Guild Wars 2

Boysenberry.1869:

I feel a 1v1 matchup every week would be incredibly boring. It would take away what suspense and strategy still remain in WvW. All you’d have to do is build a larger blob and run over the opposing blob knowing that there is no third blob that can run amok elsewhere. There would still be an imbalance. One server will have more players and more coverage and that server would still crush the lesser server.

^Pretty much hit the nail on the head there on that idea. Unless there was a total rework on the whole mode. Which would be crazy amounts of work for Anet.
There are a lot of great ideas in a great many threads in all gw2 WvW sub-forums on ways to help all the major problems with WvW. Some wouldn’t take a lot of work. Most ideas are just frustrated players on a server with mostly pve & pvp players and kind of want a “free” equalizer without trying to put work in on their end like recruiting in various ways or there’s Others who “buy” whole WvW guilds(which doesn’t help this whole unbalanced issue OP is concerned about). Maybe HoT has some surprises to shake things up a bit I keed I keed.

I hate zergfests. And I mean hate them. When I do WvW I either solo roam, or do it in a small guild group. As such, I don’t think I would derive much enjoyment from this game mode. However, I recognize that a lot of people would really like to see it, and as such I really hope A-net implements something like it. I want to see the diverse ways to play and enjoy this game grow.

In another note, If they do add something like this, I hope they provide something for the other end of the spectrum: 3v3’s, 2v2’s, 1v1’s. And I really, really hope they add a means of dueling outside of SPvP with PvE/WvW gear.

The Kingdom system is a battlegroup-esque system I have been pondering on to fix some of the major issues in WvW.

The system works as follows:

KINGDOMS:

All servers will now be called to serve one of three kingdoms as an “army:”

The Crimson Lion (Red)

Tempest Watch (Blue)

Viridian Guard (Green)

Player name labels will still reflect what server they come from but will also have a new icon in place that shows which kingdom they are serving.

MAP ROTATION AND BATTLES:

When entering WvW, the old map system and selection is now gone. It is now replaced by a new system. Each week, when WvW resets the new WvW system begins with a single map, which is randomly selected from:

-Eternal Battlegrounds
-Edge of the Mists
-Old Borderlands
-New HoT Borderlands
-Fortunes Vale (unreleased map)
*Anet can add new maps as needed.

When the current map reaches its limit, a new random map is spawned similar to edge of the mists. New maps that spawn are shown in the map selection page, which now will look like the game selection page from SPvP hot join. When looking at the map selection players will be able to see how many players on each map in order to best decide where to deploy their armies and commanders.

WvW maps have a fixed player limit (example 100-200 per side) and a time limit (5-6hrs for example) for play similar to the edge of the mist system once spawned. Once the time limit expires for a map, the map is removed from the selection screen and the Kingdom that scores the most points in that map gains a victory.

This system allows for an infinite number of maps to be spawned to support the WvW population just like Edge of the Mists.

In addition new maps would be added to the rotation that have objectives unique to to taking forts and points per tick. These maps may include supply train maps where armies have to escort supply doylaks from one side to another and the team with the most supply at the end of the timer wins.

Other ideas may include maps that specifically focus on Guild vs. Guild combat and capture the flag type objectives on a larger scale.

KINGDOM AND ARMY REWARDS:

Each week when WvW resets players earn weekly rewards based on the performance of their Kingdom as a whole. Players also gain additional rewards based on the individual performance of their servers. The top 3 servers for each Kingdom are rewarded with the ability to wear a bronze, silver, or gold banner that shows their guild emblem to show off their prestige for the following week until the next reset.

Each week all of the server armies are shuffled into one of the three kingdoms based on individual performance. Each server has a hidden performance rating that is used to pair up servers under kingdoms to ensure that the three sides are balanced. This also allows people from lower ranking servers to play along side more organized servers to foster better tactics and learn.

PROBLEMS SOLVED:

-Sever imbalance is solved through pairing servers under kingdoms
-Never wait in the queue again due to the edge of the mist style map spawning
-Extended domination is mitigated by the reshuffling of servers under kingdoms each week. Every week the system starts fresh.
-Kingdoms and servers have to tactically decide where to spread their armies as new battle maps are spawned in order to continually win victories on maps.
-The system randomly spawns maps to ensure all WvW maps are used. This allows Anet to constantly add new maps and prevents old content from being lost when HoT comes out.
-Battles are time limited to prevent a single battle map from stagnating or being covered with siege because its been up for a week.
-Controlled player populations per map allows for better performance and more balanced battles. Players will be able to see how populated maps are as they spawn.
-Players gain server pride by winning and gaining gold, silver, or bronze wearables.
-Servers are also paired by strong with weak to ensure no servers are left behind and everyone gains a chance to be led by good commanders.
-This system builds on the already existing architecture of edge of the mists.

