Guild Wars 2

There are two issues:

1. Population difference

• Set a baseline, so each server can have up to ‘X’ players on the map no matter what.
• Only allow new people into the map if their server population is less than ‘X’ players above the lowest populated server on the current map.
• Do not kick players if this rule gets broken over a large number of players leaving the map at once. That would be by choice for the now outmanned team and it will eventually balance out on its own.

2. Coverage difference.

• Split the week long Match into 21 separate Battles
• Each Battle lasting 8 hours and worth points. ‘X’ for First, ‘Y’ for Second, ‘Z’ for Third place
• After each Battle the points total for the last 8 hours resets only. Location ownership and upgrades stay so it will be a continual war that rewards consistency.
• If your server does not have SEA coverage, you won’t get blown out during that time to the point where you can’t come back in the limited time you do have coverage. All you need to do is win those times where you do have players. (which should be much more feasible because of rule set 1 above)

So in conclusion, this would solve the need to stack on the server with the most people, thus causing queues, and create competitive fights during all time zones. Players can spread out across all severs and have the same chance of winning. You could literally turn the last place server in the current system into a top tier competitor with a couple guild transfers.

Jocksy, I don’t think we are seeing eye to eye.
I’ll take your example and how it would be scored.

Blue attacks Green and loses. 50 people die.
During that fight, Blue did happen to kill 10 people.
Both of those totals would add to each teams “mark” score. Red wouldn’t get anything.
It does not matter where they fight. The team that kills gets the marks.
Then at the end of the tick, the system would take the total number of kills on that particular map and multiply it by the objects owned on that map.

In your example, it would be:
Green = (1[camp] + 2[tower] + 3[keep]) x (number of kills) = 6 × 50 = 300 points
Blue = (1[camp] + 2[tower] + 3[keep]) x (number of kills) = 6 × 10 = 60 points

That is how I envisioned it working.

Jocksy.3415:

Only downside I see :
It would mean that there would be even more people running from fight (don’t wanna die!)
The actual way it works, only stomps can be counted (I bring my bus down a cliff, 25 died, giving the ennemies 25 x Xpoints? For the points to be attributed according to who really defended, we would need to know who killed who, and not just X ennemies died, so the two other servers get X ennemies)
It seems to me it would not be fair, that if I defend Bay on an ennemy borderland, against the 3rd server, I give more points to the ennemy that I get for my side…

Hey Jocksy,
I do agree that people would probably be more cautious about engaging, but with the current Bloodlust stomp bonus, I haven’t seen a difference… so maybe not. (and that could be as much as 3 points per death)

Secondly, I’m sure Anet could code it so only players that die from other player damage would count towards the total. Cliff diving is a valid concern though that would have to be addressed when coding.

Lastly, I’m not sure I understand your last comment. Could you elaborate on it?

What if the scoring worked as follows:

1. Each object has a multiplier associated with it (camp +1, tower +2, Keep +3 , garrison +4, castle +5)
2. For each kill your server gets 1 “mark” (mark = a temporary number that would represent the number of kills for that tick)
3. Scoring = the total number of “marks” is multiplied by the combined total of objects owned at the end of the tick

This would bring a much stronger sense of strategy when fighting. You can’t just throw loads of bodies at a keep until you eventually take it over because with each death your giving your opponent “marks” towards their tick total. If you don’t take something over by the time the tick is up, you could end up giving them a ton of points (or even if you do take it over, the death count could out-weight the reward depending on what your opponent owns and how long you are able to hold the object). Defense of a high priority item should mean a lot more as defending it could earn you a ton of points.

This may also help with population issues. If people are just PVDing, then they could own the whole map and not earn much each tick. If you aren’t fighting people… you aren’t earning points.

Example:

Sever A owns 3 camps, NW & NE Tower, Hills & Bay, Garrison on their BL (top half of the map basically)
Sever A kills 200 people on that map during the 15 minutes
Their point total for the map, for that tick would be: (3 + 4 + 6 + 4) x 200 = 3400 points

Each map has their own totals. They are combined after calculations and this gives you the “PPT”.

Would this work and would it solve the problems we currently face in WvW?

Match Length = 7 Days (like it currently is)
Game Length = 8 Hours (3 games per day)

Winner of each Game gets 3 Match Points, second place gets 2 Match Points, third gets 1 Match Point. The server with the most Match Points at the end of the Match wins.

The best fighting happens on reset. Why not have 21 reset times?

This system would prevent severs earning such a big point lead that the others servers give up and WvW becomes Karma trains for the end of the match.

If your server has a weak “Overnight” population, you would only end up losing 1-2 Match Points… no matter if the other server beat you during those 8 hours by 1000 Game Point or 20,000 Game Points. Then when your force got back on, you don’t have to try and make up that 20k lose, but rather the points have reset to zero, and all servers get to push for that 8 hour win.

Anet could award some kind of bonus for each 8 hour win (a server with only good Primetime coverage could be awarded for their efforts, because they won’t win either of the other two times slots/the match), or it could be more like a mini-season where the winning server of the Match gets three bonus chests, second place gets two, and third gets one.

One thing that would have to be figured out would be what would happen at reset times:

Everyone gets kicked from WvW, Points Rest, Structures rest (currrent method)

or

Do the points just rest back to zero and play continues as is. This way might help the dominate server more times that not, but could also boost the lessor server if planned right (push the end of the previous 8 hours with a 400+ PPT so you get a jump on the stronger server at reset)

If the Match Points are tied at the end of the Match, the winner would be determined by the combined total of Game Points earned on each game.

