Guild Wars 2

munkiman.3068:

especially since objectives can go unmanned for days and still earn that server points.

That’s exactly why I proposed to that “the value of an objective decays over time, if it has no action”

Cheloss.1453:

• Merge Servers
- Remove existing servers and create 12 new servers.
- Let the players decide the server go
- The population of these servers that depend on population wvw and not pve
- Encourage transfers to servers low population

sorry for my poor English

Thanks for the pregnant summary of my to long proposal above
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437920 + https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437923

titanlectro.5029:

That said, if my team had a 40 person limit, and so did the enemy, that would suck. It would remove an entire form of play from WvW, which is a HUGE price to pay. Perhaps you do not enjoy playing with more than 40 people, and that is your prerogative. However many people LOVE that kind of play, and that play style would be completely destroyed by this “fix.”

Sacrificing an entire play style for a fix is excessive. That is why I say the cure is worse than the disease.

1) Fewer teams will result in higher limits for all teams, thats why team reduction is needed in my view.
2) I have no idea why people are on a server in the bottom half (my server is EU-Gold since ever) of the ranking. Some say they prefer lower populated maps, some say the opposite. In any case, a match-capacity reduction does not have to be uniform. It could be e.g. 30 on borderlands and 80 on EB, if you want smaller scale fights you go to borderlands, if you want larger scale fights you go to EB. Another possibility is to split the teams into smaller-scale (lower map capacity) and larger scale leagues (higher map capacity) permanently, then player can simply choose, what kind of fights they prefer.

It also should not be equal during all times of the day, limits in times where many people want to play should be higher than in times where only a few want to play, e.g. 100% in prime-time, 20% in lowest off-time.

munkiman.3068:

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

How about changing from a PPT model to a kill/event point count?

I don’t think counting only kills is a good thing. Possession and defense of valuable objects should score as well.

….

I did mention successful event points (successfully defending or capture). I’m not sure why it needs to be complicated by how long it’s been held or how many are defending it. This especially when you have 10v50 at stone mist, the 10 are racking up points killing various players in the 50 player blob. At a certain point, even if that blob managed to take it, it may actually cost them points to just capture it.

Because a pure event system that does not respect time of possession and players fighting for it is a zero sum game between two teams: you cannot make an event, if the other side didn’t made one before (you cannot conquer what you already own). So you are always exactly one event ahead or behind per objective. It’s also susceptible to manipulation if two server trade events both get ahead of the third.

If 2 teams do not show up for the first 6 days, the one team that does show up cannot do anything after it completed map conquest, the possession of the whole match does not generate any score. Matches will be decided in the last hour only (who controls most at match end).

titanlectro.5029:

1) Server membership is voluntary
2) There is more incentive to stack than to unstack

• Merging servers will not change either #1 or #2, and will therefore not net any long-term improvement.

While I agree with you on most parts, I think you forgot:
WvW has not enough population left to fill the maps for 51 (24+27) teams not even in primetime.

That’s where team reduction (less parallel matches) helps, and in my view is needed. (alternatively reduced number of maps per match, reduced match-capacity.)

Another alternative is to let teams (server) play various formats of matches. A few (3 or 6) play 24/7, some play 16/7 or 8/7, some play 24/2 (weekend only), then you choose your team based on: It plays when I like to play.

munkiman.3068:

How about changing from a PPT model to a kill/event point count?

I don’t think counting only kills is a good thing. Possession and defense of valuable objects should score as well.

I would like a dynamic value of objectives: An objective has more value the more fights are about it and no (or low) value if it is taken or just in possession without any fights. And the value is higher the more people and the longer the time they fight for it.
It has a natural tendency towards zero, if not pushed up from time to time by events involving people on both sides. Capping something and owning it while everybody else sleeps has no value, beside maybe taking something valuable away from it’s original owner.

And the value of an object should also determine personal rewards (of successful as well as loosing side, a failed defense must be better than a PvD capture.), PvD karma-train must not be the most rewarding way of playing.

