Guild Wars 2

QoL changes sound nice, but the one really broken thing from day 1 (ok, with the exception of the rampant culling we used to have) has been the scoring system.

Seriously?! Considering GW2 has NOT MONTHLY FEE and HASN’T CHARGED FOR ALL THE CONTENT UPDATES SINCE RELEASE, you are really going to quibble over this? Seriously!?!?

How will the new specialization, and really all the changes in HoT, affect people who do not buy HoT? Or did I misunderstand and HoT is not a B2P expansion, but it’s free?

Osu.6307:

Note from the Heart of Thorns discussion – “Holding objectives is now a bigger component of victories in WvW”

It’s one part of along list of what we have been asking for. If they give us this and nothing else, it won’t change WvW AT ALL! People will still stack servers and off-time hours making this change meaningless.

A lot of pieces of WvW need tweaking – defending objectives included – to revive WvW.

mako.2431:

We need objectives to give a kitten about that promote actual pvp.

1) Objectives need to be important for us to care about.
2) Mechanisms have to be put in place, so not everyone can stack on one server, or stack their off-time hours, making the achievement of objectives from 1) trivial.

I hope the WvW HoT reveals will show that ANet addressed these issues.

Broken Bottle is the new Golem In A Box. (if anyone here still remembers)

Stagnation vs uneven match-ups. What’s worse?

Would you rather fight new opponents each week or have balanced matches each week, realizing that depending on your servers strength you may not get both. Hello, T1!

PabbyGaul.9682:

As a general comment….Ancient warfare generally did involve blobs, granted many were more organized than that but, blobs none the less. That seems to be the genreal era, maybe renessaincish (also blob-like armies).

Geurilla warfare really only became a serious tactic with the invention of guns (which are far more deadly in realife than in Gw2, where my rifle bullets are made out of rubber apparently) and high explosives. If we had weapons like that, one shot = kills entire zerg, yer kitten right there’d be little sneaky groups and alot less zergs.

BUT, thats not the case.

Heh, yea, no AOE limit to real hand grenades and land mines.

24 hour coverage
Break up the 24 hour cycle into sets of 4 or 6 hours, minus a short break in between. Establish scores for each of these sets, and match them up. Accumulate all scores over the week for overall rankings. The current scoring averages out over 24 hours, which gives a server’s weak timezone block a higher score than they should get. A possible result being them getting matched up against a much stronger opposition, making the game boring for both sides.

Whether to preserve the state of the maps from the end of a set’s match (say: Wednesday, 16:00 UTC) to the start of the set’s next match (Thursday, 10:00UTC, if we assume 6 hour long matches) would depend on server technology. If you save the state, everything should be frozen during the off-line hours (scoring, yaks, workers, upgrades) and at start, all destructibles and NPCs should have a 60 second invulnerable buff. Or not, it would make the start of each period quite interesting.

This break-up will implicitly get rid of the importance of off-hour coverage, because in each set you will be matched up with servers of similar strength in that set. Also, you will always have fights, because your queued-across-all-maps server won’t be matched up against a server that fields 20 people across 4 maps. You also have a better sense of accomplishments, as you don’t have to content with PvD wiping out all you worked and paid for in 30 minutes or less. Your time zone set would also be directly responsible for its score, no more “we won by getting carried by our strong X”, or “our Y didn’t put in enough hours this week and that’s why we lost”. Further, this method would prevent snowballing, which happens when you match servers of very different strengths. Each set would be balanced around the server’s score for that set. If your server’s previous timezone block is weak compared to yours, you’d still get matched to an opponent of your strength, independent of how your previous or following timezone performs.

E.g. during EU prime time hours you have a set where servers A, B and C play against each other. But when you move into the NA prime time set, server D has a better NA score than C, so now it’s A vs B vs D.

I understand this will possibly change who you play against from one set to another, but the listed advantages far outweigh that. Lots of people also don’t play 12 hours. A 4 or 6 hour set is something close to what people play anyway, giving them a natural starting and stopping point.

Snowballing
Would be much less of an issue. Introduce dynamic events that would entice a 2v1 while one server is clearly ahead. Work out a reward ratio, such that the 2 losing servers would have a real enticement to attack the leader, while making the leader rewards worthwhile hanging on to that spot, to avoid trading off the lead position to game these events. Remember, if you offer a reward, people will find and use the easiest way to get there.

