Guild Wars 2

Seems ANet (in the guise of the BLTC) are ducking responsibility on this one.

The integrity of BLTP transactions is completely Anet/BLTC’s job – they’ve set it up that way:
- ANet/BLTC have 100% control of selecting the purchaser and administering the BLTP transaction. The seller, on the other hand, has exactly 0% control of who purchases goods they post on the BLTP (all they get is an after-the-fact indication of the rate and approximate time of the transaction).

To suggest the seller is in some way at fault here is ludicrous.
To act that way is reprehensible.

The real problem here is simply one of timing: had Anet realized that particular pile of gold involved was from an illegal source a little earlier, the transaction would never have gone ahead.

Why Anet didn’t simply reverse the transaction, refunding the sale goods directly back to the seller, we’ll never know.

Instead of punishing the seller, the BLTC should simply put some of that 15% commission they take aside and use the resutlign fund to indemnify legitiate sellers against illegal transactions on the TP.

Thanks

Thanks

Anyone know if GW2 runs better on Nvidia 930M or 940M laptop graphics?

I know these graphics cards peform differently with different games.
Any idea which is best for GW2?
(Have to make a choice soon to catch the Boxing Day sales)

Tx

Picking up a sale laptop and want to know which will be better for GW2:

1. Toshiba Satellite C50-C005
Core i7-6500U (dual core 2.5-3.1GHz)
RAM: 8GB
Windows 10
1TB HDD
2GB GeForce 930M

2. HP Pavilion 15-ab255TX
Core i7-6500U (dual core 2.5-3.1GHz)
8GB RAM
Windows 10
1TB HDD
2GB GeForce 940M

And a 3rd choice:
3. HP Pavilion 15-AB113AX
AMD A8-7410 (Quad Core 2.2-2.5Ghz)
8GB RAM
Win 10
256GB SSD
2GB Radeon R7 M360

PvE location set to Prologue: Rally to Maguma after finishing Torn from the Sky and going direct to WvW from within the TftS instance.
Broken as can’t get to Verdant Brink from P:RtM instance (presumably due to TftS being finished).

Establishing a Foothold showing as current story, but gate from P:rtM instance is closed and Maguma’s Breath WP not showing so can’t get to Verdant Brink (have to WP out and try again)

p.s. Why the protectionism around precursor prices?
That doesn’t seem to help anyone except precursor speculators, TP farmers and the few random players who got a precursor drop by pure chance; and it disadvantages the rest of the GW2 player community.

In addition to the gold cost, there’s the extra time and XP sink of precursor crafting to factor in as well.

ANet are in a bit of a bind with this.
They want people playing the game, but after the sign up fee (now the HoT expansion only) ANet’s revenue is almost exclusively from people buying through the TP ($ spent for gem or gem→gold purchases). With GW2 beign free to play, it’s simply in ANet’s best interest to encourage in game purchases. What better to do that with, than getting the best gear in the game?

There’s also the theory that the more people who play the TP, the better it will work as a market. It’s a small step from there to thinking that encouraging players to participate on the TP is good for the game.

Put these two together, and ANet’s reluctant moves towards make Legendary gear available away from the TP make a lot more sense.

Personally, I’d much prefer it if Legendaries genuinely reflected epic gameplay rather than grinding/RNG luck and trading – “Wow. They must have done some awesome stuff to get that” always seems far more inspiring than “See my amazing Sword of Trading.” (I feel sorry for the players who truly have earned their Legendaries, but those Legendaries are indistinguishable from the ones others just bought direct off the TP.)

Hearts and Minds: Defeat Mordremoth – Boss fight
Rift spawns off the platform and is unreachable.

Does swapping to/from Med Kitstill proc on-heal effects?
Or has this been nerfed?

thehipone.6812:

I don’t see why you would feel entitled to continue to “own” the market for a specific item. Besides, you could always buy up the new supply and try to defend your turf if you think that it is a true manipulation attempt and not a market shift.

