Guild Wars 2

Here is all the proof in the universe that WvW population mechanics are broken to the core.

Obviously these servers have the population to contend, but because PvE population is separated from WvW population you end up with failed game mechanics punishing those who want to WvW.

They should shrink down to 1 borderland and EB at this point.

Looks normal to me…

Yeah, I’m from FoW.

Clever.7918:

They should shrink down to 1 borderland and EB at this point.

So… you want folks on ALL servers to have a 2 hour queue EB + BL 24 hours a day?

Clockradio.3257:

Clever.7918:

They should shrink down to 1 borderland and EB at this point.

So… you want folks on ALL servers to have a 2 hour queue EB + BL 24 hours a day?

I think he meant this specific match-up.

Im currently on Erredon Terrace. Ive played on HOD, IOJ, SOR and JQ as well. Last night during Oceanic prime time we literally had two players, myself included, on our own borderlands. It was literally a 2v5 on our own borderlands. We owned nothing on EB or any other map. I find it safe to say that there would have been no more than about 5 (ET) players in total on all 4 maps at one stage during Oceanic prime time. Now compare that to my time on SOR, where they have the capacity and potential to queue all maps during Oceanic prime time and sometimes did. I say “capacity and potential”because I noticed players/groups/guilds often left a map unguarded on a regular basis on purpose so they could recap it at a later stage.

And that pretty much sums up coverage. WvW is a casual game mode. I believe completely that Anet does not see population imbalances or coverage as much of an issue. Yes its something they would like to balance out a little, but they would also like to integrate a precursor scavenger hunt like they did 6 months ago. Coverage and balance will not be “solved”, not in the way that we see it as needing. WvW will always be about this… grinding for badges, karma and bags. A casual PvE gamemode with a very small component of unbalanced PvP with a bring more mentality. That is all WvW will ever be. This is a harsh reality for a lot of us, you can either come to accept it or hate it and leave.

oh my, is that picture for real?
change server man! (if you want wvw).

10 months after release and this is STILL the #1 WvW issue, yet absolutely nothing has been done about it. gee I wonder why people are leaving this game in droves? this game had such potential but again its lead by Devs who don’t give a rats crap about their player base. instead of putting in tiered population caps on boarderlands they keep spending their time on fluff events. the game has no endgame PvP or PvE content at all, I guess its my fault I keep coming back thinking they are listening only to realize once again that im deluding myself, so disappointing. oh well, once all the MMOs on the horizon launch this game will DIE the quick death it deserves.

jadjay.8701:

10 months after release and this is STILL the #1 WvW issue, yet absolutely nothing has been done about it. gee I wonder why people are leaving this game in droves? this game had such potential but again its lead by Devs who don’t give a rats crap about their player base. instead of putting in tiered population caps on boarderlands they keep spending their time on fluff events. the game has no endgame PvP or PvE content at all, I guess its my fault I keep coming back thinking they are listening only to realize once again that im deluding myself, so disappointing. oh well, once all the MMOs on the horizon launch this game will DIE the quick death it deserves.

The programmers and art team did a great job. Amazing graphics and smoothest launch with few bugs relative to other mmorpgs.

The current Dev team is just driving a game with a great potential into the ground.

Takes a special level of kitten iness to achieve that.

XII.9401:

jadjay.8701:

10 months after release and this is STILL the #1 WvW issue, yet absolutely nothing has been done about it. gee I wonder why people are leaving this game in droves? this game had such potential but again its lead by Devs who don’t give a rats crap about their player base. instead of putting in tiered population caps on boarderlands they keep spending their time on fluff events. the game has no endgame PvP or PvE content at all, I guess its my fault I keep coming back thinking they are listening only to realize once again that im deluding myself, so disappointing. oh well, once all the MMOs on the horizon launch this game will DIE the quick death it deserves.

The programmers and art team did a great job. Amazing graphics and smoothest launch with few bugs relative to other mmorpgs.

The current Dev team is just driving a game with a great potential into the ground.

