Guild Wars 2

sparc.3649:

Okay so this thread is most likely NOT what you’re thinking it’s going to be. No it’s not me talking about whether they’re here already after today’s update, quite the opposite actually…

So I hear they’re bringing back the old A-BL’s? Well then, now it’s MY turn to Q.Q

I can’t believe they (anet) would cave in to all the WHINY babies. So, now it’s my time to be the whiny baby! Like I said, I can’t believe they’re going to cave in to you Q.Qers!

I don’t even know (nor do I care) if they actually plan to scrap the DBL’s all together or not (I doubt it, they worked very hard on them) – but the mere fact that they’re going to “cave in” to all the Q.Q – is a HUGE sign of weakness first off. Second off, I do know (luckily) I am NOT literally the ONLY person with this viewpoint, that, once they bring back your maps (due to all the Q.Q) you guys will be happy for a couple more months (somehow) and then people are still going to quit anyway. Especially after having nice new shiny’s (DBLs) people will play back on the old maps for, I personally give it 3 months (1Q), until the WvW just KEEPS going DOWNWARD. I give it three months until people are like “kitten these boring old dried up stale plain Jane looking maps (what were we thinkin LOL)”.

So here’s my Q.Q about that: Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q Q.Q – ok enough, I’m done. I’ll keep Q.Qing in private now. I can’t believe the ABL’s are coming back, I can’t believe anet is making yet ANOTHER move that is just going to be the final NAILS in the coffin of WvW! I will now likely be leaving the game. I don’t wanna play a game made by a spineless company (if I was in charge I’d have told you all to suck it up). Well I’m taking my advice, I’m gonna suck it up, IN A NEW GAME. One that isn’t ran by a bunch of spineless employees who will cave in at the whim of some twelve year olds! Not to mention I don’t really desire to play with all you WHINERS who actually want those boring old dried up stale maps back either anyways. I hope you all have fun with your old maps, anet SHOULD have put them where they really belong after the release of DBL’s – IN THE CIRCULAR FILE!

But enough about that, first you Q.Q, now I Q.Q – awesome, a huge ******* Q.Q fest goin’ on over here! It was fun but I’m going to have to point out the obvious for anyone who doesn’t even realize it (even anet mayhaps?)…

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The WHY. WHY is WvW “broke”. Some of you may still think this is subjective, let me be the first to tell you, it is not. Some of you may think it’s things like “OMGZ new BL’s suck” – let me tell you, IT’S NOT. THIS is why WvW is “broke”. There’s actually not a SINGLE reason, it’s all compounded – but adds up to the how/what/when/where/why WvW is on the degrade (and will continue to be – UNLESS this/these issue(s) are DIRECTLY addressed). Sadly I am not going to give a TL;DR version – so you’re just going to have to read this (what I believe is about to be a) wall of text! Here goes:

It does actually all begin with server population imbalance AKA “server stacking”. Since this has essentially been an issue (or potential one) since launch, it is one of if not THE biggest problems/reasons for the death of WvW. I wont even get into the speculation of the WHY people do it, nonetheless, PEOPLE DO IT. So, the top tier servers, due to server stacking, had what? REALLY LONG QUEUE TIMES. So, rather than fix the issue at hand (anet cough) by dealing with server population balance, they slap a band-aid on it. That bandaid was called EOTM. Now if you have a really long queue but you want to WvW, you can go to this place, EoTM, that will be LIKE WvW. Notice this surely does NOT fix “server stacking” one bit, because now rather than letting them suffer with long queues (mayhaps making them want to transfer to a lower tier), they have “EoTM” – GG anet, GG! This is one of the reasons I still insist that they SHOULD just completely REMOVE “EoTM”! After all, any of us “real WvWers” know that EoTM IS NOT WvW! What is EoTM? It is a “WvW-LIKE” Mega Server! Which brings us onto the other major player in what has/is ruined/ruining WvW. Mega-servers! Don’t get me wrong, I think they were/are a GREAT idea, for PvE – NOT WvW (or “EoTM”). Prior to mega-server, recruiting for WvW was VERY straight forward, and actually pretty easy to do, at least for me. I was even usually pretty good at convincing people to come just to “try it” even if they didn’t really want to. Funny, of course those are usually the people that wound up liking it the most LOL! Anyway, Mega-servers, have/are TRASHING WvW. How the heck am I supposed to recruit, and even more so, possibly bring NEW BLOOD to WvW when PvE is a HUGE cluster**** of ALL “servers”. Sure, you “can” – but NOT EFFECTIVELY. Reflecting upon it, Mega-servers is EXACTLY when my recruiting dropped probably by about 75%! I don’t care what other people THINK about that, or what other methods people may have/use – IN GAME recruiting is simply put, the BEST way of recruiting. I’ve tried external methods, including (this very) forum(s), etc! And while there may be a good number of people that check out this and other (“fan”) forums/websites; they STILL pale in comparison to the number of people who JUST PLAY THE GAME. So NO, I should NOT have to rely on external recruitment. Apparently I either suck at it, or it’s really just about as ineffective as I’ve just described anyways with the fact that “most people JUST PLAY THE GAME”! So here we have it, “server stacking” has always been an (THE?) issue. So rather than DIRECTLY address it, ANet gives us – EOTM. So now people that are already in WVW (w/ really long queues) just stay stacked, or re-stack, or whatever. And PvE receives “Mega-servers” too, so now we can’t really effectively bring in NEW BLOOD; at least NOTHING compared to before these “mega servers”!

