The only thing they did different is set the “full server” bar a bit lower, ….
Not really. The bar for linked servers has been halved according to :
[–]Anet-TylerB
Linked worlds have halved population caps. So any NA world that was at least 50% full pre-link, is now FULL. If we were to unlink them, they’d no longer be FULL.
That’s a bit misleading. 50% was the threshold. Some servers were higher than that by quite a bit.
It isn’t misleading, some people don’t understand the difference between population cap and active population.
Example
Default max cap is 1000, half the cap is 500
T1 active population is 800.
T1 is full.
T4 active popultion is 510
T4 is full too. Sucks to be T4.
Most people simply think Full as Full. Very simple minded way of thinking.
We’ve had this discussion before and it frustrates you to the point where you start hurling insults, so I’ll try one last time.
The effort is to make it as unattractive as possible for people to super-stack the higher tiers. The only solution is to lock those servers because otherwise it will continue to be a stackfest. Opening up T4, for example, deprives the lower tiers from players — which are starting to see a revitalization with the server pairings.
It may suck to be T4, but T1 is already OVER-stacked for what Anet considers “normal” population — and they’ve locked those servers in order to encourage people to try other alternatives.
T1 players will likely not leave T1. But people quit playing. Others will try different servers. Eventually the flood of T1 will start to abate and return down to normal levels of “500” through attrition.
If one pairing gets too top-heavy, they can simply unlink and relink to a lower population. It’s preventative because it was the No.1 complaint on the forums and nobody was willing to do anything to fix it ourselves.
But how do you define “top heavy” when it’s time to split apart guilds and commanders? Because WvW isnt as simple as numbers.
In particular, how would you deal with a scenario where a guild is spread 50/50 across both servers?
One does not simply “unlink” from friends.
Why on earth would a guild be 50/50 on two servers?
… because of paired servers in WvW?
Imagine if Anet split up PvE today. No more megaservers. Everyone back to the server they are on with no option to guest. That wouldnt mess up any PvE guilds at all?
No. Because guesting.
Still don’t understand why a wvw guild would be 50/50.
If one pairing gets too top-heavy, they can simply unlink and relink to a lower population. It’s preventative because it was the No.1 complaint on the forums and nobody was willing to do anything to fix it ourselves.
But how do you define “top heavy” when it’s time to split apart guilds and commanders? Because WvW isnt as simple as numbers.
In particular, how would you deal with a scenario where a guild is spread 50/50 across both servers?
One does not simply “unlink” from friends.
Why on earth would a guild be 50/50 on two servers?
… because of paired servers in WvW?
Imagine if Anet split up PvE today. No more megaservers. Everyone back to the server they are on with no option to guest. That wouldnt mess up any PvE guilds at all?
No. Because guesting.
Still don’t understand why a wvw guild would be 50/50.
The only thing they did different is set the “full server” bar a bit lower, ….
Not really. The bar for linked servers has been halved according to :
[–]Anet-TylerB
Linked worlds have halved population caps. So any NA world that was at least 50% full pre-link, is now FULL. If we were to unlink them, they’d no longer be FULL.
That’s a bit misleading. 50% was the threshold. Some servers were higher than that by quite a bit.
If one pairing gets too top-heavy, they can simply unlink and relink to a lower population. It’s preventative because it was the No.1 complaint on the forums and nobody was willing to do anything to fix it ourselves.
But how do you define “top heavy” when it’s time to split apart guilds and commanders? Because WvW isnt as simple as numbers.
In particular, how would you deal with a scenario where a guild is spread 50/50 across both servers?
One does not simply “unlink” from friends.
Why on earth would a guild be 50/50 on two servers?
As a roamer the ranks give me a good idea on whether or not I should get involved in a fight. If someone isn’t even bronze I will go after them every time, but if they’re gold and higher I might avoid them if my goal is to flip a camp or sentry and not seek out fights.
The sole purpose of being able to link and unlink servers is to thwart stacking.
What? The purpose was to consolidate the spread thin WvW population into half as many matches.
People need to bugger off with the anti WvW population stuff. It is not fair when one server has more population when the other, but the solution isn’t to ruin WvW by spreading it back out again. The solution is to condense the remaining population into better matches.
Which was the goal of linking.
If one pairing gets too top-heavy, they can simply unlink and relink to a lower population. It’s preventative because it was the No.1 complaint on the forums and nobody was willing to do anything to fix it ourselves.
Off the top of my head…perhaps the following would prevent abuse:
……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.
……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.
