Guild Wars 2

Swamurabi.7890:

2. There’s been multiple reports of queued maps that the players on the map have the outmanned buff.

Which to me means the outmanned isn’t a 3:1 thing. If your server queues a map and the two other servers also are queuing the same map, you will be outnumbered by both enemy servers. Would be interesting to really know how outmanned works though since the other two servers would also be outnumbered by their opponents on the map.

Anjo.3170:

Squads in general have created a culture of elitism and bullying.

Before the new squad ui, it was almost unheard of to join a commander’s squad. Now people get mad if they’re excluded from a squad despite the fact that you don’t need to be part of a squad to see and follow a tag.

Here’s a dirty secret: join a guild that runs a squad in WvW and get on VOIP with them.

Lawrencii.1356:

Chaba.5410:

Who? This person isn’t in FLOT.

join discord Chaba
and bring your boi Tyrionjajaja we got emojis there too!

Or you should be inviting Anet to that instead.

Who? This person isn’t in FLOT.

I recommend switching to the shortened nameplates. It is far easier to get a more accurate count of colored dots than full names. For example, “two 60 man zergs” can’t at all be accurate since map hits queue around 80 or less.

Jeknar.6184:

Chaba.5410:

“a complex solution would have taken longer to implement, and have been harder to get players to understand and accept.”

WvW players won’t bother to understand or accept anything tbh… Arena Net should just do whatever they want in hopes of getting new players to it instead of trying to make these grumpy old bums happy.

There’s a subset of players who would be happy with 40v40 battle arena.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Additional-World-Linking-Information/first#post6172091

“We had/have another, much more elaborate, solution to world population imbalance. However, we decided to table it (perhaps indefinitely) in favor of World Linking for three primary reasons:”

“a complex solution would have taken longer to implement, and have been harder to get players to understand and accept.”

Xillllix.3485:

Everyone I know has either left the game or barely plays because of the massive letdown the “WvW Overhaul” was.

Is this Alternative Fact? Everyone I know remembers that the “WvW Overhaul” was essentially scrapped and WvW placed in “beta”. We don’t have battle groups. How can you be letdown by something that was never implemented?

Buried on page 6. Should be stickied TBH.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Linking-1-6-2017/first

TasosEG.1976:

Chaba.5410:

People who publically command and then don’t do so usually because of the playerbase, not because of Anet. Average players don’t get on any VOIP system, they don’t run builds that are beneficial to an organized WvW group, they don’t coordinate with their squad. You can’t really blame Anet for that. EU tends to be different from NA in this regard because the average EU player is far more interested in contributing to team/group play than the average NA player. NA players will do “group play” via solo style like scouting rather than true team play via skill combos and party boons/comp. The only thing you can blame Anet for is the class balance/combat experience.

In Fort Aspenwood, people have completely dropped WvW. We had 2-3 good Guilds who could completely destroy BG (top NA server) in fights and was always ready for fair fights. But Siege Wars became a thing, and people got really bored of WvW. We couldnt get any decent face-to-face fight at all. Plus, since WvW is the least rewarding game mode(?) nobody wants to play. We all had the fun of playing with lots of people and organized groups before, but it’s not worth it anymore. WvW is just a place to truly test your gear with your skill. Or if you like Siege Wars then that’s the place for you. If you want gold and good gear it’s by far the least rewarding place to go. Plus, not many good players are roaming. Everyone just goes with zergs, so there’s not much you can do with a 3-4 man group. The fun in WvW is occasional. PvP is a lot more fast and has a lot more experienced players.

In Fort Aspenwood we had an experienced fights commander who would tag up in EBG every Wednesday during NA EST Prime. He didn’t quit because of Siege Wars. He got burned out really quickly on the difference between leading a guild full of people who are devoted to improving their gameplay and leading random militia players.

Militia want to also win, but for various reasons tend to not adopt the best practices guilds use for success. This isn’t simply a Fort Aspenwood problem. Public commanders struggle with this in any server. The number of commanders who are willing to deal with public commanding is dwindling.

As for roaming, I hear differently from friends who roam since FA finally stopped facing T1 servers. T3-T4 has been way more active for roamers than kitten.

He mentioned about commanders leaving the game. The point still stands that Anet has nothing really to do with that. Commanders burn out or as another poster above mentioned, real life changes happen.

