Guild Wars 2

Vaxx.3178:

Razor.9872:

A-net. My question for you is:

What is your philosophy behind the Ranger? If a warrior has excellent mobility and heavy hitting attacks, a guardian works well with team-mates and is designed to get in a foe’s face and stay there, a mesmer boasts great utility, a thief is slippery to catch and adaptive, a necromancer is the king of condition and boon manipulation, an elementalist is the jack of all trades, and an engineer is just…an engineer — they are weird…

What is the idea behind a Ranger? It would be disappointing to hear they “have a pet.” Because that is not a profession milestone, that is a mechanic to reach a milestone. Since the game’s release, I have been unsure of what gap a Ranger is meant to fill. Some clarification would help somewhat.

I don’t think they know. Seriously.

Remember last live stream? The devs could not find a minor trait in the tree, didn’t even bother to spend all trait points, and it was the shortest “preview” of all the classes.

I don’t think Anet plays the Ranger class. Period. They don’t know first hand the issues with the class it seems.

They know it has a pet. Beyond that, I don’t think they know.

They also, for over a year, didn’t know that the Rainbow Jellyfish and Blue Jellyfish not only had the exact same skill set, but had the exact same skin and model effectively making them the same pet.

It’s the kind of stuff one would expect from someone who has never heard of GW2 before, not from the people who made the game itself. It’s incredibly obvious where their passion is and it’s not in the Ranger.

I sometimes suspect the only reason we even made it past Alphas is simply because they wanted to cash in on the atypical “Ranger/archer” crowd despite knowing full well that they didn’t create a game that has any place for a range focused class and didn’t really want to tackle the complicated process of programing effective pet mechanics.

We got our “Ranger” class, but only because they knew they’d lose players if they didn’t.

Nefaria.7659:

Overall, found the beginner’s guide was not very accessible to the viewer base they might be aiming for. If you expect the viewer to know all the ins and outs of min/maxing before watching – what’s the point?

A big negative is that It watched like a school lecture; he only utilized the video to show off item and skill tool tips and then just narrated an unstructured dialogue about the profession.

I would have liked to see more depth of the different styles of play – since PvE encompasses Dungeons, Fractals, Open World, WvW, and Living Story. More focus on different weapon and build options (and why); and possibly – where to start with your builds (including trait distribution) and highlight some which players can play with; saying merely ‘condition’ or ‘damage’ isn’t necessarily beginner lingo.

This is also a “level 80 ranger guide” as well. Since, although some of the advice can be filtered down below 80, it focuses mostly on the armour and runes at level 80.

It does give some idea for what people should aim for, but suggesting that beginners pick up full offensive gear and then “not die” seems like a poor choice. I understand that might be optimal gear but its not practical to some of your audience.

I watched this today and you took the words straight out of my mouth. I would have learned a lot more if he showed different playstyles in action using different weapon and skill combinations. I was also hoping for a run down on different types of pets but he barely talked about it. Seeing as pets are the ranger’s niche it should of had a lot more focus in the guide.

Durzlla.6295:

NargofWoV.4267:

Durzlla.6295:

#3, 4, and 5 on longbow are all amazing, think outside of the box, that stealth has given is so much utility it’s ridiculous!

Play a Mesmer a bit and learn to be trixy, then play a LB ranger and reap the rewards of being trixy with the ranger toolkit.

I will disagree with one of your points here. LB #5 is a bad skill because you have to stand still to cast it. When you contrast this AoE against say, the Warrior AoE’s which are shoot and forget while your moving you will begin to see what “Amazing” is all about.

LB #5 is hardly bad, most people won’t even stand in it, you can use it as a detaunt, aka area denial, not to mention it lasts longer than the warriors AoEs (most of which are just one hit and then done which i guess you could use barrage for). Barrage, unlike the warriors skills, should be used more to create an area that the enemy doesn’t want to be in, something you can kite them through to rack up damage and cripple (which is in turn more damage since you can keep more distance).