Takes a special level of kitten iness to achieve that.

Completely agree. This game had the most potential out of any game out there, yet they’re slowly destroying it in such a shameless way it makes me wonder if the kitten developer team is just kittened or hopes to continue stealing money from their costumer’s pockets the Activision “Call of Duty” way.

Yea, this picture just sums up how I feel.

rogerwilko.6895:

oh my, is that picture for real?
change server man! (if you want wvw).

One of the ways matches end up that way …

Sitkaz.5463:

I think he meant this specific match-up.

Wouldn’t help them except for punishing the one server stuck with fighting the two effectively “dead zones” for WvW as has always been the case.

Vabbi and FoW have been the “dead zone” since launch (look at the mos history), you can’t fix that. They are just empty for WvW. The only fix would be to put them in a tier of their own vs. a computer… and they’d still lose. (Also why this thread is flawed, you’re using the ultimate extreme to try and make a point.)

Maybe merge a single server to give even numbers, and then let Vabbi and FoW have their special “empty” tier.

Vena.8436:

Vabbi and FoW have been the “dead zone” since launch (look at the mos history), you can’t fix that. They are just empty for WvW.

Emtpy? I see.. I would gladly invite you to some WvW roaming, so you’ll see how empty we are.. Some respect should be in order here, mister..

Vena.8436:

The only fix would be to put them in a tier of their own vs. a computer… and they’d still lose. (Also why this thread is flawed, you’re using the ultimate extreme to try and make a point.)

Of course, since we are T9 and we are all full kittens in your eyes? kitten , what I’d give to show you some FoW love in 1v1..

Vena.8436:

Maybe merge a single server to give even numbers, and then let Vabbi and FoW have their special “empty” tier.

Ok, I have fed you enough in my other replies, keep trolling..

Well A-net can’t do anything about the one server having more people than the other

wouw.5837:

Well A-net can’t do anything about the one server having more people than the other

Indeed, this is something that is out of the hands of ANet, and yet people always point their fingers to ANet for not fixing this matchups..
Some “solutions” have been proposed in endless other threads, but they would either a) punish the high popped server or b) buff the low popped server, so always some people to complain..

On a sidenote: One thing I know is that people on a low popped server are most of the times darn good WvW players, since they’re used to running/roaming while Outmanned (and yet they keep doing it, no matter what).

wouw.5837:

Well A-net can’t do anything about the one server having more people than the other

Not sure if your being sarcastic or not ^^

jadjay.8701:

this game had such potential but again its lead by Devs who don’t give a rats crap about their player base. instead of putting in tiered population caps on boarderlands they keep spending their time on fluff events.

Yeah it’s a little puzzling. Every month they roll out some of this living story stuff that nobody I know actually cares about. Occupies us for maybe a couple of hours to do whatever content and get the reward, if we actually want it.

I spend far more time in WvW and dungeons than anything else. Yet Anet think their best plan is to focus on content which will generate them cash through the trading post.

That’s short term thinking Anet, please prioritize. Fix the basic mechanics of the game, then get ambitious afterwards.

I actually thought this system of the lower tiered you are the smaller the maps are, the higher tiered, the bigger the maps
PROS:
Fun for higher tiered servers
Fun for lower tiered servers

CONS:
A-net needs to make new maps, which costs a lot of dev time
Lower tiered will never play the high tier maps and vice versa

Hopefully this issue will resolve itself, and here’s how:

You know how Anet is putting different servers against each other? This isn’t just so we at SoR can get free loot bags. Ultimately they’re trying to come up with an accurate ranking system that will put servers against like-strength servers. So abandoned servers will be put next to other abandoned servers, whereas WvW behemoths will have to fight other behemoths.

The problem isn’t being ignored. It just takes forever to deal with.

Well in this case there is no simple solution Anet can do.
Why? Because in EU bracket, there are only 2 servers with little WvW population. FoW and Vabbi.
Other servers like Arborstone, WSR or Blacktide have much higher population.