I’m not too interested in server transfer rewards as much since I think I would rather see reworks to the transfer system itself, but some things I would like to see for Badges are;

• Exotic Gear that can be salvaged – so WvWers can actually buy the gear and not worry about not being able to remove our runes and sigils.

• Limited Time WvW Only Commander Tag – to give players that don’t have a tag something they can use to test if they like commanding before they commit to the 300g purchase

• Box of WvW Supplies - cause it has some nice items you can get from it while still having rng so people aren’t just buying WvW xp flat out.

• WvW XP% Booster/Buff – to give something to help people pursing certain abilities.

• Various Bags of Crafting Mats – to help people trying to work towards making certain recipes and things.

• Dungeon Rewards – since WvW is the only game mode that can’t get them through our game mode and to help people have better access to dungeon runes for their builds.

• Temporary Holiday/Special Event Items – just so WvWers can have potential access to the limited stuff too when it’s out.

• New Unique Skins – just to give some incentive to go into WvW and give some stuff to show off while not making the mistforge skins less special.

• Guild Influence Consumables – to help smaller guilds in maintaining their guild buffs for WvW.

• Something Like Metabolic and Utility Primer (but maybe not as long) – to help maintaining expensive food longer so commanders don’t need to drop it as much.

• Ascalon Tonic (or something similar) – to help commanders since the prices have been going up on it.

Reading a lot of people’s reaction I don’t blame him at all.

I thought that PPT was fun, for the first thousand hours I played WvW. During that lovely time in EB, I learned to defend towers, how to siege enemy towers, and how to deal with zergs. I learned to command, and led the half afk mobs in a parade around the map taking things. We laughed, we loved, we danced on the bodies of our enemies as we took their things from them.

Then, in the second thousand hours, i got bored. I got tired of laying siege in the same places, stopping people from getting in the doors, and destroying ACs with focused meteor showers, getting pushed off by 5 ACs and endless siege spam. I still taught people the basics of WvW, i instructed new commanders, I recommended people watch youtube videos of WvW fights in order to be able to sustain in them. I started to understand what “Coverage” meant, as i found fewer and fewer commanders willing to take over when I tagged down.

By the third thousand hours, I was done PPTing. I was done pugmanding, i played WvW for the pleasure of playing with my friends and guild, improving on how we played and fought together as a group, and for the pleasure of outsmarting other commanders while fighting outnumbered, and GvGing some of the best players in the game. You play in the field, you win, and then you GvG with a top guild and die in 45 seconds. Its remarkably humbling to get outplayed like that. It reveals where your group, (or you, if you’re the commander) have weaknesses that your enemies capitalize on. I spent the third thousand hours improving our play, and teaching others. By this point, PPT is something that I did in between fights, just to have something to do.

By the fourth thousand hours, Guild raids are all that I played for anymore, my server had gone through bronze and silver, and been ground to dust by the population imbalance at the top of silver league. Our coverage was inferior in every time slot. If you didnt stay in structures you captured, you lost them in less than 15 minutes. If you stayed still in any place for too long, the enemy servers’ roaming fights guilds all converged on you, and you get blobbed to death by a multi-guild jam. Fighting an uphill coverage battle is fun when you have the right mentality for it, but it wears on people. Upgrading a keep all day is rather pointless when, an hour after you log off, the enemy servers are organized and fielding 4x the number of players that your server has available.

Danged if they do, danged if they don’t. When they relax the restrictions on the system, players cry that they get in uneven or unfair matchups. If they tighten the system, players cry that matchups are stale.

The most interesting thing about this thread, is that the OP has expressed and issue with being in unbalanced matchups recently. OP are you suggesting it is dull because you are set against an uneven match up and fell that moving down a tier would do you justice, or you wanting to fight new servers for the sake of fighting new servers?