The warrior F2 (Combustive Shot) is the nasty AoE that I was speaking of. I don’t know this for certain but I think its Area is larger than my Rangers Barrage, maybe not. Lasts nearly as long and is what I use to run folks through an area repeatedly cause it last so long and has a nasty condition tick and I CAN KITE them through the area while dealing other damage, something my Ranger can not do. Heck, I don’t have to kite them, I can swap weapons and make them go toe to toe with me and they have to do so in my soup of condition damage mess. The limitation is, my Adrenaline has to be full, which isn’t hard with Bezerker stance (it ticks your Adrenaline to full).

Sadly, Combustive shot is on the nerf bat batters box for the Dec 10 patch, its that strong. But, when you wish to use a term like Amazing it helps to know what else is out there, I was only trying to point that out to you.

Durzlla.6295:

#3, 4, and 5 on longbow are all amazing, think outside of the box, that stealth has given is so much utility it’s ridiculous!

Play a Mesmer a bit and learn to be trixy, then play a LB ranger and reap the rewards of being trixy with the ranger toolkit.

I will disagree with one of your points here. LB #5 is a bad skill because you have to stand still to cast it. When you contrast this AoE against say, the Warrior AoE’s which are shoot and forget while your moving you will begin to see what “Amazing” is all about.

Edit: My poor Ranger has to sit on top of a keep wall while casting Barrage, while my warrior can hop up onto the wall let loose a nasty ticking AoE, hop down, when cool down is up, hop back up cast another AoE in the same spot ontop of the ticking AoE, then hop back down or hit another smaller AoE bow skill…

Now THAT is amazing.

Dante.1508:

snow.8097:

to all our ranger friends who have Problems with the sword autoattack –
Strg, mouse rightclick on swordskill #1 – Problem solved
ist easier to control when press 1 by yourself

I think all question were asked but i have one
Why is the signet of the wild not instant like the other Signets?

Doesn’t work on Asura characters, even without auto attack the Asuras animations lock them in sword one….

Q: What is the ranger niche in the game?
A: Ranger is the pet class.

Really love my Ranger.

Really hate my pet.

If that’s the case why is it called a Ranger and not a Beastmaster?

Also if the Longbow is inefficient and to not use it?, i must ask why is it inefficient a year after its been released, no weapon should be inefficient on any class, or should be fixed asap if they are..

If you want my opinion all Ranger weapons are inefficient, compared to other classes using them which is why the Ranger is looked down upon so badly.

They called it a ‘Ranger’ as an homage to the GW1 class, mostly to avoid kitten ing off the rather large ranger player-base from GW1.

The GW2 class is apparently the synthesis of three separate (2 failed, 1 meh) classes.

The reason ranger weapons seem underwhelming is because the pet is supposed to account for the missing damage/utility. When you factor in the pet’s damage, assuming it somehow manages to be consistent, the ranger breaks even with most classes. BUT, pets have issues with mobile targets which leads them to being substandard in most PvP engagements. Which is why you see condi builds or full BM builds more often than power builds. One build is practically independent of the pet; the other goes the opposite and seeks to have the pet as the primary damage dealer, while the ranger serves as the utility.

As for longbow specifically, idk. Its #1 skill is cumbersome to use to its max damage in many instances. #2, rapid fire, isn’t great because its a channel involving relatively slow-moving projectiles. #3,4,5 are situational.

Just my thoughts/opinions.

snow.8097:

to all our ranger friends who have Problems with the sword autoattack –
Strg, mouse rightclick on swordskill #1 – Problem solved
ist easier to control when press 1 by yourself

I think all question were asked but i have one
Why is the signet of the wild not instant like the other Signets?

Doesn’t work on Asura characters, even without auto attack the Asuras animations lock them in sword one….

Q: What is the ranger niche in the game?
A: Ranger is the pet class.

Really love my Ranger.

Really hate my pet.

If that’s the case why is it called a Ranger and not a Beastmaster?

Also if the Longbow is inefficient and to not use it?, i must ask why is it inefficient a year after its been released, no weapon should be inefficient on any class, or should be fixed asap if they are..

If you want my opinion all Ranger weapons are inefficient, compared to other classes using them which is why the Ranger is looked down upon so badly.

GOSU.9574:

Because you haven’t gone into Beastmaster to improve your pet and you insist on using melee pets against bosses/large scale encounters. The beginners stream may be just what you need.

Which leads so logically into the question ‘Why do I suffer a 25% hit to my DPS for a class mechanic that only (vaguely) works right if I sacrifice 40% of my trait points on the altar of beastmastery and even then only if I’m using a type of pet that makes up less than 20% of the range of choices?’