Also, since matches would be shorter, there at least be less time in which to get snowballed. In the long break between sets, you can also rebuild your morale again and came back to the fight fresh.

Stagnation
Better matching provides more of a challenge and less uneven matches. See snowballing above.

Azumi.9572:

(…)
If you did a 1+3, 2+2, 3+1 you get:

StackGate+Maguuma VS Jade Quarry+Fort Aspenwood VS Tarnished Coast+Sea of Sorrows

That’s a bit better, I guess.

Because of the unbalanced population, I think you need to try something like
BuyGate vs JQ+Mag vs TC+SoS+FA

A couple points:
- lets’ stop using the term “blob” in this thread when you are talking about an outmanned situation and are referencing the more numerous server. “blob” has certain connotations in army behavior, that is really not related to the issue at hand, i.e. imbalanced server populations. If we had perfect server balance you might still have blobs.

- making the outmanned buff stronger is such a weak band aid, we shouldn’t be wasting breath on it here; let’s focus on finding a solution to the overall imbalance, rather than how to work around the imbalance, e.g. alliances, map pop caps, forcibly reshuffling people and guilds, decoupling PvE servers and WvW servers, how to deal with shifting, variable population numbers, and breaking up the 24 hour cycle.

Bitterblade.3028:

PPS. Do servers matter to anyone outside of wvw anyway?

Probably for some PvE/pride. SoR would go ape-kitten if the name goes away. Whenever we get a new world boss, like Tequatl 2.0, some servers will want to compete for world first’s.

Neko Dudley.2495:

Vanquishing maps…

Dude! Lonar’s Pass. I don’t think I spent much time in LP, so after having cleared maybe 90%, I thought, Hey, what’s this?, when I came to Grenth’s temple. Oh, it’s clickable! Will it spawn a boss monster? clicks - loading screen appears Oh, nonononoNONONONO!!! character is in underworld - all vanquish progress is reset - have to run all the way back from Camp Rankor through Snake Dance and Dreadnought’s Drift to get back to Lonar’s Pass

Dawntree.7246:

Regarding multi guild, let’s say everybody has to pick a primary guild (as proposed in guilds CDI) and they can play only for the alliance of said guild, its other side guild has to be “freelance” or still member of the same alliance.
If a player wants to leave a guild and its alliance, has to wait the new match up to join with the new guild.

This seems to get complicated because of the one player→many guilds feature.

Maybe have people pick the alliance they want to fight for, independent of their guild? That way you don’t have to designate one guild as the special WvW guild that picks your alliance. Plenty of people are in multiple WvW guilds. This design puts a bit more work on the individual, but if a GM can make everyone show up for a raid I think they can make everyone pick the same kitten alliance.

Having the alliance choice be account wide would have to be a requirement, to limit some spying. Can’t do anything about dual boxing with two accounts.

Sarisa.4731:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Which brings me back to my point, how has everyone managed to forget that GW1 had frickin’ DINOSAURS in it????

(…)
Hard Mode – Or difficulty levels like my previous MMO (normal mode doable by most PUGs; hard needs a bit of organization, but has higher drop rates; elite for the most experienced organized groups, but with even higher drop rates) . I’m still too inexperienced to do much with hard mode in GW1, but I appreciate it being there for those who have put in the time, money for gear, and the desire for challenge. It would only work for instanced areas in GW2, but it would allow groups to select their desired risk/reward ratio.
(…)

This!! So much!!

I understand, it won’t work the same way in GW2 and its open, shared world, but, man, was this fun in GW1! Vanquishing zones was a great challenge, and the HM dungeons really required some work!

Maybe you could make it work in GW2, actually. You can already instantiate new zones, i.e. “overflows”. So just make a few of these for hard mode. Have people queue up for them, if too many folks want in.

Tricky thing is, in GW1 you had heroes and henchmen to fill your party, so you either have to tune the GW2 HM zone to a party of 5, or for a solo player. Both, ideally and since we’re shooting the breeze.

The alliance idea is a good start, but without addressing the 24 hour cycle it’s either still going to be a hot mess, or super complicated.

Break up the linking of WvW to PvE worlds. People can still have their PvE home server for world first Tequatl 3.0 kills, and now they’ll have a separate alliance to fight for in WvW, which allows population balancing.

Then, break up the 24 hour match duration into smaller chunks, so you can really match population in alliances throughout the day and the week.

Without this, you’ll still screw the non-prime timezones, unless people would balance this themselves by distributing people evenly over all alliances. But if that would have actually worked, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Copying this over here from the OTHER thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage/first
about how to address coverage issues.