Lol. I don’t own that market and haven’t attempted to do so. But someone else has – and very successfully. They’ve had to work hard to do that, constantly posting and reposting their buy orders, but they’ve been able to draw enormous profits out of the market as result. (I know, because I’ve been amazed at how much profit I’ve been making, even though I’ve been getting only a fraction of the supply they have and have been reposting at much lower margins than them.)

Correction: The sudden drop in price is obviously a natural market shift in response to change in underlying supply.

However, the ongoing practice of one buyer (identifiable by the the volume and pattern of their buy orders) blocking out competing buyers has resulted in articifally high margins in this market.

Of course, whether or not that sort of anticompetive behaviour is actually a problem in an MMO market is a question that only someone like John Smith can really answer.

If it’s a natural drop, that’s great – especially as it means people can get dyes for their account cheaper than before.

Wanze.8410:

Identified Dyes, especially fine and masterwork ones, have had big price spreads for a long time now, so they are attractive for flippers, so I wouldnt neccessarily agree with your assumption that your competition is just 1 guy or a coordinated group of people.

While several people play this market, there is one that stands out for the size and pattern of their buy orders (it’s been an lesson in market manipulation watching them work).

Wanze.8410:

The strategies of “market manipulation” that you described usually never work, unless there is a shift in general supply or demand from the player base, especially for items that are not limited in supply to begin with.

I’m glad you said “usually”, because the masterwork dye market is one example where manipulation has been working.

“How?” you ask.

The first part is simple: control the supply. You do this by constantly overbidding competitors using volumes that would take several days to fill. Do this often enough and, even with large potential margins, other traders can’t get enough supply to justify the time it takes to participate in this market.

The second part is breaking even. Once you control supply, the only place people can get the dye they want is on the Sell market, which pushes up the Sell price.

The third part is making a killing. With the first two in place this becomes easy: Buy orders drop off because the only ones that ever get filled are yours; and as they do you can lower your buy price thereby increasing your margin.

For extra profits, watch for dyes that drop off in supply in the Sell market and hold back selling the supply you’ve cornered of these until the undelying demand causes the Sell price to spike.

All this depends on the follwing factors:
1. Low elasticity of both supply and demand
2. Buyers who want quick trades and will pay full price or leave the market when they can’t get that
3. Sellers who want quick trades and will accept lower prices when they can’t get that
4. Low or no cost for placing and revoking Buy orders
5. Someone with the time resources and inclination to dominate the market in this way

The first four are exactly how the masterwork dye market behaves (which is why it’s such a good market to manipualte), and at least one person (identifiable by the size and pattern of their Buy orders) fulfills the last. (FYI, I estimate this person, who adjusts their Buy orders 3+ times a day, at any time has over 1200g invested in Buy orders for Masterwork dyes, and has been making several hundred g/day profit.)

This is why the masterwork dye market has maintained such high margins, despite its healthy turnover and attractiveness to flippers.

Wanze.8410:

Edit: Not all of your perceived competition are flippers in the first place, they might be forgers as well.

Good point. However, forgers have little to no reason to actively repost Buy orders (which is where the manipulation has been occuring) several times a day.

Wanze.8410:

The same goes for sell listings. Someone who dumps a a bunch of masterwork dyes might not have gotten them via buy orders but forged them with cheap fine dyes and paid a lower price than you did, so he doesnt care, if he undercuts you by a couple of silver.

I’ve only seen Masterwork dyes dumped on the market in large quantities a couple of times this year – each time they created a short term blip that was absorbed by the market again within a couple of days.

Manipulation of the Sell market has been done by withholding supply rather than dumping. (The exception has been one early attempt to force me out of the market by driving up the Buy price, then dumping just enough dyes on the market to crash the Sell price temporarily.)

Edit: For details of the ongoing anti-competitive beahviour in the masterwork dye market see my follow-up post three down

John Smith, [Had to post this here as your pm box is full]

Is large scale manipulation of prices for masterwork dyes an issue that’s worth addressing?

