Guild Wars 2

If Blackgate are so dominant how come they haven’t been able to take SMC from Maguuma in 31 hours?

If both opposing servers have few or no people on any map then you would still be able to have a total of 80 people in wvw before you queued all maps (20 per map). And in that unlikely scenario you would own every structure on every map and probably wouldn’t want to log in anyway.

As soon as one opposing server logs on a decent number of people, the higher population server will be able to field more people as well. The idea is to reference the map cap not from the lowest population server, but the middle population server so that a single server deciding to log off doesn’t prevent the other two from playing.

Such a system would be best applied to all maps but could be trialed in the borderlands first. And various parameters including how much one side can outnumber the others by before triggering a queue could be adjusted based on feedback.

Roxanne.6140:

Gg, let the enemy decide how many people I can field at once. I can’t imagine what the great minds out there will do to game the system. I too agree some work on balance is needed (I.e BG ppt is both YB and JQ added, almost) but I won’t agree letting enemies decide whether I can play or not.

If you end up in a queue because of a system like this you still have three other maps to choose from. It’s not like you can’t play….

SkyShroud.2865:

Jayne.9251:

If you’re playing off hours and you can’t get into map because of a permanent queue, you’re gonna move

And if they’re stacked on all three servers equally, then it’s much better than what exists now. (One server ktraining an empty map — and technically one server COULD ktrain an entire map if the opposing teams don’t have the bodies/skill to counter 20).

It’s a good step forward.

Why would that be much better? Have you forgotten something called one up one down? The one that go up and the one that go down will be either ktrained or ktraining others.

Actually that’s a strength of this proposal. If you try to ktrain a map a significant proportion of your ktrain will be stuck in a queue until at least one enemy has sufficient numbers to defend.

It’s a good idea and I think it’s something that Arenanet should trial particularly given the other things they have tried haven’t worked too well.

To limit exploits:

1. Limit numbers not based on the lowest populated world, but based on the 2nd lowest populated world. This retains the essence of your idea but only the largest world would normally get queues and nobody could exploit anything by “simply logging out”.

2. Implement a lower limit before such a system would kick in – for example you can always get the first 20 people into a map no matter how many enemies and then for the 21st person if would depend on how many enemies there were on the map. This makes it much easier for a guild to get most or all of its members on the same map. This would also mean that a world can always have at least 80 people total before queuing all maps (and obviously many more if the enemy turns up) but is prevented from having all 80 people as a single blob unless the other worlds have similar numbers.

3. Allow a grace period for people who got disconnected or otherwise left to re-enter the map without needing to queue again. Otherwise people who did get disconnected would be frustrated that they can’t rejoin.

4. Trial a system first and then adjust it based on feedback.

5. Some game elements would need to be rebalanced to assume more even numbers.

The OP makes a very good point – one that has been repeatedly made since shield generators were introduced. Sadly nothing has been changed. The best defense is to simply bring a bigger blob, and if you can’t do that you are better off letting them karma train empty objectives. If they are using ranged catapults + shield gens the best defense is to simply spam shield gens yourself and this just leads to a boring stalemate.

Justine.6351:

They have tried and tried to add those 3 things since hot and they end up removing them because people kitten, whine and cry about them.

With good reason. Most of the changes were poorly thought out, poorly balanced and poorly implemented (broken for months).

Did links increase the population per map? Yes they did
Did links lead to better matchmaking and more balanced matchups? No
Did links help populate the guest servers? No
Did links lead to a more competitive WvW? No
Did links have negative consequences with regards to server communities, bandwagoning and destroying some players preferred play style? Yes
Have links wasted developer time which could have been better spent on much needed gameplay improvements? Yes

There are ways to achieve higher map populations without many of the negatives that came with server linking. That’s why server linking has indeed failed.

Swamurabi.7890:

Adamarc.7463:

Sviel.7493:

I really wish you all would stop saying that the only reason people defend is because they invested money.

