 groups fight each other. The grouping never changes, except perhaps to adjust for population. This would boost WvW populations, without affecting PvE, and would give them a fighting chance against other, higher level servers.
With the populations of Pve and WvW linked you’ll always get an imbalance as some pve servers are bound to be more popular than others. You can put in game mechanics to try and get around the issues, but so long as that link is in place the imbalance will remain.
The scales will always be tipped in favor of the more popular PvE server.
The answer is I believe is to separate the PvE server you play on with the WvW server you WvW on. This allows the population caps on each WvW server to be directly managed without impacting on PvE caps, as well as providing immense benefits to the wider game. For example.
Multi-region play: The reason why we can’t transfer servers at will isn’t technical but because of the impact to WvW. Take away that reason and we can transfer PvE servers at will, enabling us to finally play with our friends in other regions. Just like we could at launch, but without the impact to WvW.
Of course, the current server transfer restrictions would be in place for your WvW sever of choice. I.e you can move wherever you like in PvE, but you cant move WvW .
Protection from server merges: At some point in time, server merges are inevitable. Separating the WvW servers you play on shields WvW from PvE server merges.
Guild buffs: At the moment, change server and you lose all your guilds buffs, influence, bank and missions. The reason for this is WvW. Split off WvW servers and the need for this restriction goes away, thus allowing for true cross server, cross region guilds again.
How would you control population caps on the WvW servers? Well in the same way as you control population on the PvE ones, except this time you know the cap is directly going to affect the WvW numbers making it easier to manage.
Queue times will self-regulate, as people will move WvW servers to ones with a shorter queue and unlike now it won’t cost them the ability to be in their guilds, or play with their friends. In short it’ll make queues easier to manage and the adverse impact on the player is reduced.
Here’s how it could work.
Create a new field on an account, lets call it ‘loyalty’ On logging in after the patch you are asked to choose a WvW server you are loyal to. This loyalty field would not change even if you moved servers.
If you change to another server and its not your loyal one you cant enter WvW or indeed see the map.
If you want to change loyalty that will cost you gems, and have the same restrictions as now.
In short, in any comparison check within the code you are making to see if a player can WvW change that comparison to the loyalty field rather than server choice field.
As for the nodes and the like if you are not on your loyal server have a short message pop up saying “you can only loot this on your loyal server” Thus stopping the economy effects. Now sure you wont be able to gather or loot world event chests but that’s a tiny sacrifice compared to not being able to at all
Server pride is maintained by use of the loyalty mechanic so that’s unaffected. As is spying as it’s possible to have people on different servers in the same guild right now, so this suggestion would change nothing.
In this way we don’t need to redesign the network, servers or routing. We use whatever is in place and working now.
As I said above, not only would this help the PvE community come together, it would solve the fundamental population issues with WvW
(edited by Shanaeri Rynale.6897)
As others have said way too much to read so sorry if I am doubling up others posts. WvW as it stands now is a 24/7 game. But reality is that can’t happen on many servers. So people who want to win a true 24/7 WvW game stack into a few servers (3 in NA) that can more or less play 24/7.
Want a more balanced population? Make a bracket of servers 24/7 game play and give other brackets of servers various 16 (?) hours/24 hours game play (so freeze the game for 8 “off” hours per day). The servers maybe don’t have to be NA and EU (I know our T1 NA servers have European players to fill the EU time zones) but encourage players world over to play on various servers (I know, where do you put the hardware to reduce ping?).
As others have said. Only real reason to transfer is WvW so make transfer costs based on “WvW player hours” rather than total population.
Also, I know it sucks but, reduce players per map in WvW will force queues up and lag down and be a driver to move players to lower WvW populated servers and improve game play for all.
Firstly, I think the suggestion you put forward in the second paragraph has some value to it. In all honestly, it’s probably amongst the most effective that I’ve seen presented in this thread.
However, your first paragraph is completely and utterly ignorant. While it is true that NA is pretty much the only time zone which can queue all four maps, that doesn’t make the job of OC, SEA and EU any easier. During OC prime every single map in tier 1 WvW has some has a force on every map (roughly 20 – 40 people each). Fighting two other servers with roughly equal numbers is still just as much as a challenge, especially considering the room in each map for a second force to hop over and outnumber you with double the people. Not to mention the fact that when this happens and keeps on other borderlands get hit we have to swiftly move around to assist while still being agile enough to hold down our own assigned map. If anything, I would argue that the work put in by OC, SEA and EU is far more than NA which consistently has enough numbers on all four maps to hold down their territory and enough people to spare to sit down to scout.
