Guild Wars 2

Good idea. I support the proposition.

Timelord.8190:

The server linking doesen’t make WvW more balanced. It just makes WvW messier and more difficult to organize. There is a bunch of slackers not doing anything usefull on EB while we have a que.

How long are the queues in prime time? Is there ever a queue to more than 1 map outside reset? How would you solve the population issues as some servers like Ruins of Surmia or Fissure of Woe are really empty?

Here on Desolation we can have a queue to one map at best in prime time (sometimes it is a fake queue like yesterday at EBG, really it was outnumbered “buff” there instead). When 1 map is full, all other 3 maps got outnumbered “buff” on us. Yet, Arenanet counts Desolation as a full server. I just makes me wonder how empty the non-full servers without a link are…

I still remember the golden days of WvWvW when there was a queue to all 4 maps at same time. It was in 2012-2013…

You can get permanent swiftness with boon duration food/runes and using staff #3 (symbol of swiftness) or using traited “Retreat!” shout. So I really don’t see a big problem here.

Guardians have always been meta in WvWvW and are arguably the best general profession for WvWvW. Solid choice for zerging, commanding and even roaming. Many other professions need buffs for WvWvW, but guardians need some toning down.

They should make this happen as soon as possible. Time gating is easy, because you can always make the ascended gear to require laurels, which are time gated. One can also keep the spvp-alike requirement to have 500 in related crafting.

Here are examples with suggested prices:
armor piece 400 proofs of heroics + 5 laurels + 5 gold
1-handed weapon 200 proofs + 3 laurels + 3 gold
2-handed weapon 400 proofs + 5 laurels + 5 gold
back piece 2000 proofs + 30 laurels + 50 gold
(of course all with user selectable stats)

Fractal materials should also be made available via WvWvW currencies, because they are needed for ring infusions:
Vial of Condensed Mists Essence = 50 proofs
Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence = 250 proofs
Shard of Crystallized Mists Essence = 1250 proofs

Proofs come slowly, so essentially these are come slower than playing fractals.

Alternatively 10 badges could be converted to 1 proof, meaning that 1000 badges would be worth of 100 proofs.

WvWvW needs rewards which are closer to the level of other game modes. Make this happen, Arenanet!

Really what is the problem?

I basically only play WvWvW nowadays. I still got 600+ gold. So getting that 300 g from WvWvW isn’t impossible, even for a casual player who has full time work and busy family life. Where does the money from WvWvW? Do your dailies, karma train, harvest all the nodes and sell all the stuff you don’t need. Selling materials alone can bring a lot of gold.

The number of badges suggested for commander tag is way too low. Did you know that 100 g is roughly 10000 badges of honor? So 300 g should be about 30000 badges. I know that amount takes a LONG while to obtain without EotM, probably 1 year or more. I absolutely hate EotM and refuse to play there, still I got over 55k badges.

What we need is much more different items which can be bought with WvWvW specific currencies, mainly badges and proofs of heroics. WvWvW should have vendors to buy ascended armor, weapons and an ascended backbag. This would also bring more players to WvWvW.

It seems it is bugged. Shrug it off should trigger “shake it off” with all the effects (from runes and traits).

Arenanet should fix this!

Please get rid of Desert BL. All those weeks when it is the home border, it is much less fun and less fights.

Korgov.7645:

ANet considered server performance when they:

• increased target caps from 5 to 10
• added new AoE effects to existing skills
• reduced recharges of AoE skills/traits

That’ll do the trick. The WvW skill lag is a thing of the past. :P

^^ Nice sarcasm. ^^

I was thinking the same. Increasing target caps from 5 to 10 + more AoE effects puts a huge load on the servers.

Speaking of skill balance:
Why an earth Arenanet buffed Guardians in WvWvW? Guardians have always been numerous in this game mode and been part of the meta.

Also the ghost thief really didn’t need any buff, but there are several professions which
are more or less excluded from the zergs.

coro.3176:

Rifle:
* Damage on Blunderbuss is nice, but would prefer power damage over condition
* It also doesn’t address the main weaknesses – risk vs reward on Overcharged Shot, Unable to land Jump Shot due to lack of evades. I’ve said it a million times, but Overcharged Shot can’t remain the way it is when there are auto-proc-on-cc traits out there like Last Stand.

yup and not just this. We still also have the following problems:
- gadgets suck (why not at least reduce their CD and make gadgeteer’s overcharged versions as baseline)
- medkit is horribly cumbersome to use and medkit #1 is useless (why not to make medkit #2-5 instant cast or activate much faster and make medkit #1 also self-heal the engineer or cause some damage like ele water staff #1/druid staff #1)

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

Because they think AG will be saved with 2 links.
Piken isn’t really that stacked though, queues aren’t that bad, especially compared to Vabbilation when the linking tests started.