Background:
Masterwork dyes have high turnover and with margins after trading of 10+s per dye, the profits available are enormous.

I’ve been trading these dyes for most of this year, partly to help equip my characters and partly because I was offended by the price manipulation I saw when attempting to buy dyes for my characters at the regular buy price.

There are two standard manipulation behaviours:
1. Agressive control of supply by a very small number of traders, through regularly placing mass buy orders 1c above genuine purchasers, and then drop these again as soon as the legimate purchasers gave up and left the market. The effect was to widen the gap between buy and sell prices.
2. Holding back supply of a individual dye to the market until the sell price for that dye jumped to around 1g, then slowly selling stock down through the market until its price returned to its original level (recently 40-kitten.

My response to this was to trade at lower margin levels than the dominant traders. This has involved placing higher buy orders (greater than 1c uplift) and lower sell orders (often several silver lower) than the manipulated price levels. For the last few months I have been working to trade masterwork dyes at around 30s buy and 40-43s sell. Although this is returning margins significantly lower than those used by the dominant traders, it has still been surprisingly profitable.

I have also recently had several instances where I’ve identified the price inflation tactic (#2) being set up and been able to forestall this by posting larger quantities of dyes at the standard sell price.

As well as closing the gap between buy and sell prices, this has no doubt also had the effect of significantly reducing the profits the dominant traders have been able to pull out of the masterwork dye market.

Since I started doing this I have seen several attempts to drive me out of the market. My trades have been readily identifiable as I seem to be the only trader happy to share some profits with legitimate sellers and buyers by using increments greater than 1c for buy orders and when selling back (it’s possible there is now one other trader doing the same).

You will have noticed the sudden massive drop in prices for most Masterwork dyes.

Assuming this drop has been driven by a small group of people, it would appear to be a deliberate attempt to drive competitors like me out of the market by forcing losses on recently bought stocks of these dyes.

In commercial markets this sort of behavour is usually illegal. However I realise that the market of a MMO is a different sort of beast.

Is this the sort of market behaviour a problem for GW2?

Thanks

Finally

Baby golems, yes. But moas! That is not Engie love, it’s a cheap fob off.

At least, give them a reskin that makes them look like they belong with the class.

Hooray for the upcoming death of hobo sacks. Now I can finally start thinking about pimping my engie.

Moa morph for Engies! I’m sorry, but that’s just being lazy.

When you’re giving a class a new ability, at the very least do it in a way that is vaguely consistent with the theme of the class.

Ozze morph for the Engie, I can get.
Golem morph, even more so.

But moa morph for engies – get out of here!

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

On a related note:
Do you feed information on major market changes back to the game designers?
If so, have you informed them about what is happening to the silk price?

TLDR: Anet, you put so much effort into new skins. When will you give some of that love to the Engie class? We badly need the upgrade.

Maining an engineer has been amazingly effective at keeping me from bothering with skins, or pursuing an elite weapon – all because of the hobo sack look. Only the aetherblade skin has tempted me as possibly fitting for the Engie aesthetic, but the inability to dye kits killed that idea.

I wonder sometimes how much the hobo aesthetic of GW2 engies affects their adoption by players.

Still, it’s great to see this thread continuing to feature at the top of the Engie forum. Overall, Anet have done good things for the class (still miss the old Kit Refinement trait – Why they didn’t just tweak it and promote it to master or grand master trait?). Now, if they would just divert some of the effort they put into new skins into giving the Engineer class some skin love…

Lore wise it has to be Charr, and that works aesthetically as well.

Asura make great Engies in play, but the lore is messed up. Asura are the tech geniuses of Tyria whose mastery of the laws of physics etc allows them to create incredible devices. But instead of using master Asura tech (which has an awesome engineering aesthetic) Asuran Engies regress to the crude engineering and craftwork of the Charr. Only the Elixir Gun shows any sign of Asuran genius in its design (and the Asuran racial skill Radiation Field which, while ideal for an engie, is available to every class).

