Guild Wars 2

ANET response:
Thanks for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team regarding the recent changes of the World vs World Skirmish Tickets received from chests.  We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.  Sadly, WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets are not able to given out.  This is true for many time-gated currencies in the game.  I assure you the goal was not to retract from anyone’s abilities to earn tickets, while it may affect the current week it will be a good change for the long run.  Sadly, since patch days fall on Tuesday while WvW reset is on Friday, issues like this are inevitable.

Once again, I would like to express our deepest apologies for the current weeks difference in tickets you may experience.

Response I got from ANET:
Thanks for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team regarding the recent changes of the World vs World Skirmish Tickets received from chests.  We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.  Sadly, WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets are not able to given out.  This is true for many time-gated currencies in the game.  I assure you the goal was not to retract from anyone’s abilities to earn tickets, while it may affect the current week it will be a good change for the long run.  Sadly, since patch days fall on Tuesday while WvW reset is on Friday, issues like this are inevitable.

Once again, I would like to express our deepest apologies for the current weeks difference in tickets you may experience.

Like others will say, forced repopulation will split up guilds and friends. I offer an alternative idea. for those servers with highly active wvw populations, force them to contend with more than one match at a time. This could be accomplished by intelligently reviewing players’ normal wvw active periods as well as guild memberships, then selecting which match each player will be assigned to for that week. It could also be done at semi-randomly, while still working to keep guilds intact. It could also be left up to players to choose which match to participate in (or which they would prefer) for that week, but as we’ve seen, players tend to be selfish and that may not work very well. At any rate, I would like for the devs to attempt something other what has been tried recently.

aandiarie.7195:

Or they can just have loot box boxes that stack and are the same title so they are the same loot box so you don’t get 10 different boxes.

This is the better idea. One chest with the name of the reward track you got it from. Then when you open it, it can be whatever loot and chests you would normally have received. I’m also ok with the option to not have a track selected, as well as a repeat this track option.

I’d support the bail out, or rather, cash out option. The only thing is, the acceptance of that reward should lock you out of WvW for a significant period of time. I would go with 8 hours (as in you’re going to bed or do real world stuff) to prevent players from abusing the system by getting participation up, leaving, accepting 15 minutes of rewards, then logging back in after a few minutes to repeat the process. I think this would be a good compromise to simply afking for 15 minutes. Couple that with making the safe zones time-gated upon entry, and players won’t be able to stay in safe zones for very long anyway. What I mean is, once you enter a safe zone, you should have a timer that begins a countdown for you to get back into the game by leaving a certain distance away from the safe zone. If you don’t leave the zone in time, you get kicked from WvW. 5-10 minutes I would think is enough time to sell repair, etc. You then can’t re-enter the zone unless you either die, or a set time period has been met, like 30 minutes. Waypointing between safe zones shouldn’t reset the timer. I’m sure some players will still exploit it by running out and dying immediately, but I doubt it would be as many that just afk.

HazyDaisy.4107:

The zerg of 40 that ran me over 4 times the other night trying to take a shrine disproves your theory that wvw is dead, at least 41 people are playing in T3. Now that may not be que worthy, but ask yourself if you really want 80 people taking a shrine that 1 person can easily do alone.

Might not be completely dead, but it sure isn’t as good as it once was. If you’re lucky, you get into a few good battles still, but anymore it’s 40 vs. 1 at shrines. Would like to see Anet try something viable to liven it up. For instance, spread the obvious WvW centered worlds between multiple matches each week. BG clearly being the largest in NA should face 2, 3 or maybe even 4 matches each week against the other worlds. Even if it was done as just an experiment it might bring some life back to those worlds that are currently being waffle stomped in every match. Just an idea.

ThomasC.1056:

As Sviel stated, the first purpose of towers was to control access to some areas with walls and barricades. If you didn’t own the towers, you had to walk around them, i.e. take the long way. That wasn’t impossible of course, and took far less work than getting the barricade down on your own.

I also think, but I’m really not sure about it, that towers were intended to get the waypoints, instead of keeps.

Anyway, these ideas had their own logic which can be argued upon. Unfortunately, as that logic was impairing the k-train’s movement, it’s been broadly despised, and they were removed, letting the towers in their current state.

I think that they could get back some interest if towers connected each other through a teleporting system NE-NW-SW-SE-NE etc. As the devs put this idea in keep’s shrines, it has very few odds to appear, though.

I like your idea. It sure beats the “remove the map altogether” mantra you hear from some people. It’s a great map in many ways. So what if you can’t treb a keep from a tower or vice versa? Real world scenarios never had that, or rarely did at least to my understanding. You’d march your armies for miles and for months to get to an enemy keep. Anyway, I appreciate ideas like yours which focus on what could be done to improve the existing map. I also appreciate Anet’s attempt on this map and really wished the players didn’t bash it as badly as they did and still do. I think Anet would be wise to first introduce any new maps in EoTM fro players to test out, and I think it would be cool if maybe they had a map design contest to see if those players could come up with anything better.

