Guild Wars 2

Shonie.5297:

You guys are really competitive throughout the day. I actually spent over 6 hours on EBBL today and you guys had great numbers all afternoon and evening and it was back and forth all day. We wiped 73 times at your garrison and we wiped you 73 times at Hills. Enjoy those moments and not the ones with the huge population disparity.

This is somewhat difficult to do when all my moments are the ones with the huge population disparity.

Wanted: oceanics with balls.

Sorry about your dragonite. Try temples instead.

Avenge.1478:

This system is broken, but thats not news to anybody who WvWs on Tier 1 servers. It’s not fair to the players who truly play for WvW with it being the highlight of their time spent on GW2.

You have the means to bypass the queues; you just refuse to take it up.

The system is not broken, but something else obviously is.

Transfer down, problem solved.

RazGerb.6173:

Tired of getting unfair matchup, as I am speaking for everyone on Ebay.

You’re not speaking for me.

Khalic.3561:

Luvpie.8350:

Please deal with Server pop?
We know server pop is a issue we are thinking about some ideas. When we have something concrete we will let people know.

How do you suggest they handle this? Survey players and only allow a set amount of people who describe themselves as WvWers on any one server? You can’t directly control a server’s population besides putting a cap on it, and you can’t determine what the players on that server will choose to do.

They have created incentives to move away from the high pop servers. Believe it or not leagues do encourage people to move to the upper servers of the silver and bronze leagues at least. And if you noticed, transfers to medium and low pop servers are free right before the leagues begin.

There is literally nothing they can do beyond incentives like that if the players themselves insist on stacking the zergiest servers.

Of course there is. Cut map player capacity in half, problem solved.

Boreal.9826:

RazGerb.6173:

Sooooo
Since when did yaks have such a Insane EBG presence, Its almost like SBI
It’s hard to defend Overlook 10v60, even while Yaks just completely zerged down our Borderlands and they still had an army in eternal.

Say hello to our fairweathers. They’ve been absent recently while times were rough and I’m guessing they are now raring to go in WvW. Ebay (like every server to varying degree) its share of fairweathers too as your numbers are certainly down.

It doesn’t matter if we’re winning or losing. EBay has no night crew regardless of the match situation. I’m pretty much convinced it’s the law that we’re not allowed one.

Ehmry Bay, no queues ever except maybe 15 mins on reset nights.

This is what the transfer costs should have been from the start. Yes, it’s not as effective as it could be if it was based on WvW population and not total population, but these prices are still better than they’ve ever been.

Albane.3618:

Grav.3568:

It’s next to impossible to get competitive match-ups nowadays because server populations are so skewed across the board.

Are you serious? If Arena Net cared about imbalanced matchups, we would have seen changes and/or Dev posts reflecting that.

Of course I’m serious. And I agree with you too, Anet are certainly at fault for allowing it to happen. But the players who took advantage of the opportunity to transfer to T1 are equally kittened for actually going through with it.

Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Roe.3679:

Players are just as guilty of creating stacked servers.

This. It’s next to impossible to get competitive match-ups nowadays because server populations are so skewed across the board.

Yes, everyone please join SoS. If they can make it into the gold league, I won’t have to deal with their kittened night time numbers for a nice long time. <3

elkirin.8534:

I would support 4 leagues simply because 2 leagues will IMHO, badly hurt T1 servers.

That would actually be a pretty good reason to support 2 leagues tbh, except for the fact that it will hurt the lower tiers as well.

League system = nobody wins.

What else are you supposed to do the day after reset when the match is already decided?

Roll back to the old map. Reduce the current 5 sites down to 3, one on the old lake island and one each somewhere in the top left/right corners of the map where nobody ever goes. Swap bloodclot and outmanned bonuses.

Easier fix to this? Rollback.

Tried transferring down?

Do not want, never wanted, never will want.

Sovereign.1093:

Yes. There is no solution to it.

Of course there is. People just need to transfer down. They won’t though, because WvW is scurry without zergs!