What I’d really love to see is Asuran technical genius applied to Engineers:
- Dynamics powered Grenade Kits and projectiles
- Golem tech Turrets
- Synergetics fueled Bomb Kits, Tool Kits, Med Kits and Flame Throwers
Then we’d have an engie class Asurans to be proud of (and no more hobo sacks).

(FYI, I love my Asuran Engie, but the esthetic breaks the lore of his race – The Snaff Prize winner using low grade Charr tech: someone didn’t think this through.)

And they’re on their way to getting the Master of Disaster achievement!

John,

Is the following a reasonable summary of the key factors driving MMO economies and their impacts on in-game markets/prices?
If not, what’s incorrect or missing? (just the key stuff)
(I know real world economies experience many of these factors. The question is whether these are the key ones for MMO economies.)

In MMOs, player rewards create ever increasing supplies of in-game currency.

• MMOs offset this by include in-game currency sinks (e.g. the 15% TP trading tax).
• Players’ expectations that they will get richer the longer they play means:
  • Currency sinks are always set at levels lower than the overall currency supply.
• The currency surplus resulting form this imbalance causes inflation.

IN MMOs, player rewards and crafting systems create ever increasing supply of in-game items.

• MMOs offset this by:
  • Limiting supply of higher value items (e.g. low drop rates for precursors)
  • Making items have limited use (e.g. account/soul bound on equip)
  • Providing mechanisms to remove items from the game (e.g. salvaging items for magic find)
• Player expectations that they will get progressively better gear the longer they play means:
  • Increasing demand for more powerful items
  • Overall, demand for lower level items is significantly lower than for end-game items
  • Mechanisms for removing items are set lower than overall item supply
• Surplus items collapse in value
• Supply constrained items increase in value

Where MMOs include open market systems, the combination of these two aspects results in:

• Ongoing inflation caused by increasing currency supply
• Prices for desirable scarce items increase far faster than overall inflation
• Prices for surplus items collapse
  • (the extent of this may be concealed by the overall inflation of prices)

Ayrilana.1396:

NACotser.4125:

It’d be nice if they’d at least confirm ‘Hey yo, here’s whats up:

They have and it’s been mentioned several times in this thread.

That’s hearsay, not confirmation on this forum.

Confirmation here occurs when an Anet employee posts here.

Wanze.8410:

@Zenguy,

Maybe I am overseeing something or I dnt have a clear understanding of your proposal but I think this would easily be exploitable. Maybe try to explain a bit more in detail, how automated trading from Anet would work (how big are over/undercuts?).

Short example of a way of exploiting:

Item A cost 100g at lowest listing and 85g highest bid (because the Bot goes for the 15% spread). Lets assume, there are 10 more Item A listed, one each at 110g, 120g, 130g,…..up until 200g.

Now i buy out all 10 items valued from 100g-190g and the nlowest listing is 200g and the highest bid is still 85g. The bot would place a buy offer at 170g (85% of 200g), which i am happy to sell to and make a nice profit. Now Anet has an Item A, which it needs to sell, as it thrives for 15% pricespread, it will list it again at 100g, which I instantly buy again and to sell Anets new buy offer of 170g.

Rinse and Repeat.

Wanze, you’ve assumed a very dumb bot that is programmed to place buy offers 15% below the highest buy price. Why would someone programme it that way?

Far better for Anet to programme their bots to incrementally close buy and sell prices.

Taking your example: Item A cost 100g at lowest listing and 85g highest bid (because the Bot goes for the 15% spread). Lets assume, there are 10 more Item A listed, one each at 110g, 120g, 130g,…..up until 200g. You buy out all 10 items valued from 100g-190g leaving the lowest listing at 200g and the highest bid at 85g. You now have 10 items at a cost of 1450g or 145g each.

This is low volume turnover item, so lets assume the bot closes the margin in larger increments than normal – say 30% steps for this item. Bot places a buy orders at 130g and waits to get an item. The first one it gets it places on the market at 179g. If no one places a new buy order above 100g the bot replaces it’s buy order at 124g (30% of the difference between the highest buy 100g and lowest sell 179g prices), and the process continues.