This is NO excuse, because I am pretty sure overall numbers have went down.

In fact I very well remember a time in 2012-2014, when there was a prime time queue to ALL 4 maps without ANY server links and the maps limits were higher back then.

Deso had a “full” server status, while having NO queue to ANY map at prime time and NO queues outside prime either or occasionally having a very short 1-10 player queue to 1 map. That just tells that the Arenanet formulas related to server population status are indeed a bad joke.

The sad reality is:
1. Arenanet developers NEVER understood WvWvW at all
2. WvWvW still lacks rewards (where is the ascended item vendor, legendary/ascended backbag, gold per h similar to pve farm?)
3. skill & profession balance when it comes to WvWvW has been a really bad joke

Just fix #2, then the numbers are already going to be much better. And then fix #3.

The server relinks don’t much any sense, just like the recent skill “balance” update. What was the point of linking a full server like Piken Square while leaving some “very high” status servers without a link? Guardians have always been numerous in WvWvW and part of the meta. What was the point of buffing guardians even more for WvWvW? I could go on, more on these ill thought “balance” changes from the WvWvW point of view…

Is it so hard for the developers to understand the majority of the players want better balance, instead you make the balance just worse and worse…

Most important and relatively easy changes would be:

“To the Limit!” reduce CD from 30s to 25 s. And reduce activation time to 1/2 or 3/4 s. Reduce healing accordingly (so that total heal per long term is the same).
reasoning: The current long CD and activation time making it very high risk. You end up interrupted often, unless you have stability

“Fear me!” reduce CD from 60 s to 40 s. Cause weakness for 6 s.
reasoning: Way too long CD for for the current effect

Mighty Favazz.1546:

Remove damage.
Knockdown up to 3 targets (180 range) on activation for 2 seconds.
Keep range on leap.
20 second cool down.

Removal of damage allows it to be paired with smoke field without immediate reveal.

I agree on removing damage from rocket boots. The damage is subpar and not useful. Being able to pair with smoke field would be more useful.

I have suggested this countless of times:

1. add 1 s evade to rocket boots
2. make rocket kick a 600 leap with stun break, increase CD to 30 s

The first would solve being immobilized/stun while trying to escape. The second would allow rocket kick to be used as a short range gap closer and stun break.

Gadgets need more utility for engineers to pick them over kits or gyros or elixirs.

You could try guilds like AIM, LOOK and KISS (not kidding, at least they are active). And you should definitely join Desolation Community [DC], if you haven’t done yet.

I would have wanted to see Desolation continue to be linked with Vabbi.

Without any linked server Desolation will be enjoying outnumbered till it drops to its proper tier. I hope it won’t take 7 weeks, like it took last time.

I don’t know the queue situation on other servers, but I think the “full” status currently is a BAD joke. Desolation is classified as “full”, yet at Friday reset we had queue just to 1 map (about 30-40 queue to EBG), while being outnumbered on home border. Yesterday evening prime time basically the same. 7 player queue to EBG and outnumbered on 2-3 other maps at same time. The EBG queue popped quick and then we had a “massive” 2 player queue to home border and outnumbered “buff” at EBG.

Seriously Arenanet? A full server should be able to fill at least 3 maps on a regular basis, otherwise it is NOT anywhere near full. Arenanet refuses to give WvWvW players better rewards (ascended, backpiece, fractal materials etc) and is trying to cover up the failing of this game mode by artificially lowering the population status numbers to ridiculous lows.

I remember the time when there was a queue to all 4 maps and that queue could last 2 hours, not 2 minutes….

If other “full” servers are in same situation as Deso, then I see just one alternative:
merge a LOT of servers permanently and reduce the total number of servers to 9-12. The current situation where the game mode is full/half empty most of the time is NOT fun for most players. 8 weeks of these low numbers is going to bleed yet more players.

Offair.2563:

Deso needs the manpower as theyre 24/7 outnumbered according to some posters in the past.

#PoorDeso

You must refer to me. Let me get this straight:

Desolation had lost tons of players and was EU rank 9 just before the linking system was introduced. We quickly rose to EU rank #1 after getting paired with Vabbi – thanks to having a relatively high number of Points-per-Tick (PpT) players and good overall coverage.

When Desolation lost the server link we dropped to EU rank 10 and believe me or not we were almost non-stop having the outnumbered “buff” on us on 3-4 maps at same time. The only match up where we were not outnumbered all time was vs GH (yes, GH had even lower numbers than Deso).