…………a) Require a minimum of 10 Votes to enable a Player’s WvW Dishonor Flag
…………b) Each Vote must come from a different Account – but it’s a hidden rule
…………c) Each Vote must come from a different IP address – but it’s a hidden rule
…………d) All Accounts can only Vote 1-3 per day
…………e) ANet has the ability to review Dishonor Flag Transaction History of Accounts
…………f) ANet has the ability to override a Player’s Dishonor Flag & Punish Abusers
……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.
If it’s a Troll player…I’d suggest that ANet use a Dishonor Flag Mechanic to stop players like this from ruining the game.
PART III – Expanded Details of Major Mechanics & Triggers v.41
e) Anti-Trolling, Buffs, & Counter-Weights
Not Implemented
…Anti-Troll – WvW Dishonor Flag
……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.
……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.
……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.
Too easy to abuse, sadly.
Ask Maguuma about War Machine.
Heh.
To the OP. Very glad your first thought was new player. Very glad you followed to help.
That’s the easiest way to determine spies.
Next time take a video, document time, server, place, and submit a support ticket. Your paper trail initiates an investigation, and if this guy does it every time he logs in, he’ll get banned. Ofc he can just make another free account, but it’ll cost him —- time or money to level up and get access to wvw — and if he gets banned each time… It’ll get old.
But do submit full documentation to back up your ticket.
Transfers are already locked at once a week I thought?
I’d prefer to see them locked to six months, but then I suppose with free accounts folks could get around it. Or add a very steep price to transferring like $25-$50 per xfer.
Let people transfer for free, and sadly, you’d see a lot of gaming .. and not the good kind.
Per the OP: most NA servers WANT more bodies, I don’t think you’ll run into a host server that isn’t thrilled by added pop. EU on the other hand … Lol.
Maybe with so few tiers they should go back to winner moves up, loser goes down for awhile. There’s always going to be uneven matches but at least having variety will keep things fresh.
Naw, then people will scream about unfair matches re: population disparity. They tried that one tournament and forum was rife with unhappy people.
@Swagger: stop spamming threads about completely different stuff with your EOTM-idea which already has been downvoted into oblivion.
+1000
For the thread: just a matter of discussing it in map and agreeing to hold off piling on. We saw the mega blobs in EU for a while, until guilds started cooperating … The opposing servers took the prompt and you got more 20 vs fights more frequently. It’s all about how leadership sets the example.
Our guilds had a lot of respect for each other and would often make a game of it … First to call firsties and reach the opposing group, got the fight.
Our roamers would do their scoutly duties and find the other guild their own blob. Was win-win and a lot of good-natured teasing on map.
On the mixed bl question, please give options of:
No, only Alpine
No, only Desert
Yes, 2 Alpine 1 desert
Yes, 2 desert 1 Alpine.
Personally, I’d choose “No, only Alpine.” I can’t stand desert bl.
I actually found once they changed the home bl wp issue on DBL, and nuked the Oasis event, it wasn’t so bad. The placement of the towers makes them less strategic and less “mobile” but for the lowest ranked server in a tier, it could be deemed a benefit to defense and give the lowest ranked server a tiny advantage.
Mixed bl’s = yes, red/lowest server gets desert (easier to defend)
Repair hammer = the defender in me went squeeeeeee when I saw this suggestion. The player in me realizes this will be abused. It’s a cool idea, I know it’s been thrown around here on the forums a number of times, but when you stop and think about how it can be exploited, the ultimate decision is nay (sadly).
World linking = only to thwart the bandwagoners and make them exhausted about server hopping until they finally yell uncle and settle in one spot.
Fairly regularly, I see posts that say something to the effect of:
“The world that most of our guild is on is Full, so we’ve been having our new/returning guild members transfer to the Guest world, but what will happen if the Guest world gets relinked? Will we have to pay to transfer all those members again?”
This solution would give guilds like that an opportunity to freely reform on a world with plenty of space for their entire guild.
Now of course it’s still entirely possible that guilds won’t actually be willing to transfer off their current worlds, even for the opportunity to get all of their members onto the same world. However, that’s exactly why I made this post, just to confirm either case.
Don’t buy into those statements. It’s political gaming to buy more guilds. Stack the bleeding of players.
Whenever it’s been suggested in the past that these guilds join less populated servers to enjoy the game with incoming friends, it’s been flatly refused. They’re not going to do it with new servers. Or they may, and leave main accounts on T1, and then return to their main account after the shiny wears off of the new servers.
I think the way you linked EU was closer to an ideal. Top populated servers became solo, the rest matched up. I’d suggest this method might work for NA.