How are you going to exploit that profitably?
By placing your own buy orders to inflate the buying price? That’s exactly what the bot wants you to do. (Don’t forget, in your scenario you have spent 1450g on stock that will only return a profit if you sell if for over 170g average.)

Wanze,

Sorry if I missed it, but I don’t think you’ve answered my suggestion for Anet to take over flipping on the TP.

Anet could do the flipping far more efficiently than we can (always on-line, instant access to full market information, unrestricted ability to execute trades, able to sustain flipping at margins less than 15%, etc.) and instead of siphoning gold to a small portion of the player base, this would act as an even bigger gold sink than the 15% trading fees on their own, thereby further reducing inflation.

This seems to achieve everything you want from your proposal and does so in a way that increases (rather than decreases) the rate and efficiency of trades in the market (plus it acts as as even bigger gold sink with the corresponding deflationary benefits).

I’m struggling to see how your proposal would be better than that.

Your thoughts on this please, Wanze.

The problem isn’t flipping. The problem is the exaggerated wealth imbalance arising from a small portion of the player base doing most of the flipping and getting most of the profits (while everyone else is out PvP’ing and playing other content).

The karma cost idea potentially reduces this by limiting the amount of flipping, but at the risk of making the market less efficient (by reducing the amount of trading on the market) = not good after all.

A simpler solution is for Anet to do most of the flipping and keep the profits that arise. The result would be an even more efficient market and the TP being an even bigger gold sink.

NB: John Smith has yet to express a view on whether he thinks the wealth imbalance resulting from TP trading is good or bad for the game. So far, his arguments have advocated market efficiency, and having active participants in the market.

But if the market could be more efficient by supplanting the bulk of player trades with Anet automated ones, that exposes the question of “is better for GW2 to have a small proportion of players getting super wealthy from in-game trading? Or not?”
- Care to say anything on this, John Smith?

I don’t see any ninjas anywhere ;-)

Flipping is a huge benefit to the market.
The disadvantages of flipping arise when it’s players doing the flipping.

Flipping brings significant benefits to the market:

• It makes the market more efficient
• It narrows the gap between buy and sell prices for slower traded items
• It acts as a gold sink for the game

However, there are several problems with players doing this flipping:

• It is less efficient than a fully automated system would be
• It only works on items where the margin is greater than 15%
• It encourages hoarding of scarce and high demand items
• It detracts from playing content (by returning greater material rewards)
• The returns available create massive wealth inequality in the player base
• It has become a necessary activity to achieve the top end gear (for all but the most dedicated or lucky players)

Instead of relying on flipping by players to make the market more efficient, the BLTC Anet should be doing this flipping itself (c.f. the Gem/Gold exchange).
This would have the following benefits:

• The market would be more efficient because:
  • In-game flipping by BLTC would remove the lag inherent in manual trading
  • BLTC flipping would cover all of the tradable items, all of the time, instantly
  • BLTC would have real-time access to total market information for all its flips
  • Narrower margins could be used as the BLTC would take all the profit
• The incentives for hoarding would be reduced
• Wealth inequality would reduce, leading to a more purchasing equality in the market
• Playing content would become best way to obtain top end equipment (as the profits available from player trading would reduce significantly)
• Trading would no longer be a necessary activity to obtain top-end gear

To do this successfully, Anet would need to:

• Automate BLTC doing its own flipping
• Ensure top-end gear is obtainable without playing the market
• Cope with the objections of players for whom trading is their primary source of gold and in-game status

Looks like there’s been a bit of misunderstanding of my original post – I’ve edited the first line (of the OP) to make it clear it refers to Anet running their own trading bot(s) to make the market more efficient.