So, is getting rid of “mega server” the best solution, no, at least not at this point. Like I said, Mega server was/is actually a good thing, for PvE… Which makes the whole “server” concept “outdated” for WvW then. Because now there’s an issue with balance surrounding ALL of GW2, because PART of the game doesn’t use “servers”, while WvW DOES. So the scale is tipped toward “mega server”- or, MOST of the game being ONE “huge” “server”. While WvW is still broken up into many many “servers”. Heck, the ONLY reason for “servers” now IS WvW – EVERYTHING else can be done, WITH your friends, REGARDLESS of what “server” you pick. So if “servers” aren’t the way of the land for PvE, they shouldn’t be for WvW either. While I can’t profess to hold the key (answer) to all or any of what actually does need to be done to “fix” WvW, I CAN say what I know it’s not. And it’s not leaving all these individual “servers” on a game that otherwise doesn’t have ANY other reason for those “servers”. Remember, we HAVE to have an effective way to recruit people to our “war” (WvW)! Not one, and this literally actually recently happened to me, where, you’re recruiting in PvE (of course, recruiting IN WvW is just as pointless, those people are ALREADY IN THE GAME MODE) and you get some guy/gal who is like “yea I’ll join your guild”, you get to talking about WvW and they’re not really into it but then you convince them to try it – CRAP, can’t (at least not with us) they’re on a different “server”!

So I also don’t think some of the very things I also hear they’re GOING to be doing, are really going to help EITHER! I heard they’re going to do some kind of “server merge” crap. That’s not going to do anything either; may make things “fun” for some people again, for a while – but it’s still IMHO ultimately just another BANDAID. That’s going to fall off eventually, and the wound will still eventually bleed out!

So, I know my ADD kind of took this thread all over, now to declare an official PURPOSE to this thread. Lets get some constructive ideas going (for anet >.>) as to, what they can do to, not just “fix wvw”, but specifically, fix wvw population (server stacking) and recruitment issues!

You’re very good at QQ’ing, I don’t think you should call your opposition “WHINY BABIES” because it’s hypocritical of you to do that and write this kind of post…

At any rate, I am glad the Alpine Borderlands are coming back and I commend Arenanet for listening to the majority of WvW players who asked for it to come back and replace the Desert Borderlands.

Osu.6307:

zinkz.7045:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

That was because many people left when Anet changed stability and essentially rendered melee a second tier group of classes in WvW behind casters who are still dominating the meta even now (i.e. pirate-ship meta).

LOL, yes “melee” classes are second tier, poor guardians how do they cope, the lack of objectivity and hypocrisy is amazing, for second (or rather third tier) take a look at how engy/ranger/mes & thief have fared in large scale WvW for the entire game, at best bit parts at worst non-existent, where were the cries about those, ah that’s right nowhere, that “melee” classes were totally overrepresented, totally OP, for much of the game (and guards still are) was just fine.

As for the old stability it was just as broken as the current system, which is why you had 60 man “melee” blobs rolling face across the keyboard with unstoppable amounts of stab that would not be stripped & that rendered supposed strong long cooldown hard CC skills useless, it says a lot about how bad the WvW playerbase is, how similar it is to the mindless drones in Silverwastes, that some think a system was “good” with a mechanic so broken that it rendered hard CC useless and made ‘positioning’ and pushing braindead easy.

Lemme guess. You main a zerker LB ranger?

Your arguments make no sense. The old stability was not OP or broken, it was simply something that made melee viable in wvw. A 60-man zerg is going to roll over anything whether it is mostly melee or ranged, so how does that have anything to do with stability. I sense this is just another rant from someone who was repeatedly killed by a guild group that practiced hard and successfully honed their skills to such a degree that they could take on blobs twice their size. There is absolutely nothing mindless or braindead about that. If it was so easy, why didn’t you do it?

^ Exactly Osu.

zinkz.7045:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

1. Engineer, Ranger, Mes, and Thief do have a purpose in WvW fights, its called gank-team. …

LOL, most guilds did not even recruit engies or rangers for most of the game that is how valued they were, whilst mes & thief had small niche roles, there were more guards in a blob or guild raid than those four classes put together, and that is still the case now, which puts your cries about “melee” into perspective, class balance in WvW has always been a total joke, so when people go on about the tragic state of melee being “second tier” it comes across as pure hypocrisy.

MomentofWeakness.1246:

2. Old stability wasn’t broken if you utilized boon strips and were organized enough to call out when the enemy didn’t have stability on their skill bar and dropped your hard CC’s when they were vulnerable to them. It required you to use boon strips and good communication but they weren’t rendered useless…In essence, old stability required good mechanics and communication to strip and then make plays off of while it was not actively on the enemy, what’s so bad about that?

Not really, boon strip was a joke, most of the boon stripping skills were useless in large scale (mes strip on shatter, steal, thief sword 3, etc), then you had things like well of corruption where stab was the last in order to be stripped, which is a joke when melee ran around with a row of boons permanently covering stab, and could reapply with instant skills, and with a couple of guards that rotating stab you could keep it up most of the time, which when you consider you have times when you back off, or standing off, or can tank a CC because of the position you are in, you basically had it whenever you would actually need it, and the chances of it getting stripped were tiny, which is why it was all about immobilize, because hard CC was pretty useless.

It’s true that rangers and engineers played little to no role at various points in time prior to HoT but if we take the ranger for example, it just needed more buffs to be competitive with thief and mesmer. Now that things have improved for those two classes you can make the argument that they are worthwhile in fights whereas before they were buffed you couldn’t but I wouldn’t blame the WvW community for that…Engineer and Ranger needed some love but that isn’t something that the community can control and the primary classes have always been dictated by the meta. Look at how prevalent Revenants are right now.

I disagree that boon strips were not important but I do agree with you that condition based CC’s: chill, cripple, and immobilize were extremely important as well and immobilize was a very prized condition based CC but again what’s wrong with that? You’re not going to convince me that boon strips had no value when I know necromancers who would work in groups and knew how to coordinate their damage well enough to boon strip and drop Guardians and Warriors in seconds during a fight.