Personally, I just assume see the 3rd place server in every tier drop a tier for the following week, while the 1st place server in the tier move up for the following week. In that case, the forums would be spammed with threads of unfair matchups, but at least it would be consistent.

BrettM.9062:

Come to IoJ! What other servers call “solo roamers”, “duos”, or “small teams”, we call zergs. You won’t find smaller zergs anywhere else! Pop a tag and be your own zerg! What could be finer?

You’ve never played in T7 or T8, have you?

Danged if they do, danged if they don’t. When they relax the restrictions on the system, players cry that they get in uneven or unfair matchups. If they tighten the system, players cry that matchups are stale.

Personally, I just assume see the 3rd place server in every tier drop a tier for the following week, while the 1st place server in the tier move up for the following week. In that case, the forums would be spammed with threads of unfair matchups, but at least it would be consistent.

The issue will always be prevalent so long as the scoring system remains the same. It encourages coverage wars to maximize ppt. Thus, bandwagoning/stacking servers – although this is player driven, the driver behind the driver is due to the scoring mechanics.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

While the players do the stacking – its Anet that sets the rules and has ultimate control over the server balancing. Since the player base as a whole can’t/won’t do anything about it. Its up to the owners of the environment to develop and implement something to mitigate these huge wvw player base disparities.

Why? Why do they need to do anything? Do you think if players were artificially forced out of populated servers onto lesser populated ones, that many would quite wen they are ripped out of there established community? As I see it, there is reason to believe artificially forcing players into servers they didn’t chose, will cause the over all population to decline greatly.

Burke.1378:

I don’t think you quite get it. The need to transfer to other servers is almost a requirement in order to enjoy WvW at the moment.

That makes absolutely no sense. You appear to be confusing subjective opinion with objective fact. I doubt the vast majority of players have transferred servers since it changes to require gems to transfer, and I would bet they are having fun.

You simply need to make friends with and join a guild with folks who have fun together and do not depend on bandwagoning.

Kanebrake.6192:

People jump because there’s nothing to do on their current server. In the lower tiers wvw is mostly dead. All of this is a result of wvw population decline which is a direct result of how Anet has handled wvw. From unbalanced match ups to bugs to cheats to no new content to whatever else you can think of. If the wvw population was still healthy across the tiers it wouldn’t matter what server you were on because there would always be something to do.

No, people jumped because they wanted to bandwagon to already winning servers. That is evident from when they made transfers free before a tournament and everyone tried to stack on T1 or winning T2 servers.

I mean, you can blame Anet if you like, but it won’t make it make sense. They didn’t make players bandwagon servers. Players made that choice. The free transfers were offered because of massive population demand. players demanded transfers for free. Anet granted the request. player bandwagon stacked. Now players cry because there is not population balance. I prefer to blame those who moved directly.

By the way, if Anets so bad, why are you still here? The hipster movement of bashing a developer while consistently being a patron of their games is baffling. If they do such a bad job, why don’t you play a different game?

splat.8169:

that said, the current ruleset works well when you have evenly matched participants and kitteny otherwise.

to make things work better we should have a ruleset which permits uneven participants to engage and all sides have fun. ( i have no clue how you’d do that specifically)…

…the current problem with the current system is for any given server there are at most 4 servers which match up well. (based on typical tiering ratings by forumers) so for best performance servers would be stuck with the same partners until the power balances change. unchanging matchups are ALSO undesirable.
ergo. competition elements have to change.

a few suggestions:
-remove positive feedback loops.
-introduce negative feedback

possible implementations:
-remove point per tick, replace with points on cap based on completed upgrades
—exception: point per tick on defense. (introduces costs to tapping structures)
-remove structure reset on capture (inherit upgrades and Broken stuff)
—permit deconstruction of upgrades (tricky to avoid trolling/griefing)

what do ppl think of the silverwaste yaks? what if they were imported to wvw?

related question. are we shooting for an asymmetric warfare simulation? or a fair game in which case we should add more gamey aspects like methods to steal other servers score.
essentially
http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci211z/2.2/Arreguin-Toft%20IS%202001.pdf
or
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/mario-kart-8-wii-u-tipstricks-how-to-boost-drift-and-master-every-item
(mario kart reference randomly selected)

Great post. Sorry I edited out the golem part because I wanted to focus on this statement:

“the current ruleset works well when you have evenly matched participants and kitteny otherwise”.

That in a nutshell is the issue. Its at the heart of all the arguments about population/coverage imbalance.