>>>>
Break up the stupid 24/7 cycle. Follow EotM by making matches 4-6 hours long, call them frames. Your “Coverage” will then be who is playing in your frame.

Match servers based on scores during each of these frames. If you have a strong NA you get matched against other strong NAs, but your weak SEA goes up against other weak SEAs. So, you’ll have a winner for the NA frame, the SEA frame etc.

Break the 24 hours up however you like. Maybe leave a few hours unused (i.e. 4 5-hour matches) and move frames around a bit for people who would fall between static match times.

This way you get much less PvD or steam rolling (if you have 4 strong NAs you’d still get an unbalanced match). No more buying guilds to fill your tier’s off-hour slots to PvD to #1. No more blaming your underpopulated timezones for “losing the lead” and “not pulling their weight”.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Allelya.6830:

Quoting Brother Grimm “running proper builds”

They said we wouldn’t have to worry about cookie cutter builds. That’s all there ever is. It’s this build or you’re bad, get out. Really sick of this mentality and the fact that the game requires it.

The game requires it? Or some random guy requires it in his LFG dungeon speedrun listing?

I second this question. Lots of builds are viable in that the accomplish a goal, like killing MOB. Running a dungeons with 5 condi necros can get it done. 5 zerker warriors will likely do it faster, but the 5 necros can do it.

So, it’s less the game forcing bland builds, but rather certain parts of the community, isn’kitten

As an incentive for defending attach some number of points X to a successful defense event in addition to the regular tick you get from owning that structure.

I forget, but did ANet fix the “thief tapping door to contest way point” issue? If not there’d have to be some threshold/trigger, so a few attackers couldn’t trigger the defense event. This is to prevent people from running toons on the opposite server solely to trigger defense events.

Ideally, this X would scale proportional to the number of attackers. Fewer attackers would mean the defenders would get less of a bonus for defending, but the chances for success would also be lower. Don’t use fixed cut-offs, or tiers though, so the last attacker to arrive who puts you into the next defense bonus tier doesn’t get yelled at to f***-off.

On the GW1 wiki is a thread that talks you through how to get the HoM rewards with the least amount of work.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_earning_Hall_of_Monuments_rewards

And obviously, there is the calculator to see what you have earned, etc. just put your GW1 charcter name in at the top.
https://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=welcome

Straegen.2938:

Geiir.7603:

A small roaming group should have zero problem killing or send a thief fleeing inside such a small circle…. I take it we are talking about thief, right?

Warrior… they have invulns, stability and high mobility. Some Guardians and eles as well. Bunker necros can actually be the worst but their poor speed makes getting to a circle to hold it difficult. Thieves are easy because they cannot cloak to hold a circle which makes them easy prey.

You do remember that invuln skills also prevent you from stopping the cap, right?

If you couldn’t prevent the cap by circle diving no one would bother scouting around camps, which would be bad for the game.

If you can’t kill that one guy circle diving either bring a few more guys, or different classes/skills, to cap, so you can kill him, or kill the guards faster, so you cap before the lone guy arrives, or move on.

Jeknar.6184:

Mishi.7058:

Actually prior to my break they happened due to groups being very organized and very little bannering. However people used tactics, along with siege, and could drive off the enemy, or defeat the defenders and secure the objective. Then again maybe that was only tiers 1/2

Ironically, those complaining are from the higher tiers…

The game, as in GW2 itself, as well as WvW and how it’s played, has change A LOT since the early days. Don’t compare today’s T1/2 to back then.

Mishi.7058:

gennyt.3428:

Mishi.7058:

The good fights are those which last hours on end, without either side bannering the lord non stop.
…

Yeah…and they often happen because the lord kept getting bannered…

Mishi.7058:

… (Players will have to watch objectives closer to avoid waiting until swords pop to respond.)

Sounds like fun!

Actually prior to my break they happened due to groups being very organized and very little bannering. However people used tactics, along with siege, and could drive off the enemy, or defeat the defenders and secure the objective. Then again maybe that was only tiers 1/2

There was a change to when the swords would pop up, though, right? It’s been delayed vs how it was at launch? So, maybe in the early months of GW2, earlier swords or better scouting led to better responses to attacks on keeps.

“Back then”, lords were basically never bannered (or sigil’ed) to delay a cap, though once in a while, some thief has been known to stealth rez a lord or supervisor.

