I posted this idea last year when there was I think a CDI or something about population issues. At the time, I said balancing populations is the wrong way to tackle this problem because populations will fluctuate all the time for various reasons. I’m even more convinced of this now.
You have to adjust scoring in WvW to make population matter less.
1. Make unmanned structures decay. First losing upgrades, then going to a neutral uncapped state. Some indicator on the map will alert a team when a structure is in a state of decay. You have this in the ruins already. Just make it much longer for structures (30min of no defenders in a keep, 15 for towers?) This will spread zergs out and force defense. Of course people will try and bot to keep structures from decay so some kind of anti-bot measure would need to be in place.
2. Make neutral structures worth 0 PPT when captured. They will produce supply/can be upgraded, but won’t generate PPT until they’ve been defended. Once a successful defense event for that structure has been completed, it begins to generate normal PPT. Stops night-capping and pv-dooring from decimating a low pop server.
3. Neutral structures still give event completion, karma, wxp, champ bag etc when captured, so people can still karma-train even when the opposing servers are asleep.
4. Camps are left alone and don’t decay. They simply don’t send yaks to neutral structures.
5. Increase PPT the more ticks a structure is successfully kept-up (up to some cap) and the more upgrades a structure has. This allows a server with low pop to concentrate on making a ‘last stand’ in just a few structures while not getting blown out. This also promotes upgrading structures, and gives an opposing force a reason to besiege a difficult target rather than just flipping towers all day.
6. Remove waypoints from keeps.
These solutions are intended to address the problem of population/coverage imbalance without actually relying on populations being balanced or punishing servers with healthy wvw populations by lowering queue limits on them.
The scoring system as it is now heavily favors the servers with the best 24/7 coverage and the bloodlust mechanic has only made this worse. There needs to be a truly powerful comeback mechanic in place for low pop or spotty coverage.
The few servers that do organize 24/7 coverage might be initially upset that their hard work is somehow mitigated because of this but they’ll come around to it once they see more competitive matches. They will actually have to think about the battlefield and where to dig in rather than simply organize on some forum who’s blob is going to be where when.
Wouldn’t it be nice if 1st place each week wasn’t determined by Monday?
