Showing Posts For Alteros.3019:
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Even worse, it very well may be what wvw WILL be, if players do not speak up about these things.
You must be new on these forums? People have been complaining about WvW balance since the start.. :-)
I played GW1, Was part of the surveys they used to create GW2, have had this game since release and started posting in these forums back then, not sure where that would be considered “new”. WvW balance has been an issue since the start because they made too many servers from the start. I have been more vocal in forums recently due to the HoT wvw news being so depressing thus far. * last ditch effort to hopefully talk sense into them before they make everyone I play with quit the game*
It’s interesting because most of the players in GW2 are either exclusively PvE, PvP, or WvW. Not many play another game mode unless there’s something of interest or to be had. Apart from Anet forcing people to play through all their content for a legendary, most just stick to their side of the game. All the WvWers I know are pretty fed up with how things are currently and debating whether they should continue to invest more time in a game that is no longer fun for them. And PvE doesn’t hold any allure for them and they’re not PvPers, so lil devils in the same boat I am in.
Sad to say, but I have a more enjoyable and productive experience on EoTM than I do on my own server. And that’s saying something when the waiting room is actually better than the main attraction.
It sucks to be outnumbered of course, but WvW cannot be completely normalized since it’s basically a big sandbox. It is what the players make of it.
And if you see the enemy blob rampage somewhere, then go elsewhere, capture other things. If they have scouts and move to intercept, split up and capture things like that.
Even an 80-person blob cannot be in three places at once and you can take care of a lot with three 15-person groups.
Tried splitting up without much success. Not withstanding the fact our server can only manage to field about 30 reliably coordinated players per map consistently (not counting PUGs who just aimlessly wander around), the opposing force literally has enough people to hold all of our homeland objectives (and for all practical purposes everything else on all the other maps) and make them T3. Good luck trying to take that with 15 people when you have 5 superior ACs raining down on you at every gate. And assuming you break through, it’s always too late because they know you’re there and their death blob will be upon you before you’re in the lord room.
After this week’s utter massacre of my server, I’m pretty much going to take a very long break from WvW. Seems the only way to avoid the blob and not be relentlessly farmed for loot is to not be in WvW.
As long as both sides have an equally big blob, it’s fun. It’s as close to an actual battlefield as it will ever get in this game and like others have said, if you want small scale combat you have pvp or you can flip camps to help the main blob achieve its goals.
There is one problem with the blob, if the other two worlds have nowhere near as big a blob as one. Then it’s incredibly one-sided, but it’s not exactly the game mode’s fault.
So yeah, to stop the blob, get a bigger or more organised blob and may the better one win.
I beg to differ. It totally is the game’s fault through either poor or intentional design that one side has a huge blob that can roll through an entire border land unimpeded. As I have said before and will continue to say until I’m blue in the face: normalize the base power levels of the servers dynamically and virtually all of the problems plaguing WvW will go away. I don’t see a functional difference between a 40 man Zerg moving in unison melting everything in sight vs the only guy on the opposing server doing the same (extreme example, but you get the point).
The game has to be fun for both sides playing. Last time I checked, it’s not fun to be a loot bag because your outnumbered 3:1 no matter what time of day your on. My server has attempted every conceivable strategy to overcome such odds, but it’s always a numbers game. And we’re tired. And we understand why people jump ship to the safety of the friendly blob. But in the end, we’re on course for the active WvW population to condense down to a handful of servers who aren’t bored of blobbing and a whole lot of empty ones.
Make the outnumbered buff dynamically. Are you outnumbered 3 to 1 then every character should be as strong as three players. Als reduce the amount of supplies needed by the outnumbered team dynamically. This at least in some way equalizes it is a bit
Okay, I think we all know this can’t work – it would encourage people to tell allies to log off in order to “fudge” the population stats, discouraging the less-able members of your team and making the whole scene elitist (which, for the record, it isn’t now).