Good times, my friend, good times.

Alvain.7364:

As of now:
No bannering of lord.
No more dead scouts/mesmers.
No more stuck in siege.

Honestly, this should have received a place in the pr for the feature pack. Good work!

This!! Is awesome! Thief stealth rezzes are BAAAAAAACK!! LOL

Before the warrior banner rez train was a thing, I stealth-rezzed lords and supervisors on my thief so many times it wasn’t even funny anymore!

The enemy steam-rolled the camp, already dancing, thinking “yes, we flipped a fully upgraded camp, we are so great”, watching the capture bar tick towards 100%. Then, all of a sudden, there is that thief de-stealthing next to the dead supervisor! The next second the supervisor is back up, the capture bar resets and there is a friendly army charging in to push out the enemy! This became only that much sweeter if you actually saved a keep or garrison/stone mist that way!

It took a few weeks for most people to catch on to what was happening. People started to pay attention to that hostile stealth field out of nowhere dropping on the supervisor, and the super’s health bar ticking up all of a sudden! They usually started to drop AOE on the super and swinging at empty air, which made the stealth rez game quite challenging towards the end.

A close second would be the hours I spend tagging a keep’s gate to keep the waypoint contested. Makes for some great chase scenes when the angry owners try to catch you. Our guild leader started to relay me some of the nasty whispers he got about “that f-ing thief of yours who keeps tagging our Hills!”

To keep things grounded in reality, i.e. what ANet can actually accomplish, I’ll go with 1.

The Lover – bought on TP for 600-ish gold a while back; used to make Dreamer

Carcharias – from mystic forge, after dropping a few hundred rares of varying types into it; still haven’t found the energy to create the legendary out of it

The Legend – dropped in WvW, sold on TP to buy Dusk and make Twilight

With all the suggestions, take a moment and think about how with the available tools you can subvert the purpose. E.g.

“actively defended structures” – make an account on the other server, park your alt in the structure your guys will be attacking, bingo. (already happening with the supply wasters) Also, this will lead to a lot of friction on a server, if you try to defend an objective and still lose it. You’ll be blamed for giving the other side points. (already happening when people get yelled at for pointlessly dying when the other server has the orbs)

bounty – “Oh, hey, guys, I just heard I got the bounty on me, so I’mma log (or sit in citadel or sit behind a million arrow carts) until it drops off. Later!”

The one, huge and self-inflicted WvW community wound is people being kitteny kittening kittens, and people going the easy route to “win”.

Anyway, I do hope ANet gets WvW going again, somehow. Still have great memories from the first 12 months.

“Follow this concept: …”
In the old days you had to transfer gold from one character to another manually, there was no account wide wallet. Always a pain if you misjudge by a few silvers.

Do your crafting in DR. The teleport spots are fairly well placed to pick up stuff at TP and run back, especially for armor smithing. Often you can avoid the loading screen altogether.

Sounds interesting. The fee is also a good idea, IMO. Active people can just log in and get the story for free. People returning after an absence – like me – can still catch up for some small cost.

I do wonder how they will handle the large fights, like the end of season 1? Will you fight the 3 marionettes by yourself? If they did some scaling and fiddling with mechanics that could be a cool fight!

Yeay, WvW CDI! Get your copy&paste combos hot-keyed, for all the stuff that’s been written on this in the last… 2 years.

grifflyman.8102:

Will this be recorded to watch later?

Yes, you can see it on twitch.tv as well.
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/4362362

Xae Isareth.1364:

(…)

Look at the big ESports. LoL for example: pretty much non-costumizable characters with extremely limited play options designed to enable balance. You’ll never see games like GW1 or TSW being big in ESports.

Did you mean GW2 instead of GW1 here? I never played in them, but GW1 in its day seemed to have a very active GvG scene with official tournaments, money prices and stuff.

Can’t understand the hating on the orbs? It introduced a different mechanic into the game, plus some much needed new terrain. Did you guys all love the lake so much?!?

EotM outlived its need as “something to do while queued” when we finally got a friggin’ queue size indication. No one likes sitting in queue, but what sucked was you had no way of knowing how long you had to wait. That also made the queuing system look buggy, much more so than it probably was. Which in turn gave rise to anecdotes of you having to stay in one zone, no porting, or you’d mess up your queue position and won’t get in before next Wednesday.