As far as second-tier, I am saying the impact that Warrior’s and Guardian’s have in fights is second-tier to casters at the moment (Pirate Ship Meta) instead of being in equilibrium like it was before.

lil devils x.6071:

Liston.9708:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

Liston.9708:

NotKalkz.1286:

bring the old maps back
60% of people who left the game will come back
problems solved
no need to type 100 paragraphs

No they won’t – many left before HOT when alpine BL was in play….. How soon we all forget…

That was because many people left when Anet changed stability and essentially rendered melee a second tier group of classes in WvW behind casters who are still dominating the meta even now (i.e. pirate-ship meta). I’m sure WvW’s lack of rewards and other things were a factor but that was a primary issue at the time.

Agreed – it is the HOT and dbl talk of being the ruin that is wrong. It certainly did not help, but there was a lot of attrition before HOT oh and clamor ing for new maps…..

It isn’t wrong, you see, these things (PPK, Stabs, siege humping no GvG ladder) being wrong made people leave… THEN the DBLS made the rest leave… THEY BOTH ruined the game.. not just one or the other. Players just started leaving even faster than they did before over the DBLS in hordes.

I think we are agreeing here? I said it was “a primary issue” NOT “the” primary issue…

zinkz.7045:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

That was because many people left when Anet changed stability and essentially rendered melee a second tier group of classes in WvW behind casters who are still dominating the meta even now (i.e. pirate-ship meta).

LOL, yes “melee” classes are second tier, poor guardians how do they cope, the lack of objectivity and hypocrisy is amazing, for second (or rather third tier) take a look at how engy/ranger/mes & thief have fared in large scale WvW for the entire game, at best bit parts at worst non-existent, where were the cries about those, ah that’s right nowhere, that “melee” classes were totally overrepresented, totally OP, for much of the game (and guards still are) was just fine.

As for the old stability it was just as broken as the current system, which is why you had 60 man “melee” blobs rolling face across the keyboard with unstoppable amounts of stab that would not be stripped & that rendered supposed strong long cooldown hard CC skills useless, it says a lot about how bad the WvW playerbase is, how similar it is to the mindless drones in Silverwastes, that some think a system was “good” with a mechanic so broken that it rendered hard CC useless and made ‘positioning’ and pushing braindead easy.

1. Engineer, Ranger, Mes, and Thief do have a purpose in WvW fights, its called gank-team. The purpose of gank classes was to primarily focus low melee (Engineer, Ranger, Mes could do this, or if the melee was slowed and became separatedThieves could jump in as well) and backline and create downs subsequently creating momentum for their team. (winning the rally fight = winning the fight often times, although this is less important now with rallying only reviving 1 player as opposed to 5). If you really think that these classes didn’t serve a purpose then I feel like you didn’t understand their value in fights, I mean this respectfully. Pressuring and taking out the enemies casters in particular helps your group apply more pressure on the enemy and allows your melee train to ramp up its aggressiveness in fights as well as finish downs. A good pick team could control the ebb and flow of a fight and have a major impact on the outcome. I’ve seen it a ton of times…If you really think these classes didn’t matter then why did [TA] Team Aggression from EU have Sindrener from PvP team [oRNG] Orange Logo on their gank team?

2. Old stability wasn’t broken if you utilized boon strips and were organized enough to call out when the enemy didn’t have stability on their skill bar and dropped your hard CC’s when they were vulnerable to them. It required you to use boon strips and good communication but they weren’t rendered useless…In essence, old stability required good mechanics and communication to strip and then make plays off of while it was not actively on the enemy, what’s so bad about that?

3. If anything has devalued Engineer, Ranger, Mes, and Thief it was the combination of new stability and the rally mechanic changing…I personally wish they’d make it 2-3 people rallying instead of 1. I do think 5 was too many but 2-3 seems more reasonable than 1 to me (just my opinion here).

Sviel.7493:

The video was just to help with pathing—it just helps to know that we’re both on the same page in that respect.

I haven’t timed lord’s room to lord’s room specifically so I won’t dispute that just yet. I did gloss over that in your initial post, for which I apologize.

May I ask why you use that metric, though? I can’t imagine the scenario comes up often, but if I’m around then I’m usually preventing the enemies from reaching the lord’s room, so perhaps it happens more outside of my experience.

No worries, so first you want to plan worst case that way anything less than worst case = a manageable situation.

Why I use that metric:

1. If I am on another map and I port to home BL and Garrison is open and Fire Keep is being hit then I know exactly how much time I have to get there and based upon the enemies position within the Fire Keep and/or the health of the Keep lord (if it’s already being attacked) I can determine whether or not to even run there or prioritize something else.

2. If I am being hit by both servers on home BL and Garrison is open and I just finish defending Air Keep and I have to run to Fire Keep from Garrison lords room (where the waypoint is) again, I know whether I have time to react or not based on what scouts at/near the Fire Keep tell me.

There’s lots of scenarios obviously and the two I presented are based on the Keep’s being contested and Garrison not being contested but it’s a useful metric. Far more useful than knowing how long it takes to get from Garrison lords room to the outer walls of the Air or Fire Keep… you aren’t most like encountering the enemy at the Northern points of the Keeps, you need to actually move south or towards the lords room to encounter the enemy.

Liston.9708:

NotKalkz.1286:

bring the old maps back
60% of people who left the game will come back
problems solved
no need to type 100 paragraphs

No they won’t – many left before HOT when alpine BL was in play….. How soon we all forget…

That was because many people left when Anet changed stability and essentially rendered melee a second tier group of classes in WvW behind casters who are still dominating the meta even now (i.e. pirate-ship meta). I’m sure WvW’s lack of rewards and other things were a factor but that was a primary issue at the time.