Just forgo the tourney and give BG a trophy every 3 months. As others have said, they are too heavy in the wvw department, an issue also mentioned by others as being a player created situation. All true, but that doesn’t mean Anet is powerless to do anything about it. It’s their game after all. Is there an easy solution? Is there one that won’t tick some or many players off? Probably not. They’ve tried server linking, which may have helped a very small amount for some worlds to have players in wvw. Maybe the solution is a forced population rebalance of the larger wvw active population, but I’m sure that would tick players off. Maybe Anet has to offer some incentive for players in larger wvw populations to move off those worlds. Maybe the solution is to spread large wvw worlds between 2 or more matches each week. So instead of having the play on 4 maps, now they have 8 or 12 maps to cover. I don’t know, but one thing is for certain: players won’t rebalance themselves. In my opinion, it’s in Anet’s best interest to try something viable if they wish to keep wvw alive.

P.S. And to those people saying they want to keep PVErs out of WvW, I say this; please don’t be so arrogant as to realize that PVErs can become WvWrs if given the chance. I would rather play with and against a world of PVErs than to come into WvW and find it completely empty on either side, or worse, all sides.

I agree…extra expensive, for already time gated items, especially when you have to get the exotic version first before even being able to unlock the higher ascended ones. I’m not saying it should be super easy to get them, but being limited to 175 tickets per week means if you want to buy everything you can buy with tickets, that’s a serious chunk of time. Then to top it off with a really high gold cost? Seems like too much overkill to me. Might as well make the top tier WvW armor legendary to take some of the sting away. :P This also assumes that players won’t spend time in other parts of the game. Not the best way to keep players playing, in my opinion, but it will probably work for the diehards.

For me, I had to turn graphics down to the lowest setting, otherwise I would get the bug within about 1-2 hours. Sucks, because I love the better graphics.

fosfor.9076:

We need more reasons to be in a squad, like way point to the commander link text in the chat, notification pop window is inappropriate if you are on combat.

Didn’t suggest a pop up, but have it ping it in squad chat, equivalent of shift clicking the waypoint, and pressing enter but automating that for the commander (who turns on the feature) after putting in world ability points turn earn that privilege. Wouldn’t have an affect on someone in combat as it would be a chat ping.

LetoII.3782:

CattivoUomo.7198:

Phantom.8130:

Mouse over the commander’s name in the squad UI.

There’s no need for a “Laziness Mastery”.

You mean like autoloot?

Autoloot was a cure for a phenomenon lovingly referred to as “pooping bags”, not laziness. Pressing f was a full-time activity and you’d STILL miss half your bags.

Fair enough. Still don’t consider my suggestion a laziness mastery, but more of a convenience mastery. Faster reaction times to defense calls, and convenience for a commander so he doesn’t have to take the extra step of shift-clicking the waypoint before he waypoints, or squad members hovering over his name to see that he went to some BL which I don’t recall it showing you the particular waypoint he went to. Not like other convenience things haven’t been introduced: level tomes, salvage all, consume all, proofs of heroics, portal stones for all your characters to get to a new zone, the special area passes, etc.

I’m not saying my suggestion is absolutely needed, but would be a nice convenient feature to add in, while using some world ability points, which, as I mentioned before, there’s a ton of them after you reach a certain level. I’ve personally spent the max and still have 2,081 ability points…to use on…let’s see, nothing. Can only imagine how many the hard core commanders have.

I’m with you on rotating in some new maps. They should test them in EoTM though, in my opinion to gauge people’s reaction. Also, maybe not adding on top of the maps in WvW since it can stretch some of the world population a bit thin. That being said, Anet took a beating with the last WvW map because, in my opinion, stuck up WvWrs couldn’t wrap their head around how to fight on the new map, and it wasn’t ‘zerg friendly’. I personally think it’s a great map!

Phantom.8130:

Mouse over the commander’s name in the squad UI.

There’s no need for a “Laziness Mastery”.

You mean like autoloot? I’m not saying it’s an absolute need, just an added convenience for the squad, especially when map queues come into play and you’re trying to follow a commander to defend. Laziness doesn’t factor into it as far as I’m concerned, it’s about efficiency. Clearly you don’t like the idea, and that’s fine. Everyone has an opinion, and yours has been noted. Just making a suggestion, plus there are so many world ability points that go wasted once you rank up to a certain point. Why not give something to spend them on?

Phantom.8130:

Shift + left click

Not the point I was going for. The commander still has to do that, and then waypoint which not all commanders do. But if it let him waypoint and auto list the waypoint in squad chat in one action, it would let the squad know where he went more conveniently. And as suggested, if he had to put world ability points into it to do that, it gives him something else to spend the points on. Make it maybe somewhat high so the commander has to really earn the ability.

I might add that this could be something the commander could spend wvw ability points into in order to do this.

With all the map hopping that goes on with WvW, wouldn’t it be cool if the commander had the option that when he waypoints, the squad gets an auto notification of which waypoint the commander went to? I know, get on discord or ‘it adds to the challenge", but anyway it’s just a suggestion.