If an object is without a human defender, also has no NPCs (especially no Lord) to get loot from and no event to get rewards from.

If an objective is switched to often (or a wood objective is conquered) without defense it turns (with some probability) into a ruin (no doors, all destructible walls down, no lord, no owner, no events, no supply-caravans), that does not count anymore for the rest of the match. Maybe you can rebuild a ruin with massive player effort (like they have to deposit 10’000 supplies there manually). This way objective match-capacity can down-scale to the amount of objectives that both sides are able to fight for.

Fuzzion.2504:

If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

• That is a bad idea. Please do not implement it

If you relate the dynamic aspects to your match only, than your right it’s bad.

But the dynamics should balance ALL teams not only your match, therefore the dynamics should be related to all teams, not only the ones of your match.

If you relate the dynamic aspects to ALL teams (most of them have nothing to do with your match) then there is no way to manipulate things, your influence on the dynamics is only 1/teams, e.g. if we have 10 teams, your 100% absence from the map reduces the capacity by 10%, leaving your map vulnerable to 90% of your enemies.

Let me make an example, if at anytime 5 teams (L1,…,L5) have 30 people, 3 teams (N1,..,N3) have 50 and 2 teams (O1,O2) have 100 people that demand to play (expressing their demand by playing or sitting in the queue), the mean is (5*30+3*50+2*100)/10 = 50 people, then only 50 people can maximally play for each team and 50 on each of O1 and O2 have to sit in queue at that time (even if their match mean may be 100+100+50 = 83). Whenever someone sits in queue he is informed that on server L1,…,L5 he could immediately play. If he sees that often enough he may choose to move and by that increases balance.
If you try to manipulate and keep your 50 people at home, than you reduce the dynamic capacity by 5, i.e. still 45 of your enemies can devastate your possessions.

EFWinters.5421:

Merging servers won’t work. The problem is the disparity in OCX population and there is no way you can fill X amount of servers with a decent portion of OCX players without also introducing game breaking queues for NA players.
.

I see several possibilities:

• dynamic match capacity: With that you can balance time zones separate, I.e if NA population is balanced they do not have queue, if OCX pop is concentrated they have queue on the overstacked servers, but none on the servers that have low OCX pop.
• dynamic scoring: reduce the balance breaking importance of low-population time.
• separate the time-zone into different match-slices that contribute to the overall score in an aggregated manner, e.g. 3,2,1 points for winning/2nd/loosing every 4, 6 or 8h slice of the match. The different saved/restored slices ensure that each slice starts in the state it left it.
• under/over-populated bufs for increased/reduced personal rewards whenever they happen to reward balance transfer for any time separately.

Any dynamic (time-dependent) adaptation scaled by the mean of all matches is quite immune to manipulation. As there is no reason that match 2-5 manipulate match 1 and the influence of any team on the dynamic adaptation is limited.

John Corpening.9847:

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people?

If the worlds are balanced there is much less queue for everyone. In fact queues were the only balancing factor in WvW, but lost effectiveness with the introduction of EotM.

I would add a balancing mechanism to WvW-Teams. We know that queue and personal rewards are effective methods to direct transfers (not always on an individual level, but statistically they do).

Global Team Balance

If only currently active WvW-player are members of WvW-Teams counting team-size is much easier and adequate.
Each team has it’s size and we can compute an average team size (per league, should there be 2) and we can compute how much above or below mean the size of any team is.

• team > 125% mean means the team is full, it is not possible to join the team. The overstacking-penalty applies here as well.
• team > 105% there is a overstacking-penalty in personal rewards (e.g. karma, gold, WEXP, EXP, drop-rate, season-tickets) proportinal to how much oversized the team is, e.g. team = 110% there is a 10% penalty, means you get only 90% of what you currently get. Transfer cost to such a team are high.
• team = 95% – 105% perfect, personal rewards, as they are now. Transfer-price is normal
• team < 95% there is a hero-bonus in personal rewards (e.g. karma, gold, WEXP, EXP, drop-rate, season-tickets) for fighting in an outmanned team, e.g. if team = 90% there is a 10% bonus, means you get 110% of what you currently get. Transfer cost to such a team are low.
• team < 75% additional to the hero-bonus, transfer cost to such a team are zero. Maybe the hero-bonus should be doubled, if a team is that underpopulated for longer times.