Sviel.7493:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

You are horribly and terribly wrong. Here, have a video that shows you how to get around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CENlFEHyea4

FROM LORDS ROOM TO LORDS ROOM…Your video doesn’t demonstrate what I was saying. As a commander, I care about how long it takes me to get from one lords room to the other not outer walls but actually the core of the structure. If you take those timings you will see that even leaping around on a warrior with swiftness is 2 minutes +/- 10 seconds. A point of order here though.. necromancers and other classes like that cannot leap so as a commander you don’t just stack swiftness and leap all over the place because its not practical and you will create a large tail between your front line and back line. I did watch your video but it has no relevance to what I said in my first post…

I’d rather them scrap the DBL altogether and revert things back to the way the used to be it was much better. I’m still open to a new WvW map in the future but I feel that the DBL was a failed project. Failure is not always a bad thing, Anet can learn a lot from the player base about why DBL was unpopular and this will help with a new map in the future if they choose to make a new WvW map down the road.

CCLegion.5936:

My 2 cents on a certain topic. That topic being the stability fix.
Basically, there would be a ton of issues if you go back to duration stacking. Several things that were introduced or buffed after that change would dramatically increase its effectiveness beyond what we remember.
Due to the introduction of concentration as armor stat, reaching 100% uptime on would be easier than ever.
With the popularity of boonshare mesmers, which would only increase if such a change were to happen, and the amount of resistance the bring it is also unlikely that soft CC has the desired effect.
End result being groups with very high if not perfect resistance to all forms of CC.
And I’m not sure whether boon corruption would be a good answer to all that either.

Overall, it’s a concept that is, in my opinion, very dangerous when all that’s needed is a few nerfs to certain skills and a buff to stability to protect it against massed CC.

Even at 100% boon duration Guardians will only have Stand Your Ground (10s of stability) and Virtue of Courage/Shield of Courage (8 seconds of stability). If you go 100% into boon duration there are both advantages and disadvantages (example, you give up damage and armor for health and boon duration). Having duration based stability isn’t going to cause problems. Right now boon strips are devalued by disables (hard cc’s) because disables go directly to the stability boon essentially bypassing other boons… at least in the past boon strips didn’t always guarantee loss of stability, they just guaranteed a loss of boons. The counter play to duration based stability was boon strips in the past and emphasis on utilizing those types of skills would return to the game mode if duration based stability returned like the majority of people are requesting. As far as resistance, well many guilds already stack this boon in a variety of ways, perhaps resistance could be evaluated after they reverted stability but in the current meta where everything you can think of is locking down melee players can you blame guilds for trying to counter ranged bombs by resistance stacking? Anyways your thoughts…?

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Here’s my thought on this, after my own experiences and reading through the Reddit thread.

1. PvE-nish – remove the “fancy mechanics” in DBLs where possible.
2. Mobility – return uncontested waypoints when holding zones to make it easier for players to find their way to the group.
3. Enable EB, 3xDBL and 3xABL at the same time. This keeps both lovers and haters happy. Iit also helps with…

4. Megaserver fix:
a) track average population for each server over the week. Over time, add in population during different time periods to improve 24-hour balance for …
b) at reset, group servers into only the three colours, like EoTM has, by taking the stats learned in “a” to have 3 unique, balanced “Megateams,” each week
c) don’t use the overflow map system. Seven maps with queues is a better problem than empty T1 maps.
d) retain the current week long progression to avoid the mercenary feel of EoTM.
e) Create additional WvW maps as necessary to ease queues and keep interest.

If we’re already jamming people from all the servers into a single PvE experience, why not follow a similar path in WvW?

This avoids needing to amalgamate quieter servers, and potentially mixes things up to ensure one of the three colours doesn’t just dominate each week.

That is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many maps dude, 7 maps…. you’re kitten meh right?

You need both PPT and PPK. PPT to make territory, structures, and camps valuable and PPK to make fighting (both small and large scale) valuable in the game mode. The main thing is that they need to have equal weight on the outcome of a matchup.

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

Please scrap the Desert Borderlands, they are absolutely terrible I’d run out of lines before I could finish expressing all the flaws of the new map and I have 6,000 hours in WvW alone.

Signing my name for the old maps! Bring back the Alpine Borderlands!

Dislike, and I also dislike EotM.

DeWolfe.2174:

migellito.7301:

I’m just saying there are a lot of voices that aren’t here, and that those players matter too.

And… one would have to assume that the percentage of people for and against would scale proportionately.

IF the percentages scaled proportionally then the list the dev’s have now would be accurate…which I think there list is extremely accurate so hopefully they stick to it

It’s super overpowered, hopefully they remove all of these gimmicky buffs or only allow them when outnumbered.

Please make NA reset Fridays at 8pm EST/5pm PST again like it was in the old days…

Please focus priorities around fixing the following:

1. Fix Stability (Bring to Previous Form)

a. The stability nerf/change in WvW has caused WvW battles to become stale, and one-dimensional. It used to be that there were three distinct groups (the melee train, casters, and pick team/gank) in WvW that helped shaped the Meta and each group which contained two or more classes filled a unique role/purpose in the game-mode, which were of equal importance and significance to victory in any battle. No doubt any class could modify its role to some extent because of the versatility of Guild Wars 2’s class design but this was the general breakdown of how things used to work.