Nobody is saying that. People will defend if there is a fun fight in doing so. But there isn’t a way to tell whether people before you put any effort into upgrading anything (unless you see them doing so yourself), so there’s less reason to prioritize defending at all. It’s about effort and teamwork, not gold.

There was also a time when players/guilds would NOT invest gold into upgrades because they knew that minutes after they logged off their investment would be erased.

The best option is to have the old system without the gold costs. It solves both issues at once and people have been suggesting this for a while.

Sviel.7493:

I really wish you all would stop saying that the only reason people defend is because they invested money.

Nobody is saying that. People will defend if there is a fun fight in doing so. But there isn’t a way to tell whether people before you put any effort into upgrading anything (unless you see them doing so yourself), so there’s less reason to prioritize defending at all. It’s about effort and teamwork, not gold.

The OP is spot on. It’s the same experience on the NA servers during off-hours. You log on and whoever is the stronger server for that week has a T3 SMC with full supply and guild tactics. And it just sits that way for hours. Hours that before HoT would have been filled with fights in and around SMC. You can sometimes still get fights but a major source of them is diminished. And the borderlands are no better – mostly auto upgraded to T3 and filled with structures that are either undefended or too difficult for most moderate sized groups to take.

And this leads into another problem with WvW currently – apathy. You don’t care about defending because nobody put any effort into upgrading in the first place, and structures will just auto upgrade again super fast. You don’t care about the score because there isn’t really anything to fight for (the one thing in the past was server rivalry and that’s gone now we have linking), and most skirmishes are decided before they start by who has the most upgraded objectives (almost always the side with the T3 SMC). That leaves the fights, and if there aren’t any most people will just log off.

The main complaint people had about the old upgrade system was the gold cost and simply removing that cost would have been a much better outcome. By removing the old upgrade system, WvW became a shallower experience.

Swagger.1459:

The devs are not going to gut elite specs just for players still stuck in the zerker meta, and who thought the launched profession designs were quality…

There was never any zerker meta for WvW……..
Stat combinations like soldiers, knights, valkyrie, celestial, dire, rabid and clerics saw regular use in WvW up until HoT when they became numerically inferior to the 4-stat HoT combinations (except celestial).

Isn’t it the case that the team which would be first with 3-2-1 will still be first with 5-4-3, the team that would be second will still be second, and the team that would be third will still be third? Which means that the only difference is the glicko calculations…..

Dawdler.8521:

Sviel.7493:

I like how DBL has polled way above 50% every time, but people still say the majority dislike it.

Probably because a majority of those 50% will still refuse to play on it even if they voted to keep it.

Either way you really dont even need to bring in percentages to know the facts. Just look at the kill statistics. Desert has nowhere near the activity of any given alpine border (which in turn will be nowhere near EB).

This. Each week people vote on which map they would like to play on and the Desert Borderlands consistently has the lowest activity (kills/deaths) of any map, by a considerable margin. That is the vote that should really count.

Chaba.5410:

Anet should stop rewarding PPK when an opponent has the outnumbered buff. And the API should separate out kills and assists.

Could even change PPK so it’s only awarded to the server that has the outnumbered buff – that way blobbing is no longer the best way to get PPK and the outnumbered buff is actually a little bit useful.

Reverting back to the Alpine Borderlands is probably one of the most immediate and easiest fixes that can be done to improve WvW in the short term. While I know there are some who prefer the Desert Borderlands, I think that the lack of activity on the new maps speaks for itself and is perhaps the best indicator of the majority opinion. The feedback I receive as a commander is generally negative and mainly centred around the verticality, difficulty and length of navigation, lack of incentive to attack/defend (free waypoints, no strategic placement of towers, can’t use many waypoints), and frustration of design aspects like barricades, air/fire turrets, rock walls and excessive CC from Keep lords. It is also clear that the map is designed for more people than most servers can field during off-hours.

Fixing all these issues would understandably take some time and I think the better option is to go back to the Alpine map ideally with the minimum changes necessary to accommodate today’s WvW. Reverting back to the Alpine Borderlands won’t be a silver bullet to solve all the problems with WvW but I do think it should be a priority to help stabilize the current population.