While we are paired with Vabbi, I am NOT complaining that we have too low numbers compared to enemies. Nowadays we can sometimes even create short queue on 2 different maps at same time. Generally on prime time on one map has queue, so we are still not as full as some might think.

Anyways server linking will change on 6th Jan 2017. I hope Desolation + Vabbi will continue to be linked, because I have grown to like many players on Vabbi and I think these two servers compliment each other. Vabbi hosts also many ex-Deso players, who simply transferred there because of lower transfer cost. If Desolation loses link, we will once again drop like stone.

Reply to the OP: If you enjoy being part of an organized blob using meta builds, I think FSP is your #1 choice. I know many people will claim that Deso quality is low, but honestly I don’t see much difference in quality between FSP or Deso. In the current match up Deso+Vabbi has 1.2 Kills-per-Death (KDR), FSP has 1.0 and JS is 0.7.

I think the main difference is that FSP players are better sticking to the tag aka more organized. Desolation has always had lots of players who just wanna do whatever they want: roam, skirmish, blob, zerg, gvg – and many Desolation players are so stubborn that this will surely drive any PuG commander mad sooner or later. Yet this diversity has proven to give more resilience to Deso. Out of those servers which were in TOP3 in Autumn 2012, Desolation is the ONLY one, which is still in TOP3. Desolation has “died” so many times, yet always came back to top.

I voted for 1 Desert + 2 Alpine, because I didn’t like the other options. I would have to have 3 Desert BL for many months in a row. Alpine isn’t a perfect map, but gamewise it is offers much more enjoyable fights and faster paced action than Alpine.

Please just remove Desert BL. Almost nobody plays it, besides occasionally gvg/pre-planned zerg clashes, which can be easily had Alpine border or Obsidian Sanctum.

Draeyon.4392:

Ye, your probably right.
Another way that actually will time-gate the armor (meaning it cant be Ktrained/farmed to get) would be to add a weekly (or monthly) achievement. Player kills, keep captures/defense etc. Tokens awarded upon completion. Obtaining a full set of armor should take roughly 3-4 months or so. Weapons a month each (1h 2 weeks, 2h 4 weeks). It makes a single piece achievable in the short term but a full set requires people to come back to WvW (if they choose to only obtain the armor in this way).

Your suggested rate is way too slow. Currently some people have gotten 5 pieces of ascended armor from mere 10 hours of spvp. Why WvWvW ascended rewards should be over 20 times slower?

WvWvW needs significantly improved rewards. The easiest way for developers would simply add new items for WvWvW vendors e.g. ability to buy ascended backpiece, ascended weapons and ascended armor + fractal related things (e.g. Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence) using proofs of heroics and/or badges of honor and/or laurels and/or gold.

Draeyon.4392:

I think the best way to introduce ascended armor into WvW (i made a post about it but it didnt attract any attention) is to add a new currency to reward tracks.
Specifically, the WvW reward tracks (Hero Weapon, Triumphant Armor and Gift of Battle).
Then add a new vendor with the armor/weapons available.
New Currency + Badges

Adding new currencies doesn’t make sense. One should be able to buy ascended using existing currencies, mainly proofs of heroics and badges of honor.

Timelord.8190:

So they could just simply add another reward track or currency or use the proof of heroics.

The best choice would be the combination of gold + laurels + WvWvW specific currencies, mainly: proofs of heroics and badges of honor.

I feel that 5 laurels + 5-10 g + 150 proofs / 3000 badges sounds reasonable for 1 piece of armor. It would still be faster to get the ascended in spvp tournaments.

Ten times the above cost ascended back piece with selectable stats.

It is not just too many tomes of knowledge (and thus spirit shards). It is too much of useless green stuff or even more worthless items which just clutter the inventory.

I got 5k+ spirit shards, 9+ million karma, almost 50k badges and 5k+ proofs of heroics.

Arenanet should enable to buy more useful stuff from vendors using badges, spirit shards, karma and proofs of heroics. I would very much appreciate the ability to buy fractal components (Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence), which are needed to infuse rings. I hate to do pve to get the stuff I need for WvWvW. They should allow us to buy ascended backpiece and other ascended stuff. I don’t mind if it has very high cost of badges/proofs of heroics + gold + laurels e.g. something like 150 g + 50 laurels + 2k proofs of heroics for ascended backpiece with selectable stats.

Lazze.9870:

PvP and PvE that is. WvW still lack an own split, which is also completely stupid.

Especially when certain professions dominate WvWvW meta, just look at any zerg you will find many times more guardians/DH, herald revenants and reapers than engineers or rangers. And none of the changes suggested are going to shake the meta (even if the spvp changes would have been implemented in WvWvW as well). WvWvW Meta has been stale for so long time… sighs.