I understand that further reducing server cap size will help with the linking and parity, but as many here have pointed out, you already have existing low tier servers that no one will move to.
Certainly the novelty of a “brand new server” will appeal to a few, but until you find a solution for the bandwagoner, you’re only delaying the inevitable stacking that will occur. So this solution, unfortunately, doesn’t offer a long term fix for the health of the game.
Save the cheerleader, save the world(s)? Nope. More like stop the bandwagoners, save the game.
P.S. Keep the linking. It gives you more control over some of the server gaming that’s occurred.
He actually reads the forum and people grousing about Reddit only.
*sniff
Feel loved folks.
For the record: No on elaborate system, it feels too much like EoTM at reference.
As for the 800 vs 500 gems, I think, as someone else rightly pointed out, if you can grind that in a day in pve it’s not going to have much impact on the bandwagoners. Make it 2500 (or more) gems, or do, as you suggested linking more frequently (which kind of wreaks havoc on the community ecosystem though).
That does not have the desired affect. All that happens is those who can afford to transfer do as they please, and those who are unhappy on their server leave the game entirely. Most of these transfers are paid for by credit card and if money is not an issue it doesn’t make a difference. Increased costs to get out of a situation you are not happy with = easier to leave the game entirely than pay.
This equates to only those who can afford to be happy will. I would think they would want to encourage more participation, not less.
The core issue is bandwagoners and people looking for an easy win.
If you don’t address that issue, nothing you do will change the existing status quo.
Even moneybags players will eventually start to account for the funds used in transferring. They don’t have infinite resources.
And those that grind for gems will be less inclined to hop, too, given the labour needed to raise the funds.
The cost of transferring should not be impossible, but it should require effort to prompt at least a good long think about doing it.
I would favor a blow it up option. Perhaps plan it out as a recurring cycle. Wvw’s very own elder dragon, completely nuke resuffle and form new servers every 4 or 5 years. Or with each expansion that could work too.
I have always seen works linking as a bandaid. Even nuking it all would be a stop gap. But one that could participate well with big changes to how wvw works.
Biggest thing is getting butts in wvw and not have us feel like we are competing for space since the maps queue so easy. It has to feel rewarding and accessible and no EotM doesn’t count as wvw. Look at your metrics for what queued players do while waiting for regular wvw. Most sit around or farm or hit another wvw map while they wait. All queued they don’t EotM.
Blowing it up won’t fix issues. It’s like moths at a light, you wave your hand to disrupt them and they just resettle back where they were before.
The issue is bandwagoners or people looking for an easy win by stacking.
That core issue won’t get resolved by blowing things up. You’ll get a replica of the current situation in under a month.
He actually reads the forum and people grousing about Reddit only.
*sniff
Feel loved folks.
For the record: No on elaborate system, it feels too much like EoTM at reference.
As for the 800 vs 500 gems, I think, as someone else rightly pointed out, if you can grind that in a day in pve it’s not going to have much impact on the bandwagoners. Make it 2500 (or more) gems, or do, as you suggested linking more frequently (which kind of wreaks havoc on the community ecosystem though).
I am from a T8 server, and want to go back to T8. My reasoning is that I enjoy low population fights. I think it can also be a bit more strategic than “let’s blob over everyone and make it blob v blob”.
If you want low population fights try PvP, because WvW isn’t designed for nothing but that which happens in T8 brackets.
Blobbing is strategic, just not how you’d like it. I don’t think blobbing is healthy for the mode, however this is entirely a different issue and it wont be solved by reversing the process.
In the olden days you would still have X number of players, but instead of one blob there would be 4 different groups running around. Now those 4 groups of 15-20 voltron into a giant blob, and it isn’t as fun as it used to be.
I agree that low pop fights are better found in PvP as WvW is meant for larger clashes, but I do wish that the blobs would separate a bit more.
It was always this way in NA from about a year into the game, and only recently in EU.
The in-game mail notification should be active now.
How it works:
The mail is sent once upon WvW rankup (minimum rank 10), each time a new poll is activated. The mail includes a link to the poll website.
@Jayne, I could be wrong but are you assuming that the recent transfers to lower tier servers are going to stay put if there is an unlinking? I would guess the opposite as the gameplay will be more a roaming style than a blob style. That said, the full servers will prevent these transfers from relocating again, and thus cause them to quit for the time being.
Likely not. It’s not the way of the bandwagoner.
But.
If T1 servers remain locked, and servers are unlinked and then relinked to other low pop servers, there’s hope that this will facilitate the population parity everyone’s been begging for, for years.