@Wall and Siege
Irresponsible supply waste happens, just like when Steve from the motor pool uses all the engine grease to make an epic slip n slide. No reason to expect people won’t do the same in a game.

@Free Accounts
As someone that paid for the game, I was personally against free accounts overall but understand that it gets many new players into the game. I felt they should have been excluded from PvP and WvW, and if they wanted that they needed to buy it. Unfortunately, the stable door has already been open and the horses have been set free. Changing it now would be bad.

@Outnumbered, Map Hopping and AFK at Spawn
To me the issue here comes down to people not actually playing to get the pips on an outnumbered map. I don’t really agree with the map hopping part, but offer an alternative idea. While in a protected zone like the spawn, you can’t earn pips. To prevent afkrs at the spawn, there should be countdown that starts when you enter a protected zone that you must leave that zone before the countdown reaches 0 or you are kicked from wvw. I would say max would be 5 minutes and that not only must you leave the zone, you must leave some distance away from the zone and not allowed back in unless you die or a certain time has been reached, let’s say 30 minutes. This way afkrs can’t be just on the outside of a safe zone. This would affect map hopping to some degree if for instance you just left a safe area to map hop, and then try to return to in before the time is up. Would add a wrinkle into some defense plans, but I’m sure players would adjust to it.

@Log Off Pips
I agree with this idea, other than it would need to have a debuff on players such that they can’t abuse the system by getting participation up, logging off, accepting extra pips, then logging back on again. The debuff, if you accept your remaining pips, should sting a little, like for instance you can’t re-enter WvW for 6-8 hours after accepting your pips.

Also, there is a WvW reward track that you can work on to get the hero weapons first. I had the same thought as you when I saw the changes and someone else pointed this out to me. It will take much time to get them all but at least now we have a way to work on it.

By unlocking the hero weapon, you can now earn skirmish tickets at a max of 175 per week which can then be used to buy the mistforged hero weapons for 350 tickets and I think memories of battle.

Anything to help with the battle of the bulge. Thank you. I’d still like to see endless potions going into an apothecary cabinet accessible from anywhere in the game, and also a toy box for all the gem store toys you can get. But, maybe we can hope for that in a future update. Also would like more uses for some of the items like the blade shards and unidentified fossils. Once you’ve made the items they make, there’s not much use left in them, really, yet we still get them.

Maybe this has already been asked, but are mistforged hero weapons still obtainable with the ticket changes, and if so, how?

Equipped it on a human and it looks fine. I’m guessing it may be clipping through the bridge of the nose?

Ok cool. That fixed it. Thanks. Stupid bug!!

Has anyone else just received this message? It took away my GWAMM title from GW1 and all of the achievement points I had from GW1. I submitted a ticket, of course, but want to know if anyone else got this. Not happy!!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

CattivoUomo.7198:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t think everything in the game has to have a use or value. I’d rather have a bunch of recipes that are vendor trash than more than a tiny few that are high value.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course. I see it as an opportunity to make the mystic forge more like a slot machine, where players are throwing in nearly worthless items, for a chance at something of value, knowing that most of the time the chances of hitting a jackpot is unlikely. It could remain as it is, boring; “Oh look, another crap recipe I’ve gotten a hundred times before…guess I have to merc it (assuming it’s not account bound and unsellable).” Or it could be a little more fun and be “Oh look, another ‘token’ for the slot machine”. A second chance for a crap drop to be something better. Either this, or stop having recipes drop for players who have already learned them. I’m not looking for a get rich quick scheme; but rather just something that brings back, in part, some excitement from getting an item drop you’ve gotten many times before.

The mystic forge is a gold & material sink; it’s not designed to be a faucet.

You are looking for a “get something for nothing” scheme. I’m not sure why you think that would be best for the game as a whole.

Well to answer that, I don’t think getting an account bound recipe that you’ve already learned, or for that matter, a common sellable recipe is very good for the game either. It gets boring, and tedious to just delete them knowing you’re probably going to get it again the next day, possibly within the next hour. So why not either make it so that players stop getting the same boring recipe drop they can do nothing with, or give it a second life in the forge? So what’s the harm of throwing 4 recipes you got from playing the game, into the forge and getting a couple of silver back in most cases? That’s not going to make anyone rich, and you still had to play the game to get them. Consider the minute or so you spent forging the recipes as a time(and recipe) sink. I use the slot machine comparison because really, slot machines are not faucets, they are money and time sinks that keep players in a casino longer even though the return on investment for players is very low. It’s the excitement of ‘what if I win big’ that keeps them playing. I see no harm in giving players this option. But instead, you seem to think that getting ‘nothing’ drops is somehow good for the game? How excited are you when you get drops that have no value? I can’t imagine too enthusiastic. “Oh yay, another recipe” right-click delete. Exciting stuff right there!

Linken.6345:

CattivoUomo.7198:

DeanBB.4268:

I would assume if Anet added something to the MF for recipes, then you would get a recipe back. Much like tossing in 4 runes.