Only thing Anet can do, is not putting servers like RoF and RoS to fight Vabbi and FoW.

My question to FoW and vabbi: last week against RoF and this week against Blacktide, who has lower population? FoW got already more points that they had for whole week against RoF.

Hule.8794:

My question to FoW and vabbi: last week against RoF and this week against Blacktide, who has lower population? FoW got already more points that they had for whole week against RoF.

It feels like Blacktide has indeed less population than RoF. They normally zergball in one map (20-30), while they leave their other maps little populated (3-5 players). So it’s easier for us (FoW/Vabbi) to lure their zerg away from their active map by just capturing stuff on another map (BT zerg in EB? Get some camps flipped in BT BL, and their zerg will come back). So all we have to do is avoid their zergball, and we should be allright..

With RoF this was another issue: Their main zerg (30-40) was active on one map, while in the other maps they would still have 10-20 players roaming around, taking out any roamers from our servers..

@Tribio thanks, I thought it will be like this.
And if you look at ratings, BT is 24, WSR 25, FoW 26 and Vabbi 27.
WSR and BT has equal population and yet it is bigger than of Vabbi or FoW.

This is why there is nothing Anet can do. There is no third server with population equal to FoW or Vabbi.
Only solution they can do is to delete 3 servers from the bottom. Now its FoW,Vabbi and WSR. Not good solution, but the only one possible.

Perhaps to make things a little easier, the following.

If you are trying to enter a map but that map has a queue you can “wait” out the queue by joining another server entirely. Atleast untill your queue is ready.

You can be put in a map for a server that his horribly underpopulated. As a result high populated servers where people have long queue’s will be able to atleast play WvW while they wait for their own maps. And while playing, they will actively assist servers that are getting steamrolled/brutally outmanned. Obviously the server you join (like an overflow) is not in the same matchup as your home server.

I dont know if such a system can be made, or if it would work properly within the gamecode of GW2 and the server setup. But if it can be done it sounds like a win-win to me.

Terrahero.9358:

Perhaps to make things a little easier, the following.

If you are trying to enter a map but that map has a queue you can “wait” out the queue by joining another server entirely. Atleast untill your queue is ready.

You can be put in a map for a server that his horribly underpopulated. As a result high populated servers where people have long queue’s will be able to atleast play WvW while they wait for their own maps. And while playing, they will actively assist servers that are getting steamrolled/brutally outmanned. Obviously the server you join (like an overflow) is not in the same matchup as your home server.

I dont know if such a system can be made, or if it would work properly within the gamecode of GW2 and the server setup. But if it can be done it sounds like a win-win to me.

Hmmz, what would stop me (when I’m queued for EB so I join another server) to just troll that server then? I’m true at heart to my home server, so meaning I get pushed to another one because there is a queue, just means I get the opportunity to scout this server, abuse siege deployment, …

No thanks, already trolls enough in WvW..

Maybe the player rewards for disadvantaged servers should be increased.

I don’t know what ANET would be willing to do but the only way someone is going to leave a big server and move down to equalize things I think is if they were compensated in some significant fashion.

It might also encourage the players who don’t try WvW to give it a shot.

Personally I don’t think there is enough mentoring going on for people who don’t know how to play WvW. Also what is ANET doing to encourage PVE players to give it a shot.

And the way some of key guilds that keep WvW going on our server look down their noses at us PUGs who play I think also discourages play. Nobody wants to be disparaged or yelled at and it happens too often.

Problem with queue is that you dont see how long it will take. You dont see your number in queue.
On higher servers if suddenly they will se they are 90/100 in queue they will start thinking of leaving server to ones with shorter queues.

Tribio.8531:

Hmmz, what would stop me (when I’m queued for EB so I join another server) to just troll that server then? I’m true at heart to my home server, so meaning I get pushed to another one because there is a queue, just means I get the opportunity to scout this server, abuse siege deployment, …

No thanks, already trolls enough in WvW..

