Guild Wars 2

thankyou gank thats a really valid point, I know TA has a single Euro guild in Ginnunga (will check on numbers but I know its far from being a zerg) and in that time zone it could really make a difference if the opposition is do not have any clear leadership.

Gin though will be playing in the evening Euro time which is ~ 5 hours in front of East coast US.

Do we know what east coast weekday daytime (9am- 5pm) populations are like? maybe there is a major disparity there and not in the oceanic time as everything thinks is the case?

edited by moderator, as the quoted text has been moderated

I`m not arguing with you, I don`t want to PvE in a PvP zone, i`m asking why it happened because the night before you oceanic and crews held us pretty even then yesterday ET simply failed to show up in that timezone even though they have greater potential numbers. SBI were there but with no ET we could focus on them and keep them bottled up. This is a problem from both ends not just one.

melchiz.7182:

Isomyr.6319:

You are looking at it wrong, we all want competitive play, my guild (TRF) rolled with TA because we though being placed in the top bracket would ensure we had good PvP in our playtimes.

If that doesn`t occur then things will need to change one way or another. What i`m after is some actual data ideally from other guilds in the oceanic and SEA timezones as to what their expectations are, what can they field, how often etc.

With that data we as a playerbase may be able to do something, if that means Oceanics transferring, US guilds transferring to SoS or IoJ or alliances breaking up it is better than the game dying on itskittenbecause we all wait for a non ideal mechanical solution.

I laughed. Good PvP is setting up rams at undefended doors and killing Tower Lords? You’re confusing PvE with PvP.

Again thanks for your input. However if you logged on at oceanic times what you would see isn`t a PvE-fest at all. vs SBI they have an awesome night crew with massive numbers but their playstyle wins them battles but not points, maybe somebody on SBI could talk to Evil and WM about this and try to get them to split up bit.

on ET they go from one extreme to the other with huge numbers (of oceanic guilds not stay up late US folks) to literally nothing. Why is that and can anything be done about it?

Currently you folks complaining about HoD night capping are doing a huge disservice to your own night-time populations who were all very much there on Monday night and kept things remarkably close. Maybe work with them to see what can be done to make their life easier so they keep logging on to W3 each night?

You are looking at it wrong, we all want competitive play, my guild (TRF) rolled with TA because we though being placed in the top bracket would ensure we had good PvP in our playtimes.

If that doesn`t occur then things will need to change one way or another. What i`m after is some actual data ideally from other guilds in the oceanic and SEA timezones as to what their expectations are, what can they field, how often etc.

With that data we as a playerbase may be able to do something, if that means Oceanics transferring, US guilds transferring to SoS or IoJ or alliances breaking up it is better than the game dying on itskittenbecause we all wait for a non ideal mechanical solution.

Thanks for the constructive comments.

I agree regarding skill, the way W3 is constructed means it is not overly dependent on individual skill and I don`t see it a major factor in the disparity.

Grim, i`m asking why your map is empty because all of the data I`ve been able to find says that actual population is not imbalanced, just the W3 population and varying times.

So for example does AA`s oceanic player base have set PvP / PvE nights? (they had massive showing on Monday night but nothing on Tuesday). Has MoP launch hugely effected potential W3 populations?

unless we get some data we don`t actually know what the problem is and cannot fix it.

So there are constant posts at the moment about how oceanic and SEA population imbalance is destroying certain match-ups but people are missing key pieces of data and choosing to simply ignore others.

There are things that we as a playerbase can do to mitigate these.

So taking my bracket as the example (I`m a HoD oceanic) we have HoD / SBI / ET and supposedly HoD has a massive oceanic zerg that far outnumbers the others servers.

The facts however are slightly different, AA recruited the largest Australian guilds:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/36676-ascension-alliance-together-we-rise/

These guilds together far outnumber in pure population terms those HoD can field in this timezone

Similarly SBI has huge numbers via Evil and WarMachine in this time zone and are constantly cleaning house. From what I have seen they can basically fill a map each with numbers to spare.

So if potential population isn`t causing the score disparity then what is? I`ll suggest a few things from my perspective along with some player driven fixes. Whether or not my perception is valid only we as players or A-net with actual mined data can say for sure but I encourage people from all server to speak honestly about their numbers, playtimes, organisation and play styles so we can get a clearer idea of the actual problem without all the emotion and passion that comes with winning or losing.