The team size as percentage of mean should be visible in the team-choice dialog, such that people, do not have to choose their rewrd level blindly, but instead can actively contribute to balance, by choosing an underpopulated team with hero-bonus.

Queue EotM game mode (4h matches of mega-server technology assigned teams) can be extended to not only contain the EotM map, but also EB and Borderland maps. People not in a wvw-team that play in EotM have no overstacking-penalty and no hero-bonus, people in a wvw-team have their overstacking-penalty applied in EotM as well (they are a reserve-force with gun by foot, but the hero-bonus should should not be applied or at least limited according to the time spend in WvW to avoid exploitation by leecher.).

Dynamic 24hour Balance

It is clear that the demand for WvW-capacity is not equal around the clock. Some times have much higher demand than others. It is also clear, that concentration of people that play in low-demand times in a team currently gives that team a decisive advance in scoring that disturbe match-balance. Therefore 24h balance cannot be ignored in team-balance. However, there are many possibilities to choose.

• reduced (no) personal rewrds and no score for PvD (less incentive for low-demand-time raids)
• dynamic maps availability. If this is computed on a global (all matches) scale, it contributes to balance (T1 cannot field a superior force in off-time, if there is no one in T5- that want to play at that time) and it is imune to match-manipulation as the demand in all matches is averaged.
• dynamic scoring, again if it is computed on a global (all matches) scale, it is imune to match-manipulation as the demand in all matches is averaged.
• dynamic queueing, average demand over all matches determines how many people can enter in every match. Again due to averaging over all matches it is imune to match-manipulation. It contributes to global balance, as concentration of people playing in low-demand-times on a few servers, only leads to queue even in low-demand-time.

Combined Global and Dynamic balancing
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-imbalanced-season-after-season/4428902
can be considered as a starting point for an integrated approach.

John Corpening.9847:

For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged?

Server are a relict from pre-mega-server, and it’s probably time to get rid of them in WvW as well.
Instead of merging existing servers, it probably better to kill all server and do a fresh start (all Glicko 1500) with new WvW-Teams. (Concerning names, you could make a vote in the forum, propose a list of current and new names, and the most voted ones are choosen). Current Server communities of course can talk to each other to join all together the same WvW-team. The recruitment thread in the forum can probably be of good use to find out who is planning to go where to avoid incompatibilities.

People that only play PvE, sPvP or even EotM (seeing EotM independend of WvW, which it is. So EotM team assignment should be independend of WvW-team membership, which would make eotm team balancing much easier than as well.) but not WvW do not need to be associated to a WvW-team. This would make population counting (for balancing) much easier than it currently is.

How many WvW-teams are optimnal is only decidable after an analysis of the current WvW-population, numbers only ANet have access to. I would rather choose to few teams than to many, because only full teams are competitive. And capacity should not oriented on occasional maximal need, but on mean need. At maximal peek moments, peole can play EotM which could be extended by an Ethernal Battlefield Map and/or Borderland-maps running in EotM mode. There has been rumors in the forum that people are on low tier servers because they do not want so many people in their match as there are on high pop servers. This should be examined and if it is the case 2 permantly separated leagues (with different map capacities) are probabaly a good idea.

WvW-Teams Initially no one is associated to a WvW-team, and every one has a free choice for a WvW-Team (but restricted to not able to join already full teams). Choice should no longer be mandatory in the char-selection, but if you enter WvW and aren’t associated with a team you are asked which team to join. You cannot transfer between, teams, but you can be inactive for a match, which automtically drops you out of a team. When you aren’t in a team, you can choose one when you next try to enter WvW. The initial join and rejoining your last team should be free, choosing a different one cost gems. (if there are two leagues (mid and large scale), you should have a last- or current-team in every league, which you can freely join.)