Will this include WvW with the PvE? It’s hard to keep track of things as one day WvW is PvP and the next it’s PvE!

But I’d have to say the most important issue for me with Rangers right now is how you could go in the WvW forum right now, ask people to rank the classes from most to least valuable, and every single person will rank the Ranger as last place. Why? Can/will anything ever be done about this?

The next big sticking point with Rangers is the Sword’s #1 attack with the leaps. This is a very difficult mechanic to use for new players which turns a lot of player’s off the weapon/class. The only way to use it is to turn off auto-attack which means the player is going to have a direct DPS loss on their highest DPS weapon!

Next up is pets… even with additional health (why no in WvW btw?), they are still more of a hindrance than an asset to the class. With poor pathing, their inability to hit moving targets, unresponsive F2 abilities, their inability to dodge, and the fact that the Ranger loses between 25-40% of its damage because it’s balanced under the presumption the class will have the pet up 100% of the time… which is impossible. Will pets be improved?

Next up is utility. The class offers some reasonable utility with Spotter (a tree that’s mostly there to help Ranged attacks, which are awful in PvE) and Storm Spirit (which requires a 30pt investment to actually be functional), and a waterfield (which recently had its duration reduced), but that’s about it? Does this utility offset the fact that the class does so much less DPS and the horrible pet mechanics?

The next thing I’d love to hear discussed is why the class is so passive in nature? We have other classes that are actually fun to play with engaging skills that need to be combo’d or timed perfectly that have amazing effects on the class and your group. The Ranger not so much… you kinda select something, hit f1, and auto attack. Why aren’t the weapons as engaging as other classes? The ranged weapons in particular!

That’s about all I’ve got for the PvE (slanted toward real PvE and less about WvW for now

PVE isn’t the major problem for rangers- it’s wvw doing anything other than soloing..

For pve: why does my pet die so much and yet there is a huge cooldown after both pets are dead? What other class suffers a 50% damage nerf whenever something decides to throw out a random skill that wipes your pet?

You think it’s a beginner guide because they never play the class and that’s all they know about it?

I’m pretty confused as to what we are supposed to discuss. World population could mean WvW population since this is in the WvW forum, or it could mean server population. It could also refer to just imbalanced population in activity which we don’t know any solid numbers of. Should we post suggestions or complaints on these topics? A discussion would warrant better feedback if it had some survey questions or a synopsis of what the goal of the discussion is.

That being said, my problems with the unbalanced populations is that many realms have enough people to field huge WvW forces, but there is little communication or incentive to push players into WvW besides some achievements (which do not reward players for helping their server).

The WvW leaderboards are a good example of where communication goes wrong in that if you want to know how good your server is, you have to alt tab out of the game itself just to see- and even then, you cannot see what guilds are good or bad or what happened or why. There is little to no context for new players, so it’s easier to play in dungeons or living story elements that are more integrated and introduced through the world than WvW.

With the current system, new players are encouraged to tick off some achievements in WvW and then get hooked into the gameplay enough so that they stay. However, this system doesn’t encourage players to help their server in dire times when they are getting golem rushed on every keep or when they are getting pushed hard in a 2v1. The game is counting on players to help because helping others is fun, but when we get achievements that reward players for doing jumping puzzles- then it looks like the core concept is going against the game design. I think there needs to be a greater chain of communication between players, maps, and most importantly- a line of communication between players in WvW and players outside of WvW.

Population imbalances are certainly the biggest issue facing WvW today, but I don’t really like most of the solutions posted so far. Many people seem to favor some sort of messing with the population cap to artificially enforce population parity, but there’s major downsides to this approach. The primary problem is that this approach requires a lowering of the cap, in some manner or other. The first problem with this is that it makes it even more miserable to be on a high population server, as it’ll only exacerbate queue length issues. Second, WvW is just plain more fun on well populated maps(unless your thing is really 1v1’s, but that’s not really what the game mode is designed around). At this point, any solution that results in WvW being LESS accessible for significant numbers of people should probably not be the long-term strategy for improving the game.

