Guild Wars 2

When the out-manned buff is active, should death be harsher for the larger force? Should resurrection by players be disabled?

Gahn.8150:

None.
Players might be useless tho.

This.

IMO, your experience, build and the role you choose to fill, will determine your usefulness. Even a Mesmer can siege up a keep.

This issue is now part of the “Collaborative Development: World Population” discussion. Please help keep this topic at the top of the list.

Plains of Ashes.5941:

I have read thru pages of this thread and I see a lot of complex solutions, alot of gaming the PPTs and buffs. Most of what I see is cures for symptoms. The first step is to separate the cause from the effect, identify the root cause, then solve the root cause.
The population imbalance, the stacking of servers, the fact that coverage defines the winner, the outmanned buff, the week after week of lobsided matches are not the problem, they are symptoms of the problems.

I submit the primary root cause, but not the only one, is the fact that servers are allowed to field unequal number of players. I have never played a game which allows one team to field unequal teams as its default mode. WvW allows you to field 70+ more players on one side than the other. Not even GW2 sPvP allows unequal teams. I cant name a game or sport which breaks this rule.

This i would contend is the underlying cause of most of WvW’s problems. Its a violation of fundemental game design. What flows from this flaw is what you would expect of human nature: everyone stacking the teams because stacking is rewarded with what people want the most: and that is to win. Its simple, if the NFL changed the rules which allowed a team to field all the players on its bench (like WvW), and players didnt cost the team money (like WvW), and the winning team gets a super bowl ring, well, the NFL would look like WvW next season with all the same flaws we see now.

WvW WILL BE BROKEN FOREVER UNTIL SERVERS ARE CONSTRAINED TO FIELD EQUAL NUMBER OF PLAYERS. Without this we will continue to have kludges (outmanned anyone?) and incentives, and the horribly complex solutions to manipulate PPTs and buffs when the solution is very simple. You must remove the incentive to change the behavior, and the incentive is stack a map and win the game.
So how do we fix it?

• limit the fielded teams to equal sizes, just like every other game does.
• make the remainder wait in queues, like other games
• Dont kick in the dynamic cap till the teamsize is over 20.
• if the teams are equal and one server has people leave then this offset is ok, balancing should only prevent folks from joining a team when that team is larger than the other teams (ie nobody ever gets booted for the sake of balane, let normal attrition do this)
• once this is in place, allow matchups between any 3 servers. thats right, for some matches it means HUGE queues (like for JQ vs AR), but that is what it will take to show players that a) stacked servers have no statistical advantage in winning, and b) stacking to a server means less playtime as a reward for their choice. with even teams, skill and tactics will matter more, where now they almost dont matter.
• keep statistics on which servers are cronically limiting the map pop and make a finite number of transfers avalable for free. Keeping statistics will allow ANET to know the specific number of transfers a server needs.

In summary: there are multiple flaws that result in stacked servers, but WvW will be broken until ANET creates a limit which equalizes the size of fielded teams between servers. You cant violate a fundamental game design principle and not have endless bad side effects and kludges.

I will pitch in another root cause for the stacking and that is ANETs attitude of treating the high ranked servers better. Example: we have 3 totally independent leagues in Season 1. why dont they get the exact same reward as a function of where they place in their league? why is the first place silver league reward worse than the gold winner? and the bronze league winner worse still? they dont play each other so why dont the 3 number ones each get the same number 1 prize? cant ANET see this forces players to stack because ANET themselves reward stacking? ANET should make all 3 league winners have the same quality of reward, then there is no reason to say “I gotta transfer to T1 or ANET is gonna screw me out of something worthwhile”

The reason there is stacking (and the resultant pop imbalance) is because ANET rewards it. both in its gameplay flaws, and in the very culture ANET has created for WvW. Pick the simple solution to the WvW problem, not the insanely convoluted solutions ive seen posted – equalized fielded teams in WvW just like every other online game does! that and enable transfers to even out the teams and ANET is on its way to making WvW what it should be.

Totally agree on this being a root problem. This issue of unbalanced numbers has been raised in a number of threads spread across the forums. It should be THE TOP PRIORITY for the dev’s. No server should be able to field more players than any other on a single map. The silence from the Dev’s on this issue is unacceptable.

nomdeplums.5780:

Sincere thanks to GLOB for taking the time to GvG both RET and HOPE back-to-back. Those were some fun fights to participate in and watch.

We hope that GLOB stays active in the GvG scene, and that more YB guilds become interested in it and rise to the challenge. It would be very nice to see a larger field of competition in silver league.

It was a lot of fun. As we do more of these types of events, we continue to improve. Many thanks to both RET and HOPE for taking the time.

There is a thread in the Bug forum on this topic. We need to keep it from getting buried.

I’m going to bump this up again. This is being reported on a number of servers and has been noted in a few threads. This is a huge issue which needs to be resolved.

This could fix unbalanced fights on maps. It won’t solve coverage issues, but it will at least give a smaller server a chance against a bigger one. A smaller server could rally all its forces to at least one map so they can be competitive in fights. As it stands, no one has been able to explain how the queue actually works (or if it even does). There is much speculation and no confirmation.

lordkrall.7241:

bretk.6019:

I may have missed this in a previous post, but do we know if the map slots are evenly divided among the three servers?

Of course they are.
Anything else would be extremely idiotic.

I would agree. There was a post in another thread about a server being out-manned and having a queue. Hence the question.