There really isn’t much of a debate here, it is far harder to score points during NA primetime than any other time of the day. The exact population imbalance that you describe is exactly why this thread is here. When an enemy has double the numbers than you have it is EASY for them to win. While I’m sure there are timezones where there are even matchups and things aren’t exactly roses and pie, right now BG has 60% of everything. Perhaps the BG crew is having a hard time against the 1-2 SoR players though…Let’s ask JQ and their 75% of everything or Fort Aspenwood’s 94%. The point is that right now 6 out of 8 matchups have a server that is that is dominating the maps and having an EASY time. Are you really going to sit back and tell me these points are as hard fought over as the NA primetime points? They simply aren’t and yet they are worth more towards winning, that’s my problem with the whole thing.
The system is bad, we knew that from the very start when ArenaNet didn’t open servers for other timezones and HoD stacked for nightcapping. The question now is how can we reward points based on the effort required to obtain them in order to keep things fair. Personally I’m on board with a combination of points weighted by population/dominance and combining all servers for a 3 way fight. If server combinations per side shift every week then people won’t flock to the winning side/server. If we can include the EU servers into this combination then the “nightcapping” will become a much less prevalent problem and everyone will have plenty of competition.
Success for the game on population looks like this:
1) Border zones have equal populations
2) Queues to enter worlds are short
Achieving (1) – Equal border pops
This can simply be built into the queueing logic. You can only enter if your world does not have x% more than the second highest population in that zone.
Achieving (2) – Short queues
This requires two steps from Anet
- Publish the average queue length for each world
- Allow free world transfers from Long queue to short queue worlds
Over time the border populations will stabilise and all queues will shorten.
World population can ONLY be addressed in a systematic way like this. If you have systemic flaws like we currently do (e.g. there is more incentive to move to a high border pop world than a low pop one), there are no other side-rules or efforts that will fix it.
I dunno if this has been mentioned, I’m not reading all 13 pages, but I think that, instead of a server merge, there’s a WvW merge. Take the 9 lowest ranked WvW servers, and combine them, like this 1, 4, 9; 2, 5, 8; 3, 6, 7. And then those 3 groups fight each other. The grouping never changes, except perhaps to adjust for population. This would boost WvW populations, without affecting PvE, and would give them a fighting chance against other, higher level servers.
The problem with a solution like this is that it gradually goes out of whack over time, requiring you to do it again and again.
As soon as it becomes obvious which worlds are better at WvW, people start moving to them. They need some incentive not to do that. In my view, queue lengths should form that incentive. If you move to a world with high WvW pop you should know that you’re going to be queuing longer to get into the border.
One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars 2 is the spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players. It’s a core principle behind the event system, the skills in the game, the way we created gathering nodes, etc. Simply put, if a change will cause players to be less inclined to playing with other players, we won’t make it. Changes to WvW that incentivize players to avoid others on the map or that create incentives to have a smaller general population on the map create just that problem. When we look to make changes to WvW we look towards encouraging players to play together, finding ways to empower groups of skilled players to be able to make their mark even against superior numbers, etc. Solutions to the population imbalance would absolutely have to take that into account.
This is one of the problems with WvW population, 80 players working together to just roll over the 10 defending players. just do not stand a chance. That’s why I would say that before Anet can do something about population imbalance they need to first do some thing about blobbing. Many of us have seen how our side fun and interesting fights while the numbers are balanced and suddenly the BLOB arrives and just walks over everyone, the players then get discouraged and leave WvW and this just adds to the imbalance. Now with less players on your side it becomes even harder to take back those lost keeps/towers.