b. The stability change has caused melee players to be powerless because any disable instantly removes a stack of stability from the melee player. The problem with this change is that the amount of stacks initially given is not enough to balance out against the overwhelming number of disables being thrown towards the melee player. For example, siege such as the catapult, shield generator, and trebuchet, all which have disabling effects on their primary skills can remove a stack of stability on less than 10-second intervals (ex: shield generator skill (#1) [Force Ball] which can hit 50 players on a 4-second cool down and removes a stack of stab every hit). Often times when siege is placed, there is more than one piece of siege placed down so the amount of disables is generally magnified. In addition to siege-based stability-stack-removers, there are a plethora of skills that every class has access to which also contribute to stability-stack-removal in fights. Some examples would be [Unsteady Ground], [Static Field], on the Elementalist, or [Reaper’s Mark] on the Necromancer. There is nothing wrong with these class-based skills, but they do contribute to stability-stack-removal along with siege and many other class-specific skills not mentioned here. The overarching point being that there are too many ways for stability to be removed and not enough ways for it to be applied in fights on the scale that WvW supports. As a community, WvW players understand how the stability change may or may not contribute to a better PvP environment but in WvW it has crippled the game mode and the Meta.

c. The stability change has not only negatively affected melee players. Classes such as the Thief, Mesmer, and Necromancer have suffered as well. These classes are particularly good at boon-removal. Yet, since the arrival of the stability change, these types of skills which remove boons have been devalued. The most prized boons to remove tend to be protection and stability and when you can by-pass all boons by using disables, the need for boon-removal skills is diminished.

d. The stability change did not just affect primarily melee classes such as the Warrior or Guardian either; it is not as feasible to run an Elementalist or Necromancer in a more melee-centric role because of the stability change (ex: D/D Elementalist).

e. The stability change heavily favors large groups because they can send out a greater number of disables and subsequently damage than smaller groups can. This gives larger groups an advantage over smaller groups who rapidly lose their stability and mobility which essentially renders them immobile and vulnerable to overwhelming amounts of ranged pressure and siege fire (which also removes stacks). One of WvW’s greatest aspects was that a smaller group could defeat a larger group with skillful play and chemistry, this is no longer possible with stacks-based stability. Prior to the stability change, winning fights through more organized/efficient/skilled play was something that many guilds worked towards being able to achieve and helped create and sustain many WvW guilds.

2. Overpowering the Defender/Siege Wars 2

a. Currently the defensive force is extremely overpowered. There are a multitude of options for the defender to overwhelm the offensive force. Most notably the shrines, design/chokes on new maps, pact fleet air ship, chilling fog, nerf to omega golems (golems can no longer hit siege above walls), shield generators, cloaking waters (EBG), sentries, banners, emergency waypoints having unlimited respawns, etc.

b. The problem with having the scales tipped so heavily in the defenders favor is it takes the excitement away from the game mode. The offensive force should be equally powerful in fights. When defending is too easy, the battles become stale and there is nothing suspenseful about defending structures. Offensive forces need to be able to have an equal chance against the defender. A good start to fixing this issue would be revert Omega Golems back to their previous form so they can attack siege above walls, returning the waypoints to their previous form because the emergency waypoint is far too powerful in its current form and while I do like the emergency waypoint conceptually it was more engaging to be taking a keep and expect the enemy force to either run back from their Spawn or Garrison and try to save their structure or teleport in via their keeps waypoint if possible, and finally limiting offensive siege somewhat so that there isn’t 10+ arrow carts around a choke.

c. Keep/tower/camp lords are too strong and take forever to kill (most obvious with the Stonemist Castle lord) which doesn’t allow structures to be stolen through map manipulation and strategy which is unfortunate because it took away the important role that havoc guilds used to play in WvW matchups through sniping structures with a few players who took it upon themselves to tackle a large task (greater effort should equal a greater reward and havoc groups also manipulated the map this way and created a fog-of-war on the mini-map). Keep/tower/camp lords should only have these effects when a server is under the influence of the “outnumbered” buff. During times of equal population, servers should have an opportunity to punish each other for being out of position and not using available resources (mini-map, scouts, sentries) to keep an eye on the enemies movements and actions.

3. Rewards

a. WvW players should be able to earn new types of armor, runes, sigils, legendary weapons, legendary armor, food recipes, etc. when they are released by playing WvW instead of having to leave the game mode and the difficulty for earning new items should be equivalent.

b. WXP Points should be a currency earned through WvW play that can be spent in lieu of going to PvP or PvE and earning those game modes specific currencies so that WvW players can access new armor and items when they are released like players in the other game modes are able to (when you hit rank 10,000 you should still continue to earn WXP points for currency purposes even though you have reached maximum rank).

c. A WvW track similar to PvP would be a nice new feature that might also incentivize players to continue daily play in the WvW game mode.

d. There should be a WvW currency or some other form of reward given to anyone who participates in WvW based upon their placement and participation during that week. This reward should allow WvW players to earn something on the equivalent level of someone who invested the same amount of time/effort in PvE so that WvW players can properly gear their characters and afford necessities for the WvW game-mode.

4. WvW Titles/Achievements

a. Removing the old WvW titles and replacing them with new ones caused uproar in the community because many players had been working on the WvW achievements for three years and had only asked that the requirements be toned down, not the names of the titles which were highly sought after. The new names for the achievements and their complete re-work caused many players to be upset with Arenanet for taking away all of their efforts and essentially casting them aside.

b. In this video from Reyana’s interview with Colin Johanson and Mike O’Brien at PAX South 2015, Mike O’Brien says the following between (0:48s) and (0:56s) “We have always made a promise with Guild Wars 2 to respect players time and investments in their characters.” Yet, the multi-year investment(s) thousands of WvW players made towards the highly sought after WvW titles were tarnished and not respected as promised.

c. Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMaqOSE1Kx8

5. Outnumbered Buff (Population Balance)

a. Many of the new Heart of Thorns exclusive features should be only usable during the outnumbered buff so they empower defenders when the defender is significantly outnumbered. These features include: Hardened gates, hardened siege, iron guards, the dragon banner, centaur banner, and turtle banner, chilling fog, cloaking waters, and the pact fleet air ship. Allowing these features to be exclusively used when a server is “outnumbered” will help players feel like they have the ability to balance the scales and protect what they own. Both the chilling fog and the pact fleet air ship’s cool downs should be increased to 45 and 60 minutes respectively.