You’re probably right, but being in control of their game, they wouldn’t have to limit themselves to doing just that. Even if they did, a random chance to get a recipe you don’t already have is still better than multiple recipes you’ve already learned that aren’t worth much to sell.

Dont kid yourself mate it wouldent be a random recipe you dont already have, it would be a random recipe period.
So you could get the same one back if you were unlucky.

Nah, I’m not kidding myself about anything. The likelihood my suggestion will be implemented is just as good as my chances of getting something better from the forge from some crap items. The point is not about what you get from playing the ‘slot machine’, but rather being able to play it in the first place for that rare chance you do get something.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t think everything in the game has to have a use or value. I’d rather have a bunch of recipes that are vendor trash than more than a tiny few that are high value.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course. I see it as an opportunity to make the mystic forge more like a slot machine, where players are throwing in nearly worthless items, for a chance at something of value, knowing that most of the time the chances of hitting a jackpot is unlikely. It could remain as it is, boring; “Oh look, another crap recipe I’ve gotten a hundred times before…guess I have to merc it (assuming it’s not account bound and unsellable).” Or it could be a little more fun and be “Oh look, another ‘token’ for the slot machine”. A second chance for a crap drop to be something better. Either this, or stop having recipes drop for players who have already learned them. I’m not looking for a get rich quick scheme; but rather just something that brings back, in part, some excitement from getting an item drop you’ve gotten many times before.

DeanBB.4268:

I would assume if Anet added something to the MF for recipes, then you would get a recipe back. Much like tossing in 4 runes.

You’re probably right, but being in control of their game, they wouldn’t have to limit themselves to doing just that. Even if they did, a random chance to get a recipe you don’t already have is still better than multiple recipes you’ve already learned that aren’t worth much to sell.

Greener.6204:

Intriguing idea, but wouldn’t that just be an automatic upgrade?
Convert to a specific skin —> Convert to any skin?

Not sure what you mean by an automatic upgrade. It would only give you a transmutation charge to let you change your character’s look using skins you’ve already unlocked, so it wouldn’t be just ‘any skin’. I’d be happy if they just stopped dropping a skin I already have unlocked, and instead give me a random crap item.

OniGiri.9461:

Wouldn’t that render the “buy transmutation charge for gems” useless?

Yes, but no. Really if you PvP enough, or just do the story on enough characters, you can already get enough transmutation charges that you wouldn’t need to buy them. Those players who would buy them will probably still buy them because they can, and just don’t want to get them through game play. The idea is to give a little value to extra skins, and I doubt it would drastically affect the sales of transmutation charges from the gem store.

So how many recipes has everyone gotten since they started playing? How many duplicates have you gotten that really aren’t worth selling anymore because the market is flooded with them? How many would like some way of getting rid of them without just deleting them? I’d suggest the mystic forge where you can put in four recipes, and get a random item. Obviously this would be only for recipes that drop from chests and not ones you would buy from a vendor. Don’t really care what the random loot table consists of so long as there’s some chance to come away with something worth a few silver and maybe a few gold for those extremely rare ‘jackpots’.

Don’t know if this has ever been brought up, but can we have the option to convert any extra weapon or armor skins such as fractal skins into transmutation charges? Once you have that item unlocked, the extras are nearly useless unless you happen to want that skin used on another item or piece of gear. At least by letting us convert them to a transmutation charge we’d feel like we actually got something useful, rather than just another item to delete upon receipt.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

Shaogin.2679:

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

OriOri.8724:

But you need 2 hands to shoot a bow

http://i.imgur.com/vcJfmIc.jpg

Dev just confirmed, dual wielding longbows coming to the game! You saw it here guys, it’s real! No take-backsies!

I literally just told McKenna that this was going to be a response. Thanks.

I’ve seen it all now. This is proof that there IS a picture or meme out there in response to every silly question! Thank you for the laugh!

Regardless of Anet announcing the changes, some players benefitted from spending the shards before the changes, which to me makes it an unfair change. Anet should have simply changed the tokens (instead of ascended shards, make it something else) for the upcoming tournament plus the changes that they have now for the rewards. This way all players who earned the shards last season can get the same cost to reward benefit that others received by spending the old shards for the armor at the previous prices. That way, with the new season, everyone would be on equal footing.

I could wall of text here like so many have, but I won’t. I’ll just say it feels as if we’re fighting for scraps anymore. For the time invested, it’s not worth it.