If the queue indicators had been there and maybe access to the separate Obsidian Sanctum for some FFA PvP I don’t think EotM would have ever seen the light as it is now. Maybe, with changes, it would have been instead a alternate borderland map.

There have been a couple threads with ideas how to improve WvW server competition. I hope ANet is going to pick up some of those ideas. Another season without changes would be sad.

That is an excellent idea! Drop in Divinity’s Reach and watch the mayhem!

- coverage > all
- same maps since launch (change to center and new orbs actually helped for a while IMO)
- mixing of PvE’ers with casual PvP interest and hardcore mass PvPers from DAoC

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

With the pending China/Asia release of GW2, I wonder what impact, if any, this will have on WvW. From what I’ve read, it’s my understanding GW2 is being modified to conform to certain “restrictions” as a condition of being distributed in China. One such restriction may be that only players from China and affiliated Asian nations will be permitted on their regional servers.

Consequently, WvW will be much more homogenous when viewed in the context of time zones and server populations. As a result, coverage disparities and “night capping” may not be as much of an issue on the Chinese/Asiatic servers. My fear is the developers can then use this to argue that coverage disparities don’t need to be taken seriously. This, of course, would be disingenuous because of the differences in how the servers in China/Asia are set up versus all the other servers; apples to oranges.

They will still have some people who play in the morning or during regular work hours, which will represent their off-hour coverage. Since it’s much less all around, the top server may have only 30 people on during those hours.

I can actually see “pay for coverage” going on there. If you have one of the newly rich playing on your server, who has more money than sense, he might offer some actual cash for 5, 10, 20 people to switch to his server. If some of those folks are on the lower economic spectrum, offering them the equivalent of $1,000 to play on this and not that server might be very tempting. Doesn’t work on the NA/EU servers because 10, 20 people even during off hours is next to nothing on the top servers.

Berk.8561:

Jeknar.6184:

Also, the Upgrade Extractor Tool argument still stand.

Yeah, great, now we need to spend an additional 50 gems to get an Extractor, which, unlike the old Transmutation Crystals, doesn’t seem to drop as part of normal gameplay.

Isn’t the extractor a permanent item? Buy it once and use it forever?

[edit]Nope, nvm, it’s not permanent.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Mattargul.9235:

The assumption is that PPT is a reasonable measure of population/server strength. It can be calculated for small slices of time just as well as for 24 hours. This metric over 6 hours will be a much, much better predictor for the actual strengt of that server during that 6 hour period than the 24 hour score. It will be much better than averaging out a score over 24 hours when everyone agrees that population can vary wildly over that time.

No, PPT is a game mechanic that rewards you for taking and holding structures, and is calculated at a specific time that everyone is aware of.

Yes. And if you have more people on you will have a higher PPT, leaving aside the time it takes to grind down a T3 structure with full supply, or vastly better players.

(…)PPT is what actually binds all of WvW together, and people complain about PPT when they don’t have it. (…)

People complain, when they get overrun by a zerg facing 5 to 1 odds. That usually leads to less PPT down the road. Conversely, people complain, when they are on the winning side of a 5v1 match up, albeit a little less, since at least that are “winning”.

If you have a strong NA, and the other servers do not, then that is exactly the same as a server that has a strong OCX or strong SEA, or strong EU, while their competition doesn’t.

Yea…?

(…)Sometimes there is nothign that can be done (like when we face HoD during the season), and we know that. (…)

And this is what “off hour coverage” leads to , nothing you can do about it. Which arguably sucks. That’s what we’re discussing here, how to fix the “nothing can be done about it”, because that’s not a good state of affairs.

The assumption is that PPT is a reasonable measure of population/server strength. It can be calculated for small slices of time just as well as for 24 hours. This metric over 6 hours will be a much, much better predictor for the actual strengt of that server during that 6 hour period than the 24 hour score. It will be much better than averaging out a score over 24 hours when everyone agrees that population can vary wildly over that time.

I’m not clear on this part. What PPT are we using? The PPT from the previous 6 hours? The PPT from the same time period of the previous day? Both of these measures have their own issues, since they try to predict the strength of a server on a future date.

True. Predicting from one day to the next can still yield results that are off. To get the best results you’d have to slice the day very thinly. Running with a 4, 6 or 8 hour slice instead is a trade off between having a match that has a reasonable length vs. preventing off-hour coverage from having too much of an effect.

Maybe having a separate match for weekday and weekends would also make sense.