Addressing your edited post about people leaving and friends list getting smaller, I’m not exactly sure what you expect to happen after four years. In the first year of this game my WvW guild died when the GL quit. Half of them never logged on ever again. The other half went their own ways. Today there’s maybe three people of that guild left still playing this game, myself included. We’ve all moved on to other social circles, made new friends, etc. The GL quit back then for many of the same reasons people quit right now: dead game, “all the good players have already left”, burn-out, numbers imbalance, real life.

People who publically command and then don’t do so usually because of the playerbase, not because of Anet. Average players don’t get on any VOIP system, they don’t run builds that are beneficial to an organized WvW group, they don’t coordinate with their squad. You can’t really blame Anet for that. EU tends to be different from NA in this regard because the average EU player is far more interested in contributing to team/group play than the average NA player. NA players will do “group play” via solo style like scouting rather than true team play via skill combos and party boons/comp. The only thing you can blame Anet for is the class balance/combat experience.

The best obstruction is the white rabbit in Alpine BL at the top of the stairs of the southwest spawn. You can stand right next to it and your necro scepter auto will not hit it at all. Always reproducible.

Lahmia.2193:

You do know Epidemic is capped at 25 stacks per condition, right?

Then just get four necros. EZ.

https://gfycat.com/GreenWindingGraysquirrel

Sorry you edited your post… The first version was great.

Don’t worry. FA will roll T1 next match and get our teeth kicked in.

I never heard of it that you can’t transfer between EU and NA with gems. I’ve done that twice. Odd.

Glicko rating is used for match-making.

It used to be in NA that tiers had a strong separation between them by rating so the probability of a rank 5 server rolling a T4 match was extremely low. But now the rating between servers has been getting closer so the probability of such a thing is much higher.

One of the reasons for this is the new server link system where ArenaNet tries to form teams with relatively even populations.

Anyway, you probably can’t go wrong with any of the rank 5 – rank 11 servers if you enjoy variations in matches. You’d have to look up which servers are linked to those host servers if you wanted to go that route, just be aware that in another month and a half servers get re-linked so you might end up with a different host server.

No one so far have explained to you server links with the partial glicko resets and how the rank 6-rank 11 servers basically all are within glicko range of rolling T2-T4?

I don’t understand the GM comment about High population server. HoD and CD are the only medium population servers that are “host”. The others right now end up getting linked to another server to bring average population levels up.

World population is now determined by WvW activity, not by number of accounts logged into the shard.

Artaz.3819:

And having an average population across all times of the day is actually detrimental to your server (server link) now. You will more than likely never have enough players to outsize one of the two other competing opponents.

This forces a case of always being #2/#3 in point score for every session which really skews player perceived coverage more.

Unless you are in T1 (i.e., BG which doesn’t always get what it needs either) and have a extremely healthy population across all hours of every day in WvW, you will continue to see the fault in the average WvW time that bars new players to home servers.

Ultimately, the problem is aggregated map play time is not multiplied by some factor like PPT match outcome or kills-to-death ratio to determine the more relevant perceived coverage issue.

The other option to having an average population across all timezones is to have only 1 or 2 stacked timezones which leads to a different kind of problem: timezone mismatches.

For example, there are a few servers light on NA players and heavy in OCX or SEA time players. When these servers get matched up against servers heavy in NA and very light in OCX or SEA, it makes for rather boring matches for both sets of players.

Now you used the example of BG having a “healthy population across all hours of every day”. I hope you realize that the only difference between a server with an average population across all timezones and BG is scale. Both would have population across all timezones; i.e., players would at least have someone to fight and not have boring timezone mismatches.

Fatherbliss.4701:

For instance, what constitutes “active” in the context of WvW? Would it be for those who get WvW reward track points?

Rewards tracks utilize the “participation” mechanic, which I’m pretty sure was in place before the reward tracks were released. “Participation” goes back to at least HoT release and the introduction of the new Squad UI, which was something that came out of Adopt-a-Dev; trying to find a better way to reward different roles, for example, the scout, through “shared participation”. That same summer saw the world population change so I would not be surprised if that also utilizes the “participation” underlayment in order to calculate “active” man hours.

The other way to measure “active” would most likely be based on the length of time spent in a WvW map rather than activity taken in that map. I don’t recall any clear statement from Anet on idle players on a map.

You can’t compare SoS queues with YB, BG, Mag, TC, nor JQ since it has a server link. They’re linked with GoM which was one of the mid-tier servers prior to server links. The old mid-tier servers bring more population to their host server than the old servers below them.