John Corpening.9847:

You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

There are a couple of ideas already going in this thread:

• population caps
• merge servers
• Battle Groups

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

Thirdly, there is the question of persistent 2 vs. 1 scenarios. 2v1 is inevitable and in many ways needed to tilt the balance of power, however when 2 worlds constantly beat down the 3rd without any penalty or deterrent to discourage this activity, it changes WvWvW to W&WvW and ruins the experience for many players. Harder to detect and control I’m sure, but surely there must be some mechanism that could be introduced to dissuade such activity from being persistent. What if there were capture bonus points awarded based the current world scores, matchup positions, and captured objectives? For instance, let’s say we have the following score: 1st=30k; 2nd=20k, 3rd=10k. If 3rd place captures 1st place’s home world keep they are awarded 75% of the point difference between 3rd and 1st. In this case, 15k thus closing the gap to 1st place significantly and bringing the 3rd world now into 2nd place. Lower objectives such as home back/front towers would award a smaller percentage of the point difference respectively. What if 1st captures 3rd place objectives? No bonus points there, but if they capture 2nd place home objectives they to could get a smaller % of their point difference bonus. So in this scenario, 1st place could capture 2nd places’ home keep for let’s say a 25% point bonus of their lead, in this case 2500. Someone with better math skills and the time to run through some scenarios, could I’m sure, find the right balance for such a bonus point system. So now 2nd place has some incentive to attack 1st place so they too can close the gap and try to steal 1st place; 3rd place has opportunities to even the score with just a few 1st and/or 2nd place objective captures, while 1st place has reason to not only defend all of their objectives, but to protect and extend their lead over 2nd place by taking 2nd place’s objectives. If 1st and 2nd still continue to beat down 3rd extending their lead, they could potentially set themselves up for a major shift in points. (i.e. if 1st=200k, 2nd=150k, 3rd=50k, and 3rd manages to mount a successful assault of 1st place’s home keep they would earn 112.5k in points and pass 2nd place by 12.5k) That would be a game changer where I think worlds would now have to protect themselves from such a scenario by working with and against the other worlds so as to keep the scores relatively closer throughout the matchup such that the last day of the matchup would be as important, if not more so than the 1st day.

I’m hoping some ANET geeks could put their heads together to take some of these ideas and at least play through various scenarios to see how they would play out

John Corpening.9847:

You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

There are a couple of ideas already going in this thread:

• population caps
• merge servers
• Battle Groups

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John
[/quote]

I’d be curious if there are any analytics being done on WvW matchups, and what that entails. For instance, tracking each player’s active WvW hours for every matchup such that predictions can be made about their future play. The same can be done with other stats gathered from players’ WvW activities. Some of my ideas:

The first would be dividing players evenly into tournament groups (red, green, blue) based on analytics gathered for each player (i.e. split the players up so that coverage is less of an issue, while also dividing the players up based on their stats such that not all of the ‘best’ players are on the same team). Yes, that would affect world pride, but how proud can you be when you knowingly have a 270k point lead midweek over a lesser populated or lesser WvW active world? Small price to pay for more challenging and closer matches in my opinion, and would only affect ‘pride’ during tournaments.

My second idea involves using the same analytics to dynamically control either player population or PPT during certain hours. If there is an ‘overpopulation’ issue in the ‘closer’ matchups, it typically has to do with 1 world having more people on during certain timeframes. Based on the analytics gathered for each player, it would in theory be possible to predict which hours 1 world will have a population imbalance over another. During these hours either throttle down how many players that world can introduce to a map, or reduce the points per tick they can achieve when there is an outnumbered scenario. Third idea in next post.

I think it would be cool if they brought existing PVE maps into WvW, either entirely or in sections (i.e. WvW battles in Queensdale, Lonar’s Pass, or even the cities like Rata Sum, Divinity). Throw in some keeps/towers/camps/control points on them and see what sticks. Obviously city maps would only have control points added. Imagine zerg battles in Divinity. Start them out as EoTM maps, get some gamer feedback, make any necessary adjustments to improve/balance them. Then rotate the gamer approved maps as maybe a 5th map in the main WvW competition. Rotate the 5th map every week with a new map. Sounds easier than it really is, I know, but not impossible. Whatever happens, ANET does need to mix it up in WvW because as much as I love it, it is getting stale.

ManaCraft.5630:

Well, all of these problems have been brought up many times before.

A.net has stated repeatedly that they can’t make bigger maps (although their reasoning behind that decision remains partially unclear), so I don’t think larger maps are a viable idea. You could, however, achieve much of the same effect by having a larger map pool. But that would require the generation of a lot of additional content.

About PPT, it’s not as bad as you think. The idea of being rewarded for holding territory over time is decent enough, the system just needs to reflect who you captured that territory from and how many resources have been invested in it. Both of those are relatively simple fixes that do not require the full scale overhaul many people imagine. But you can go much further if you want of course.

I can see both side of the PPT issue. In situations where there really is WvWvW and all 3 worlds are roughly equal in size and time zone coverage and each world spends equal amount of time attack each other world rather than persistently 2vs1, then PPT can actually be balanced. Problem is, players choose not to be balanced and will beat down the weakest world first, and then maybe they will fight it out with each other for 1st. There are no real in-game mechanics to prevent it. I agree with a previous poster that EotM could be used to experiment with different scoring systems and/or ways to better balance the fights.