A better, but still flawed, approach I see mentioned a lot is that PPT should be scaled according to population. This doesn’t suffer from accessibility issues, but it is going to be hard to avoid some toxic meta-strategies. In particular, it could easily create cases where joining in on your team’s side actually is a net negative for your team, since now accomplishing the same thing but with less people becomes more profitable to your team. I know WvW communities can already have issues with tension between the hard core and newer players, derisively termed “rally fodder”. I don’t really look forward to having commander’s yelling at PUGs to get off the map, since they’re trying to suppress the other side’s PPT through low population.

I think there’s another method that hasn’t been discussed much, but has already been implemented on a small scale somewhat successfully: “comeback” mechanics. This class of solution would involve some kind of advantage that could be given out to badly losing teams to create a rubber-band effect, making it harder to keep pulling ahead and easier to catch up. The main benefit I see with this strategy is that you can divorce it completely from current population totals on a map by basing it on cumulative score instead.

The easiest, most boring implementation of this could be a stat-boost that losing teams get once they’re losing sufficiently. Much more interesting, I think, would be expanding on the idea of the Siegerazer event. Just to throw out a few possible expansions that shouldn’t be too hard: If a server is losing by 50k+ to a server that takes one of the towers flanking Garrison, allow Siegerazer to start for that tower regardless of the rest of the map state. Losing by 100k+? Have a larger version of Siegerazer event that helps retake Garrison should it fall. 150k+? Have that event start on that enemy borderlands, targeting the keep on your third of the map. 200k+? Have Seigerazer stay and help you defend if you take it.

The benefits of this are pretty clear to me: First, it doesn’t make the game inaccessible to anyone artificially. Second, it’s easily scalable/tweakable for balance. Third, the most competitive times of the week(thus least needing balance help) are right after reset, which is conveniently also when large point differentials haven’t accrued. The least balanced part of the week is Wed/Thurs, when unbalanced matchups lead to low morale, which only worsens the problem. This type of solution would mostly be applicable during this time period, and would serve to give the losing servers a fun reason to play, while giving winning servers someone to fight. Lastly, as we’ve seen with the Siegerazer event, the “victim” server still has an opportunity to fight back and win, it’s just a more balanced fight.

This won’t please everybody. Many of the hardcore advocate for eliminating PvE aspects of WvW, not adding more. However, I don’t think making WvW strictly PvP is the way to go with the game mode. WvW should use PvP elements to keep the fights always fresh and interesting, while using the “PvE” elements like castles and camps to make it feel more epic and adding scale that is otherwise technologically impossible.

I want to start with comparing a top server to a bottom ranker server as I recently transfered from blackgate to fergs crossing. On blackgate wvw was packed, too crowded for me. we took and then defended objectives and players worked together. On fergs crossing its door hammer. you dodge the enemy zerg and knock down undefended doors as they do the same thing. the exception is eternal battlegrounds but on borderlands you avoid fights and cap undefended towers all night.

I believe the core problem with wvw population balance ties in to the fact that as players we try to find the simplest way to meet a goal or gain a reward for our actions. What motivates the player. Loot, look how many people grind away hours farming for loot. You cannot argue the level of control you have over how a player plays simply adjusting loot tables.
I have a few ideas.

First I would love to see opposing players names in 2 different colors representing what server they are on, so I can quickly prioritize my targets in a 3 sided fight. Change wvw colors from red, blue, green to 3 colors NOT used in pve like yellow, purple, orange. This should be simple enough to do, and a long time ago I used to pvp in EQ1 we had 4 teams and being able to see each side in a battle was awesome, made for some interesting fights.

Next, the team with the top current population on the map should have a bonus to the loot dropped by the players of that world. Want players to team up on the big team, reward them for it. We follow the loot. You will of course have to tell us who this bonus is on at any given moment.

Without a defending force a tower can fall in minutes, this is a major problem as no one enjoys standing guard. What happens is no one stands guard at all so no one makes it to the tower to defend in time. Gates (and walls so thiefs can stop perma stealthing inside) should only take damage from siege and not from players as zergs just mow them down. guards should stand inside the keep and man siege until a player kicks them off of it, bad ai using siege is better than no one using it. Players should be able to purchase additional guards to man siege as well as the current upgrades. Maybe even a system to allow the claiming guild to dictate a priority system of what siege to man, a simple priority list so they stay off the treb and use an arrow card when theres a group at the gate. I honestly feel an undefended tower falls so fast that we are overly rewarded for avoiding the enemy and trading towers back and forth. You gain karma and wxp faster trading towers than fighting to defend them. Also a greater variety of guards for the additional purchased ones would be interesting, allow the purchasing guild to pick between the types.