Slicing the 24 hour day into smaller slices, especially if these can be aligned with “prime times”, will yield matches with more even populations for the majority of the players.

There’s simply no evidence for this. In most cases, a server will have more players at all times, or less players at all times.

You doubt there are servers that run heavy NA, or only OCX, while next to nothing during their off-hours?

Kodaka.1960:

Johje Holan.4607:

3. Time zone gated matches. I believe this is the best solution. The main reason is that it actually does create more balanced matches – for all time zones.

Time-zone matches do not work for the following 3 reasons:
1. Assumes that there is some reliable metric that can be calculated to determine a server’s strength in each of these slices.

The assumption is that PPT is a reasonable measure of population/server strength. It can be calculated for small slices of time just as well as for 24 hours. This metric over 6 hours will be a much, much better predictor for the actual strengt of that server during that 6 hour period than the 24 hour score. It will be much better than averaging out a score over 24 hours when everyone agrees that population can vary wildly over that time.

2. Assumes that even if we could calculate that metric, all match-ups would somehow magically be even, when they were not before.

Slicing the 24 hour day into smaller slices, especially if these can be aligned with “prime times”, will yield matches with more even populations for the majority of the players.

3. Does not account for the increased complexity burden on the players, and the servers.

Burden on players? Pretty much, none. You play the same way you play now, at your current time for your current server, just that you would be matched up against a server that can achieve the same score during those hours you play, which likely means that they have the same-ish number of people.

Burden on servers? Yes. Some more computations, shuffling of matches. It’s not trivial and won’t be done in an afternoon, but it’s not like we’re putting someone on the moon here.

BrotherBelial.3094:

After reading most of the wall of text by the OP(…)

Don’t give up, keep reading.

Meglobob.8620:

Where Are All The Devs?

Working on China/Asia GW2 release of course.

Good point. And let’s do acknowledge, some of the stuff int he feature patch was actually pretty cool, like the wardrobe.

Johje Holan.4607:

(…)
Unfortunately, Devon’s failure to acknowledge the full time slices suggestion and/or scoring changes lead me to believe that neither is technically possible for them to do.

I’m not sure this last proposal was offered like that during the EotM CDI. In that CDI, it was discussed and acknowledged by Devon, to have WvW scoring/matching on shorter timescales instead of a whole week, without other changes, which was downvoted.

I don’t think it was discussed to have separate time slices that would be individually matched up based on their own glicko score.

Raf.1078:

The only way to actually nerf coverage would be to take all the wvw populations and re-shuffle them evenly across all the servers & lock down server transfers at that point.

But no one really wants that.

Well, even then you’d still have issues with people leaving the game, or just dropping out of WvW.

Whatever solution we get would have to account for populations fluctuating, even for legit reasons, not just people chasing the bandwagon.

BAITness.1083:

Far too many of these suggestions punish servers that have players coming into WvW and reward servers that don’t. If you think this is a fix, you are blind. This will only lead to people yelling at others to log out of WvW so they can get whatever incentive it is you are providing.

No. One proposed solution is to separate the 24 hour period into distinct chunks that are then scored and matched up independently. The scoring method stays the same. However many people you have in WvW contribute to PPT for the time block they are in, determining who they will fight against next. Same as right now. Only difference is you will be vastly less likely to be fighting outnumbered.

I think the only “solution” wvw needs is a seperate GvG gametype like GW1, with organized small-medium sized groups. After that is introduced, the smaller servers should be lumped into larger servers. This would make it possible for everyone to have balanced small, medium, and large scale fights – just in different game modes.

This solution doesn’t address that some servers are running 100s deep during certain hours, while they can still be matched up against servers that are nearly empty during those same hours due to scoring being accumulated over 24 hours.

Dayra.7405:

Please do not mix up two completely different problems of WVW as they need completely different actions to fix.

- coverage: even if you field more people you loose, as the scoring favor a few doing PvD in off-time over many fighting for points in prime-time.
- population imbalance such that you are outmanned most of the time.

True, this thread was meant to deal with the issue of off-hour coverage > anything when it comes to scoring PPT.

We do have a solution in here that would address the general population imbalance, too, though. Quick recap -

The big problem is that servers are matched for 24 hours based on a score that’s computed over a 24 hour period. That’s a problem because not everyone plays 24 hours a day. Server populations – maybe outside of T1 – can vary quite a bit over a day. This usually results in your PPT also being different over the course of the day. If your server is all but empty 16 hours of a day, but fields the Mongolian hordes during the other 8, you may end up with an overall score that is similar to a server with a only mid sized, but steady, 24 hour population. When these two get matched up and you play during your server’s dead period, you are not going to have much fun, getting zerged down all the time, and your 8 hours of overwhelming dominance may get similarly bored.