b. In addition to providing tools to defenders specifically when they are outnumbered, it would be ideal to also give additional incentives to players to join the map while outnumbered so that WvW population can improve overtime back to a healthy level. Non-player based buffs such as % increases to: WXP, Gold Find, EXP, Supply Carry, Badges, 25% movement speed, etc. would help players be incentivized to play the game when the odds are against them.

c. Players who are “outnumbered” should be rewarded higher than normal until their server’s population reaches a near-equal level to the other servers because it takes more effort for WvW players to make an impact on the map, get kills, etc. when outnumbered.

d. In the WvW panel it should tell players in PvE/PvP which maps are outnumbered and their potential reward(s) if they choose to join a map that is outnumbered. If a player joins a map that is outnumbered to help out their server they should receive a residual effect on those rewards (non-player based buffs) that last 1 hour after the outnumbered buff drops (unless they leave WvW) to encourage them to keep playing and reward them for fighting against the odds.

Thank you Arenanet for reaching out to us!

It’s a good start. Keep reviewing the feedback from her (Reyana’s) interviews and things will work themselves out. I’m looking forward to these changes, my own interview with Reyana in January, and hopefully more community-driven solutions.

Thank you guys for doing this, OOM: Heap Bytes error has plagued my system in WvW for 3 years, yet my system has 32GB of DDR3 haha.

Traps need ground targeting at a short range (300-range). This would pair well with the Heavy Light grand master trait for DH (which knocks back enemies who you hit with the longbow @ 300 or less range). More Importantly, when using traps with longbow the interaction is kind okittenward because you can’t really set the traps up and then use longbow skills effectively inside the trap area without burning something important like a dodge (you basically are forced to dodge backwards or sit in the traps with a melee weapon). It would be nice to have a short ranged ground targeting so that you could place the traps on a point and still be effective with longbow.

Stuck in Forest of Niflhel please help.

Diku.2546:

Sorry…will stop.

Please do not reply to my comments here moving forward.

Thank you.

Diku.2546:

coglin.1867:

What a horrible idea. I see no logic in removing server rankings, in order to simply have some manipulatable voting system that just cries to be trolled.

The Tier Based System that Matches 3 Worlds to fight Based on a “Server’s Rank” is being proposed to be thrown out.

Please go back & read the thread carefully.

Server Ranking IS NOT being proposed to be thrown out.

World Rank is no longer used to decide the Match-Ups in Tiers. There is no Tier.

World Rank is affected by the following & is really used for Tournaments & World Pride:

a) Weekly Count of Active WvW players for a Home World.
b) Weekly Overall Tick Score for a Home World
c) Weekly Time Counter(s) for Objective(s) held by a Home World
d) Weekly Objective(s) claimed by Enemy Guilds.

World Rank is still used, but will probably be used to determine Tournament Match-Ups.

Reference thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Discuss-New-WvW-Map-Mechanic-v2-0

I’m looking for input on my proposal please don’t inject your thread into mine. I am looking for comments towards my suggestions and their potential impact, thanks!

Tongku.5326:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

Tongku.5326:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

3. Increase the PPT value of upgraded structures based on each completed upgrade-tier by +5 points.

The reason I mention this is because while structures are more durable and there is a few quality of life benefits to having upgraded structures, you don’t actually get any increased value PPT/score-wise. My idea here basically is, when all of the Personnel and Structural upgrades are finished for a tier then you gain +5 points to that structure.

This would not only align well with Arenanet’s goals in HoT where upgrading is automated and follows a tiered system but also it would incentivize players to defend structures that are upgraded and would further motivate and justify saving a tier 3 tower over a tier 1 tower for example. But the main reason this would be a nice feature is because as servers transition between high and low coverage time zones their structures that are fully upgraded will have a higher tick even if it goes away over-time. Finally, enemy servers will have a greater sense of urgency to attack and seize upgraded towers because resetting them would be even more important.

Hi

Some of these are good ideas, but I disagree with your idea #3.

[Cut out your points so I could reply, but I did read your entire post @ Tongku.5326]

I can appreciate your perspective and I can see how my point #3 would mostly be useful in matchups that are currently more balanced amongst all time zones. As far as your suggestions I liked most of what you said except the idea of empty structures that aren’t being attended not being able to stand/tick. I have never been a fan of forcing people to sentry or making someone babysit a structure because it takes their ability to participate out of the game mode. Plus on low population servers this would be an absolute disaster because you would have almost no one in your groups because they would all be occupying structures. Sentry’ing unless voluntary is really not good for the game-mode. It would be ideal to give commanders more tools to respond to attacks and monitor upgrades/supply/etc. so that everyone can play instead of having to sit in TeamSpeak/Mumble and babysit a garrison or other structure.

I have been a fan of giving rewards for active effort, taking a structure then holding it without any active players in it = zero effort. Thus should yield 0 reward. And yes, it would drive people away from sentry duty, thats the point. On low tiers, they dont have the numebrs to split up and sentry everything, higher server slacks off cause as you stated sentry duty is boring, thus higher server loses that structure. This would work exactly and precisely as intended.

Also note, I stated this would be applicable to home BL map only, thus if left unattended, this would cause the home BL to return to its owner, not continue ticking in favor of a k-train that only had to take it once then leave. Overall effect on the score is that it would improve the balance quite a bit in favor of defenders. Especially on the lower tier servers, trust me, I came from one.