The real reason for the differences IMHO has to do with how population is averaged out.

“most people in t1 view lower tier wvw as almost dead”

Ah, found your problem right there. If they’re looking for 50v50 battle arena, yea, wvw is pretty dead.

That’s misleading. T1’s empty maps are a result of a playstyle that doesn’t allow for a variety atm. I have accounts in both T1 and T4. When I have to run around for 30m in EBG on my T1 account farming nodes and seeing nothing while I could hop on my T4 account and get action, that’s very telling to me.

Maybe someday the general playerbase will realize that WvW is designed like an RTS, not a 40v40 battle arena, and requires a variety of units to be fun. I’ve written here for a long time now that WvW is most healthy when there is a mix of styles. That still seems to hold true.

kitten has tried to dominate and push with a single blob “fights” style with nothing in-between. That’s why T1 is “dead” right now and why T2 isn’t much better. When I get roamer friends who mainly play on Mag whispering me how much fun they are having in the T4 match on their alts, that affirms my opinions.

Player created problems….

James Rustler.7860:

Chaba.5410:

Clint.6145:

its almost like they let the computer randomly pick the matchups

Yes, that’s exactly how match-making works. There’s some randomization put into the ordering of servers by glicko rating to prevent the matches from becoming too static. FA appears to have gotten the “negative roll” while DB got a “positive roll”.

Two weeks in a row? What are the odds of that? Regardless, the population difference is extreme—their matchmaking system needs to be smart enough to keep such one-sided matchups from happening. It’s costing them players.

The random glicko range is +/-100. There are 8 out of 12 teams all within that range of each other. /shrug

Clint.6145:

its almost like they let the computer randomly pick the matchups

Yes, that’s exactly how match-making works. There’s some randomization put into the ordering of servers by glicko rating to prevent the matches from becoming too static. FA appears to have gotten the “negative roll” while DB got a “positive roll”.

So guilds are only a factor now if they stack on a bandwagon to spam one a server up to T1 and make the rest of the remaining playerbase stop playing?

Remind me again how population imbalance in NA servers is not a player created issue. Anet, forget about marking servers full. Just mark certain accounts as “do not transfer”. EU player base has always been better than NA in this regard.

Swagger.1459:

Chaba.5410:

Swagger.1459:

Oh I see, you are forced into using slot skills to maintain a level of competitiveness for both ranged and melee combat…

As I said, there are a lot of mechanics in this game that are accomplished in different ways across the different classes. You are not here saying that Warriors are not competitive because they are forced to have a smaller number of total skills than an Engi or Ele (because they don’t have kits or attunements). Engi and Ele rank very high in the total number of skills available on their bars at any one time and adding weapon swap would increase that even higher.

I’m aware there are lots of mechanics, thanks!

You don’t understand the core of what I’m bringing up, and also avoided the ele question, so I’ll pass on discussing this in greater detail and overcomplicating the simple suggestion.

Because I know Engineer far more than I know Elementalist. That said, I also know that on ele staff I can AoE right on top of me for a lot of melee style cleave. Especially Lava Font since it is relatively low cooldown and if you are geared right it hurts pretty badly. Other than that, you’d actually want to kite melee a lot on an ele, which is why it has all these skills that help you do that.

Basically, ele doesn’t need a second weapon to be “competitive” with however you are defining it.

As for your suggestion about disabling engi kits or nerfing ele attunements when wielding two weapons, not only would that be yet another source of balance headaches, you are basically acknowledging that both engi and ele have a great array of skills available to them that other classes don’t have and thus they do not need a second weapon to be “competitive”.

Swagger.1459:

Oh I see, you are forced into using slot skills to maintain a level of competitiveness for both ranged and melee combat…

As I said, there are a lot of mechanics in this game that are accomplished in different ways across the different classes. You are not here saying that Warriors are not competitive because they are forced to have a smaller number of total skills than an Engi or Ele (because they don’t have kits or attunements). Engi and Ele rank very high in the total number of skills available on their bars at any one time and adding weapon swap would increase that even higher.

Swagger.1459:

A hammer engi can be competitive vs ranged opponents?

I don’t know what you’re running, but the Mortar kit elite has a range that rivals that of Ranger longbow while Elixir gun auto provides for general pew pew to keep someone in combat. Then there is toolkit for pulling in a ranged opponent with multiple other skills that can then lock them down and you might be running the Bulwark Gyro to block projectiles.