Another thing that I think also adds to the feeling of population imbalance is the map hopping blob and Anet should do something about this. It is possible for a 80 man blob to fully supply in their home Garri and then port to the next border and cap both southern towers and keeps without needing to resupply, then resupply again at their home garri and be back in minutes to wipe out the rest of the border. I think that any player changing a WvW or spawning to WvW from PvE should start with no supply. This will discourage map hopping blobs and bring some balance in populations across all the maps and would add to coverage issues. It would also entourage smaller squads of around 20 to 30 players instead of the 80 man blob. 10 Defenders behind walls can realistically defend better against 20 -30 attackers than, 20 defenders can against 60 – 80 attackers because of the supply cost of siege vs the supply carried by a blob. We have all seen that a reinforced gate fall in seconds to a 80 man blob with the monasteries that allow for faster siege building and ram mastery combined, it is as is there is just no door there then 5 superior rams get instantly placed and built. 80 men spawning in my home border and then have to scramble around for supply to attack gives us a fighting chance.
Another thing that add to population imbalance is fair weather players. We see it so often reset is all balanced and this last until prime time ends then one server pulls ahead and starts dominating. Players see the out-manned buff and abandon the maps whit out even trying to put up a fight. Anet can keep the buff but not allow players to see the icon as it is sad when you try to rally players to start the breakout event and the first response you get is something like this “can you not see we are out-manned?”
One thing that I saw mentioned here quite a few times is prime time differences, I think that that although a big factor in the PTT should not be Anets problem when servers can actually sole it themselves by a bit of creative recruiting. get some players from other time zones, recruit players that are often online during your down time. We started doing that on our server and our small night-shift although they cannot dominate everything is a force to reckoned with. this should not be Anet’s headache but our own to solve.
A few thoughts:
1- Population imbalance cannot be fixed/is almost impossible to fix
ANET will not be able to trully fix population imbalance. Think about it…. They can’t simply transfer people from one server to another. It can’t be done against a player’s will. And most people will not change, not anymore. Even if transfers costed nothing, nobody will want to change to a “losing” server. Even if a few players would transfer it will Never be a large amount of players to make a real diference.
It’s too late now.
So any solutions to WvW will not come from that side.
2- WvW has two types of players: PvErs and WvWers
This will always have to be taken indo consideration when considering possible solutions.
PvErs will play mostly for the achievements and for the “material” rewards -chests, badges for legendary items, gold, karma. But especially, they’ll play for the achievements, which brings problems of its own.
Now, WvWers, true WvWers will play for the fun, for the adrenaline of the fights. And for the bragging rights, the prestige.
Currently, there is no real “fame”/prestige in winning trully difficult and awesome fights in WvW. And most fights are just a matter of who has more players.
This has to change
3- Too much design emphasis on attack and few on defence
This one spkeaks for itself. This has to change. Promote and reward defending, but not with PvE rewards only but also with WvW rewards and/or match points. Defence must count for something.
4- WPing around the map should be disabled
Currently, there is no tactical commitement on a zerg going to the far end of a map, capping a tower and still wping back to defend or capping another objective.
It should not be allowed.
I believe every solution that will have a positive outcome must have these four points into consideration.
(edited by Bio Flame.4276)
i don’t think world population is the problem. there is a lot of factor that influence wvw population of a server. too many to identify and to complex. however there is some simple solution for it.
this problem with the imbalance wvw population can be solved with:
1. scaling the outnumbered buff. the outnumbered buff currently helps nothing for the outnumbered server ( 25% exp bla bla bla doesn’t help when you are facing a mob).
adding scaling bonus status should help so the outnumbered server can fight back.
also adding siege engine power to the outnumbered buff seems like a good idea.
2. giving penalty to the overpopulated server. a buff that diminishes wexp, karma, drop chance, or gold drop rate would deter overcrowding. this is not an optimal solution but there is no harm to look at it.
3. queue on the crowded wvw map should be made in corresponded to the smallest wvw population at the moment. currently i am playing in a server that is always outnumbered 1: 4+3, and i am always wondering how could that happened? should add some filter to limit the number of player so the wvw will have fair numbers.
4. give some bonus incentives for playing in a server that have small wvw population.
well there are others but i only list the one i think will have the biggest impact on wvw state
A few thoughts:
1- Population imbalance cannot be fixed/is almost impossible to fix
ANET will not be able to trully fix population imbalance. Think about it…. They can’t simply transfer people from one server to another. It can’t be done against a player’s will. And most people will not change, not anymore. Even if transfers costed nothing, nobody will want to change to a “losing” server. Even if a few players would transfer it will Never be a large amount of players to make a real diference.
It’s too late now.
So any solutions to WvW will not come from that side.