Overall I feel that if you reward the player more for attacking the top world on a given map, and defending rather than going on the offensive you will see wvw change. It will be more balanced and fun. Fun is what is going to draw more players on lower servers to play it, and in the end make them servers worth transferring to when your tired of ques in higher tiers. And that is the only way to balance the population without restrictions, give the players a reason to go and a place they will want to go to on a lower tier server. I hate my new servers wvw population, I truly miss players who had winning in mind as team mates but it was too zergy for me in kitten

take this a little further and provide some balance I would even suggest reducing the rewards for capping towers and keeps as well would be getting rewards for defending them now too.

One potential problem is that increasing the defense of towers and keeps will make it easier for a big server to hold them, that is why it is key to this to make sure that the big server has bonuses attached to killing them and capping their towers. Give me bonus wxp, karma, and better loot rolls against the top server and thats who I am going after.

Imagine a group of players with yellow tags, and a group with purple tags besieging a keep belonging to the orange team. Then fighting each other over the cap after we take out the walls, guards, and players. Now that would be fun. But it rarely happens with all red name tags.

This has been mentioned before, but I don’t know who to credit:

Give a set reward to each server at week’s end that is of equal scaling for each server (maybe even by place they finished, or total # of points scored), but divided evenly amongst all wvw participants that week (people who gained a certain # of wvw rank points). As an example:

Every server gets 500g at week’s end divided amongst wvw players if they get first.

Blackgate, SOR, or JQ players would then be getting ~20s – a nominal amount
Anvil Rock or Kaening players would be getting ~5g each (a nice chunk of change)

You could even make it like: total server gold = (points scored)/1000 + 200/(final server rank).

Now you have an incentive for people to get their easy gold at smaller servers, and help even-out the populations. It would also give servers a reason to keep fighting to get their larger raid-reward at week’s end for more points.

You could even do it with wvw exp. or something if they are worried about gold economy. People will want the easy reward, and the system has built-in negative feedback (so there is less snowballing, like we have today).

There are two main issues which need addressing as I see it, and personally I see it in this order:

1. Fix Queues

There is nothing more frustrating than sitting in a WvWvW queue. It has multiple problems – specificallly:

• those that do it most only want to WvWvW
• we can’t level up other characters while we wait because we want to go in on our main WvWvW character (alts and WXP another topic, right?)
• the queues don’t work so sometimes I get in within seconds while a guild mate has been queued for hours
• we can only queue for one BL at a time
• we have no idea what the queues are like

So I would like to see:

• Priority: The queues fixed so it takes people in the order they queued
• Priority: The ability to see a breakdown per BL of how busy each queue is and an estimated wait time (done so well in other games)
• Wish list – ability to queue for multiple BLs
• Wish list – ability to swap chars without leaving WvWvW (it is so alt unfriendly with WXP already, long queues just make it more so)

2. Fix Population/Server Imbalance

OK so we now how this goes now, there is nothing new here and nothing hinted at that would solve this. I don’t feel I need to write out what the problems are because everyone knows them. Possible solutions:

• Server Alliances. Ally servers (as many as six) to colors dramatically reducing the number of WvWvW servers. Allows lower tiered servers to group up and compete against (for example) the top 3 in NA. Could also help with night coverage as well if done right and can be varied whenever required to take account of population shifts.
• Make server transfer costs dependant on WvWvW rank, quite frankly I don’t know why a PvE only player would transfer anyway – just quest.
• Encourage guilds to move to lower rank WvWvW servers (less gold or no cost at all, add feature to lower tiered servers only where they can retain guild bank and status etc).
• Get rid of leagues until you have a proper system implemented, the leagues are just making an already severe problem worse.
• Increase rewards for WvWvW, I don’t believe lower tier servers have a lower population in total just that WvWvW is not their game type or WvWvW is far less profitable (and has less access to mats, ascended items and is far less lucrative for gold than a champ run).
• Introduce unique items for WvWvW like skins (yup, dungeons have them) and other goodies that people will want to get and these items should not be linked to “winning” or dominating the tier.