Honestly I feel like you just aren’t all that familiar with these classes and are looking at them from a single weapon-based paradigm. There are a ton of mechanics in this game that are accomplished in different ways across different classes.

Edit: To add, I am just thinking about in WvW classes like guardian and warrior in standard zerg meta do not really use ranged weapons at all nor do they make up for lack of range with some other skills for the most part. No one says they are not competitive because they are built to perform a certain group role. So I assume you are referring to “competitive” in a small scale or 1v1 scenario.

Swagger.1459:

Chaba.5410:

I haven’t ever considered Engi or Ele not competitive enough. Hrm….

All professions should have both melee and ranged capabilities, not limited to one choice by design.

I think you should replace the word “capabilities” with “weapon skills” because these classes always had both melee and ranged capabilities. Scrapper hammer brought a melee weapon choice to the engi class where previously it only could melee through other skills. Melee/ranged capabilities isn’t a weapon number issue.

I haven’t ever considered Engi or Ele not competitive enough. Hrm….

Roxhemar.6039:

It absolutely is important now, in fact it might be more important then it’s ever been. You know it’s a serious problem when the high-population servers are having issues in a dying gamemode. It was important 2+ years ago as well, but SoS and FA should have never been matched with TC to begin with. In it’s prime TC was a veritable force now it’s a shell of it’s former glory.

FA was a Full-Very High server in T2 back then too. I’m not saying I disagree with you nor can’t empathize. I’m saying should’ve seen it coming for TC too, I suppose, which is why other posters may have a difficult time sympathizing with you.

TC was one of those servers like BG and JQ that “benefited” from a somewhat broken population system where servers could get “over filled” just by being open during off-peak hours or organizing mass log-outs. Players can become acclimated to that “over filled” status IMHO and so when your server loses population to levels that are still comfortable in a lower tier the morale takes a big hit and people panic-transfer. When the population calculation changed, it became clear the old T1 sized-servers were no longer possible so that morale hit is definitely a thing people need to learn how to manage, especially with so-called fairweather players.

I’d like to see the ArenaNet guild get together and do a GvG.

Someone tell me again how the 2-1-1 scoring system is supposed to change player behavior towards going after the first place server?

Mylerian.9176:

Honestly have never seen one on FA. But maybe they run during the daytime?

There’s a Devon who is a longtime Anet FA player. The one time I talked to him, he said he’s in QA. He played WvW casually and I haven’t seen him on too much anymore so he’s basically like all the other GW2 players in that way.

True. Guilds need people to play against and don’t need too many more other guilds to run with on a map (usually only need one other guild). I suggest servers stop buying those they are playing against, especially when it is so easy to go Full.

Glass Hand.7306:

Simply there needs to be an end to the current extremes in server population imbalance. The extension of full status to 4 servers this week was a great idea.

WvW in T2 has devolved into the old “like it used to be” servers and players still trying to make WvW “like it used to be” and still not recognizing that they cannot because they can’t run organized login blackouts.

Boysenberry.1869:

One problem with draining the “full” servers is that “full” isn’t anything like it used to be. Even a “full” server will rarely have a queue outside of reset. If every server was balanced then you’d have the population spread far too thin.

Someday NA players may finally admit to themselves that NA has the population, just doesn’t want to be on the third place server in a match. That day is not today.

No one has been able to build a server up to the levels like “it used to be” for almost two years now. FA was the example server with relatively even coverage across all timezones sitting between Full and Very High for most of that time. Other servers since then got bandwagoned links or had a single stacked timezone and poor coverage in another.

Mokk.2397:

The problem is that the linking system doesn’t take in account the number of people in a server that play WvW. It’s based on total server population of a server.

Why do people keep repeating this incorrect info? World population is derived from WvW activity. Accounts that don’t play WvW don’t count unless they suddenly start becoming active.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/first#post5315121

“we have developed a better model that exclusively uses WvW data to determine population levels”

Tim,

The real icing on the cake was OP taking McKenna’s quote completely out of context by leaving non-Full servers off the graph.

Liston.9708:

Chaba.5410:

Sounds like your server has too many players if your queue is an hour long.

there is also more than EBG to choose from…….