Your suggestion only helps more populated servers and that’s not a good thing. You’re assuming that lower tier servers are more disciplined but I’ve been on many servers (BP, Mag, FA, YB, TC, BG, JQ, and Kaineng) I can tell you that the lower down in tiers you go the less organized the pugs are, the less organized TS/Mumble is, and the less organized commanders are when they are working together on separate maps. Sure you’ll have organized guild groups that can be very effective (there is great players in all tiers) but the pugs tend to be worse. Regardless of that, your suggestion is going to force weaker servers to put all their people in keeps, towers, and camps just to hold them. When they only have 10 on the map then they won’t be able to move to another map and get things done or even defend anything on that map when the enemy comes in because it would be 1 person per structure. It’s a bad idea and it doesn’t allow people to actually play the game mode, it just makes them babysit keeps, towers, and camps.

Just as a side note, I’m looking for input on my proposal so maybe you can gear comments towards my suggestions and their potential impact, thanks!

I agree with coglin, you want to have tiers and competition with other servers who are near-equal strength to your own. I want to see balance not chaos. That’s what this thread is about. Finding a solution within the tier system.

Strider Pj.2193:

MomentofWeakness.1246

Sort of, Yaks Bend lost a bunch of guilds because T1 guilds came to Yaks Bend so I don’t necessarily agree. Yeah sometimes you get a bunch of guilds that move to a new place but it’s not a monthly occurrence. I’d be in favor of something like you proposed though, maybe make the time between transfers longer than 7 days? Make it 30 days or 60 days that way you have less movement but still allow players to have the freedom to move every once in awhile. What do you think about that?

A couple things:

1. This will fix the population inequality. That is fairly obvious. It may not be enjoyed by people that are stuck in tiers thy don’t want to be in, but it will balance them.

2. Somewhere in your OP, you noted people want to play with their friends. If people are THAT enamored by playing with their friends, I am sure that Tier 8 & 9 have room to accommodate. But I really don’t think that is your real issue here.

3. You state you have been in tier 1 for 3 years. We’re you not in one of the guilds that transferred to YB? Correction: your OP stated tier one and two.

4. I have heard rumor of some who feel they are/have been in ‘control’ of the top tier servers, helping some rise and fall at their whim. Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to test that? I mean, with this in place, the (I think they refer to themselves as the ‘Illuminati’) could prove their superiority and transfer down to a tier 6 or 7 server and drive it up to tier 1. This change would actually make that possible and solidify their ‘greatness’.

I’ll respond to everything in the same numerical order you provided your points in.

1. No it won’t fix population inequality. Population values are constantly changing and cannot be fully controlled. They said that the new algorithm requires a significant amount of time in order to see changes so it will always be behind-the-curve and as I said in my post the best that this new change implemented by Arenanet will be able to do is attempt to fix/balance population issues in a slow and reactive manner. That’s the whole problem, we need something adaptive that is able to change as dynamically as populations do on servers and we need it to be proactive not reactive.

2. I mentioned playing with friends because for some people that is their reason, you cannot expect someone who has integrated into a WvW community to leave everyone who they play with in their guild(s) and on their server just because they want to have their family member buy the game and since their family member can’t join them on their “full” server they have to go elsewhere. It’s not realistic it just leaves that person in a lose-lose situation.

3. Actually I you must’ve misread what I wrote because this is what I said “I’ve been a commander for almost 3 years, I have 6,500 hours played in Guild Wars 2 and I have spent the majority of my time in tier 1 and tier 2 servers on North America.” I transferred to Yaks Bend because my friends moved here and then moved to Crystal Desert so nearly all of them aren’t on Yaks Bend anymore and I would leave if I could as well.

4. There are people with dual accounts on two tier 1 servers. Yes, those people try to manipulate the matchup but that isn’t an issue isolated to tier 1, it happens in every tier in varying amounts. Also, there’s already been a server that was tier 6-7 that came to tier 1 it was called Sanctum of Rall and that happened a very long time ago so we have already observed a server ascending tiers in a rapid manner.

stof.9341:

There’s 0 chance the populations will end up balanced if you leave it to the player themselves with no hard rules to enforce balance.

You won’t balance it either way. Population is constantly changing in this game and it will never be a fixed value. People stop playing, new people buy the game, new people enter WvW as a game mode, the list goes on… and on… and on…So don’t you think it would be better to search for a solution that doesn’t revolve around a metric that is so volatile and inconsistent? Thats all I am saying, there has got to be a way to bring balance without trying to create “fixed” populations because no servers are ever going to have a population that doesn’t change on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis.

style.6173:

Here is the issue. Without locking transfers, you’ll always have the flavor of the month server, and those who are bandwagon jumpers by nature. Look at everyone who transferred to Yak’s Bend recently as the most recent example. That type of server stacking benefits no one since they’ll just dominate T2, but MMR is too static to allow them to move to T1.

Personally, I like the idea of locking servers, but in a different way than it is being done today. It needs to focus both on total player hours AND number of transfers to that server over the past month. Once a magic number is reached, new members can’t transfer for awhile.

Sort of, Yaks Bend lost a bunch of guilds because T1 guilds came to Yaks Bend so I don’t necessarily agree. Yeah sometimes you get a bunch of guilds that move to a new place but it’s not a monthly occurrence. I’d be in favor of something like you proposed though, maybe make the time between transfers longer than 7 days? Make it 30 days or 60 days that way you have less movement but still allow players to have the freedom to move every once in awhile. What do you think about that?

SkyShroud.2865:

You are indeed thinking about the top few servers when you come out with these suggestions. Giving them buffs and so on are not equivalent in having more people to play with and to work with, that is just making them feels better and less sorry about their own state. It also not any more fun than it is.