Its why you see people from T1 NA saying one thing while others in lower tiers saying something else – see this very thread.

The current ruleset works fine for T1 NA and whenever you happen to have relatively equal populations (which rarely happen outside of T1 in NA). But it does not work for the majority of the servers at the majority of the time periods.

To make matters worse, even if a particular block of time (say NA Prime) is relatively even it is still affected by the time periods that have come before it. This is why you hear all the complaints about "night"capping.

The solution is not trying to equal out populations. Populations cannot be equalized without having queues, its impossible. And I would say for the broader game it is impossible to equalize populations in WvW across all timezones and all servers.

Therefore the solution lies in the ruleset. There must be a ruleset in place that works for both equal populations and doesn’t totally break down when the populations are not equal.

There have been proposals to make changes in scoring and mechanics that would attempt to mitigate the effect of unbalanced population (splat makes some in the post). In other words, change the ruleset. I don’t know if Anet has plans for any changes in HoT but I sure hope so.

TLDR; It is impossible to balance populations in WvW. Therefore changes to the ruleset should be made to mitigate the negative effects of imbalanced population.

FrownyClown.8402:

lordkrall.7241:

I would say it was simply because it was way too powerful before.

too powerful? has anyone ever complained about stability being too good?

Just about everyone that didn’t main a warrior or a guardian, yeah.

Agreed. It would be nice to have a /wvw or /server channel in every map, where you knew you were only talking to people in your wvw server. Perhaps this is what /team could be used for, since right now /team and /map are redundant?

I have to say the server mergers have been a good thing for PvE. You can find more people when you want to do something. Unfortunately, there have been unexpected consequences for WvW. The combined map chat channel is a challenge for guild and individuals who want to recruit members to their WvW dedicated guild or just requests for people to discreetly zone into WvW to respond to attacks. An open call for people to come help defend our garrison would have the opposite effect since you would be potentially talking to two enemy servers and only one friendly one. Projecting weakness is counterproductive. For this reason, commanders and competitive WvW players don’t use PvE map chat. This has stifled efforts to get PvE and PvP players to cross over into WvW. PvE map chat is actually a nuisance for most players even those looking for WvW guilds, since the chance is negligible to speak to someone on our own server. Attrition will continue in WvW until we get a secure means to speak to players on our server. In this case, silence is deadly.

What would be nice is a multi-channel filter, where we could broadcast only to our server in map chat. A dedicated WvW channel that is toggled off by default would not work in my honest opinion. Only currently active WvW players would turn it on. If the channel was on by default, all it would take is some trollage and PvE players would turn it off and never look back. You guys created some great content in WvW. I just want to remove this unintentional barrier to bringing new players into it.

A Few Simple Points.

PvErs Farm Gold. WvWers Buy Gems.

PvErs Guest. WvWers Transfer.

PvErs are Casual. WvWers are Loyal.

1 Simple change would make you alot of money. 20v20 Death Match with rankings/ GvG.

Why? WvW Guilds are the life blood of this game they are constantly buying gems and transferring, always buying make over kits and the new skins, because WvW rewards are low we use gems and pay real money.

Two WvW Guilds just transfer to my server this week, over 50 people they said they had to buy 1800 gems to transfer since you cant buy 1800 gems (sneaky tactic to make more money) most would of bought 2800 as the next one up, costing £30 over 50 people that makes £1500 in a week, on one server, with just two WvW guilds. They are over 20 WvW Guilds on my server alone and we are low tier server.

A 20v20 Death match mode would bring a huge population back not to mention new guilds coming to guild wars as it appears more PvP friendly increasing the chance of becoming an ESport.

Any Thoughts?

At this point the only thing I really hate about WvW is really this disjointed bipolar view of it needs to be fair, but it also war so anything goes vibe it gives off. Really just make it one or the other none of this half measure skritt.

Truth be told, to fix this would be to have guilds transfer down. More randomized matchups. It’s not what we want be any means, but the game did advertise 125vs125vs125. It’s on the box.

Golems are already way too over powered. Golem mastery was a terrible addition to the game. If anything there needs to be more counters to golems. Also if siege disablers are only going to work for half the time against golems then they should be fully disabled for the duration, meaning they shouldn’t be able to move.

You appear to confuse subjective opinion, with that of objective fact.