Terrahero.9358:

Obviously the server you join (like an overflow) is not in the same matchup as your home server.

Terrahero.9358:

Obviously the server you join (like an overflow) is not in the same matchup as your home server.

Nicely added there.. However, I still think my statement stands: When a player wants to go to WvW, he wants to aid his home world. If he is pushed to another (not in his tier) world, he wouldn’t be that motivated to do anything good (since all he’s doing isn’t for his home world).

However, I do like the train of thought you put here.. ^^

Tribio.8531:

Terrahero.9358:

Obviously the server you join (like an overflow) is not in the same matchup as your home server.

Nicely added there.. However, I still think my statement stands: When a player wants to go to WvW, he wants to aid his home world. If he is pushed to another (not in his tier) world, he wouldn’t be that motivated to do anything good (since all he’s doing isn’t for his home world).

However, I do like the train of thought you put here.. ^^

It was already in the text you quoted :P

Also i think you overestimate how zealous players are for their own server. If given the opertunity to spend their queue fighting in WvW and actually playing (what most people care about), i dont think they will then try and sabotage the server that is already getting its kitten kicked.

That just doesnt make any sense whatsoever, you arent helping your own server. If anything this might just cause more and more desperate WvW players from this losing server to jump ship and join your server. You know, the one where you are spending a lot of time waiting in a queue. The only people who would do this are kittens anyway and would just as likely grief their own server.

WvW shouldn’t have been so literal. Our worlds should have been labeled countries. Then each week they could have put together or the players chosen which “countries” get put together to form Worlds to fight each other. This way they could have coupled the highest and the lowest WvW populated servers together. Or, it’s simply like sPvP where matches are run on auto and people simply join in the fight.

I think the scoring mechanic should work based on how many enemies are in a map. So if you have no enemies and are holding a whole zone you’re not ticking freely.

One thing that should be considered in this discussion: There are players, who, no matter the circumstances, stay in that outmanned scneario and keep fighting.

If ANet is interested in balancing things out (what I assume they are at least a bit), they shoud look into those players and try to figure out, what makes them stay there.

Another thing is, that the average WvW and PvE population could be used to determin transfer costs, where you could transfer to a lower tier server cheaper than to a high tier server, making it less likely players would stack in one server.

Other thing I have noticed:
Players on lower populated servers are proud of their personal skill lvl and seek out small scale outnumbered situations to prove their skill. That is contraproductive in a Zerg, for those players tend to do their own thing and disrupt the Zerg discipline, while players on higher populated servers lack often skill in small scale combat (what is partually cuased by a more Zerg oriented build, but also by lesser experience in those kind of fights) but have a better Zerg mentality.

I also know ANet is making new maps. Yet it would be a great move, if they would take those observations (if they hold true that is) into consideration and design maps accordingly. I’ve got some ideas how to do that, but I am sure ANet can come up with some too^^

How about using/have the option to use the Obsidian Sanctum as an overflow for those in queue? You can go have some pvp fun in the JP while you wait for your queue to pop or you can stand in LA/pve zone of choice doing your thing.

Sounds like a win/win to me…

Clockradio.3257:

How about using/have the option to use the Obsidian Sanctum as an overflow for those in queue? You can go have some pvp fun in the JP while you wait for your queue to pop or you can stand in LA/pve zone of choice doing your thing.

Sounds like a win/win to me…

I would kittening love this.

wouw.5837:

Well A-net can’t do anything about the one server having more people than the other

Ye, it’s not like they are effectively gods who can put whatever rules in place they choose… oh.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Hopefully this issue will resolve itself, and here’s how:

You know how Anet is putting different servers against each other? This isn’t just so we at SoR can get free loot bags. Ultimately they’re trying to come up with an accurate ranking system that will put servers against like-strength servers. So abandoned servers will be put next to other abandoned servers, whereas WvW behemoths will have to fight other behemoths.

The problem isn’t being ignored. It just takes forever to deal with.