What that could be I don’t know, but I would like to see some of the community’s ideas tested out. I had some ideas also to maybe introduce some balance, or at least add some twists into WvW when the matchups aren’t so close. For instance, what if mega bosses (dragons) triggered to attack the 1st/2nd place world’s keep/garrison whenever their points lead exceeds a certain threshold over the 2nd and 3rd place? It gives the world under the boss attack a reason to shift focus away from the other worlds to defend their territory. And, if they fail to defeat the boss such that the boss kills the keep lord, this could cause a point deduction from that team’s score. Maybe as much as half of their lead. So if 1st place was 10k points ahead and a boss killed their keep lord, then their lead is cut to 5k. I think it would also be cool if during this boss battle that a random player from an opposing team is given the option to fight as the boss, with all the skills the boss would possess so that now the ‘dragon’ or whatever has a chance for better intelligence over the standard AI. The only stipulation is that the controlling player has to be actively attacking, can’t leave or otherwise be booted from control. Anyway, I’m sure there are many other good ideas out there for adding new ways to balance or at least make WvW more interesting. New maps that rotate weekly would certainly be #1 for me.

As for map sizes, I’m sure that Anet has a good reason for not being able to have larger maps, but what they could do is like what they did with EoTM and have fewer wide open areas and more choke points which limit the mobility of the zergs. They could also have more and better/bigger NPC attacks on camps, keeps and towers requiring players to defend more. Right now, the mercenaries only will attack camps. Why not have them attempt to take other objectives, and geared primarily at the worlds in 1st/2nd depending on the current point total? NPC battles may not present a significant challenge to large zergs, but they would force the zergs to divide their attention more from their opponents, giving the trailing teams more opportunities to catch up. It also gives the zergs something to do when the opposing team isn’t making much of a ‘showing’ in the match.

Solstice.1097:

More in-depth solutions may be more ideal, but extremely unlikely to be implemented within any sense of the “near future”

Shorter matches would be a much more immediate fix requiring very little resources to implement.

Maybe more immediate to implement, but I don’t really agree it is a fix for balance issues. It just gives the heavily weighted servers a shorter timeframe to stomp the lesser populated worlds. So even if you have 6 hour matchups, a world like BG has more than enough coverage to still dominate most other worlds so rather than losing once a week your world loses 28 times each week (4 matchups x 7 days). Even if your world has one really dominating timeslot each day over BG, for instance, that would only yield the potential of 7 wins out of 28 matchups per week. Wins sound good, but even then a really dedicated server like BG would simply improve their coverages across all timeslots, so it would still be unbalanced, and unlikely to change any end results. Same thing applies for 56 hour matchups; nothing really changes because dedicated servers will just compensate to ensure victory which is the whole reason why players all flocked to specific servers early on in the game; to overload their coverage and practically always guarantee a win. The problem is, there are no real controls to prevent or inhibit a world from doing that. It’s like having an NFL team that is allowed to play all 44 players at the same time against your 11 players. Even if you treat each quarter like a separate game, you’re still going to lose them all.

I would rather the developers spend the time and resources to actually design a more balanced and structured WvW matchup system which can mathematically improve the probability that matchups will be much closer, and which further inhibits the players’ abilities to overload the teams or dramatically control the outcome. Players will still try to do that with this system, but it would be much harder to accomplish and much harder to maintain over the course of subsequent matchups since the teams would inevitably vary between matchups. i.e. Your guild won’t always be paired with your friend’s guild, nor would your guild always oppose the same enemy guilds, etc.

Sure, it might not be really easy to implement, but what else does the WvW developer team have to do? It’s been well over a year and WvW hasn’t really changed so much to even proclaim it to be night and day different from beta.

Hannelore.8153:

This game will never be balanced as long as people are split up into servers. If the game instead had factions that every server could join (but each faction still battled one another), it would be far more balanced. I have never, in all of my years, seen a single game that could solve server populations whatsoever. The only real fix is to not use servers as a determination of “ally” or “enemy” in combat.

That said, shorter matches would help, especially with variation. But ultimately its going to come back to the same problem that servers need to be merged.

So long as players have sole control over who is and is not part of their team, there will never be any balance. My post above, I think, would lend itself to a more balanced matchup at least for structured matchups. To summarize, players choose their WvW guild during a registration period, that guild then registers for a matchup, guild and player stats, achievements, playing hours, etc. are then plugged into a formula to determine each guild’s WvW ‘strength’, then all registered guilds are placed across teams such that those teams match up as evenly as possible with guild strengths and time zone coverage. Some randomization and/or anti-affinity rules can also be used between matchups so that the same guilds aren’t always placed on the same teams as other guilds or always face the same guilds each week. i.e. if guild XYZ faced guild ABC this matchup, then the next matchup every effort would be made, where possible, to have XYZ and ABC in different matchups. Only registered guilds and players for that matchup will be allowed into the matchup while new players or unregistered players/guilds simply go into an unrelated matchup based on the current WvW system.

Since the guilds of structured matchups cannot guarantee or control which team they are placed in or what opponents they will face, it will be much more difficult for alliances to be created or at least to persist for any length of time. Nothing will truly guarantee that players won’t figure out some way to unbalance any matchup, but something like this would make it much more difficult to do.

Grav.3568:

Shorter matches is not the answer. Server population balance is.