Why Anet should do its own auto-trading on the market:

Trading for profit brings significant benefits to the market:

• It makes the market more efficient
• It narrows the gap between buy and sell prices for slower traded items
• It acts as a gold sink for the game

However, there are several problems with players doing this trading:

• It is less efficient than a fully automated system would be
• It only works on items where the margin is greater than 15%
• It encourages hoarding of scarce and high demand items
• It detracts from playing content (by returning greater material rewards)
• The returns available create massive wealth inequality in the player base
• It has become a necessary activity to achieve the top end gear (for all but the most dedicated or lucky players)

Instead of relying on players to make the market more efficient, Anet should take over this role and automate it (as they’ve done for the Gem/Gold trading).

This would have the following benefits:

• The market would be more efficient because:
  • Automation would remove the lag inherent in manual trading
  • Automation would cover all items all of the time
  • The automation would have real-time access to complete market information
  • Narrower margins could be used where beneficial
  • The incentives for hoarding would be reduced
• Wealth inequality would reduce, leading to a more purchasing equality in the market
• Playing content would become best way to gain top end equipment (as the profits available from player trading would reduce significantly)
• Trading would no longer be a necessary activity to obtain top-end gear

To do this successfully, Anet would need to:

• Set up an automated system for trading on the market
• Ensure top-end gear is obtainable without playing the market
• Cope with the objections of players for whom trading is their primary source of gold and in-game status

Thanks . . . and that’s two conflicting answers.

Which one is the better guide?
Or is there an even better range for opening exotic loot bags?

I’m level a character and along the way collecting a small stack of account bound exoctic loot bags/purses/etc.

Is it best to wait for L80 to open these?
Or do the the TP prices for drops from exotic bags/purses/etc work out better if they’re opened at a lower level (e.g. 60)?

9 minutes ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/About-China-the-Trading-Post/4024036

John Smith.4610:

Xbon.9086:

Um… so are chinese and our TP linked?

No, The Chinese TP is not linked to the NA/EU Trading post.

Thanks, very helpful.

If there are automatic buy order bots out there, that could create a serious imbalance in the market as they could effectively monopolise the cheap supply (‘offer’) end of the market.

What do you recommend for PvE melee with a Ranger?

I’m levelling a Ranger (level 40 atm) and because I naturally tend to ranged characters (and ranged rather than melee games) it’s very tempting to just stick with bows. But I know this is missing out on a huge part of both the Ranger and GW2 in general. I’ve been trying the Ranger’s melee weapons but so far haven’t got a feel for them.

What are the different Ranger’s melee weapons best for?
And what sorts combinations work well with the different Ranger melee skills?

Are there trading bots?
If so, are they farming the TP and in the process making it more difficult for the rest of us to get items we want for the game?

With the success of efforts to stamp out combat and harvesting bots, the TP is the logical place for bots to farm GW2 gold. Not only is the TP a direct source of GW2 gold, the API provides a ready source of information for bots and the simplistic nature of TP trading provides very little information to identify bots.

I’ve been trying to buy some items with low turnover and a relatively wide margin between buy and sell prices for my characters and have noticed there is at least one trader out there (the offer quantities are always the same) that consistently outbids buy offers within a couple of minutes of placing them. I’ve noticed them doing this even when someone places a single buy offer far above the going rate. Looking at these items, I’ve also noticed the same happening on the for sale side, even when the someone posts a single item for sale far below the going market rate.

This could just be the behaviour of some fanatical traders.

However, the speed at which the buy and sell offers are being made and the mindlessly consistently nature of those offers has me wondering if trading bots involved.

A classic piece of entrepreneurial advice: never commit more than you can afford to lose to a single investment. In other words, spread your purchases so if one goes sour you can still keep trading.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

Have I read this right?
Is this really an ANet Community Liason suggesting the people that modify GW2 classes stop by the GW2 Profession Balance forum to check out one of its most viewed threads?
Surely they would be doing this already?

It’s going to take a lot of difficult and risky work to succesfully change WVW away from the current meta of population dominating over skill.

In the meantime, things (i.e. competitiveness of match-ups and the resulting improvements in participation) would be improved enormously by balancing WvW server populations.

“How?” you ask.