You are assuming everyone is a sore loser. Currently, we are trying to make Sorrow’s Furnace go from zero to hero. Yes, a month ago we had doubts, but the turn outs lately have been awesome and some PvE guild’s WvW night have added a 2nd or even a 3rd WvW night. We are getting there. (BTW, we need an Euro and SEA guild or else bronze will be hard to get out of)
2- WvW has two types of players: PvErs and WvWers
This will always have to be taken indo consideration when considering possible solutions.
PvErs will play mostly for the achievements and for the “material” rewards -chests, badges for legendary items, gold, karma. But especially, they’ll play for the achievements, which brings problems of its own.
Now, WvWers, true WvWers will play for the fun, for the adrenaline of the fights. And for the bragging rights, the prestige.
Currently, there is no real “fame”/prestige in winning trully difficult and awesome fights in WvW. And most fights are just a matter of who has more players.
This has to change
You don’t need that fame and prestige if you are a true WvW. That point contradicts itself. There is no greater reward than being accused in forums of running a 50 man zerg when you know your group couldn’t even pop orange swords.
3- Too much design emphasis on attack and few on defence
This one spkeaks for itself. This has to change. Promote and reward defending, but not with PvE rewards only but also with WvW rewards and/or match points. Defence must count for something..
I would say that the OP arrowcarts means there was emphasis put on defense. The problem is defensive guilds usually can’t fight and when the gates go down, they are walking lootbags. They can’t magically make a player good either. All I say is that I rather defend without siege, the tactical advantage the “1st push” gives a group should be plenty, the lootbags are their own rewards. I would like to see 1 loot bag per player killed, in bags that stack up to 250 that we can open later though. But that’s just my own inventory problems speaking.
4- WPing around the map should be disabled
Currently, there is no tactical commitement on a zerg going to the far end of a map, capping a tower and still wping back to defend or capping another objective.
It should not be allowed.I believe every solution that will have a positive outcome must have these four points into consideration.
Completely agree with you there, if you mean keep waypoints. For the spawn waypoint, which I abuse a lot I disagree, because what happens when you die? You’re perma-death until you log in/log out? Perhaps WP to spawn should remove the stacks/buffs other than food and toolbar.
There are several ways to address the power imbalance between high and lower population servers:
1. Siege. Whenever a server is 100 PPT behind the leader, their siege costs 80% of the normal supply to build. When a server is 200PPT behind the leader, siege costs 50% of normal.
2. NPC’s. Whenever a server is 100PPT behind the leader, all players on the server with commander tags up get an ‘NPC squire’ following them until it is killed or the server is less than 100PPT behind. Siegerazer/Siegecrusher will start with only 5 players present. When a server is 200PPT behind the leader, every player with a commander tag gets a 3-mercenary guard detail as long as the tag is up and the server is 200 points behind. The 3-guard detail becomes a 1-guard detail when the gap falls to less than 200PPT.
3. Bloodlust. Whenever a server is 100PPT ahead of the 2nd place server, it will need to hold 4 runs to get bloodlust. Whenever a server is 200PPT ahead of the 2nd place server, it will need to hold all 5 ruins to get bloodlust. A server that is 100PPT behind the leader will only need to hold 2 ruins to get bloodlust, while a server that is 200 PPT behind the leader will only need to hold 1 ruin.
4. Resurrection. A server that is 100PPT behind the leader will be able to resurrect players 10% faster. A server that is 200PPT behind the leader will be able to resurrect players 25% faster.
5. Defenses. NPCs defending structures, camps and sentry points for a server that is behind the leader by 200PPT get upgraded by one stage (Normal to Veteran, Veteran to Champion, Champion to Legendary). This frees the available defending players for counterattack. Upgraded NPC’s do not give upgraded loot when killed. These upgrades disappear as soon as the gap is less than 200PPT.
There are probably better ideas for how to buff the underdogs, but buffing them would go a long way toward alleviating the demoralization that causes the players on a server that is getting steamrolled to just quit. When players on the losing teams leave WvW for greener pastures it just makes WvW less interesting and fun for everyone.
(edited by Daddar.5971)
Hi Mr. Developer,
Please reduce the map population allowed. There should not be lag in a three way fight, much less in a two way fight! You get just two close to queue servers going at it nowadays, and it lags to timbucktoo and back. If the servers can’t handle this. REDUCE POPULATION!