I agree that shorter matches aren’t really the answer and server population balance ‘could’ be the answer, but I would suggest talking more about WvW balance instead. Here’s my idea for structured matchups, as well as unstructured (casual) matchups, and WvW skirmishes.

Structured Matchups:
1. Each week starts a registration period for the following week’s matchup.
2. During registration, players register to play in the matchup and select one of their guilds as the guild they wish to represent for that matchup.
3. Guild leaders then register their guilds for the matchup.
4. After the registration period is over, a tally is made of all the registered players/guilds, and then each guild is assessed for their WvW ‘strength’ based on some calculable factors: a) guild size calculated by the number of members that registered to play for that matchup b) the combined WvW achievement history/ranks for those members c) the average playing times for all guild members so as to determine when the guild is most likely to be active within WvW d) any other recordable information or stat that might be used to calculate the overall WvW strength of a guild such as GvG tournament finishes should those ever be added to the game, PvP tournament finishes for players, as well as any other pertinent stat that I can’t think of at the moment.
5. Once each registered guild’s strength is determined, along with their average playing timeframe, then each guild is evenly as possible assigned to teams such as to match them up with competitors that are as close both in strength and playing hours as possible.
6. No team/guild transfers would be allow for registered players and no new players or previously unregistered players would be allowed to join in the matchup.

Unstructured (casual) Matchups
1. For those new or unregistered players, they could still get into a more ‘casual’ WvW matchup based on the current system, but this would be separate from the structured WvW matchups/tournaments.

WvW Skirmishes
1. Shorter matchups much like the current PvP system just on a larger scale with several matchup time limits. i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 24 and 48 hour matchup, or even just selectable match times (up to a limit of course) chosen by the skirmish creator.
2. Skirmishes could also be designed to use many more maps and playing objectives such as capture the flag, king of the hill, deathmatch (last team standing), total annihilation (destroy all enemy structures), last man standing (everyone is an enemy), outnumbered (one team is smaller than the other by design and plays to defend an objective until time is up or they wipe the enemy) and so on, such as you see in many other games.
3. Teams don’t even have to be limited to 2 team, 3 team limits. i.e. what if a team of 50 must defend their flag in the center of Divinity from 3 opposing teams of 20 players that must both work with and against the other teams in order to capture the flag and return it to their own district?
4. So many more options to list them all here.

I think this would lead to closer matchups, more controllable balance, much more variety in the structured matchups, gives the casual WvW players and PvE achievement hunters alternative means to get started in WvW with little to no effect on a structured matchup, much more fun options with skirmishes and would make server populations for PvE a moot point as now players don’t have to be tied down to any one world to be part of a winning or competitive WvW team.

-ken

I see what you’re saying, and I think I would agree only if not for some key points.

Firstly the disparity between each world’s rating prior to the season was quite significant such that no matter how the worlds were broken out into leagues, it was fairly obvious how every world would finish even before the season started. So you’re right that a league of all servers facing each other still wouldn’t ensure a 2nd place team a reward. However, it also would mean that 1st place Silver/Bronze winners would also not win a reward. And that’s part of the point. More than likely, 2nd thru 6th would defeat 7th thru 24th in almost any combination of matchups, and yet aren’t given a reward simply because they were placed in an ‘unbalanced’ matchup not significantly in their favor as was the case for each of the 1st place winners. Simply seeing the end results should be evident enough of how unbalanced it was with all 1st place league winners for EU and NA being unbeaten for the entire 7 weeks, and I don’t think it could be claimed any one of them was really an upset, unpredictable 7 weeks prior, nor really very close in points overall.

Secondly, and more importantly, mid season server transfers allowed the waters to be muddied. Clearly the developers not only knew this could happen but even admit that it did happen, and yet still did nothing to prevent it. They locked rewards for players to their starting worlds, but didn’t lock out players from playing for other worlds? So was this really gold league vs. gold league, or was it just more tier 1 stomping tier 2 with the further insult of players from other worlds, not even native to that league, flocking to the winning servers for some easy WxP and further assurance the already top rated teams would win? How much griefing was done and not witnessed or reported as a result?

My point is, that while the leagues were created with the guise of matching up worlds with similarly equal ratings, there was an imbalance long before the first tick of the clock which only got worse with server transfers, and additionally proved nothing worthy of any reward for anyone, let alone a 7th or 16th rated team over the 2nd thru 6th rated teams. Hence, I would amend my recommendation to either give all that participated an equal reward for a system that was clearly unequal from the start, or don’t give anyone a reward for that very same reason. Call it a failed beta test, and go back to the drawing board.

To be honest, I would recommend any future seasons to have a registration period where players pick or join their preferred WvW guild; that guild then registers for the season, and at the end of the registration period, the registered players’ WvW stats and normal WvW times (all of which are probably already being logged), and any other data that could be pertinent to determining that guild’s WvW presence, are then assessed in such a way as to place the guilds as evenly and as competitively as possible across various teams such that any pre-existing alliances would have little to no effect on the outcome, as players wouldn’t have as much influence on which teams they end up being placed on. Obviously, once registration is over, guild/team swapping should be locked for the season. Then, all teams vie for the top positions as you might actually see in most other types of tournaments. That, I feel, would at least come much closer being a fair and balanced competition than what was done for season 1, and thus actually worthy of a reward.