See, not a single kitten in there. Oh wait…

First of all! Thank you for identifying the top issues and putting forth a plan that is conveyed to us that you understand the issues and are now working towards fixing them! This such a huge step forward at least getting acknowledgement. So thank you guys!

That being said. I know right now its a rather open topic but I will take a stab high level and try to keep it short.

Let’s start with WHY the population balance matters….simply put…

It only matters right now because of how the scoring is done between the 3 servers. If discussing changing the way scores are calculated is on the table, then you may be able to come up with solutions that don’t necessarily involve balancing the populations of the servers.

If you do not want to change the way the scoring system is…then you simply must address the population imbalance issue….if you go this route here are some suggestions (some good prolly some not so good lol)

1.) Revisit the outmanned buff (im not a fan but its an option)
2.) Add NPC’s the outmanned server (im not a fan but its an option)
3.) Incentivize server transfers to lower ranked servers (I use the ranking vs WvW population since WvW pop is probably an unknown variable for you guys right now )
4.) Consolidate lower ranked WvW servers together for WvW purposes

I personally would like to revisit the scoring system. I also like the idea of using the glicko rating difference to determine the winner of the week and not just the points. The reason I sort of like that is because it means that you’re server performed better than it was expected to…it will def have issues if you keep random matchups and a high ranked server fights a low ranked server (Because almost always the lower ranked server will gain rating), but it’s something that could be adjusted and worked on.

Anyways there are a ton more ideas, but I think first we should figure out whether the scoring system should change (best option IMO) or you want to keep the scoring system and fix the imbalance pop.

This is probably the hardest topic to discuss as the only time there will never be true balance without drastically limiting the number of people playing per side, which shouldn’t happen. The only thing you can really do here is to create additional artificial controls which shape the way people play the game. The only control currently is outnumbered, 3 factions and siegerazer which are not up to snuff as a method to help with population imbalance.

1. Boost incentive for 2v1 to aid with imbalances

Currently 2nd and 3rd place tend to concentrate on one another rather than both attempting to knock 1st place down when it’s a runaway/imbalanced match. Most of their decision process comes from wxp farming and the easiest points are from the most picked on (paper), which tends to be the last placed team.

There is a pretty easy fix here. Make it so that the rewards for wxp is greater the tougher the tower. A paper tower should be worth a x1 muliple, t2 a x4 multiple and a t3 a x8 multiple. The same with keeps. Rewards in general should be higher the harder the task. This idea should be extended when facing the server that is “stacked” by having a general multiple when killing or taking land from the server in the lead.

This will help with fulfilling DAOC’s old idea that the two weaker groups will gang up on the strongest group. It’s currently failing in gw2 as it’s more about wxp then winning.

2. Artificially strengthen and weaken servers via NPCs

As a server gets pushed back to next to nothing it causes the weaker server to lose even more players and the stronger server to gain players due to pvers jumping on the “karma train”. As a side is pushed back add more and better defenses that potentially scale to what they have left, and possibly spawn attackers to help take back what is lost. Make reducing a server to nothing an incredible undertaking and give those that are outnumbered hope that as they are pushed back they will eventually see those legendary defenders out in the field and in action.

Adressing imbalace caused by different server population
I don’t think the score should be balanced on WvW population. In the worst case scenario that could lead to a highly unpopulated server to meet a highly populated server (cuz they could have the same points now). In such a matchup nobody would have fun, whan 50 ppl Zerg spawncamps Vabbi, while 1 guy in 2 hours wants to step out of the spawn (a bit overstated^^).

Important should be, that the server with a lower population and the server with a higher population will still be able to do stuff. This could be achieved by making it exponentially harder for the attacking server to get stuff, the further they are away from their spawn. So they for example would need to split up, in order to march further.

I can imagine lawa streams or other obsticles have to be crossed by teleporters, that can only transport a few and then need to recharge for a long time. Or buildable bridges to overcome that obstacle, who can be destroyed by siege weapons. Cap points, that have to be hold simotaniosly, to allow passage deeper in the enemies terretory. There are many obstacles, one can think of, to make it harder for the higher populated server to capture the last parts of the map deep in enemy terretory, while the defenders would have it easier to disrupt those efforts. This way, a population imbalance could still lead to interesting fights and to challanges for both sides, that actually make sense to engage in.