You see, you can not simply “declare” something as fun or not fun. I, for one, rather enjoy WP and fast travel.

Most of what your complaining about, in my opinion, would harm the game immensely. Lessoning AoE and their range serves no one in my opinion. It only serves to promote compressing players into a smaller area and to pile on PIN in as big a blob as possible.

As to badges of honor, I honestly feel that wanting value in what they can purchase, is something that is unanimously favored.

Cool story, bro. It’s a video game. Play it like one. Have fun and play what you want, who cares if you’re not contributing as much as you could be as long as you’re contributing as much as you can.

Cash.2385:

Somethings I’ve noticed that might go better with a few tweaks.

- Improve golem strength against enemies on foot, one golem should easily be able to take out three enemies in a three vs one, I tried it….. You know they stand around 15 to 18ft tall that should count for something, plus they look like their made of metal not tissue.

- Less waypointing here, there, here it breaks from imersion is annoying.

- Make rams reusable if the enemy leaves rams at the gate, well using what is left there only stands to make more sense then destroying two just to build two more. If you can construction why can’t you deconstruct something?

- Better purchasable item with badges of honor, for the players who have thousands.

— Golems really shouldn’t have increased strength against players, they’re already really powerful. I’ve seen blobs completely wipe in hills to about 5 spinning golems.

— Less Waypointing sounds good, not because of immersion but because it could help with small man taking stuff and help force fights by making a zerg chose to either go through or around to get in.

— I don’t think rams should be reusable since there is not really a difficulty in getting them up and because you can’t really get rid of your own rams. So basically you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage with no real way of remedying that unless the enemies destroy them without paying attention.

— YES! Badges of honor should have reason to use them and purely them. The fact that WvWers have to sink so much gold into upgrading structures and the only really decent option for badges seems to be the exotic 80 gear — which also costs gold and can’t be salvaged or mystic forged — really is quite sad.

I agree with what Zoke saying – Also where it’s place don’t see it no harm if not I think GM can move it.

The majority of this is addressing people who use wvw atm to try to do these things. I agree it should be in the pvp section, but that is because it should already be a pvp mode.

Can we please just get, or have some discussion on, a 15-15, 20 v 20 preferred, pop sizes added to Custom arenas, with a check box to use PVE gear and allow food buffs… that’s it, boom you’ve done it, the community can then host and hold private organized GvG format competition.

Maybe i’m just being impatient, maybe ALL of these issues will be addressed by the new Stronghold format where arena net will allow 15 – 20 players per side, and MAYBE even the wvw stating and food buffs, which would be AWESOME and kill so many birds with so few stones I’d be giddy at the wherewithal to make such an elegant move.

After all it’s been 3 years, all we’ve gotten are 3 more maps to a format that didn’t need a single new map… 1 of which was removed because anet was still trying to push for underwater combat… and WvW has only received an up level xp farming map… awesome.

and while we’re on it…

Where is the silly capture the flag format that could be super unpolished and people would have fun with it?

Where is the AB styled format with 10 – 15 people fighting over 7 nodes on an awesome map?

where is a 2v2 or 3v3 ladder? It’s already a super popular shout casted format, why not allow players to fight it more than just when some massive forum driven event takes place but daily?

can’t really blame Anet. when they vary the opponents, people complain about the large disparities in matchups that result in lots of blowouts. when they pair up the closest ranking servers, people complain about it getting boring fighting the same people.

ah, now I understand the question.

ok. 100 is the hard cap, but that doesn’t mean that +100 or -100 will always be possible. the amount of randomness a server can get depends on its ‘deviation’ value. the exact upper value is 10 + (0.45 x Deviation).

TC has a predicted deviation of 127.7872, so 10 + (0.45 × 127.7872) = 67.5

so TC can’t possibly roll higher than +67.5, or lower than -67.5 because their deviation isn’t high enough to allow it. likewise, FA has a predicted deviation of 131.3507, which means their random roll will be between +69.1 and -69.1.

add 69.1 and 67.5 together and you get 136.6, which is high enough to get past the 128 point gap. in previous weeks this wasn’t the case.

note that the amount of variation is different for every server, because every server has a different Deviation value (and the values change from week to week). this complicates the math and makes it so that there’s no single number that’s the limit for everyone (or even a single number that’s correct for one server week after week). this is why everyone just uses 100 points as the limit, because at least that is the same for everyone.

-ken