Would something like this work and promote competitive fights for the whole week?

@Straegen,

It would be suggested that Anet allow free transfers to the lower tier (less populated) servers when this concept went into effect. People originally transferred to the top Tier servers because they were winning, in direct relation to population.

In this model, when people in the over populated servers realized they could transfer to a “lower tier” server and have an equally competitive fight, they would. Eventually balancing out the population among all servers and making queue times nearly equal on all servers.

Hey LunarFault, this is a great concept and has been brought up a few times. I feel it would solve the biggest problem with WvW right now. I’m waiting for someone to point out the downside to this concept, but since the threads don’t get many replies… maybe there are no valid flaws.

Here are two other threads with a similar concept, one from Plains of Ashes.5941 and one I created about a month ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Simple-solution-to-the-WvW-coverage-problem/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Plus-Ten/first

@Johje Holan
I don’t think the OP was implying what you described. I believe he was suggesting is that if you were on a server that was over populated, due to people transfer to a winning server, that you could transfer to a lower ranked server for free.

The free transfer threshold being set by ArenaNet and would probably around the lower third of servers (because ranks are population based now). This would be needed because in this system the queue’s would be longer for those over populated servers since the competing server couldn’t keep up with their numbers. (which is the problem in the first place).

Once people realized they could go to a “lower tier” server and be competitive (because the maps would have a near equal player base at all times), they would transfer and thus eventually create nearly equal queue times on all servers.

Also, in your example, the map numbers of 100, 50, 30 would never be that far apart in this system. In an extreme case it would be more like A-50, B-40, C-30. (and that could only happen if server C had 15 people leave all at once [in the OP’s plus 5 example])

I’m not sure why this suggestion doesn’t get more traction. I essentially posted this same concept almost a month ago and only go two responses, both being more or less positive. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Plus-Ten/first

Someone please point out the downside to this.

@Clockradio,
There would be a minimum starting threshold, so if the lowest server has zero, the others can still have up to X players; once the lowest server reaches the threshold is when the queue rules kick in.

To your other point, I think typically peaks times and off times are similar among the competing servers. (right now rankings are based on coverage, so that makes this work even better) People will log in and out roughly around the same time periods, keeping queues low. If it does become unbalanced because a large zerg decided to leave the map, the system doesn’t boot players off the now higher side, but rather queues them from getting even more and allows the lower map population catch up, thus creating a fair fight again in a short amount of time.

Anyway, great post Plains of Ashes. I hope more people look into this option.

One of the biggest turnoffs for me in WvW is when one server has a mega-zerg on the map and just steam rolls everything in their path. Even with superior tactics, you can only survive for so long when the enemy outnumbers you by 30+ people.

What if Anet were to change the way the queue works to only allow “Enemy, Plus Ten” players on the map (with a minimum base number). This would eliminate the mega-zerg mentality and require more tactics to win.

For example:
Server A: 45 people – Queue until lowest population of players > = current total – 9
Server B: 30 people – No Queue : up to 25 more players allowed (if other servers maintain their current totals)
Server C: 60 people – Queue until lowest population of players > = current total – 9

In this example, at one time Server A or B had 50 people on the map, allowing Server C to have 60 people on it.

So yes, potentially, your server could still be out numbered if your large zerg fighting your opponents large zerg decided to all leave at the same time… but this probably won’t happen often since the fighting is competitive. (I only really see people bailing on the map when a mega-zerg is just crushing everything and it’s not fun anymore)

This would keep the fighting fair and require skill over population. I think this would only cause slightly longer queues than the current ones because the servers are basically ranked by population. So each server fighting a near ranked server should produce similar numbers.

Even in the case of a bloated population server I don’t think queues would be any longer because the map cap would be reached before the Plus Ten rule engages.
Also, maybe people would transfer off to a lower tier, since it would be skill winning fights and not numbers, so it wouldn’t matter if you were on a highly populated server or not.

Obviously these example numbers are made up and Anet would set the base number for the queue to start and the maximum offset of people based on real population figures. (ie: it cold be Enemy, Plus Thirty… depending on what the overall map maximum caps are)

Just a thought. Any obvious holes in this idea?

Confirmation from a dev on if this sigil is working as intended or not would be great.

It looks like it could be a copy/paste error or on the flip side it could be intended for main hand/off hand use along with the Malice sigil.

Anyone else having issues with the guildwars2.com homepage? Appears to be missing the stylesheet.

I like the concept, I don’t like the time based element. It would just promote afkers and take up WvW slots because they wanted to earn more WXP when they come back. Instead maybe use a system like some Sigil’s that apply a boon counter for killing. In this case maybe a counter for taking over a tower and such. Remove on down/death.

Also, would this kind of thing cause more bandwagoners to jump to a winning server. If server A is crushing server B and C in their tier… they would undoubtedly be earning a more consistent stream of WXP from this than the other two servers.

Am I looking at these abilities wrong?…
Siege might – Increase siege-engine? damage done
Siege bunker – Reduce siege damage taken

In a couple months when everyone has max on these, doesn’t it take us back to where we started? (assuming the percentage change is the same for each)

Doesn’t it only discourage new people from getting into WvW? They are less effective defending a tower via siege and get owned by siege when trying to attack a tower.

I suppose it’s hard to tell at this point without seeing the actual increases and decreases these will provide.

ps. does “siege-engine” refer to a specific type of siege only?

I nominate the eyeball from Big Trouble in Little China for Blackgate. They always seem to show up with 800 people wherever I’m attacking. Eyeball Spy!

From the feedback you have gotten from WvW players, are you going to making any tweaks to the breakout events?