I may have missed this in a previous post, but do we know if the map slots are evenly divided among the three servers?

UrMom.4205:

Dio.2394:

Lapiy.7160:

Can someone tell me why we (cd) are outnumbered but people are waiting to get in?

BP had a problem last week in BPBL where we would have a queue, but could only find 30-50 actual players on the map. At first we thought it was just that there were a huge amount of PvE’ers off doing random things, but after sending people to all corners of the map to check for people in the JPs, at the skrit, at the centaurs, etc. we have become convinced that there is something wrong with the queues. Anet has acknowledged there is something they are going to fix in the queues without specifically saying what the problem is, so who knows when it will be fixed.

This crap has been happening all everyday in this match up for us. Yes we are outnumbered and there are zergs everywhere but we have the map que’d and we’re still outnumbered 4:1….broken kitten kitten

I’m curious about this and I have heard mention in TS about how the map slots are not evenly allocated for all three servers. For example, if there are 300 slots on a map, each server is not allocated 100 each. So, one server could flood a map and create a situation where you are out-manned AND have a que. Again, not sure if this is how it works, but heard mention of it recently. Does anyone know for sure?

nothing.7941:

Void and GLOB, thanks for the gvg’s with Borlis Brawlers this week. You’re quality guilds we’d be proud to have on our server. We enjoyed the fights and good sportsmanship, and look forward to doing it again sometime. Good luck in your match next week.

It was great fun and educational for us. Thank you for taking the time.

Portal Entry/Exit:
I would like to see a skill icon notification when you get out of range for placing the exit. There are existing indicators for other skills when target is out of range (red bar at bottom of icon). I would like the red bar to appear at the bottom of the portal icon when I go beyond range.

I would like to see a skill icon notification when you get out of range for placing the exit. There are existing indicators for other skills when target is out of range (red bar at bottom of icon). I would like the red bar to appear at the bottom of the portal icon when I go beyond range.

The Dev’s should have data on the WvW population distribution for each server over the course of a 24 hr period (and over the entire week). Combine 2 or more servers on one side that have 24/7 coverage combined. Put them against a single server with 24/7 coverage and you might have a fun and different contest. The number of servers on each side should not matter. Matching the population peaks and valleys would.

Osi,

Would love to here your opinion on a good mix for a mesmer group. I have been playing a mesmer from launch but have recently got three other players to begin to learn mesmer who are in the process of training up. All four characters look exactly alike and I wanted your opinion on a good mix for wvw.

I actually do what Mister Mustard suggested and switch my traits/utils for this. Now if I could just do something about the gd thieves who jump me in the middle of the battle….I had a pretty difficult time last night with one in particular.

The problem does occur during the week, especially when population/time is unbalanced. It would be nice if Anet could have two types of match-ups as mentioned above: A weekend slug-fest match-up and a weekday match-up based on W3 population curves. Plot the W3 participation over a 24 hr period (Monday -Thursday) and put servers together who have similar curves during the week.

A larger AOE would be nice. I would like to see it remove both enemy boons and friendly conditions.

Same here. I have two sets of armor and often switch out weapons depending upon situation. Now if we could just have more weapon sets………….

I’m gonna echo Kazhiel a bit. I tried many of the various builds as I was leveling and after hitting 80. The one piece of advice that I kept reading was to find your individual playstyle. In the end this will lead you to a build for your mesmer. For me, I ended up with a Glamour Bomb build and really love it. I discovered that the most fun I have is being the “point of the spear” for our main force. I run at the point with the commander, head long into the enemy zerg as far through it as I can (reminds me of battle sequences in Braveheart). I drop Glamour/Light fields, switch to GS and spread mass confusion. I like seeing lots of purple numbers………..

Human Female: Elandra Chrysomer

Chrysomer came from an old D&D module, Egg of the Pheonix. It was the name of the Paladin’s Holy Sword.

I love my focus. Dragging people off of walls and over cliffs (especially over cliffs) is a secret pleasure. Well, we were fighting a battle at the east keep land bridge and I saw an opportunity to drag a few enemy’s over the edge. I got up close, set my target, grabbed three and sent them to their death into the ravine below. I then started to laugh, well….. because it’s fun. I stopped laughing as I was dragged over the edge falling on top of, and joining, my unsuspecting victims. Turnabout is fair play.

I recently switched to the 20/0/0/20/30 build EasymodeX mentioned above. Mostly run it in WvW as a Glamour/Confusion build. It had been very effective and quite a bit of fun when dealing with zergs.

I have recently switched to a glamour build for WvW and have found it to be very effective vs. zergs as well as attacking/defending keeps. The natural tendency of enemy players is to move out of the glamours, no matter if it’s in the open field or on top of a keep wall. Non-attentive players move through the fields, pick up stacks of confusion and then proceed to spam their skills……hurting themselves to the point they have to back off. Attentive players back off until confusion wears off, which keeps them from hitting us on the ground. Effective control for attacking and defending.

Out in the open I have dropped Chaos Storm, Null, Feedback and Time Warp into the middle of a zerg. That was a lot of fun to watch. The zerg broke apart as the they started to figure out what had happened. Our side then proceeded to wipe them in the ensuing confusion (pun intended).

So far it has been a fun departure from the other builds. However, I do smile every time I drag someone off the wall or off a cliff.

3 to 1 would be right. You need to make sure that all the players make characters that look exactly alike and dress in the same armor/color.