Nonsense. No one plays on Desert BL and borderlands are just for PPT/PvDooring anyway, not skilled fights. /sarcasm

displayname.8315:

Yeah balance dosent matter when all you do is hide from enemy’s and backcap. FA bros have the right idea. Snoogins

Exactly. “Hiding” and “backcapping” is not a symptom of population balance at all, like you say. Everyone’s 15 man guild should take on the 50 man lag-causing bandwagon zergs so the bandwagoners can feel like they’re really skilled because #winning and “for the fights”. Those are the kinds of fights everyone looks forward to. So the graphic looks like no problem.

Looks about right. I don’t see a problem. Try “deal with it” sometime. Doesn’t work for you? Can I have your stuff when you quit game? Pretty cool that no one on FA ever made such a salty image when we were marked Full while getting blobbed down.

Sounds like your server has too many players if your queue is an hour long.

morrolan.9608:

Yeah shows how many players have left

Yea, that’s pretty obvious if you examine glicko ratings.

Byron.1902:

@Jim Hunter

Yh that makes sense, transfer 30 ppl to play with 5, instead of the other way around. -.-

By the same logic, T1 and T2 would be a carousel of leaving guilds and be left as zombie pug hordes. Good work.

Also, the ladder would become stale. Guild was made when Deso was r10, now we’re punished for becoming established and landing Vabbi as partners for 2 months. Go figure.

Now T1 is locked into bickering over PPT coverage (literally no guild cares) and waiting till the casuals leave as we ship rating like crazy.

Is there actually a WvW development team? or is it an Urban Myth?

I don’t know about EU, but in NA T2 already became a carousel of guilds leaving for either T1 or T3 to avoid T2.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Chaba.5410:

Xenesis.6389:

Don’t see a problem with this, the threshold needed to be lowered a long time ago. Most servers have been open for a while and they’ve had a chance to recruit, even BG opened for a week to restock their zergs.

People come in here to complain every time a server is closed and yet don’t bother to recruit when it’s open. Learn the lesson already.

Well said. BG opening that one week was pretty disastrous to what population balance there was.

No it wasn’t and your post is a real laugh. Honestly, with the way Mag was buying guilds, they are the big cheese now, not BG and TC is pretty close to the same level as Mag.

Honestly I think A.Net should force the populations even lower by forcing recent guilds that transferred either back to their original server or to one that is open. This way, there will be more of a balance and more rotation for the servers.

It was perfectly said. The threshold needed to be lowered a long time ago, before BG had opened up. Before that there was possibility of relatively even-populated servers rotating with each other but afterwards the population disparity between tiers became too great. No, no one can stack a server to BG/old T1 levels anymore without a link. Let BG rot with boredom if they won’t destack. No, they’re not going to destack just because someone on Mag decided to buy everyone to beat them down.

morrolan.9608:

bladedzack.3215:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzSruupuqYU

video showing how this is done

Man how easy is that. Why does anet not just shorten the leap a bit?

Changing the structure would be better because they’d basically have to hit up all classes that have similar leaps. Like, I think this leap can also be made by Engineer.

Xenesis.6389:

Don’t see a problem with this, the threshold needed to be lowered a long time ago. Most servers have been open for a while and they’ve had a chance to recruit, even BG opened for a week to restock their zergs.

People come in here to complain every time a server is closed and yet don’t bother to recruit when it’s open. Learn the lesson already.

Well said. BG opening that one week was pretty disastrous to what population balance there was.

jamesdolla.3954:

2-It’s not that the timezones are completely dead it’s that their spread out too much. A contraction can help for sure.

Help who? There’s this thing called World Transfer. If these spread out players were really interested in concentrating into a single tier, they would, especially given the premium such off-hours can obtain in transfer assistance from top tier servers. Almost as if these players really aren’t all that interested in OP’s brand of WvW…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Jeknar.6184:

It’s a preparation to open BG so people can leave the “full” servers to it.
I can feel it.

Is this confirmed? I hope so, because I’d like to transfer over without having to pay the War Council for a blackout.

Just contact Anet support and let them know you have family that plays on BG and you want to play with them.

I’d like to see population calculations done for linking purposes only that separate out active migratory accounts from active accounts that remain for a long time on a server and then linking done with those differences considered. With the server links so far, there’s been a lot of bandwagoning by migratory accounts to low-populated linked servers that then lose those bandwagoners just as quickly as they xferred. Such xferring behavior would have also been disastrous for TylerB’s “many small shards” proposal.