Member of a WVW-team should all share the team-chat whenever they are online independent where they are, e.g. if a wvw-map needs reinforcements, it could ask for help in the team-chat, and all people of that team see it, if they are on this map, on a different wvw-map or not in WvW (e.g. in PvE, EotM or sPvP) at moment.

Transfer costs
Transfer costs didn’t worked as a balancing tool, they did not avoided overstacking for leagues. In fact they are only a flatting-function currently cementing the existing imbalance. To ease balance movements (and to allow player to experiment with different communities) they should be low during off-season as soon as a balancing mechanics (as described below) is in place, and high (10-20 times higher) during seasons. Important is: Season-tariff starts in the moment the season is announced (and not when the season matches actually start, that’s to late to tax the WTJ).

Ha ha, great video discovery, sminkiottone. ANet should use it as wvw advertisement video for the next season.

Motto: “The majority of our players feel great in a great game”

There are better ways. (See Forum)

and

What to do if these 3 server blobs become imbalanced? (E.g. as EotM is especially this week)

and

How should that be done with long running matches on more than 1 map?

Loosmaster.8263:

Welcome to WvW. Please move your post to the Pve forum.

Learn more about ANet conception of the game before making unqualified comments.
If you open a thread about EotM outside WvW sub forum it’s moved to here by moderators.

And the arrogance of WvW over EotM misses any base. WvW has at least as much PvD karma train (call it scoring race, if that let you feel better) than EotM.

The WvW-season has full attention and support from ANet as clearly seen on
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/wvwgold
in week TWO of the season. Fall-tournament appeared there much faster than in any season before.

However, some questions remain open:

• How does it come that Vizunah Square is playing in Gold and Silver league?
• How do you get 39 points after just 1 finished round?
• How did some server manage to have 9 results in the 2 round in a tournament that has only 4 rounds?
• …

Middzz.1490:

It is players that stack servers not ANET.
It is players that come on maps and shout wheres the ZERG not ANET.
It is players that create blobs not ANET .

Is it bad ,yes often ….It is clearly the choice of the majority players .
and I am sure if anet started telling people how to play limiting groups there would be a lot more screaming .

All you can do is hope more players change there style .

It’s the players that optimize their behavior according to the rules ANet has setup

But you may not like this optimum, therefore you ask for rule changes that allow nicer optima.

Johje Holan.4607:

The question is though what will they do for the 3rd and 4th week?

If they go by strict Swiss System and then Glicko as tiebreaker as they have in the past then it could (and will in the case of NA Gold) result in the same matchups as previously played in the tournament. But Anet said that we won’t face the same matchups more than once in the tourney.

They said you will face the same opponents less often, which is true without doubt, if you have only 4 instead of 9 rounds

“ The shorter format will ensure that worlds will not be repeatedly matched against one another”
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-world-vs-world-fall-tournament-2014/

ARAGON.8759:

Unfortunately, transfer fees to popular servers generate money for Arenanet .If they fix the problems with unfair matchups ,They make less money..

If done correctly this can be turned into an infinite stream of transfer income!

• seasons that reward concentration transfers
• off-seasons that reward balancing transfers

Money you can get from concentration transfers only is limited. Blackgate is already full.

We need a new scoring, i.e. one that does not reward PvD (currently PvD is more rewarding than successful fights for an objective, if you see it as reward per time) personally (no drops, karma, WEXP from event and NPCs if there are no defenders) as well as PPT wise (an objective conquered via PvD does score 0). If we have no PvD rewards, we will automatically have much less coverage problems.

We need less servers. With all the player losses nearly no one ouside T1 is able to fill it’s maps.

We need a reward (e.g. all Karma, WEXP, EXP, drop-rate is doubled) for playing on low-populated servers, and/or a player-limitation via queue on overpopulated servers.

We need cheap transfers to all under-populated (but only exactly as long as they are under-populated) worlds and NO transfers to worlds already overpopulated.