Thanks
Dear god no. We have 2 to 5 hour queues for EB on JQ. Your suggestion MIGHT be fine for some servers does not make sense for others.
Perhaps GW2 needs to use a overflow per grouping. I.E. Only gold servers players go into into a EB server. They reduce the amount of players on the main map (and and shave the points). Overflow would have very little impact on scoring (just the remaining shaved amount) but you get to play the map you wanted! Those that are interested in doing achievements can do them.
For me its about being able to play on EB. I log in at night, all the other BL are clear, we have everything this week and most of last. EB is all there is. This league action has ruined queues. Overflow might fix both issues of queues and map population.
First of all I would like to thank the developers for taking their time to read these feedbacks from the World vs World players all over the globe.
That being said, let’s jump into some change that could be used for addressing the problem of the world population. The main reason why we have this problem is because players like to be part of the best.
What I’ve been experiencing (like many other lower ranked servers) is that we are becoming the underdogs, the easiest target. People tend to go quicker to our borderland then to the borderland of the other server. Mainly because our coverage is much lower than the best server. This causes massive zergs (cause zerging is easiest) on our borderland. They will take everything for the world experience and wait till we recap it.
This way we lose morale, points and fun (+ nowadays rewards). Causing people of our servers to migrate to the servers with a higher population. After a while the impact of migrating people is visible by less and less numbers, servers downgrade in ranking and a server dries out. (aka BT, vabbi, FoW, RoS etc.)
So what can we do about it?
First of all we can promote the smaller servers. People main interest in world vs world is gaining world experience. People say they will go for fun fights, but blobbing up isn’t fun. It’s just an easier way to get to your loot.
Ways to promote smaller servers:
• Give smaller servers and MF and Wxp boost.
For example:
Rank 1: +0% MF and +0% WXP
Rank 10: +20% MF and +20% WXP
Rank 20: + 40% MF and + 40 % WXP
Rank 27: +50 MF and + 50% WXP
• Let events scale up according to the players in their vicinity
Example:
5 Man raiding a tower. NPC and walls has 100% of their health, 100% power.
10 man Raiding a tower. NPC and walls has 200% of their health, 200% power.
20 man raiding a tower. NPC and walls has 400% of their health, 400% power.
• Defending over attacking
Defending is underrated at the moment. Defending a camp, a tower or a keep gives the same world experience. While defending a camp is often much harder than defending a keep or attacking a camp.
• Revamping EB
1. Give the lowest rating server more power by adding an extra supply camp at their spawn. The supply camp has no supply depot and produces dolyaks that give 15 supplies to towers and 30 supplies to keeps.
2. Get rid of the mercenaries, or alter the mercenaries. If you get rid of the mercenaries, replace this by towers or supply camps. These supply camps can be used for attacking and defending the enemy corner of EB. (Not for supplying your own corner.) If you want to alter the mercenary camps, let them give you things like extra upgrades.
• Revamping BL:
See Overkillengine.6084 idea for that
These recommendations I have at this moment. Also, make a wvw queue list where you can see how many are in front of you.
To me, there seems to be a couple of related issues with the population imbalances, one is allowing the final score to be competitive, and the other is allowing the fights to be competitive. I think that any solution should both minimize the impact to the importance of the way a server plays (such as devaluing points based on the time of day) and limit the cause of contention within a server (such as having a serious bonus tied to the outmanned buff to attempt to equalize the fight, so that when a player joins the map causing outmanned to be lost, the others on the map would rather have that player leave to regain the outmanned buff instead of having that player contribute to the fight). Additionally, I think that changes should be made to attempt to make matchups more competitive/fun, rather than in an attempt to completely balance or level the playing field (as an example, since I am on SBI, a few weeks ago our matchup was with SOR and SOS, with SOR predictably winning easily. In this matchup I would always expect SOR to have an advantage, they have the numerical superiority and that aspect should continue to count for something, but changes could help lessen the gap and make it more competitive and enjoyable for all three servers).