Before anyone suggests that I’m ranting for not winning 1st, let me say that I’d rather finish in last place in every tournament knowing that every best effort was made to ensure a fair and balanced competition. Season 1…not even close to an ‘effort’ let alone ‘best’.

So am I correct that only 1st place in each league gets a special finisher even though the 1st place of silver and 1st place of bronze actually finished behind the 2nd and/or 3rd place gold teams? That’s a messed up reward system. How does being 3rd/4th or 6th overall warrant getting a reward over what the 2nd place gold team gets?

As this thread clearly refers to, it is known that server transfers occurred during the season, even between EU and NA, so I think it’s safe to say the current rewards are simply unfair to all those who participated, to include the 1st placers, who in my opinion, can’t honestly claim their world was solely responsible for their victories.

Simplify the issue and just give all participants the same reward for this season and plan it better for next season if there is one.

At least I can find the humor in the gold/money spent by players to transfer between servers before, during, and possibly after the season. Hope it was worth it for them. :P Everyone forgets that it’s ANETvWvWvW and ANET always wins!!!! Good game, Anet, good game!

1. When a season starts, split WvW into two parts: 1 for season play, and 1 for the normal ‘casual’ WvW play using the existing matchup system. Meta achievements can be obtained in either. This may help with allowing players to still get into a WvW matchup while being queued up for season play. Also allows achievement hunters more options for completion.
2. Season play should be for guilds/players that register for it prior to the start of the season, and be intelligently placed into teams based on several factors.
3. Guild membership (players must choose 1 of their guilds to represent during season play, and guild leaders then register that guild for the season).
4. Once the registration period is closed, no player who was not registered for the season will be able to enter season play, but would still be able to get into the normal WvW matchup at least.
5. Transfers between servers have no affect on season play, only the casual WvW.
6. After registration is closed, analysis of the register guilds and players can be done to gather information from players’ normal playing hours/time zones, WvW/PvP achievements, GvG rankings should GvG tournaments ever be implemented, guild sizes, past season finishes, and so on. This analysis can then be used to as evenly as possible distribute guilds across teams such as to create competitive matchups.
7. Additional game mechanics can be added in the event any matchup does become overly lopsided such as having dynamic events spawn against any team whose score exceeds a certain threshold above the other teams. For example, if 1st place has 20k more points over 2nd and 3rd, this could spawn a dragon + army to attack 1st place’s garrison. During the event, 1st place stops earning points for that garrison and possibly starts losing points the longer the dragon remains attacking. Should the garrison lord be defeated by the dragon/army, then that team could further suffer a points loss such as a percentage of their lead over 2nd place. i.e. their lead could be cut in half. Successfully defeating the dragon, however, gives the participating players a chest reward; no additional team points, of course, as this mechanic is intended to keep scores closer. It would also be cool to give an opposing randomly selected team member the opportunity to play as and control the dragon’s actions, giving the dragon the chance to be more ‘intelligent’ and challenging. Player cannot move the dragon away from the fight and must be actively attacking or otherwise be removed from control.

Anyway, these are my ideas for attempting to balance season play.

Not knowing what the rewards are as of yet makes this suggestion ‘nearly’ moot. That being said, I don’t have a problem with all participants being given at least some reward no matter what place they finished. Those teams my world faced put up some very good fights despite what place they finished, and had there been any really balance mechanism in place prior to and during the season, many of those matches could have been much closer. Lack of time zone coverage shouldn’t be the only determining factor for players being rewarded for the effort.

Nah. Every WvWr who really wants to play would just then buy a tag and you’d still end up with commanders being in queue. That, and once a map is full already, no spot would open up until at least 1 player leaves or crashes so you still could have a long queue, commander or not. Besides, when you get 2 or more commanders all into any map there is already tension as to who will be leading and what will be done. Too many chiefs; not enough Indians. The real issue is having a queue for WvW.

I’d counter suggest that at minimum, there should be some WvW skirmish maps (aka overflow) where players from all worlds are randomly placed into teams for brief 15-30-60 minute matchups while waiting for their primary WvW queue to pop. These would not affect the primary WvW matchup’s score, but would be individually scored just as would any PvP matchup.

Just need for Anet to add some WvW skirmish maps to the equation. Essentially, GvG or at least team vs team where players join into larger scale PvP matchups. Some maps could include fortifications while others are just open battlefields. I would prefer these be separate from the WvW matchups though since I really like storming and defending the fortifications. Plus this opens it up for a variety of existing and even new maps to be used for the skirmishes. i.e. they could use even the towns for capture the flag skirmishes. Imagine battles inside Divinity, for instance with the goal for 1 large team to defend the flag in the center of the city from the other smaller teams taking it back to their district. Say 50 players on the defense team with 3 teams of 20 players all trying to get the flag back to their own district. The smaller teams would both have to work together but also against each other to be successful. It would be some chaotic fun in my opinion.