I don’t know about you, but I will play WvW whenever I feel like it. If someone tells me I should go do something else so they can be buffed up, I’ll tell them to go do exceptionally unpleasant things to themselves…to put it mildly. The purpose of balancing the server power curves is so that participating players at anytime logging on to WvW can be just as effective as everyone else whose on an opposing server. As more people log on or off, the power levels should be dynamically adjusted just as they are in PvE and already base adjusted in PvP. Once people no longer have to huddle together in crowded servers as a way of protecting themselves from the dreaded Blob, server populations should begin to equalize out rendering this dynamic adjustment quite irrelevant…which is the ultimate endpoint by the way.
Well recruit for one. As we have a sub forums for that, and I look and see almost no one here who is complaining, making recruitment threads, I have no sympathy for their low numbers.
Tried that. Very few if any are dumb enough to leave behind at best a decent experience in WvW for an utterly horrific one. In the past 3 months we got 2 active WvW guilds to join us and now they’re gone. One of them is a really good one. But, being constantly outnumbered at least 5:1 at any given time any day of the week you play gets old real quick. No amount of gear or skill as it stands can overcome that. And no, we’re not going to go broke either in real life or in game currency to bribe people to stay either.
Of course not, that is just what happens when you play wvw, however, when one team has a 80 man zerg and there are 3 people on the server they are playing, and this happens repeatedly day in day out week after week, there is something very wrong with the system.
IF you are roaming and you encounter 5 opponents, you are supposed to call for help to take them out, and there should be help available on your server to do so. That is what you have a team for.
Agreed. Those 3 people should have a way of being effective and productive against the 80 man zerg they keep getting pitted against. Its one thing if all servers have an equal presence on a given map and there’s a scout who comes across a 5 man havoc squad vs. a 5-man squad representing an entire server’s presence on a given map against an 80 man zerg.
Yes, because Videles for example, doesn’t realize this is not how math works.
If there is one player against 5. And you make said player 5 times as strong as each of the others, then by focusing them one at a time, the 5 would be destroyed every time. The over all damage output may be similar. The problem is, that defensive effects/stats will be spread out over 5 players compared to that of 5X the offensive output per the one player.
It is the equivalent mentality of illogically believing that it is an even fight if it is 5 people versus 1 and you give the 1 an uzi and body armor. That doesn’t make it into an equivalent battle.
As opposed to how it currently is when 1 player (or entire server) is outnumbered 5:1 and is insta-melted through raw damage and stun-locks?
What did those 5 players do wrong? They deserve to be innately punished simply for logging in? You have evidence those specific 5 players did something personally to cause a population imbalance? if not, I find it odd that you support creating an artificial imbalance against them.
Those 5 players didn’t do anything wrong, just as the one guy didn’t do anything wrong either. Its just not an even fight. From the sound of it, there will never be a numbers balance in WvW. So if you 1) can’t force people to move, 2) can’t move people by force or against their will to another server, 3) or merge servers…what other option do you have but balance the power levels between servers?
Yes, because Videles for example, doesn’t realize this is not how math works.
If there is one player against 5. And you make said player 5 times as strong as each of the others, then by focusing them one at a time, the 5 would be destroyed every time. The over all damage output may be similar. The problem is, that defensive effects/stats will be spread out over 5 players compared to that of 5X the offensive output per the one player.
It is the equivalent mentality of illogically believing that it is an even fight if it is 5 people versus 1 and you give the 1 an uzi and body armor. That doesn’t make it into an equivalent battle.
As opposed to how it currently is when 1 player (or entire server) is outnumbered 5:1 and is insta-melted through raw damage and stun-locks?
They will never add mechanics that changes the playing field of a 1on1 much. If they did that, it would create some really crazy situations in the game, and probably drive away large parts of the people interested in actually fights in WvW. Just imagine how this would affect single roamers taking camps in enemy borderland, if the home server got 20 people in citadel, and 20 out patrolling and guarding etc. That single roamer is strong as 40 man ?