1. Separate the WvW and PvE servers (required for 3, 4, 5 and 6 below)
2. Set/adjust upper and lower population thresholds for WvW servers
3. Merge underpopulated WvW servers
4. Block transfers to overpopulated WvW servers
5. Make it cheap/free to transfer to underpopulated WvW servers
6. (Optionally) Provide other incentives that encourage participation on under populated WvW servers
7. Review impact of population (and incentive) changes on the competitiveness and enjoyment of WvW matchups
8. Rinse and repeat from 2

Each of these changes is straight forward and delivers results with a high degree of confidence and minimal risk of destabilising gameplay.

The hardest part of all this will probably be accepting that rather than encouraging the degree of WvW participation required for WvW to be effective across the board, tying the WvW and PvE servers together has instead been a major contributor to the population imbalances that plague WvW.

Reasons why the WvW-PvE link has not provided sufficient encouragement to participate in WvW include:

• To most players, the impact of WvW results in PvE is indistinguishable from the normal RNG, and therefore does not provide a real incentive for PvE’ers to participate in WvW
• PvE’ers try WvW primarily because they want to try the game-mode, not because of the WvW-PvE link

Reasons why the rigid PvE-WvW link has contributed to the population imbalances in WvW include:

• The total number of WvW servers cannot be optimised for the overall level of WvW participation (c.f. PvE where the total number of servers is constrained to ensure each server has an adequate level of participation)
• Transfers between WvW servers cannot be distinguished from PvE transfers making it impossible to manage population shifts that could (and do) unbalance WvW
• WvW populations can only be capped at the map level not the server level as can be done with ‘full’ PvE servers
• The pool of players on a WvW server is restricted to a single PvE server population, meaning WvW participation (and therefore competitiveness) is constrained by the level of WvW interest in each PvE population. (This wouldn’t have been a problem if levels of interest in WvW were the same across all servers, but very clearly they are not.)
• The strong link between WvW participation and success in WvW polarises WvW populations by encouraging stacking on the PvE servers with the highest levels of WvW participation and discouraging WvW participation on those PvE populations with less interest in WvW
• WvW Players with ties to existing PvE communities are discouraged from moving to servers that need additional WvW players

Address the WvW population disparities, with the corresponding improvements in the competitiveness of matchups, and you’ll have a stronger foundation on which to make other riskier changes to WvW.

What awesome work! Thanks for doing all this, Sobat.

(Yes, I know this is bumping a thread that’s over a week old – but Sobat truly deserves some thanks for doing this.)

To fix this, Anet need to separate the WvW and PvE servers.

Separate PvE and WvW servers would allow:

1. WvW transfers to be are based on WvW population not PvE population
2. People to join the WvW server they want without undermining their connections with their PvE friends

Thanks for the summaries from the US league.

It’s sad there were so few changes from the start of the season. Can see why Anet aren’t shouting about the results of the league (at least the achievements encouraged more people to try WvW).
Congrats to BG, FA and HD for their wins, to TC and YB for improving a place, and to AR for its climb up the ranks.

What happened in the EU league?

Just logged back onto the forums after a break and I can’t find what the outcome of Season 1 was! There’s no announcement! There’s no stickied thread congratulating the winners! The schedule is still stickied up there, but no results!

It’s as though the season never officially happened!

Five pages into the WvW forum and I still can’t find what happened! Plenty of gripes about the rewards and hopes that Anet will do something about coverage and population – but nothing about what actually happened. (Great that WXP is finally becoming account bound.)

So:

1. Who won?
2. Who surpassed themselves and climbed the tables during the season?
3. Who stumbled and dropped down the tables?

Or did it all end up back right where it started? (Please tell me that wasn’t the case.)

Fuzzion.2504:

Zenguy.6421:

Thanks for maintaining these.

Any chance you could throw in a comparison against rankings from the start of the season, so we can see the overall effect the league is having on rankings?

Will try. In a nut shell, I wont duplicates things already available on the (MOS) website.
PS.i wont be updating this coming week because im going a cruise holiday . Yay

Thanks, Fuzzion. Looking forward to seeing the overall changes … and enjoy your cruise.