This entire “balance” patch is a BAD joke when it comes to engineer rifle. It seems the developers do NOT understand the game at all nor the engineer profession.

People choose hammer over rifle, because of the utility it gives. I haven’t done any tests, but I think the damage between rifle and hammer is roughly the same, but hammer has far better utility. You can reflect and black and do good damage at same time with hammer. Hammer has 1200 range AoE stun, blast finisher, lighting field etc. A mere 10 % damage buff to bluderbuss isn’t gonna make it break or break it. And why the change is just pvp specific? Rifle engineers are rare as hen’s teeth in WvWvW, so they would even more require buffs in WvWvW. Hammer is much more common there as well.

If Arenanet would have wanted to buff rifle, they would have been adding functionality to rifle:
- make blunderbuss (rifle #3) a blast finisher
- add evade frame to jump shot (rifle #5) and make the animation tiny bit faster to make it a viable movement skill (now immobilize in air really ruins it)

I would leave overcharged shot (rifle #4) as it is. High risk and high reward. And yes, I would shave off hammer a bit, it has too many goodies going on at same time.

It is really sad that Arenanet doesn’t seem to get “it”, when it comes to balancing engineer. They added some damage to rocket boots, which is was another stupid change. People do NOT choose rocket boots for the damage, but for the utility. At the current form most gadgets are sorely underpowered compared to kits, elixirs and gyros. A better to way to make them more viable is to add some functionality e.g. make rocket kick a stun break and/or lower the cooldown.

Not to mention Arenanet destroyed medkit when they turned in into “toss” skills. Medkit really needs attention. Why an earth still medkit #1 doesn’t heal the engineer himself and has so small cone it is really utterly useless skill in the game (compared to druid staff auto attack and ele water staff #1, which both do damage and heal at same time).

*The lack of viable healing skills for many professions is a serious issue e.g. almost all warrior’s use healing signet for obvious reasons. *Arenanet could have made some other healing skills viable e.g. reducing the cooldown “To the limit!” to 25 s and lowering the healing amount accordingly or reducing the activation time to 1/2 s.

The lack of diversity in viable builds is one of the biggest problems in spvp and I don’t see this patch much fixing it. The deletion of many amulets + HoT power creep was the last straw for me.

Pride.1734:

Good thing that the Blunderbuss change is PvP only. Oh boy that would have really broken PvE and WvW. Great splitting!

10 % dmg increase for small range skill!?!

You must be kidding. Rifle engineers are rare as hen’s teeth in WvWvW.

This entire “balance” patch is a BAD joke when it comes to rifle. People choose hammer over rifle, because of the utility it gives. You can reflect and black and do good damage at same time with hammer. Hammer has 1200 range AoE stun, blast finisher, lighting field etc.

If Arenanet would have wanted to buff rifle, they would have been adding functionality to rifle:
- make blunderbuss (rifle #3) a blast finisher
- add evade frame to jump shot (rifle #5) and make the animation tiny bit faster to make it a viable movement skill (now immobilize in air really ruins it)

I would leave overcharged shot (rifle #4) as it is. High risk and high reward. And yes, I would shave off hammer a bit, it has too many goodies going on at same time.

Crapgame.6519:

Players say Devs, we want new maps
And Devs granted new map
Players say Devs, maps are too big, small populated servers can’t cover/manage
And Devs removed new map
Players say, Devs, we made a mistake, we want the map back
And devs took a poll and added map back

See any pattern here at all OP?

Correction:
Some players told devs they wanted new maps. I was never in this group. I think other WvWvW related things should be solved first: Like population imbalance, better profession/skill balance, better rewards, getting rid of lag & bugs. These remain still to be solved and since Arenanet has limited resources, I hope they are NOT wasting their limited resources in making a 3rd borderland map.

The new map, Desert Borderland, wasn’t properly tested and the devs ignored the feedback, releasing it in a crappy form. Later on they made several improvements to it, but it is still in many ways inferior to the Alpine border, which enables much faster paced fluid game play and has less gimmicks.

I voted for DBL + 2 Alpine, because I rather have this combination than 3 months of DBL only and then 3 months of Alpine only. If there would have been choice to have endless months of the original Alpine border (with lake) I would have surely voted for that.

I love this idea.

Even better if all HoT-related stuff could be disabled for one week in WvWvW. I mean stuff like Durability runes, viper/trailblazer/minster stats on armor and weapons and HoT specific (overpowered) consumables, such as Plate of Mussels Gnashblade.

Please give us the old vanilla back for at least 1 week!