It doesn’t really work like that. All the system does is give a chance to gain or lose rating quicker. And along with that give “abandoned servers” a higher chance of playing “behemoth servers” through random roll. I really doubt that this change was in anyway intended to address this and if it was, they severely misunderstood how their system works.

Svarty.8019:

wouw.5837:

Well A-net can’t do anything about the one server having more people than the other

Ye, it’s not like they are effectively gods who can put whatever rules in place they choose… oh.

He didnt mean they litterally cannot do it. But consider this, if you logged in one day and found that you were moved by ANet to another server. Seperated from your friends, your guild.

Would you be happy that ANet did something? Especially if they then charge you money to move back to your old server, that would be a hoot. Pretty sure these forums would go down in flames if they ever did that.

I don’t totally agree.
To be clear: I am from FoW

I ve been in the WvW for about 6 weeks. I am very commited, spend most of my GW2 time there. I am proud that our commanders already know me very well.

First:
I am observing a significant raise in the number of players involved in daily WvW.
It s chainging by the days and there are more and more people roaming in. ‘Fresh blood’ needs at least 2 weeks to get a hang of what is going on. My point is: PATIENCE fellow FoW players. Our time will come eventually. Plus who would have thought that we could muster 2 organised cooperating zergs approx 30 ppl each

Second:
If u look on this weeks matchup 5 – 12 July: FoW, Vabbi, Blacktide.
The BT are not enoying this as much as they used too. We don’t wake up in the morning with owning one camp in our BL. And during the day we usually control our BL no problem, and take the fight to EB or enemy BLs. So bottom line:
1. Keep it up
2. Don’t transfer to other server
3. Bear in mind that it’s holidays time – many ppl are away and we are only performing rookie practice atm. Think of what could happen if we are all here.

Last word:
The matchup mechanics is flawed – no doubts. But FoW and Vabbi – at the moment – there is no fair match for us. For now… All we can do is work work work, wait for the ppl to flow in (we are on top of the list for new players), and STAY ON THE SERVER

merridd out

Well, this is just the flaw of the whole idea behind Worlds fighting other Worlds, some are much larger and/or stronger. That’s just how it is I guess.

That can be changed however, but you’d have to step away from the whole “World identity” thing, and change it.

The following is just randomly come up with;

> Change the WvW identity into 3 groups fighting each other (e.g. Red is Order of Whispers, Green is Vigil and Blue is Durmand Priory).
> Let Guilds represent one of the orders. Each member will automatically represent the Order of their current active guild (the one they represent with that character). Players without Guild can choose their own.
> Remove the qeue for WvW based on Worlds, but instead make WvW based on multiple overflow maps. Where players are automatically divided across the multiple overflow maps according to the numbers currently fighting for their “order” in those maps.
> Introduce alliances, so that Guilds can ally each other and represent an “order” with a complete alliance, so they can fight for that “order” together in the same overflow WvW map.
> In conclusion, match-ups can constantly be balanced as people or Guilds join different overflow WvW maps based on player density (representation) rather than be committed/limited to their World borderlands.

Of course I just used the three orders as an example. But it does provide a good replacement identity for the current “fight for your World”.

And yes, I’m aware this kind of messes with the whole World vs World aspect as you are no longer bound to your world in particular and can basically fight together with Guilds from other Worlds vs Guilds of your own World.

Just food for thought…

Well that is some idea Furesy.
Only thing that scares me are those overflow servers.

Terrahero.9358:

Svarty.8019:

wouw.5837:

Well A-net can’t do anything about the one server having more people than the other

Ye, it’s not like they are effectively gods who can put whatever rules in place they choose… oh.

He didnt mean they litterally cannot do it. But consider this, if you logged in one day and found that you were moved by ANet to another server. Seperated from your friends, your guild.

Would you be happy that ANet did something? Especially if they then charge you money to move back to your old server, that would be a hoot. Pretty sure these forums would go down in flames if they ever did that.