Do like the idea of outnumbered affecting supplies though, increasing the supply limit for outnumbered means that less people can still use siege (both for roaming, and defending etc).
If you want to play as a single roamer in WvW, I have three letters for you: PvP. But as an aside, that single roamer probably wouldn’t be able to hold down the entire map like the 40 you speak of either. But it would be functionally equivalent, which is what is entirely lacking in WvW right now. Otherwise, that single guy trying his darnedest wouldn’t be able to accomplish much against 40 men.
It would change the dynamic and as I’ve said before on other forums, Anet has been curiously comparing WvW to an RPG you are a part of. The most successful RPG of all time, the very same that added “zerg” to our everyday lexicon, gave us the RTS mechanic and play style that we’ve so readily accepted in RPG environments: few but powerful, moderate numbers and strength, and many but weak.
Make the outnumbered buff dynamically. Are you outnumbered 3 to 1 then every character should be as strong as three players. Als reduce the amount of supplies needed by the outnumbered team dynamically. This at least in some way equalizes it is a bit
Agreed. The core issue with WvW is an unequal, and growing increasingly unequal, distribution of power within the servers. And as the server’s power is a direct reflection of the active player population, those servers with more players are naturally more powerful to the detriment of all other servers. Anet can say the matchups are designed to give an equal or “best” chance at victory, but there is no excuse other than very poor game design when in a couple of hours of reset one server can have 3 times PPT than the next highest server is said tier. Equalize the base power curves of the servers dynamically and it should solve most of the WvW problems. GW2 already dynamically adjusts the events in PvE and standardizes the player’s base stats in PvP…so I truly don’t understand the hesitation on the part of Anet to do the same in WvW.
Thank you everyone for your feedback! I’ve been taking notes based on everyone’s perspectives on this particular subject, and will be releasing a revised version of the report.
I know this has been mentioned a few times in this thread, but how would you feel about a “trail run” of said changes? Such as removing the white swords in WvW. Which change would you like see implemented first? Why?Merging servers nor reducing pop map caps is not something that can be done temporarily. Really nothing that I can think of that would affect actual population can be attempted temporarily.
So these temp changes would need to be things that attempt to mitigate the imbalance. Or scoring type changes.
Some things I can think of:
- Give an incentive to attack the stronger/winning server. Could be more rewards or more score or a combination for taking the winning servers assets.
- Increase rewards/points for attacking the stronger/winning servers Home BL.
- Reduce the rewards/points for taking unupgraded structures. And/Or increase the rewards/points for taking upgraded structures.
- Give more rewards for player kills and less for taking a structure. (Could be combined with the previous suggestion).
- Turn off rezzing in combat.
- Turn off rally.
- Turn off downed state completely – oh yeah I said it.
Why not just balance the base power curves of each server no matter how few or many people are playing at any given time? It seems the biggest issue with WvW is that the power (which is a direct function of active WvW population) is being disproportionately concentrated in a few servers. Since this scenario is truly a zero sum game, the more you take from one server, the less another sever has. Just change the nature of the game itself. All servers are functionally equivalent no matter how many players are on at a given moment. Don’t want to wait up for 30 min in que just to have your 50 man zerg rolled by 5 guys who are functionally equivalent to you…move down a server. Eventually people will spread themselves out as there is no longer any benefit to hoarding players or stacking. And you can play with people you want to play instead of just having to tolerate each other’s presence out of convenience.
It’s unfortunate that your legendary requires some legendary acts to construct. Or just getting it handed to you with a 1/3 chance every Friday.
Its totally not a legendary act for someone on a WvW server who completely dominates the other 2 servers on their respective tier week after week because of the broken nature of WvW. My advice: transfer to a server that is clearly annihilating the opposition, get your POIs and Vistas of interest, and either stay there or transfer back to your server of choice. Apart from the ~$20 you’d spend getting there (and other ~$20 to get back should you want to), you’d still be coming out ahead of what I hear other people are spending out of pocket for legendary weapons.