Add a steep xfer cost of say $50, and people might be more inclined to push their server up, and bring competitiveness and anti-stacking gameplay. You can still grind the $50 in game play for gems, but it’s going to make you think twice about server hopping, particularly with a large guild.
And if they do? More money for Anet to invest in WvW … Finally making our game mode competitive and viable to the pve market shop crowd.
Are the lower tiered servers, paired with the high ones, not getting a population boost? You’re saying people reporting guild movement to lower tiers aren’t being truthful?
This will still mean servers would have to be combined, and if this happens both servers should have input into what they want their new server to be called so no one is left out.
What if you still carried your server name, regardless of who you were paired with?
It wouldn’t be too confusing in WvW, simply because red = enemy. And still allow all servers to retain their unique identity.
Top servers are being purposefully capped to help spread out the population into the lower linked servers. Once unlinked, I believe the hope is that the lower tiers will see a much better parity for action-based WvW.
Opening up the higher tier servers would defeat this attempt to fix an issue everyone’s been screaming about for three years — stacked T1 NA servers.
Over in EU it’s a bit different (well except for SFR :p), where players have spread themselves out and not stacked any one server — although that appears to be changing, too sadly.
This initiative is to push NA players into different servers because they were unwilling to destack themselves, and still cried on the forums about it.
The current plan is to rotate the borderlands maps each quarterly update. That said, now that we are actively polling the community, perhaps we can start exploring other options.
For instance, nothing is really stopping us from having a combination of ABL and DBL maps running simultaneously. 2 of one and 1 of the other. If we polled that, and players approved it, then there’d be no need for the rotation, and players on both sides of the issue could play on their preferred map. The downside of course, would be any perception of imbalance that may arise from one map being considered the stronger “Home” map, but we could always give the more defensible map to Red/Blue and leave the less defensible map to Green.
TYLER YES! DBL for redbl and Alpine on blue and green bl.
Give it a shot and see how it goes!
Actually that makes sense, assuming red truly means the lowest ranked and not RNG.
E Z.
Give DBL to the lowest rank server in the match; ignoring color. That is, of course, if we agree that DBL is “more easily defended” than Alpine. I think that’s possibly true today, but is very questionable. Regardless, it may not be true after eventual terrain, environment, and NPC changes to Alpine (you gotta know that they’re thinking about that, right?)
DBL is “more easily defended” for map size reasons alone. You can’t use another tower to hit a keep, etc .. and while Alpine k-train chugging means you lose a tower the minute you see white swords, DBL white swords means you actually have time to run and check (assuming you have the bodies to defend). It’s not such an insta-domino effect on DBL (but it can happen with no response, lol).
The alternative is that all of the west coast players get to sit in queues for 3 hours, just because a small minority of east coast players have work early the next morning.
Yeah, I can see why ANet isn’t listening.
I’d be curious to see the % breakdown of East vs West players.
I’ve always assumed, because the East is more populated, that the majority was always East Coast — demographically.
They have to keep some randomness to it, otherwise you’ll get people complaining they don’t get to play the other colors, why are we stuck on red for 6 weeks now!.
Well… use to mostly get those complaints when world completion had to be done in wvw, but not anymore.
That only really mattered for map completion, which has been removed.
That’s what I said in my last sentence…… …. .. .
13 hour work day, I think my eyes stopped working an hour ago. Sorry..
Desert is designed as a border. We cant have kittening 4 of them. It’s not gonna be another EB unless they do what many of us want them to do – remake the kitten map from scratch because nothing else can fix it’s core problems. But that aint gonna happen and you know it. So no point even suggesting that.
If they readjust to make the corresponding keep towers serve a function … ie, you can use it as a base to hit other objectives, then I think the map is salvageable. I was happy just getting the home keeps WPs back.
They have to keep some randomness to it, otherwise you’ll get people complaining they don’t get to play the other colors, why are we stuck on red for 6 weeks now!.
Well… use to mostly get those complaints when world completion had to be done in wvw, but not anymore.
That only really mattered for map completion, which has been removed.
But if you make it an hour early with the daylight savings it would 8pm est ;-; more time for us est players to play. So basically with the current time the people who can’t play rn will only be able to play reset every 6 months?
Which is 5pm PST. Too early for those living on the West Coast.
Unless our internal R&D project is successful— flattening the Earth so there’s only one sunrise/sunset for everyone— there is no time which exists that will please everyone.
Time to dust off the giant turtle and the elephants?