If we get all this WvW will turn back to much more balance within half a year, if not the queue should be more restrictive and the rewards (drops, karma, WEXP) for playing on low-pop worlds be increassed.

Romek.4201:

system is fine but it can´t work cause all servers too different

problem is not the system problem is the coverage from all servers and i think its more “motivation” problem

nearly all servers can bring big numbers on reset night but after this only the masochists stay for a week

arenanet schould change tournaments to daylie matchups for 1 week and i bet 1000gold this tournament would have much more players and would be much more fun

so in short:

• 1 week tournament with 7×24h matchups
• and this maby every month in last week

Romek this is nonsense, you should not talk about a game mode you stopped playing.
If I compare https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Want-your-WvW-queue-photos with what I saw on Elona in a good week I see over 500 people more that want to play on SFR than on Elona, nearly twice as many, and I would not queue on SFR if I see such a queue, so there are probably even more on SFR, that just gave up queuing for reset.

But yeah if matches would last only 4 hours Elona could probably be competitive with SFR, afterwards we run out of manpower, whereas on SFR probably the queues are still there. And that’s all gold-league, I don’t want to know how it looks in bronze.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Dayra.7405:

Never seeing an enemy can be quite boring.

Try seeing an enemy zerg which is twice as large as your zerg run away from you without a single skills used against you!

Fights = lost time capping a tower = lower PPT

Yeah that’s one of the mayor problems of WvW, PvD is the superior strategy, for personal rewards as well as for PPT.

The scoring function as well as personal rewards should really be adapted, such that conquest against to few defenders neither give personal rewards nor should the objectives acquired by PvD count towards scoring.

One the other side a successful defense event should give much more rewards and a successful conquest against an admissible number of defenders should give more rewards than today.

Would also help against imbalance and coverage, as they are nothing else then PvD by the superior side.

If you need an enemy to get something, overstacking and night-raids make much less sense.

coglin.1867:

Bubi.5237:

Scoring system. (PPT)

Works great. In what way does it not work? It is pretty basic. Take and defend and hold more stuff, you get more points.

The problem with the scoring system is that it rewards PvD as much as fights for an objective. Competition degenerated therefore to a capping race now, as fights for an objective take to long to be equally rewarding.

Every single match looks like the first plays against last.
But in fact maximal distance is 7 out of 24/27.

Balance is broken and with it interest in it.

Never seeing an enemy can be quite boring.

echo.2053:

They use to be able to claim that it helps bring pvers in wvw, but now that the meta can easily be done in eotm, land of the uplevel champ zerg….its more like why bother?

ANet count eotm into wvw, so any visitor of EotM support their believe it brings people into WvW.

I did not looked into EotM this match, but it will hardly be fun as well. Green will be as superior in EotM as in nearly all WvW-matches.

695:0:0 should be reach latest 8h after reset, then the losers better stay home and let the winner enjoy their scoring undisturbed.

Junkpile.7439:

Not fun. Can’t get lot’s of kills in EotM because enemy is kitten.

I proposed (in german forum) that the Elona WvW Orga will not enter WvW, but go to EotM and play EotM with TS. But I fear they will not

Until they do I play PvE or another game.

Probably TC find it as funny as SFR

Don’t go there the rest of the week, probably they loose fun as well if thee is no one to overrun and nothing left to conquer.

Hardly. More and more people want to be there, no one want to leave, and the ones that do not play GW2 anymore are still counting.

And the worst thing:

The longer the concentration (or exit) process isn’t countered, the faster it will run. No longer driven by the rewards, but simply by: being able to play.

If you stay where you are, you will either do not find enough friends to play with or you do not find enough enemies to fight against.

ANet is already sleeping with respect to that for half a year, time is running out.

In seasons there are these tickets and season 2 said first place get more than last place.
Season 3 said, the more you win the more you get. And always including off season, you get the WEXP bonus boxes, more for winning than for loosing.