Thanks for maintaining these.

Any chance you could throw in a comparison against rankings from the start of the season, so we can see the overall effect the league is having on rankings?

Simple fix: Divide WvW rewards by the number of people involved in getting them.

That will sort out zergs for everything except open field battles.

Why are we hanging on to the idea that WvW and PvE servers should remain tied together? That design feature is what’s causing the population imbalances in the first place:

• WvW participation varies widely across the different PvE servers
• PvE population limits are too high to prevent WvW players stacking on a few servers

So lets fix the problem at its cause by unhooking WvW from the PvE servers.

Things that would be needed for this to work:

1. Accounts need a separate PvE and default WvW server
   (For WvW balancing, the default WvW server does not need to be allocated until the player starts to WvW on that account)
2. Each guild subscribes to a single (or no) WvW server
3. Player WvW info and travel based on whichever guild they are representing at that time, or personal default if not representing a guild with a WvW server.
4. Accounts and guilds can transfer to different WvW servers with cost and limitations based on available WvW population capacity and WvW server rank.

At initial set-up:

• Accounts and guilds with WvW history are allocated a default WvW server based on their current PvE server.
• All other accounts and guilds start without an allocated WvW server.
• Merge low population WvW servers to improve to WvW server population balance at day 1

Thereafter:

• Free/reduced cost for accounts and guilds to select their first WvW server
• Block transfers to overpopulated WvW servers
• Free/reduced fee to transfer to a lower population WvW server
• Reduced fee to transfer to a lower ranked WvW server
• Higher fees to transfer to a higher ranked WvW server
• Increased guild subscription change if guild increases in size and its WvW server has high population or rank (needed to prevent players using guild server access to bypass population caps and transfer fees for top servers).

Costs:

• Doing the work outlined above

Benefits:

• Day 1 improvement in WvW server population balance and
• Ability to manage WvW server populations directly
• Ability to adjust number of WvW servers to better fit overall WvW population
• WvW specific revenue stream for server transfers
• [Edit]Players can participate on WvW server of their choice without losing ties to their PvE community[/edit]
• Significant population balance improvements without messing with WvW game mechanics

TLDR: Separate WvW and PvE servers and get significant improvements to WvW population balance without expensive, time consuming and risky changes to WvW game mechanics.

TLDR: If you want to balance WvW populations, separate WvW and PvE servers – after that the task is easy. (The chance of anything else working is extremely low.)

(Come back after a break and we are onto page 22 of this discussion – can only hope Anet are still reading this. Apologies if you’ve covered this ground already somewhere in the previous 22 pages.)

WvW populations are broken because they are tied to individual PvE servers. This is because:

1. Levels of WvW participation vary significantly across the different PvE servers.
2. Transfer limits are set by the PvE population not WvW participation
   With the relatively low levels of WvW participation, not only are WvW populations effectively uncapped, they are also effectively uncappable.

We need to face the fact that WvW server populations are imbalanced because they are tied to the PvE severs.

Even if Anet are somehow able to create the perfect incentives for balancing WvW populations, population movements are too unpredictable and too reactive to shifts in the incentive and play balance in WvW to enable the serves to balance effectively.

The only reliable solution is to manage WvW sever populations directly, and this can only be done by separating WvW and PvE servers populations.

Fortunately, separating the WvW and PvE servers not only makes balancing WvW populations possible, it also makes this far easier to achieve as it opens up a whole range of options for managing WvW populations (e.g. WvW population caps, WvW specific transfer pricing, WvW population based rewards and buffs, etc.)

Instead of wasting time trying to tweak the system in vain hope of getting WvW populations to balance themselves, Anet need to drop the unsuccessful link between PvE and WvW servers (it was a nice idea but lets face it, not only hasn’t it worked, it has caused most of the population imbalance problems in WvW) and manage WvW populations separately from PvE.

Separate PvE and WvW populations, and the rest is easy – fail to do this and the problems will continue.