Point #1 – allowing the final score to be competitive:
My suggestion here would be to break each week-long matchup into a series of short matches with each match contributing to the final matchup score. The length of the mini-matches could be anywhere from 4-12 hours, but I’ll use 8 hours in my example. Since NA reset happens at 6pm server time there would be three matches that occurred each day – 6pm to 2am, 2am to 10am, and 10am to 6pm – so 21 total matches in a single matchup. At the end of each match the server with the highest match score would get three matchup points, second two points, and third one point, and the match score would reset to zero (objectives would not reset though, so upgrading structures would still have benefit). This change would help prevent coverage from having as large an impact (i.e. ticking at 660 overnight has the same effect on the matchup as winning the primetime match by 100 points) as well as providing smaller goals throughout the week (sure, our server might not have a chance at the matchup, but can we win this single match…) and help bring relevance to the entire matchup (just because your server was grossly outscored over the weekend doesn’t mean that it can’t make a run later in the week). Total server score could still be calculated for the existing buffs and used to break a tie in match points.
Point #2 – allowing the fights to be more competitive:
My suggestion here would be to encourage the weaker two servers to gang up on the top server. 2v1’ing the top server has long been one of the self-balancing features of the three server matchup, but one that seems to rarely be put into practice. To help enable 2v1, I would recommend allowing commanders on the losing servers to have the option to flag themselves as “allied” (both servers would need to be behind the leader by a large enough margin/percent to trigger the option, and if/once that margin is closed the alliance would automatically break – for example, an initial margin might be that the two servers need to individually be at least 15k behind the leader and a total of 40k behind, and once either of the servers closes to within 7.5k the alliance is broken). Anyone following a commander would receive that commanders “alliance” status. If commanders from both servers flag themselves as “allied” then they would see each other as friendly, but an “allied” vs. non-“allied” scenario would still see each other as hostile.
I have read thru pages of this thread and I see a lot of complex solutions, alot of gaming the PPTs and buffs. Most of what I see is cures for symptoms. The first step is to separate the cause from the effect, identify the root cause, then solve the root cause.
The population imbalance, the stacking of servers, the fact that coverage defines the winner, the outmanned buff, the week after week of lobsided matches are not the problem, they are symptoms of the problems.
I submit the primary root cause, but not the only one, is the fact that servers are allowed to field unequal number of players. I have never played a game which allows one team to field unequal teams as its default mode. WvW allows you to field 70+ more players on one side than the other. Not even GW2 sPvP allows unequal teams. I cant name a game or sport which breaks this rule.
This i would contend is the underlying cause of most of WvW’s problems. Its a violation of fundemental game design. What flows from this flaw is what you would expect of human nature: everyone stacking the teams because stacking is rewarded with what people want the most: and that is to win. Its simple, if the NFL changed the rules which allowed a team to field all the players on its bench (like WvW), and players didnt cost the team money (like WvW), and the winning team gets a super bowl ring, well, the NFL would look like WvW next season with all the same flaws we see now.
WvW WILL BE BROKEN FOREVER UNTIL SERVERS ARE CONSTRAINED TO FIELD EQUAL NUMBER OF PLAYERS. Without this we will continue to have kludges (outmanned anyone?) and incentives, and the horribly complex solutions to manipulate PPTs and buffs when the solution is very simple. You must remove the incentive to change the behavior, and the incentive is stack a map and win the game.
So how do we fix it?
In summary: there are multiple flaws that result in stacked servers, but WvW will be broken until ANET creates a limit which equalizes the size of fielded teams between servers. You cant violate a fundamental game design principle and not have endless bad side effects and kludges.
I will pitch in another root cause for the stacking and that is ANETs attitude of treating the high ranked servers better. Example: we have 3 totally independent leagues in Season 1. why dont they get the exact same reward as a function of where they place in their league? why is the first place silver league reward worse than the gold winner? and the bronze league winner worse still? they dont play each other so why dont the 3 number ones each get the same number 1 prize? cant ANET see this forces players to stack because ANET themselves reward stacking? ANET should make all 3 league winners have the same quality of reward, then there is no reason to say “I gotta transfer to T1 or ANET is gonna screw me out of something worthwhile”
The reason there is stacking (and the resultant pop imbalance) is because ANET rewards it. both in its gameplay flaws, and in the very culture ANET has created for WvW. Pick the simple solution to the WvW problem, not the insanely convoluted solutions ive seen posted – equalized fielded teams in WvW just like every other online game does! that and enable transfers to even out the teams and ANET is on its way to making WvW what it should be.