Warhorn could still use some buffs, as it is overshadowed by shield and other offhands:

charge (warhorn #4) reduce untraited recharge to 12 s or increase swiftness to 15 s to give easy perma swiftness

call to arms (warhorn #5) make it also cause 2 s chill at 600 range, to give it more utility (chill could be used both offensively e.g. timing when enemy uses heal or other key skill, trying to snare enemy or to get away while melee enemy is chilled)
merely giving 10 vigor and causing 6 s weakness with 20 s recharge, makes it very weak skill.

I would say that Desolation + Vabbi together is as strong fighting server as FSP. Right now the Kills per Deaths (KDR) count is 1.4 for both at:
http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups

Of course KDR is just one metric and generally favors blobbing. I can assure you that besides the zergs, Desolation has plenty of roamers and players who just don’t want to stick to tag. This has been typical for Desolation already for as long as I remember (3.5 years).

If you play primarily in prime time and want to be part of a massive organized blob, FSP is probably the best choice in EU. The French servers have massive blobs as well, but especially the Vizunah blobs are often very low quality and die in first push or just run away. If you want to play on a server, which has a good night time and off time coverage and roamers as well, Desolation is a better choice.

Desolation will probably never be the most tightly organized server in EU (well, in early 2013 Desolation was very tightly organized with [IRON] etc. stewarding it). Often the commander will have to wait excessive time to get barely anyone into TeamSpeak and a lot of players just do what they want to do. A lot of commanders don’t even bother with TS anymore. But there is a lot of popular PuGmander commanders. Even that Ins guy, who said he would quit GW2, is back.

Deso + Vabbi pair is doing very well. There are fights (almost) all the time and the French enemy blobs are massive, but generally lack of quality, unless we face FSP, which is very blobby indeed (like described above), but in the general has high quality blobs. I feel that Deso + Vabbi really compliment each other well. Deso was rank #10 without a server link and now back to EU #1. Sadly this link will probably disappear in the next relink.

But this also means the server pair getting full. Now at prime time we can have queue to 2 maps at same time for a brief moment, while without a link Deso was outnumbered almost all the time. And when Vabbi was paired with Gunnar’s Hold, it was lowest rank EU server.

For the sake of better fights, I would recommend you to transfer somewhere else. Any top server will be a target of bandwagoners, which will eventually push the average quality down. During the fall Deso managed to purge most of the bandwagoners, but I am sure they are soon coming back with numbers.

Rocketboots and gadgets in general need love – this everyone agrees.

The animation could be polished a bit as in the end it still sometimes looks a bit quirky. The longer 1200 distance (by the GM gadgeteer) should be baseline.

Adding 3/4-1 s evade frame and lowering the CD to 16 s would make many more engineers choose the skill.

I feel the stun break should better be incorporated in the toolbelt skill, rocket kick, and at same time increasing its CD to 30 s. I also feel that rocket kick range should be increased to 600 s. Much less of a DPS skill, but giving more utility overall. Nobody will select rocketboots for DPS anyways, because taking any kit instead would be far better choice. Thus we need more utility.

I would like to see the bloodlust gone complete and every borderland map have its middle area reworked into water + island in the middle. Just like the original Alpine borderland had in 2012-2013, but make the central island a bit bigger and be of more importance.

Bloodlust is NOT a good game mechanic at all, because:
- it adds powercreep (we already got too much of it)
- adds to server lag and requires more server resources to calculate
- really does NOT help the weaker side to make comeback vs winners

Deployable Cannons are a bad idea. Remove them as soon as possible.

Excessive siege wars is NOT fun at all.

Taxidriver.2043:

time to get rid of DBL its just a ktrain map and ppl who voted to keep it dont even play it, they are all queueing EBG.

^^ this ^^

Actually I also voted for 2 Alpine and 1 DBL, because the options were so bad. I really rather have this imbalanced current system than to have 3x DBL many months in a row.

joneirikb.7506:

Deniara Devious.3948:

- better rewards and WvWvW specific unique rewards e.g. ascended and legendary back item (this will have positive effect on population)

I know I’m not one of the hip kids that runs around with shiny stuff, but I can’t imagine a single thing less constructive for fixing WvW than slap some Legendary ugly backpack skin on it.

Deniara Devious.3948:

- fixing population imbalance issues
- better skill and gear balance (currently few professions/builds and gear sets e.g. durability runes dominate the meta)
- reducing the lag

- How ? I really agree that population is one of the 3 largest problems with the game mode, but just how are you going to fix that, short of deleting all servers, and randomly distribute players to servers, and remove transfers ?

Better rewards in generally are really needed. Now pve players earn much more than WvWvW players. Many players are willingly to go through relatively repetitive and tedious pve farm for hours, just for the sake of rewards. I know that core WvWvW players are generally lot like that, but the core is getting smaller and smaller. And having just few players on huge maps is not fun.