Not much, but obviously already enough to to speed up the natural concentration process, originating in people’s preference to win and not to loose.

Dano.5298:

It’s entirely the player base that made these matchups exist.

Yes, it’s the players that move, but it’s ANet that make the rules.

And the rules are: More people win, and there is no penalty to concentration and a reward for winning.

Result: rather sooner than later all will be gone or concentrated on one server.

If you design a game, you have to foresee and counter that.

And if you are not able to foresee it, you should notice and correct it while it happens!

But all ANet seem to be able to do is: “WvW is so great lets make another competition”

WvW is broken. That’s it.

It started with the removal of the queue by EotM as the only balancing factor that ever existed, got out of control by season 2 rewards and is now gone.

If 4 ranks difference is a blow out there is nothing left to play.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-imbalanced-season-after-season/4428199

My Prediction: Green will win all matches, except EU-Bronze Dzagonur will win, not RoF.

Edit: Oh I forgot that FA is green, not TC, but yeah TC will win.

For optimal income ANet should therefore
- make league with high prices for the first to generate over stacking movements
Followed by normal play
- with balancing rewards and queues as above, generating balancing movement.

Voila, steady income.

strifer.7986:

because this bring more money to Anet from trasfers. why someone should transfer if its all good? Anet and have no interest to fix that even if they make a CDI to talk about population , thats why population will be always unbalanced.

Unhappyness due to queue and overpopulated buf, instead of overpopulated buf will cause transfers and with it income for ANet.

ANet doesnt have to move people to reach balance, we already know 2 things that let people move on their own:

• rewards
• queue

So balance is as easy as that:

At any time measure how many people are in WvW or WvW-queue (not eotm) on each world and in total.

People on worlds that have at a time more than 110% of mean population get a fat red Overpopulated buf.

People on a server that has currently 150% of mean population that want to enter a WvW map go to an "overpopulation-queue* instead, i.e. how many people want to play in T8/9 influences how many people are allowed to play in T1.

People on worlds that have at a time less than 90% of mean population get a Underpopulated buf.

Overpopulated buf.: Only halve Karma, Exp, WEXP, Gold, baggies are earned in WvW and EotM, and on the right side a list of all servers with underpopulated but is shown.

Underpopulated buf: Double Karma, Exp, WEXP, Gold, baggies are earned in WvW and EotM.

After less than a month we have perfect (every server has 90%-110% of mean population) balance and coverage.

Maybe it’s a good idea to reduce the number of servers first.

Transfer costs can be equal and very low (e.g. 100-500 gems per transfer in general) only to generate income for ANet and to decay movements in general, the reward and queue system ensures the balance.

And if the system stays in place, we will keep balance, even when a server community implodes in dispute, it will be refilled fast by reward hunter.

How about bufs along the line of (some not all of):

• you tick every 5min (instead of 15)
• your objectives count double at any tick
• invulnerable bufs at bosses turned by you is 10min not 5.
• invulnerability bufs have no effect on you as outmanned attacker
• you do double damage on NPCs
• you do double damage on doors & walls
• you can carry twice as many supplies
• your dollies run twice as fast
• your doors and walls have double life
• your (some/all) siege do double damage
• stomps by you score double
• stomps against you do not score
• every kill you do score
• dolly kills you do score twice
• sentries you conquer score twice
• …

Fights aren’t affected by that, but a well organized outmanned force may even win the score race against a dumb blob. The blob should be warned that he produced outmanned buf on opponent XYZ. Guerrilla war face becomes an option.

No wishes accepted this week. The season rules with iron fist

Predicted matches of the next week:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-imbalanced-season-after-season/4428199

After we finished the fairest round of season 3,
now for the basest round of season 3:

The top-tier servers of each league spread out to crush the rest.
Or will there be any surprises, i.e. not green will win? (Maybe Dzagonur in EU-Bronze?)