Specifically on the topic of gross server population differences. The solution (as much as there could be one) was already in place back at launch. The Glicko system (with a few procedural tweaks to keep the ratings within shouting distance between tiers) was reasonably good about generating matchups that were “competitive” relative to the established scoring system. The whole point of the Glicko system was to ensure that servers were matched which could gain roughly similar average PPT over the course of the week.

Of course, because server populations don’t shift wildly from week to week, we ended up playing the same servers (the most ideal populations relative to our home servers) week after week. That was the whole point of the system, but some players interpreted the ranking as a measure of “best” and other players complained of boring matches if the opponents were always the same, so the system was changed and we wound up with wildly imbalanced matchups in every tier. It may be too late to return to that system now, but that was the most “balanced” time we ever had in WvW.

Overall though, main problem that I see with relation to population balance is that the whole system of WvW suffers from a fuzzy objective.

It seems to want to play as a league-type sporting event, but then makes no effort to enforce balanced teams and match-ups.

In some ways it seems to want to simulate open warfare, where a balanced fight is usually the result of a tactical mistake, but then the system intervenes with periodic resets and points accumulation, and on top of that there is no tactical or strategic reasoning behind fighting this fight at all.

If WvW is to be a sporting-event, then world populations need to be balanced the same way that sports league teams are. Somehow teams will need to be picked in a reasonably even fashion and assigned to a given “side”. As pointed out previously, WvW is the only server restricted element of GW2, so it doesn’t really matter what servers are played for – WvW players could be shunted around the servers as needed. I’d imagine that metrics could be generated to give each player or guild a possible home based on WvW activity and timezone – but it would honestly be a lot of work and of uncertain success at the end.

If WvW is instead supposed to be a wargame, then there needs to be an elimination of the “gamey” aspects of points-per-turn and weekly resets, and installation of hard and fast strategic reasons for holding the keeps and towers on each map. The problem would then be engineering it such that the eventual victor has great difficulty holding their gains and the system naturally falls back to a more balanced state. A mercenary system would probably go a long way to help in such a vision as well.

It might seem trite, but I think that the population balance problems are really secondary to much more fundamental issues in the WvW game-type, and without solving those issues the specific problem of pop balance is grabbing for the tail of the problem rather than the head.

In other games (WoW comes to mind) PvP instanced games (like Alterac Valley) Were balanced in numbers via Gating.

How gating works:

The system sets a base number of players lets say 20 spots, and the amount of slots would increase incrementally based on flagging certain events. Side A hits 15/20, the gate is raised to allow 30 people total- But Side B and C fill out the 30 already. The gate will not raise again until the lowest sides population hit the next gate. This was done in games to prevent 5 on 40’s, the game would not even start until the minimum gate was filled (10 people in the case of AV)

The Pros of gating- curbs victories soley dependent on number of forces. Balances out numbers incrementally, the cap can be raised based off of demand to get into the game.

Gating calculations could provide functional data to set up future match ups- It would provide average players based on the time of the day.

Cons of gating: Would cause strife for WvW players of non NA times, If ET has no oceanics then very few of the opposing sides would get to play against them.

Gating does not push out players if the other side’s dwindle- It simply won’t let more join until enough leave to be under the gate. So if nobody left on one side you could be left with a 90 on 20.

Gating isn’t easy to program, and takes a constant stream of code to function. (I don’t have a lot of confidence Anet can pull it off without adding a bunch of lag, and bugs they wouldn’t bother fixing for months.)

Sucks for you, but yah just respawn after you die and all loot bags or chests will spawn with you where you can pick them up.

It fills me with a strange form of spiteful joy when the defense of a keep fails by a hair because there’s 20 people who died and refused to run back. And then the chat fills up with “ah man i had like X bags there!”.
Yes, and if you had just run back instead of being lazy those bags wouldve been yours while you were running back.

It’s good and bad.