To address this, the 24 hour period should be chopped up into smaller scoring blocks. You still play under your server’s banner, but now during each scoring block, you will be matched against servers that are closest to you in scoring during that time period, which should mean you will fight a roughly equal population.

Fighting equal populations translates into more fun in WvW IMO. Maybe this is a minority viewpoint.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

And, sadly, I think coverage will continue to be a problem until ArenaNet can find a method to monetize WvW that doesn’t rely on server transfer fees.

Very interesting – and kinda disheartening – point. I’m not quite sure of the pure capitalistic motivations behind stacked servers, though I wholeheartedly agree with the corollary that if there was an obvious and easy way to link balanced populations to gem purchases, it would happen at the drop of a hat.

Maybe we should ask ANet, how much effort it would be to implement a solution that gives us balanced populations, and then open a kind of “kickstarter” in the gem store, where people just deposit gems into until we have the amount necessary to fund the effort, or make it their worthwhile. Would need some way to link the gems to cash, so you couldn’t just use in-game gold, so maybe make it a real kickstarter, hehehe.

I would hazard a guess that – taken as a whole – WvW players spend less on the trading post for cosmetic and quality-of-life items than their PvE compatriots.

Maybe…? Dunno. PvE players have a much, much, very much easier way of making gold, which allows them to buy gems with gold, reducing the potential for gem purchases. Pure WvW also offers less opportunities to score unique skins, which should mean WvW players would be more open to purchasing skins of the TP.

Also, people would still transfer between servers, not everyone just bandwagons or abandons ship.

BTW, Devon — your mailbox is full.

buckeyecro.9614:

(..)Then zerging would likely become inefficient coupled with scoring system and map changes.

IMO “zerging” isn’t related to coverage imbalances, or even population size. Smaller population server’s zerg may only muster 20 people, but if you are 5, it’ll look like a “zerg”. Larger servers just do this in 60 v 20 proportions.

Additionally the best things about TESO’s AvA is that structures and fortifications must be taken strategically in an order. Camps first, then towers, then you can attack keeps. The system prevents captures if they are taken out of order.

Arguably, doing things in order, like secure your corner, then take E/W camp, then NE/NW tower then garri makes things easier, though I like the high risk/high reward attempts to “ninja” garri.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

(though I do love a good underdog comeback at the last second; in both an individual fight and a week-long WvW match).

Yes, this can be fun, but it usually comes with a cost, like pulling overtime. That is not really a long term strategy though.

(..)I’m simply looking for a workable solution which – though it may not balance the match directly – balances how points are earned in the face of imbalance.

Fair enough, I get that. I’m just not sure that it would make the matches “fun” as I understand it.

(…)
This is in reference to the lack of world identity in EotM and how players were resistant to losing that identity in WvW should a similar system be implemented there.
(…)

I have the impression this was more focused on EotM design of putting people from all servers together based on their color. I can see the loss of server identity there and why it’s not that well received. We’re trying for something that sufficiently different, though.

Also, how much good does your server pride do for you in those 10 v 50 fights, compared to having 10 v 10 or 10 v 12 fights even if these guys come from a different server than what your servier fought 5 hours ago?

However, returning back to the server pride thing, it goes beyond simply, “Who am I facing in my time slice.” (…)

Hmm, ok. I see your point, though maybe I’m less convinced how much weight it would have versus the hoped for benefits.

(…)Admittedly not an ideal option; I’d prefer to do what you hope to achieve with your suggestion and log in to see a fairly evenly matched battlefield (numerically speaking). I concede, though, that’s not likely to happen for all the reasons covered both in this thread and elsewhere; there will probably always be coverage disparities in WvW. With that as a given, I’m simply looking for ways to prevent coverage from being the sole deciding factor when it comes to PPT by diminishing and countering the passive awarding of points in the absence of action and/or investment.(…)

Well, any change that addresses the issue should be welcome right now.

Changing the PPT game to make it seem less hopeless might work to motivate more people to play.

I hope that there is the will to push for a – IMHO – better solution to actually make fighting more fun for all tiers on a consistent basis. Even with the possible downsides, it seems vastly better than what we have now. (cut short gotta run)