And rightly so, because that’s completely the wrong way to go about it. There is a few issues with the way you put it. Now consider them doing it this way. They reduce the map cap so larger guilds cannot fit onto a server stacked with pugs who have been following them. Eventually, after hitting queues all too often, the guild decides to leave (with their friends). Because Anet fixed their pricing so that transferring to a low population server is cheap there is no problem with putting 10g into a transfer to avoid the queues.

Right now the pricing for transfer is broken because they have adjusted the definitions multiple times since they put their pricing back on transfers. They need to do it very differently and it should not be based on total server population, but active WvW player population.

Right now the map cap is there to cater to stacking servers and until they change that WvW is just a joke game format where you pay to win by paying to transfer to a higher population server. As far as I am concerned, Anet is doing this model at present to exploit players into paying gems to win.

[posted in wrong thread]

Hule.8794:

Well that is some idea Furesy.
Only thing that scares me are those overflow servers.

Hmm, when I get home I’m gonna think about it a bit more and make a solid discussion topic for it to get some feedback. Who knows ^^

+(x amount) magic/gold find for everyone who joins a reserve server that is used to balance numbers?

Furesy.6935:

Hule.8794:

Well that is some idea Furesy.
Only thing that scares me are those overflow servers.

Hmm, when I get home I’m gonna think about it a bit more and make a solid discussion topic for it to get some feedback. Who knows ^^

Don’t waste your time, Anet isn’t listening and WvW is what it is. If you dont like the way it is id suggest moving on to another game. They don’t have the resources to make that kind of change. WvW is an after thought, it always has been.

Furesy.6935:

A decent idea!.

Like I said in the quote, it’s a decent idea. However, there is one caveat. There are, I think, a decent amount of people who like the idea of fighting “for their server”. I Know on TC, there are lots of us who fight, even though we get less benefits than PvE’ing, because we’re fighting “for” TC. I know personally I really enjoy fighting with all the guilds that are on TC. In this new system, it would be extremely hard then for that to happen unless all these guilds synched up for the same faction, and if there are “overflows” (i.e. random matches in each faction), then 1) it might be hard to get the same GUILD into the same match, unless you can make “parties” of 20+, and 2) you aren’t guaranteed any sort of consistency. If its random match ups, within those factions, you have no idea who could be trying to command, and it could lead to lots of un-needed drama, or a severe lack of communication.

I think this issue is something which is hard, if not impossible, to fix. Even in lotro, which had no server v server, there were complaints about some servers PvMP being too empty, or one side dominating another. There will always be “more full” servers and less full servers.

I think population imbalances will always be an issue as long as they have a server v server match up system. But, that’s how WORLD vs WORLD is built. (Also, they would have to get rid of all the buffs that WvW gives to servers if they went to a random match up system outside of server v server). They built the whole system to be server vs server, and to go back and redo it now would basically redo the entire system from scratch. There will always be an issue, I think, with the bottom tier.

Do the people from the bottom tiers, who have been sticking it out on one of the bottom servers, what would you suggest, which would be a fair system to all, which would actually give you a fair match up? (Mind you, giving more rewards to people who are outmanned probably won’t make the matches anymore fair or balanced, but just give the people less a reason to be bummed out about their entire borderlands being taken) (Of course one solution is to set all the ratings back to even, open up free transfers and see if things scramble themselves in a better way, but I’m guessing there would still be a similar situation to what there is now). It’s a bad situation to be in, and I really do hope that eventually things get better!

There just needs to be much more insentive to WvW. The massive separation between WvW and the rest of the game is pretty clear.

Give players unique armor, pets, weapons.

I’m not sure I understand the complaints here. Vabbi and Fissure of Woe have been on the bottom of EU for some time now. Its quite obvious that they are not WvW servers at all…If your interested in WvW, why would you stay on those servers?

Like some others said, lower wvw map population levels, helps with unbalance and helps with lag. It may make people switch to lower pop servers to avoid que times.

Might not hurt to make an additional map or two for wvw.