Monsoon.2589:

This does nothing to solve the problem as once you transfer down you also clog that server if it is at capacity. Further more why would someone lose their server pride, friends and guilds just to go to another server that will then also get skill lag?

Lol server pride. That hasn’t stopped half the entire game from transferring their way to tier 1 to date, now has it?

Oh well, I’ll just go back to enjoying my lag-free game then. Have fun with yours.

Transfer down, problem solved. No skill lag in my tier.

Transfer down, problem solved. No skill lag in my tier.

Le Rooster.8715:

Most boring matchup -_-

And it’s all your fault.

Buffy.9246:

The only 2 servers sbi will beat 100% is Yak’s Bend and Ehmry Bay(idk how they r even rank 9).

Tbh we don’t know either.

Stacked servers on the most stacked map on the most stacked night of the week?

Nah I got no clue where your lag is coming from, either.

Sorry bro, no night crew.

boosh.1978:

Looking to make a move to one of the above servers.

You’re doing it wrong.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal. Everyone who transfers up is doing it wrong.

If WvWers have to be spammed about PvE invasions, then PvErs should be spammed about enemy WvW zergs. It’s only fair.

Achilles.2197:

Ehmry, I’m sure on even numbers it would be a great matchup for sure,

You willing to spare us some of your night crew to find out?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

Tiers, RNG, leagues, it doesn’t matter. No match-up system will ever work for as long as the server populations remain as horribly imbalanced as they are now. Which they will, for as long as transfer costs don’t change.

1-3. Check out our awesome living story content.

The match-up system is not terrible. It’s the server transfer cost system that’s terrible.

There’s little reason for people to want to transfer down when for only a few more gems they can just transfer up and win every week instead.

This would be less of an issue if server populations were more balanced.

Arenanet likes to talk about there being no pay2win in this game, meanwhile people just keep transferring up and up and up.

This matchup is literally my worst nightmare.

Arenanet, why do you hate balance?

Chris.3290:

From T5 to T1 and back down to T4. EVERY server that has ever lost to us… (all of them except maybe FC we have faced) has said the same things “they PvD”; “They only win because the Oceanics.”

What amazes me is that this is still a story.

That’s because it’s still true.

Chris.3290:

This has been a known fact since the FIRST Beta weekend, that SoS was the unofficial Oceanic server and everyone knows we bring a nighttime threat.

Of course. Nobody is arguing the size of your night crew, I’m just arguing that it’s kittened for both you and everyone you face.

Think about it. As much as you state the obvious about your night crew winning matches against lower tier servers, you neglect to mention that when you lose to higher tier servers, it’s because of your relatively small day crew. Your night crew is overwhelming when you win, but still large enough to be competitive when you lose. How often has SoS been outmanned at night, really?

The underlying issue is, your lopsided coverage compared to all other servers (with the possible exception of Dragonbrand) guarantees an excess of PvD for all sides involved in match-ups with you. SoS PvDs in their peak, your opponents PvD back in their peak. And that’s not fun for anyone on any side, unless you’re a no-skill karma-training carebear.

That’s why I don’t like SoS. I’m sure as individuals many of you are just as nice as anyone else, and you do seem to have one or two decent guilds amongst you (BANE and vH come to mind), but as a WvW server your reason for being is hopelessly flawed.

Chris.3290:

Also props to the folks who were up late/early from both servers. A BL would turn green and there was no time wasted by either server in taking back real estate. Much better than some higher ranked servers who just quit for the night and then complain about it on the forums.

Free WXP for everyone! >_>

Terrible week-long mismatch has been terrible.

Put your Anet hat on and imagine you were writing the WvW patch notes of your dreams. Here’s mine:

—

Since the only real reason to transfer servers is for WvW, we’ve decided to incorporate the server’s Glicko score into the transfer cost, as well as the player’s individual WvW experience:

cost = max(serverGlicko – 1000,0) x 2 + playerWXP x 5

This means a PvEr can transfer to a T8 server for potentially nothing, while experienced WvWers looking at T1 will have to fork out as much as 3000 gems to get there. The idea is to break up the existing numerical logjam in the upper tiers and try to spread people around the servers a bit better.