1) Population != W3 population

HoD while having smaller numbers overall in the oceanic / SEA timezone seems to have a far higher ratio of W3 focussed players and guilds. (I would love to see graphs of W3 queue times vs online population for each server to see if this is actually the case or not but that data is pretty key to A-nets business so I don`t ever expect to see it).

- Possible solutions, encourage more W3 amongst your server populations. I suspect this will change over time as more and more people hit 80 and get fully geared but gentle nudging of your realm mates is good.

2) Large difference in play styles and player aims

HoD oceanic timezones has some very W3 focussed guilds that operate independently but coordinate together. The result is that you have multiple fronts being pushed or defended at the same time. I know US time SBI and ET have this but come oceanic times even when the maps are full ET / SBI seem to roll around in large zerg balls from one objective to another which is not an efficient use of resources and is not sustainable.

Possible solution – alter your playstyles and spread out across the map. This will not only keep your opponents on the back foot it will facilitate more skill based, small group play, it will eliminate the render problems people are complaining about and provide variety to all players in W3 instead of running back and forth between 2 locations.

3) Server Transfers

We all (including my alliance) need to take responsibility for the longevity of the game if we want GW2 to succeed and be sustainable. As such we need to consider splitting / merging and transferring where appropriate. I would love A-net to provide more data to help us the player base make meaningful choices and I think they have to do one time guild influence transfers, but even now there are some really clear choices available but people would rather complain and hope A-net fixes it via some band-aid mechanic than make a move themselves.

I am guessing that these issues are showcased to varying degrees on all servers so data from anywhere is welcome.

Nick.3926:

You’re delusional. You’re not taking advantage of your enemies weak spot, you’re simply playing when you have people that want to play. There is no strategy, there is no secret plan. People of certain groups tend to want to play together, and as a result you have the largest Oceanic population of the NA servers.

This is simply not true, both SBI and ET have larger oceanic populations than HoD, look at the rosters for Ascension Alliance oceanic guilds and the size of Warmachine / Evil for SBI and then compare them to the size of the HoD Oceanics.

HoD does however have far more W3 focussed players in these timezones.

I would love to see some graphs of queue size vs concurrent population on each of the servers as it would highlight this further.

I suggest that ET focus on getting their people into W3 as opposed to PvE, as for SBI yes you are lacking coverage for around 2 hours between US west coast logging off and WM / Evil logging on, if you can get they covered then you will be fine as I can assure you that your SEA guilds are brutal opposition and certainly have the numbers.

Natural.7013:

Get home from work at 4est and we have 95 from all the capping while most the server is afk. By 10est. we have 245 and top score. Logging to go to bed and I’m sure the night HoD will take it back. Bottom line HoD benefits greatly from night capping. We do not have the night presence and are largely an East coast server, but keep the forum zerg fest coming with the usual misinformation. Pretty sure the republicans would love to hire many of you.

Please check your alliance roster, you have plenty of oceanic, more than HOD does in fact.

The constant complaining about 2v1 and timezones differences are immaterial, the game, just like DAoC was designed with those as key factors to keep things unpredictable thus keeping the end game fresh and ensuring that nobody is unbeatable. If you don`t like either of those things then maybe GW2 W3 is maybe not for you.

I`d just like to state that the imbalance in oceanic / asian is not down to numbers.

- SBI has Warmachine and Evil both of which are massive,(combined these two guilds have more members than the entirety of TA) structured and well organised guilds in that timezone.

- AA has Res, Nocturne, OGC, Harlequin, FOO and Conquest + I believe a Filipino alliance. which equates to far more in sheer numbers than TA can field in these timezones.

- TA have a single European guild to cover us from Asia to US logon. The other major difference is that all of TA are W3 focussed all of the time whereas I believe the AA oceanic guilds spread their activities.

Bottom line all 3 of the servers have the numbers in non US hours if they apply themselves to W3.

Please dont add mounts, whether to spec for movement speed is currently an important choice for any WvWvW player and requires sacrifices in other areas. it is also an essential choice for anybody wanting to participate in small scale WvWvW.

Adding mounts would remove this choice, push everybody to either damage / defence builds with little to no thought given to mobility.

It would also give further incentive to just zerg it up.

Please no mounts or other movement buffs in WvWvW that do not come from a conscious character build decision.

I`m fairly certain that your alliance has a sizeable oceanic and south east Asian presence as well. In fact I believe you purposefully recruited such guilds into AA, am I wrong on this?