I have read thru pages of this thread and I see a lot of complex solutions, alot of gaming the PPTs and buffs. Most of what I see is cures for symptoms. The first step is to separate the cause from the effect, identify the root cause, then solve the root cause.
The population imbalance, the stacking of servers, the fact that coverage defines the winner, the outmanned buff, the week after week of lobsided matches are not the problem, they are symptoms of the problems.I submit the primary root cause, but not the only one, is the fact that servers are allowed to field unequal number of players. I have never played a game which allows one team to field unequal teams as its default mode. WvW allows you to field 70+ more players on one side than the other. Not even GW2 sPvP allows unequal teams. I cant name a game or sport which breaks this rule.
This i would contend is the underlying cause of most of WvW’s problems. Its a violation of fundemental game design. What flows from this flaw is what you would expect of human nature: everyone stacking the teams because stacking is rewarded with what people want the most: and that is to win. Its simple, if the NFL changed the rules which allowed a team to field all the players on its bench (like WvW), and players didnt cost the team money (like WvW), and the winning team gets a super bowl ring, well, the NFL would look like WvW next season with all the same flaws we see now.
WvW WILL BE BROKEN FOREVER UNTIL SERVERS ARE CONSTRAINED TO FIELD EQUAL NUMBER OF PLAYERS. Without this we will continue to have kludges (outmanned anyone?) and incentives, and the horribly complex solutions to manipulate PPTs and buffs when the solution is very simple. You must remove the incentive to change the behavior, and the incentive is stack a map and win the game.
So how do we fix it?
- limit the fielded teams to equal sizes, just like every other game does.
- make the remainder wait in queues, like other games
- Dont kick in the dynamic cap till the teamsize is over 20.
- if the teams are equal and one server has people leave then this offset is ok, balancing should only prevent folks from joining a team when that team is larger than the other teams (ie nobody ever gets booted for the sake of balane, let normal attrition do this)
- once this is in place, allow matchups between any 3 servers. thats right, for some matches it means HUGE queues (like for JQ vs AR), but that is what it will take to show players that a) stacked servers have no statistical advantage in winning, and b) stacking to a server means less playtime as a reward for their choice. with even teams, skill and tactics will matter more, where now they almost dont matter.
- keep statistics on which servers are cronically limiting the map pop and make a finite number of transfers avalable for free. Keeping statistics will allow ANET to know the specific number of transfers a server needs.
In summary: there are multiple flaws that result in stacked servers, but WvW will be broken until ANET creates a limit which equalizes the size of fielded teams between servers. You cant violate a fundamental game design principle and not have endless bad side effects and kludges.
I will pitch in another root cause for the stacking and that is ANETs attitude of treating the high ranked servers better. Example: we have 3 totally independent leagues in Season 1. why dont they get the exact same reward as a function of where they place in their league? why is the first place silver league reward worse than the gold winner? and the bronze league winner worse still? they dont play each other so why dont the 3 number ones each get the same number 1 prize? cant ANET see this forces players to stack because ANET themselves reward stacking? ANET should make all 3 league winners have the same quality of reward, then there is no reason to say “I gotta transfer to T1 or ANET is gonna screw me out of something worthwhile”
The reason there is stacking (and the resultant pop imbalance) is because ANET rewards it. both in its gameplay flaws, and in the very culture ANET has created for WvW. Pick the simple solution to the WvW problem, not the insanely convoluted solutions ive seen posted – equalized fielded teams in WvW just like every other online game does! that and enable transfers to even out the teams and ANET is on its way to making WvW what it should be.
Totally agree on this being a root problem. This issue of unbalanced numbers has been raised in a number of threads spread across the forums. It should be THE TOP PRIORITY for the dev’s. No server should be able to field more players than any other on a single map. The silence from the Dev’s on this issue is unacceptable.
Are the devs still reading this? Seems devoid of developer posts/opinions/suggestions. Doesn’t appear to be much collaboration going on aside from the usual playervsforum stuff we usually get.
Pretty disheartening when you see the number of Dev replies in Living World thread compared to this one, but not surprising.
Pretty disheartening when you see the number of Dev replies in Living World thread compared to this one, but not surprising.
Quite logical though.
They have WAY more people working in the Living Story teams than they have in WvW, thus it is much easier for that team to get some time to read and post on the forums.
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