Remember that these are very easy things for Arenanet to change:
- give us more things to buy with badges and proofs of heroics e.g. fractal materials e.g. shards/globs and vials of mist essence (needed to upgrade ascended trinkets), ability to buy more consumables and materials, runes, sigils with the WvWvW based currencies

To do that they simply need to give the WvWvW vendors just a few more lists.

Shiny new skins are a thing for some players and I am sure that will increase WvWvW activity, but this already takes up more developer resources (somebody needs to design those skins).

Population balance could be alleviated with the following changes:

- match making based on active population (tally in the active WvWvW population from linked servers as well). The current way of reassigning server links and letting glicko slowly adjust to massive changes is leading to 7 weeks of bad matches.

- combine even more servers to get more equal population and this might in EU mean combining some language based servers. The current “very high” server status on some servers is a bad joke. Our server has “very high” status and yet there are NO queues at any hour, except a very short queue to 1 map at the peak of prime time. Other 3 maps are generally giving us outnumbered “buff”. On the other hand those servers, which have so much players that they are able to create queues on 4 maps, should be quickly reconsidered to unlinked, because nobody likes to spend a lot of time waiting in queue. These are easy things for Arenanet to analyze and they can do linking/relinking e.g. once per month.

Getting a new map really doesn’t solve any of the above critical issues. I feel that Desert BL is not bringing in more players, but reducing their amount (very slightly though).

Timelord.8190:

Alot of people are transfering over to FSP daily. We get like 10+ new registrations on our TS daily. I’m really annoyed by these bandwagoners who keep transfer to the highest populated servers and we ending up alot of ques to the borders.

I guess Arenanet didn’t understand the size of the active core population and didn’t have any clue how the transfers would be going.

Desolation was EU rank #9 before linking and hopelessly outnumbered. When we got linked with Vabbi about half a year ago we rose quickly to EU rank #1. Now after linking removed Desolation is back to EU rank #9 and soon dropping to rank #10. Since our linking was removed there has been constant outnumbered on 3-4 maps. In prime time there is typically a short queue (4-30 players) to EBG, while 3 borderlands are have outnumbered “buff” on our side. If the EBG commander border hops to help a borderland, then EBG instantly gets outnumbered. Thus the situation is that even in prime time there are 3 maps with outnumbered “buff”. And outside prime there are no queues to any map.

On the positive side many of the band wagoners left and the overall quality of players is slowly going up.

I definitely hope Arenanet will NOT waste their limited developer resources on creating a new map. Instead they should focus on:
- better rewards and WvWvW specific unique rewards e.g. ascended and legendary back item (this will have positive effect on population)
- fixing population imbalance issues
- better skill and gear balance (currently few professions/builds and gear sets e.g. durability runes dominate the meta)
- reducing the lag

In fact I still hope Arenanet would just remove the Desert BL from rotation. That map is still not fun to play and with the current population (typically just 1-10 per borderland on Desolation, except if there is guild raid in prime time) it is hopelessly large.

Swamurabi.7890:

But the generic player enters WvW, sees they have the “outmanned” buff, doens’t see a tag on the map and knows that it might be more fun to play another game.

^^ This! ^^

Removal of the outnumbered “buff” won’t solve the problem either as players will very soon notice that there are only few of them. If there is no popular commander present, most casual players just go to do something else.

All this discussion of Skirmish is points is rather fruitless and bad allocation of limited developer resources. None of it matters. If they change scoring from 3-2-1 to 2-1-1 or 4-3-2 etc. It will still lead to same situation. Servers which are outnumbered almost all the time, will have impossible task to recover. Matches will still be decided way too early and most players will stop playing for points after the weekend. There is no comeback mechanism (in fact the old scoring allowed a bit better comeback).

Servers should be matched based on their total population (tallying in the linked servers as well) or else we are going to have the current situation continue.

If you continue with server linking and change the linking once every 2 months or more often, then there is ONLY one reasonable solution:

match making based on total active population

otherwise there will be many weeks of totally imbalanced match ups, because glicko and +/1 tier up and down system adjusts too slowly. If you remove links from rank #1 it is almost guaranteed to be in wrong tier. And forcing that server to spend next 2 months slowly dropping down isn’t a good solution. Similarly if you give some tier 2-4 server strong links it will stomp the opposition with ease and create lopsided match ups as it rises up.

And if you keep deciding the who are in tier 1, then players will be aggravated of Arenanet favoring some servers. (like now you did by giving FSP 2 linked servers, even though it was already EU rank #2 before any links and giving Gunnars Hold link with Vabbi = not strong enough).

I didn’t like it and I feel it was a big waste of limited developer resources. Sort of like putting a bumber sticker on a half broken car, instead of actually fixing the car.