We are also going to increase the time between point ticks during off-hours. From midnight to 6am server time, point ticks will be 30 minutes apart instead of the usual 15. This change is specifically aimed at nerfing servers that specialise in nightcapping. You may own the majority of territory during that time, but you’ll get fewer points for it since it takes you less effort to hold it during that time.

Commander tags are in for an overhaul. We are refunding everyone the 100g for their existing commander tags, and replacing them with WvW-specific ones that cost 2000 badges instead. PvErs can still buy a PvE-only tag for 100 gold if they wish, but instead of a blue dorito, theirs looks more like a pink taco.

Other changes we’re bringing in:

- For every player in excess of the first 25 in the vicinity (the same vicinity that calculates orange swords), all players in that vicinity lose 1% on all their stats. Zerging should be a last resort, not the first.
- Golems are now limited to 5 per type per side per map. You can still golem rush, you just can’t be kittened about it anymore.
- We’ve removed the unique names from all towers and camps and replaced them with generic names based on cardinal directions. Nobody was using them anyway.
- All siege within the walls of a tower or keep can now be refreshed by talking to the claim lord NPC. Siege refreshed in this way will persist for 3 hours instead of 1.
- Damaged siege can now be repaired with supply.
- The 30 second contested delay has been removed from camps. They were just too easy to flip.
- Repel events have been added to the daily achievement rotation. Defenders are people, too.
- When a player takes part in successfuly capturing a camp, all enemy NPCs at all other camps on the map become invulnerable to that player for a minimum of 5 minutes. This is to discourage roamers who do nothing but flip camps round and round for hours on end. Seriously, is your life that dull?
- /team chat now has an MOTD feature. This message can be set by any commander, and it will appear to any player as soon as they load on a WvW map, repeating every hour on borderlands maps and every 15 minutes on EBG; they need the extra reminding there.
- Players gain one free WXP re-spec with every 10 WXP ranks they gain. We realise the WXP system was pretty dumb in retrospect, but it’s too late now; at least players can now make the best of it as they see fit.
- The dolyak escort at NE camp now actually works 100% of the time.
- All dolyak escorts increase in level for each person attacking them. They will also no longer despawn if their dolyak dies before they do, but instead gain another 3 levels and will chase their attackers.
- Swiftness from Temporal Curtain now stacks with other sources of swiftness. We didn’t fix this earlier because it goes against our policy of nerfing mesmers with every patch, but we finally ran out of things to nerf.

Finally, what would an Anet patch be without some useless fluff? New titles are also on their way, now with an added twist. These titles are earned by performing certain actions in WvW, and will display on your character for the next 7 days and cannot be removed. Amongst others, they include:

- participating in a fight involving 50 or more players and winning: “Zerg buster”.
- participating in a fight involving 50 or more players and losing: “Roflstomped”.
- using 5 or more emotes within 60 seconds: “Emo”.
- using a treb on Bay from SW tower: “Boring”.
- spending more than an hour inside SW tower: “Burger eater”.
- receive free supply from Siegerazer: “Lazy”.
- warriors who escape combat using a greatsword: “kitten”.

These titles also stack, so it will be possible to become a “Boring Roflstomped Emo kitten”.

—

What’s yours?

Canar.2064:

And a lot of us prefer to run 1 or 2 man groups, guys.

Maybe in your timezone.

Balancing server transfer sosts on total server population alone is ridiculous, particularly when it comes to balancing performance in WvW. Infact, WvW-related criteria should be the only criteria, since PvE population can be mitigated by overflows at any time, and PvE content is the same on every server anyway . Here is my proposal to alter the transfer cost calculation system.

Replace the current system with a flat fee of 500 gems, with the following modifiers:

1. Add the difference between the server Glicko score and 1500 to the total gem cost. Examples: to transfer to a server with 1900 Glicko, that’s another 400 gems; to transfer to a 1000 Glicko server, that’s 500 gems discounted.