My server has had, with the exception of last week, been mismatched badly on a consistent basis for at least a month. I understand that server populations can vary radically from one ranking to the next and that it must be extremely difficult to maintain a variety of matchups without lopsided scoring as a result. That I can live with. What I really take exception to is the behavior of players I have seen in some servers that are at the high end of the score for most of the week. And it’s getting worse. There is no need have to tolerate disrespect and taunting from other players when a score becomes a rout. People in every server have invested time and money in building up a guild or combat scenario that they want to continue to develop. Being subjected to ridicule by opposing players is what causes these mismatches to become a bigger issue than it needs to be. Nobody wants to be on the losing end of a battle if instead of treating opponents with respect and basic courtesy, they are subjected to abusive and taunting behavior. Any match between any server can be a good playing experience if there was a lot more respect than I have seen in recent weeks. There’s just no reason for it.
Agreed. In a matter of hours of this evening’s new matchups, virtually every matchup is totally out of whack. In my tier, the leading server is as of right now at 69K PPT. The next closest is at 20K, and we’re at 14K. Here’s the sad part: we’re not doing that much worse than 2nd place and we as a server boycotted the week’s matchup. The leading server is free to take all our homeland, but that’s all they’re going to get from us. We refuse to attempt any action that could give them any further loot. And as deepriver has stated, they’re pretty nasty as players.
Anet has to understand that if they mess up the PvE content of HoT without fixing WvW, the party’s over. Having been part of many strategic planning operations in the real world, I get the distinct impression that WvW was an afterthought addition to the game as something inserted to placate a niche player base. They honestly thought that they were going to retain their player base primarily with their PvE/Living World content. And when they gave us a whack-job Silvari that makes the cheesiest of Bond villans look somewhat respectable, a lot of players naturally gravitated to the other two aspects of the game, PvP and WvW. PvP is pretty balanced but not my style, so I’m left with WvW which is totally and utterly a broken system. Since they never gave this aspect of the game any serious thought or planning and subsequently were caught off guard by its poor design, they honestly have no clue how to go about fixing it.
The decision has been made by me and all those I know on my server to basically avoid this aspect of the game unless you really, really need a legendary (i.e. world completion). Just like in the 80s movie War Games, the correct decision to make in a game with no conceivable victory condition is not to play.
snort Just had to post this idea, turn the outnumbered bonus around, and make it an “Outnumbering” penalty, and downlevel the outnumbering players somehow equivalent to how much they outnumber the other team :p
Never going to fly, because they won’t mess with penalizing other players, and specifically not drastically shift the power levels between players (good thing).
That’s actually a very legitimate solution to the server imbalance problem. Remember, it’s WvW (i.e. Server vs. server), not player vs player. In PvP, everything is standardized and readily available to everyone but the skill level of the players. So therefore I don’t view it as penalizing the players in WvW because ultimately you are merely a component of the overall “player” which is the server itself and the PPT it accumulates. And right now, the players in WvW are totally imbalanced.
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It’s odd that only until recently Anet has been comparing WvW to an “RTS” you can actually be an individual player in. I know of no RTS where from the get go, one player is totally underpowered and the other totally overpowered and the imbalance between the two is both permanent and insurmountable without paying more money. Put differently, it’s like two players paying an equivalent fee for their box of chess pieces which they don’t know the contents of until they show up to the match…and one guy has 5 pawns and a king while the other guy has 5 queens in addition to a full set. And if the poor schmo with only 5 pawns wants to have a fighting chance, he’s got to spend more money than the other guy for more pieces.
In any other universe, this wouldn’t fly. Yet this is the norm for the lower tier servers in WvW. Want to make it like an RTS, then balance the “power” levels of the servers dynamically just as every other RTS is designed: All sides equal in power. The most popular RTS of all time works under the mechanic of “few but powerful”, “moderate numbers and strength”, and “many but weak”. And guess what, it’s a wonderfully successful and popular game because all play styles have an equal chance at victory because all sides are power balanced…and no one complains about that.