(Match prediction based on Season 2 matchmaking, colors: green-blue-red)

• NA-Gold
  BG-SoS-JQ
  TC-FA-Mag
• NA-Silver
  YB-SI-NSP
  DB-IoJ-HoD
  CD-DR-BP
• NA-Bronze
  GoM/SoR-EB-FC
  SoR/GoM-Ka-AR
  DH-SF-ET

• EU-Gold
  SFR-Elona-BB
  Deso-Gandi-FSP
  Kodash-RS-JS
• EU-Silver
  PS-GH-DL
  AR-AG-Arbor
  Aba-Vizu-FR
• EU-Bronze
  RoF-Dzag-WR
  MS-BT-Vabbi
  RoS-FoW-UW

And there is no escape from imbalance:
In EotM all Top-Tier-Server of all Leagues will be green (beside JQ-red due to the 6 server league), the middle tiers blue and the low tiers red.

Filovirus.6258:

Oh and can you stop with the “majority of player in prime time don’t count it’s off time that matters” line ? It’s a logical falacy and a lie.

You obviously don’t like to hear it. But it is the case.

695 objective points for 1000 people in the match at primetime gives 0.7 points per player.
695 objective points for (less than) 100 people in the match at off-time gives (more than) 7 points per player.
Each off-time player fight for more than 10 times as many points and is therefore 10 times as worthy for the match outcome.

Another example of the imbalance is the question “how much differene does it make to have 10 people more or less”
In prime-time 90:100, you will rarely notice the difference.
in off-time where it means 30:20 or 20:10 or even 10:0 it will generate a huge (score-) difference.

So yes: off-time is favored over prime-time by the game, it has more objective per player and it makes more difference in fights and scoring to have a handful player more.

And if you still not believe it: look all old (pre-EotM, where queue was a problem) recruiting threads that all more or less contain: “If you play off-time, we need you, if you play mainly primetime, we don’t want you”

And if you are still not convinced look at the tick per time graphs at http://www.gw2score.com/ or http://mos.millenium.org/

Much to many otherwise balanced matches are decided by (an) inadequate high tick-peak(s) in off-time (Graph 1). And a dominating server dominates most in off-time and much-less in prime-time (Graph 2). There are even cases where a server regularly wins matches – even if it is worser most of time than the others – just due to off-time peaks (Graph 3).

Filovirus.6258:

If you actually liked WvW you wouldn’t ask Anet to remove all that makes it WvW in every single one of your proposals….

The sense of forum discussion is of course to find out, who like which aspect of WvW more than the other. Your view of what is WvW is clearly different than mine.
But neither is correct nor false, they are just different. If you ask 100 people they will likely tell you 100 different most important aspects. If you ask 100 people they will likely tell you 100 different worst problems.

So instead of telling everyone that makes a proposal you don’t like “you destroy WvW”, tell everyone which aspect it is that you liked most and that you see harmed by the proposal.

And coverage, imbalance and PvD aren’t just my burn-out problems,they are problems of a lot of people. But obviously not yours.

The ban hammer should not be just one hammer. It can be a full spectrum of things.

• time: a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few matches, permanently
• capabilities: not enter a golem, not able to place siege, not able to take supplies, not able to start upgrades, not able to enter WvW for a specific team, not able to enter WvW, not able to play gw2 with this account.

As soon as there is a grade of punishment things can be delegated to

1. automated systems, e.g. 100 to 0 damage of a golem by fall damage disables golem driving for 24h
2. player votes, e.g. a majority vote that this and this is trolling disables this and this related capability for that and that time (maybe long the more decisive the vote)

Combined with logging and manual inspection of collected evidence in repeated cases it will likely work.

Filovirus.6258:

The problem with you is that actually you don’t like WvW, it’s not what you want at all (all your propositions/ideas proves it every single day), but instead of asking for something else (that you might actually get one day) you are trying to get the game modes quite some people like gutted and remade into something totally different, REMOVING their ability to play it so you can have your shiny personnal toy.

It’s the worst possible kind of behaviour possible.

The problem is not that I don’t like WvW, the problem is that I liked WvW a lot during the first year.