The good is that people seem a lot more motivated now that there’s something more than just the match of the week to win. I’ve gotten in some good fights over the past few weeks. For example, I had a good 1:1 earlier this evening with a elementalist that was back and forth until I managed to lure him into a couple of wandering guards. (I hope he realized that my bow emote was for a good fight and not mocking him.) It’s also good to have personal goals in the form of the season achievements.

The bad is that the season achievements often are counter to the playing that you need to actually win, leading to frustration when you should’ve been able to cap a tower, but too many were off capping a sentry or yak and you got repelled instead. Or they are mindlessly repetitive (ruin capping..ugh). There’s even more zerging than usual and the karma train can get old.

The last one may not be an effect of the league, just the servers that we’re matched up with, but seen a lot more hacking than I have in months (since the last match up with FC with players literally running through walls).

Hate what the season has brought to wvw. As I semi interested wvwer (highest rank is 81), the achievements have brought in too many goals that can be counter productive. That has led to some toxicity in wvw chat towards new players to wvw who simply may not know….. Good luck ever getting them back…..

Of all the places I expected to find a philosophical discussion on morality and loyalty.

Hobbitz.5831:

I’ll do you one better, I’ll describe the situation.

SoR dominated BG through the first 3 days of its match up last week. Sunday night going into Monday morning Blackgate paid a Russian guild an extremely large sum of gold to transfer to their server just for the league. The guild has already stated that they have no intentions of staying on BG and are only be paid to help them win league. As SoR has no players in their particular time slot (9aPST/12pEST) the guild continues to flip all borderlands uncontested.

Now SoR players are quitting the game left and right. The league was viewed as the savior of WvW for a large section of the base but now that one server has gone to the extreme to literally ‘pay-to-win’ a lot of the player base has lost faith in leagues and ArenaNet.

Your talking 1 guild. Unless they are 70+ players, they cant make that big of a difference.

The issue as far as I can see is all your fair weather players left when you started losing, while BG’s fair weathers started joining the fight (BG has a ton of fair weathers).

Its sad to see SoR players cry and blaiming it on one guild transferring. One guild cant be why you are acting like a t2 server atm.
Its because your server gave up. Dont blaim it on transfers. Blaim it on your high fair weather population.

SoR has ton of Oceanic and EU population. We saw it during the first match up. Even if it was unorganized they were there.

You can’t buy guilds. You can only rent people who have no loyalty.

Well to be honest I don’t really care abt the purchasing of guilds by the richer worlds cus its the guilds choice to be mercs and work for gold or $$$. I’m from SOR too and last night I witnessed players morals collapsed to a disappointing lvl at 1 pt in eb due to the coodinated atks by 2 worlds (we have screenshots to prove it but whats the point?) and most players left EB. What I wanna say is we rise and fall as a server and I’ll like to commend on our commanders last night for rallying the few of us remaining to get back our 1/3 of the map from having 0 spots at 1 pt. There’s no pt in talking abt guild selling themselves as it is their choice to do it and we have to deal with it as a whole as this is all part of the game.

Carize.8532:

TL;DR: Stop the kittening and whining about unfair matchup or schedule or 2v1…you just make yourselves look petty and childish. GO FIGHT

GO FIGHT! for JQ is more GO FIGHT DOORS! hehehe but srsly I think who should be mad at this is JQ at the first place, for 2 reasons:

1 – They will have 3 weeks of nothing …
2 – Their title of first place will always be remembered by this, its stained no matter what.

At the end of the day if you analyze ANET kittened JQ, not SoR or BG, well thats IMHO.

Yeah, most people who have played WvW since launch would not be surprised to hear that this 1st Season is being looked at as an Open Beta, this would actually sum up the overall WvW experience of most players since launch. I mean, orbs, held in Keeps, in a single, specific spot that people could reach by simply dropping down BEHIND THE MAP from their own spawn, running under the floors of the Keep to destroy the orb? The original orb concept always felt like we were still in beta. And does anyone remember when you could simply climb over the door of ANY Tower or Keep in the game and solo the Tower/Keep Lord to ninja cap it? Or how about holding points for an infinite amount of time in stealth?

So yeah, when I really think about it, an unbalanced schedule for the 1st Season of WvW League play doesn’t really seem that bad anymore…

Yep, Yep, I was a true bandwagoner. I Transferred to SBI at launch from absolutely no server.