Perhaps Anet could learn something from that.
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I’ve been in my “wasteland” server for the greater part of 2 years. I have seen guilds come and go, most on their own accord. Several recently have been outright purchased by higher ranked servers.
Briefly, my server saw a brief resurgence in population and power before the mass exodus as most of the active WvW guilds departed for one reason or another (I think 2 got purchased by a higher tier server). Now my guild is basically the last real active force for WvW on my server…and as expected, it doesn’t go so well most nights and even worse during the day and late nights when there is zero coverage.
I’ve also heard every argument for every conceivable fix. The simplest fix for me is to just pack up and leave for greener pastures. Cheaper option for me would be to stop playing WvW honestly because most nights are futile efforts at staying alive, much less taking a tower. For the last remnants of us on our server however, we simply don’t want to pack up and switch “communities” that we’ve grown accustomed to and really like.
Forced transfers and server mergers will never work; no one will bother taking WvW seriously if you can just be moved to a team you have no interest in participating in. Reworking the PPT with handicaps and formulas won’t fix the problem of constantly getting steamrolled by more densely populated servers (i.e. you spend all week being a walking bag but somehow you still come ahead with some intangible benefit and a lot a grief…doesn’t seem fun).
If Anet was serious about removing the incentive of transferring to higher tier servers where mobs of skill-less players can karma farm wasteland servers, they would do what has been done in PvP: normalize the power levels (i.e. the cumulative server’s player population’s power would be normalized across all three servers irrespective of how many players each server is fielding at any given moment on a map). If server 1 has 100 people on a map, server 2 has 50, and server 3 has 10 on a given map, all three forces are equivalent in power. Wouldn’t solve the coverage issue entirely, but it would solve population imbalance issues. I think things would eventually balance themselves out over time when there is no “incentive” to stay on a server just because you have “numbers”.
And yes, I am aware the higher tier servers would loathe to be rolled by 2 guys that are functionally equivalent to their 100 man zerg. At this point however, our WvW population is so small that we recognize new players on the maps instantly, especially after the $10 sale. We chat with them and tell them not to be discouraged by what they see…even though its pretty much a very rough ride at best. Even more annoying to them is that while the game cost them $10, the server transfer will be twice as much. If this is Anet’s business model, then so be it. But they do need to level with us as to how they are going to address the original poster’s concerns as well as the “wasteland” server’s concerns.
This is my first time posting but I echo much of the sentiments posted on this thread and other threads as well. It would be wonderful to know what Anet plans to do with WvW. Not withstanding the top tier servers who have continuous coverage, there is no balance in WvW.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind getting totally wiped if it was because I was outclassed in skill (I rank myself as a mediocre player by the way). I however do not enjoy at all logging on and being continuously wiped by a glob of players five times larger than all of the people my server can muster on any given map…repeatedly. Things have even degenerated so much for our server where our opponents literally have the manpower to 24/7 spawn camp all our borderland spawns and keeps while we don’t even have the manpower to take back a single keep and hold it.
I do not pretend to know what the formula Anet is using to “rank” the servers, but there is clearly a disconnect between what is being calculated from what is actually occurring. I also would like to know how Anet wishes to preserve a sense of community within the lower WvW tier servers when there is currently zero incentive to stay on. And no, the outnumbered bonus is not incentive enough. Why participate in a perpetually losing, constantly being steamrolled experience when you can transfer out and have a more enjoyable experience?
If I have to switch out servers to have a better WvW experience, so be it. Or simply just stop playing WvW because it has stopped being fun. I just happen to really enjoy the community made up of the last few people left in my server which I am loathe to leave. Anet just needs to flat out tell us if WvW will ever be balanced with respect to server population/power/score points/etc. in a way that makes meaningful sense. WvW should be an enjoyable experience everytime a GW2 player logs on irrespective of what server they’re on.
(edited by Alteros.3019)
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