However after a year, it was no longer possible to ignore that: Scoring is a mess, the majority of (prime-time) players is irrelevant for match outcome, only a minority of off-time players matters for the outcome of the match. “who has a handful more player during the longest off-time period” decides the matches.

The second disaster that happened to WvW was the introduction of the seasons with season rewards that encouraged over-stacking and imbalance. Combined with the introduction of EotM that defused the only existing corrective to over-stacking: the queues.

Together with the unavoidable loss of player to other games and the failure of ANet to correct the imbalance situation, most WvW-matches (probably all beside T1) aren’t matches any more, but most of the time (20 of 24 hours) empty wastelands, only rarely visited by map-jumping PvD blobs.

So the WvW game-mode I liked, dissolved on it’s own. What can be done to bring something that work under the new conditions back is what drives my proposals.

Commander alone isn’t really a good criterium, now that nearly every char has a lamp. Commander with x% of map-population in his squad may work however.
Still you have to consider the lonely scout in an objective, that buildup the meaningful defense while scouting, he must not be hindered doing so.

Grinoire, yes, build and usage of a siege by other people than the owner are good indicators, that this isn’t troll-siege.

Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?

In the end only humans can decide, if something is trolling or not. If you don’t want to involve GMs you have to involve the players. Of course the player should not be able to ban the player, but only to temporarily disable capabilities of the player.

E.g. when you select a siege, you can “vote that this is a troll siege” and you can “vote that this is a normal siege”, if 10 more player vote for troll than for normal and this happens on several different siege, the player cannot place further siege as long as these siege did not despawned.

This should be recorded and if several such disabling votes hit the same player a GM should investigate to confirm that the often disabled player is indeed a troll to be banned from WvW for this team (so he has 50 other possibilities to behave better). But also people that vote often should be investigated, if they are trolling by vote, and if so their right to vote should be taken away.

Balance is not a on or off, but a continuum. And we do not ask for “Give us total balance tomorrow”, we asked for “put anything in that helps to improve balance”

But in fact we only got 2 things from ANet that improve imbalance:
- EotM removed queue pressure from overstacked servers
- Season-rewards rewarding overstacking

As usual you contradict yourself, but he happy with your battleground conception used everywhere how irrelevant it is.

And for sure would a working competitive game mode take a lot of player time from WvW, EotM already took a lot of player time from WvW and e.g. a mode that would support GvGs better would take a lot of guild-raid time out of WvW. They would train and play in their better suited mode and only occasionally go to WvW to slay some pug zerg for the baggies. Everyone that say WvW-score is irrelevant I only play there as there is no alternative is a potential loss.

New Game mode would be cool. I proposed one, especially as NEW ADDITIONAL mode https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Proposal-combine-the-best-of-WvW-and-EotM

But, you know, a new additional mode has two drawbacks:

1) It does not help to solve WvW-Problems.
But, ok, no problem, I played the first year of GW2 intensively WVW, and have no problem ignoring it from now on, when there is an alternative.

2) It increases the WvW-Problems.
I will probably not the only one who will ignore WvW after a (in their and my view) better mode get added.

Any new game mode included PvP of 20+ people will be another nail in the coffin of WvW, as EotM was already one.

PS: This is an EotM thread. EotM is by all means already a battleground, i..e only 4h matches, only one map, no fixed realms that fight each other. Your argumentation dos not fit here.

Ha! Lvlup to 37, cool lets see what I get.

Argh a green lvl 33 chest, wtf, I just bough my lvl 35 cultural armor

Probably sponsored by Logitech: several clicks needed to accept and destroy it
Neither sellable to NPC, nor salvage. Stop throwing such garbage at players. The only thing that can still be made worser: “Enter the name of the item to really destroy it”.

Every single mob I slayed during the last 4 levels was more rewarding than this level up reward!

Nerf the loot of fresh killed people is one thing, but how about the balancing action of improve the loot of people not killed for a long time?

It’s not that WvW is already over-rewarded. And nerfing at one end without improving at the other is a overall nerf.