2. Add the player’s WvW achievement score multiplied by 10. Example: if I have 60-something points in WvW, it should cost me another 600-something gems.

3. Measure the hours the player is usually online against the hours a server’s WvW maps are spent queued. For every hour a person’s playing time overlaps with a map queue, add another 10 gems to the transfer cost. Example: if I play for say 20 hours a week and there is usually 1 x map queue for 10 hours and 2 x map queues for 2 hours during that time, then 14 hours of queue = 140 more gems. Busier servers would obviously add up to considerably more.

This skews the transfer costs much more heavily in favour of lower tier servers, while increasing costs for WvWers depending on their experience and timezone coverage. A hardcore WvWer might have to pay 2500 gems to transfer to T1, while a WvW newbie could transfer to T8 for free.

Yes, I realise that a WvWer could save on gem costs by twinking new characters on a new account, but that new account means more money for Anet anyway.

Discuss.

Chris.3290:

As for our Oceanics; yes, it’s incredibly unfair; but we are on the other side of the scale (TC has all hours coverage and DB has massive SEA presence) more than we are in this situation if that gives you any kind of solace.

I’d tell you what I think, but Anet would rather have me talk about baby felines instead.

CHIPS.6018:

We finally broke 500. ^^

Congrats on having a night presence bigger than EBay’s day presence. >_>

Pretty intense reset night so far, will be interesting to see how much longer we (EBay) can compete against T2 numbers. Smart money is on “not much beyond the weekend” but we’ll do what we can. o7

Transfer down a few tiers. That will solve your skill lag right quick.

Serjical.9613:

We play during NA primetime 4-12pm central, So we’d like to find a home in which we’d help make a difference and not just add to a zergfest.

Bolded the important part for all you T1/2 servers out there. :P

I would argue there’s a decent case for going T5 atm, since there’s a pretty big PPT gap between them and T4 right now.

“Server in ruins” is perhaps overstating it a tad. You’re still doing a lot better than you were before the bandwagoning began. :P

Chris.3290:

we remain the warm home to all our good friends from the lands of giant spiders and hobbits (and the rest of Oceania).

It’s a nice sentiment, but I can’t go along with it myself. As long as oceanics (and SEAs for that matter) continue to stack up on the same servers, you will always end up PvDooring in your own time and being PvDoored outside of it. It’s not fun for your opponents and I don’t really see how it would be fun for you either.

Signed, the only kiwi on EBay that I know.

Vermillion.4061:

Let’s all have a moment of silence for SoS Teamspeak/Website being shut down for good. ;~;

What happened there?

There’s actually a bit of a gap between T4 and T5 numberswise these days, and that’s reflected in the Glicko gap between the tiers of approx 250 points. It’s not going to get any better any time soon either, as BP and AR have recently lost guilds (to Mag and DB respectively) and SBI have been on a slow slide for a while.

Here on EBay we, like most NA servers, are NA heavy and light overnight. We can queue all 4 maps on a good reset night but it nevers lasts longer than a few minutes and queues at any other time of the week at all are rare, suggesting a casual but enthusiastic WvW playerbase. We have a couple of med sized guilds capable of fielding 20-30 players, and 3 bigger ones that usually run in squads of similar numbers, so all-out zerging is uncommon.

We try and take defense seriously, focusing on home BL and our corner of EBG before anything else. We have a server TS which all guilds use, though a few choose to run their own comms on the side as well. Our server forums are also the busiest of any server in the game to my knowledge, have a look at www.ehmry.com and see for yourself.

Hope that helps.

Seems that the only direction any guild ever transfers these days is up. Of course there may be a few going the other way but the only ones I ever see are going up.

So Anet, let’s have some stats please, say month by month. How many people have transferred up versus transferring down? Is the current trend what you want to see, and if not, what do you plan to do about the very large and very obvious number imbalances between servers that exist today?