Skirmish system complicates the scoring, yet offers very little benefits besides slightly dampening the effect of off-peak time capturing. Now often there is situation that the point gap within the skirmish is grows so large that it the last hour of the skirmish doesn’t matter any more. Thus players can as well stop playing for points and this leads to lower activity.

We still have no incentives (in scoring) for the #2 and #3 to team up against the winner. There are still big point differences e.g. winner getting twice more skirmish points than the loser are very common (at least for Desolation, probably because of the huge population differences vs opposing servers).

If you want to change the scoring, think about these things:
- give the underdog some realistic chances of come back (old system and skirmish offer none, the matches are still decided way too early)
- make outnumbered actually count e.g. so that the other two servers do NOT get any server points killing players on the outnumbed side (but still get WXP)
- focus on better rewards and better skill/profession balance and fixing the lag and population issues instead. If you can fix these, then there will be much more players = more big fun fights
- remember to keep it simple, stupid (often less complex is better)

Guardian has always been TOP tier profession in WvWvW. Guardian has been WvWvW meta since Autumn 2012. Sometimes half of some zergs have been guardians. Don’t you think there should be place for a bit more diversity?

There are way too many tomes of knowledge. I got over 5000 unused spirits shards and so many full stacks of tomes of knowledge in my bank. I really don’t know what to do with them.

mordran.4750:

That´s how it looks like when Arenanet tries to create “interesting matches” . As always they kittening failed, it´s ridiculous. A lot of people don´t even log in at all or only for a few minutes until they see that either FSP or BB (at night) has their mega zone blobs everywhere and simply go offline. This is not fun and if Arenanet does not start to handle that in a way more professional way, it will damage the wvw community in the long run. But they don´t even dare to come here to say something, really the worst handling of problems from a company i´ve ever seen.

Like I have written multiple times: the match making should be based on total population (including linked servers), not the rank. If server links are reset every 2 months, it gives too short time for the glicko to adjust to new populations. In general glicko adjusts to population changes too slowly, created totally lopsided match ups. To make things worse, Arenanet increased the random glicko range. They did in purpose to make the glicko adjust faster, but the side effect is that we have way too large gaps in glicko and thus you have match ups like: FSP (EU #1) vs BB (EU #8) and Kodash (EU #9). Ideally the most populated server combinations FSP, Piken and Jade Sea would be in tier 1 match vs each other. And Deso should be in tier 3 with the current population.

Our current match up is even more imbalanced than your screen shot. Deso has mere 73 points vs Piken has 157. I think the ~2x point difference paints a rather rosy picture, because last time I played today we had just 3 players on home bl and outnumbered “buff”. We still managed to flip keeps and towers, but of course there was no way to hold paper towers/keeps against much superior numbers. So basically it is just a quick sneak capture and then run. I guess it is also quite boring for enemy as well, just to see one server running away…

Most top servers want big fights, but the current match up system doesn’t give much changes to them. Even a population difference e.g. 10 vs 30 vs 50 creates a huge advantage for the latter. You can split 50 players 30+10+10 and there is no way the side with 10 is able to defend against those numbers. So everything in the map will be paper and the vicious circle is ready.

Hvaran.6327:

9 out of 10 wvwers think that they fight outnumbered when they actually not.

Hmm, so you think the outnumbered “buff” is wrong? I thought it was based on real time tolling of players on that map.

Personally I do NOT consider being outnumbered unless the outnumbered “buff” is displayed on my screen. And it is on my screen about 90 % of my WvWvW play time.

Arenanet should match servers based on WvWvW population (server + linked server together) instead of rank. They already have the code to count the active population. Just tally in the numbers from all linked servers as well and place servers vs each other based on the total population.

Dawdler.8521:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Ehm. How are servers able to keep off players from the map? The moment more arrive the map for better rewards etc., the buff wears off. This really doesn’t sound like a big problem at all.

Simple with some organization. It would basicly only lead to 50 man zergs roflstomping a border, then leave maybe 5 peeps to delay the enemy. The enemy have to bring 20+ to recap, so you will be outmanned all the time. Then when its all capped… return with the zerg.

This type of PPT boon will only lead to people being yelled at in chat and pushed away from WvW because they’re ruining it for the server.

True, but this exploit could be mostly avoided by taking into account of all active players on all 4 maps. Unless your total number of players in all 4 maps is the lowest, you don’t get this special outnumbered buff. In other words if you have 50 man zerg in map A and you have just 5 players on maps B, C, D. And let’s say both opposing players have 40 players spread evenly to 4 maps = 10 players per map. None of these map B, C and D give you the special outnumbered buff to that server which has the 50 man zerg even if enemy is outnumbering them 10 vs 5 in all those 3 maps, because their total number of players is 5+5+5+50 = 65, which is clearly bigger than 40. But perhaps this gets too complex, even though as a programmer I can see that it doesn’t require more than just few lines of code.

But nevertheless the biggest problem right now is that servers with vastly different population are in same match up. The new server linking thread discusses this, so I won’t comment more on this.

The server linking failed big time in EU. Now the population imbalance is so big that I am sure it is not the best fun even for the winning side as they have queues and less zerg fights to fight. Several big name commanders either quit or log in very rare. Some guilds disbanded. And we seen massive bandwagoning, yet the two most bandwagoned EU servers are not in the same match up against each other, which would of course be the optimal case.

Arenanet should rethink their match making: match servers based on WvWvW population (server + linked server together) instead of rank. They already have the code to count the active population. Just tally in the numbers from all linked servers as well and place servers vs each other based on the total population.

The server linking changes were so drastic that the old rankings became partly obsolete and the glicko changes so slow that it leads to imbalanced match ups, week after week. Waiting for 8+ weeks for the glicko to give the servers their corresponding ranks makes no sense, as after 8 weeks we have another server relink. If Arenanet continues the current way to world linking, they must do the match making based on population, not based on rank.

X T D.6458:

Outnumbered is NOT A BUFF it’s an EFFECT that serves two main purposes. To indicate when the other servers have more people on a map, and to give some small incentives for players to continue playing on the map. Suggesting any advantages to a server, and keeping people off the map are terrible ideas.

Ehm. How are servers able to keep off players from the map? The moment more arrive the map for better rewards etc., the buff wears off. This really doesn’t sound like a big problem at all.

The small incentive the outnumbered buff now has is really so small, it doesn’t matter. If the buff doesn’t give the players really anything concrete, it just leads to empty maps or at least 1 side out of 3 is missing from the fights.

Of course an even bigger issues is the server linking, which massively affects the popultion, but I don’t want to steer this thread to off topic.

The outnumbered “buff” should give players real worth while reasons to play, no matter what the odds are. The current system just encourages them to log off, which is bad for this game.

The current buff is an absolute useless joke, anybody must agree on that. Of course no “buff” can solve issues if there really is just 1-2 players on the map and both enemy servers have enough to make orange swords or more.

The outnumbered side should not reward the enemy servers any points if it is killed. This should be obvious.

The outnumbered side should be rewarded 3-5x more points per kills if it somehow manages to score a kill. This is still going to be so small amounts compared to points per tick from structures.

Outnumbered buff should increase defenses of structures, but it should not make the players stronger as the latter can lead to serious balance problems. For example while you are outnumbered each camp has 2 extra guards, each tower has 5 extra archers (3 of them within range of lords room) and so on. Or the gates/walls have bonus hp while you are outnumbered. Giving any bonus stats to players is a bad idea.

Outnumbered buff should give the players much better access to useful loot e.g. use a totally different loot table, which actually drops some useful things like crafting materials, exotic items, ascended chests, instead of broken chips and fangs.

It is still too early to tell if the Skirmish scoring system is a total failure or not, but it doesn’t seem to be making the matches more even at all.

Just one day in match up, Desolation is 19, Jade Sea+Arborstone at 32 and Piken Square+Blacktide at 36. It means that the gap between weakest and strongest is already about 2x and so early in the match up. I can imagine the point gap will just widen in the next few days, making it impossible for the 3rd server to recover.

I have countless of times suggested better scoring systems, but it seems Arenanet either wants to invent their own overly complicated system (aka “NIH = Not Invented Here” syndrome) or want to do something which just further makes the game less balanced.

The scoring system should most importantly address this problem: make it worth while for 2nd and 3rd server to attack the leading server. Since the server which is leading in points is easy to determine in real time, why not alter scoring so that you get double points if you capture an objective from the winning server. This would motivate both 2nd and 3rd one in the match up to focus on the 1st one, instead of both preying on the weakest or the 2nd. If either 2nd or 3rd one manage to climb to number 1 spot, the enemy servers will get double points attacking the new leader.

The current Skirmish scoring system is bad in many ways:
1) It is more difficult for players to understand the the old system (“keep it simple stupid”)
2) the winner is often determined too early in the weekly match up. When the point lead is too high, the others often just give up. There is really no reward to fight an uphill battle.
3) the last two days are often irrelevant to determine the winner. The point gap is too wide, so even if the winner almost stops playing, they would still win.

And of course, the coverage, the number of players and the amount of good, popular and active commanders, still pretty much determine the winner. If one side has half the amount of players, there is no way they are going to win. Simple as that.