No I’m not lol these buffs would help out servers with less population and servers with population gaps in certain time zones…Contrary to what you might think, some people actually like to defend stuff in WvW. It’s not my favorite thing to do personally, but I know people who enjoy it. It doesn’t “make them feel better” as you suggest, this allows their server to stay competitive and win weekly matches even if there is a difference in population. It’s like you didn’t even read the post lol, servers who are “outnumbered” receive the buff on maps where it applies to them, that is going to happen MORE to servers with less population, the buff would hardly apply to servers with good coverage because even now they don’t see that buff very often.

SkyShroud.2865:

Nope, like I said, your suggestions is only about the PPT and not the actual situation. It doesn’t help with what is happening on the ground but rather just trying to make them feel better in a outman situation but it doesn’t change the fact that they are outman. Your suggestion is more towards keeping the status quo but anet is taking that big step to break that status quo and bring back what WvW meant to be, a variety of wars between different servers, not just between 3 same servers weeks after weeks.

Btw, to be precise, you are thinking about the top few server communities and ignoring the many other servers communities. However, to begin with, being at the top few servers, one should be prepared that they will have difficulties getting players in.

How does giving players who are outnumbered +33% health and armor to structures and siege, double supply carry, and +33% gold find (just to name a few possible ideas) not help them on the ground level? By making both siege and structures harder to capture when a server is “outnumbered” a server can hold onto more of their territory when they are in a low-coverage time zone. That directly helps the “ground-level” as you suggest. It also makes back-capping more important and more effective as a last resort strategy when things are really rough because the structures you take will be harder to capture by the enemy while their structures and siege will be at the default health/armor values. I’m not just thinking about top communities, my posts consider all servers, their communities and all time zones.

stof.9341:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

You are seriously exaggerating if you really think that every single player that does WvW would all go to 1 single server…

No but there 0 chance the populations will end up balanced.

Look, even the “I want to play with my friends” thing only makes population imbalance worse. Because if a server has more population, then those players have more friends too. Allowing friends to enter will average into making the population imbalance worse if such a policy was put in place.

Or maybe you could take the approach I took which was to suggest a different way to balancing tiers that didn’t base it on population. As you just said “there is 0 chance populations will end up balanced.” So essentially the solution has to be based around something else…

stof.9341:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

Not really, from day 1 of this game being released Arenanet has always said that they want us as players to “play the game however we want, with whomever we want, without being forced to do things we don’t want to do [I am paraphrasing here but that is the essence of what they said].”

This new change simply goes against their own ideological principles of how the game should be.

At one point, “play how you want” has to make room for practicality and quality of life.

There’s nothing practical or good in letting every single GW2 player enter the same winning WvW server just cause they want to win because it’d destroy the very same WvW people want to enjoy.

You are seriously exaggerating if you really think that every single player that does WvW would all go to 1 single server…

PariahX.6970:

DeWolfe.2174:

If it helps any, T1 is in a sad state as well. We had 30 players in TS for all 4 maps at the start of NA Prime. That’s it… 30! Players just aren’t logging into WvW anymore. The mode got hit hard with the Golem rush event, the ridiculous transfer’s to YB, and now the server lock downs. I don’t know which of them was the straw or if it was the combination of all 3 but, a lot of players seem to be completely done with the game and WvW for now.

So GJ! to those involved in such things, you successfully imploded the mode.

I think right now in the middle of summer sunshine when there has not been any real new content in GW2 in 8 months, almost a year since the last WvW tourney and people are jumping on and off the HoT hype train like it is going out of style is probably the worst time to make any sort of sweeping statements about the state of WvW populations on any given tier. We all know T1 is so overfull in NA timezones at least that it is likely double the new cap and we all know tons of people are on “holiday” for whatever reason right now so lets not starting crying about how we can’t play that super stacker game anymore covering our lulls with MOAR players. Lest we forget that is how we all ended up this mess in the first place with a community so diluted and lackluster that it is hard to care about. We pretty much broke it ourselves and I don’t envy ANET trying to find the least harmful fix for the long run but dang, you gotta give it a little bit of time people.

Not really, from day 1 of this game being released Arenanet has always said that they want us as players to “play the game however we want, with whomever we want, without being forced to do things we don’t want to do [I am paraphrasing here but that is the essence of what they said].”

This new change simply goes against their own ideological principles of how the game should be.

These comments about EU/OCX/SEA relate to the lengthy post I just made about them locking servers. I play NA prime but I do understand the needs of other time zones. You guys who play EU/OCX/SEA in particular might enjoy the read because I do think I address your guys concerns based on what you posted above.

Link to thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/How-To-Fix-WvW-Pop-W-Out-Locking-Servers/first#post5364240

SkyShroud.2865:

Anet goal is to drove the population to the lesser populated server and then given enough time, those server will become populated enough to create a variety of matchups. That is long term solution, to create variety of matchups than the current fixed servers on each tiers due to population difference.

Your suggestions are based on PPT and not about population balancing. The main concern has always been population balancing and this has been discussed for months and even years. Your suggestions while on the surface, on the graph, on the PPT, it seems promising but the reality is that your suggestion is trying to sweep the population issue under the rug.

Yes you’re right, my suggestions are related to balancing the PPT. I don’t think its a good idea to try to “force” people to go to a certain server because it breaks up communities, discourages new people from buying the game who might want to play with people they know on a “full” server, hurts certain timezones like EU, OCX, and SEA, where the overall populations are much smaller and are segmented to fewer servers because people from those time-zones want to play with other people who live where they live, speak their language, share their culture and most of all, play when they play. My suggestion may not completely “balance” population and make every server have an equivalent amount of players on it, but what it does do is allow every server to be competitive week in and week out in PPT/weekly score and allows every server to have a fighting chance at winning each week. I don’t think people would mind being “out-gunned” as much if they felt like they could still win the week and knew that even when they are outnumbered that there are tools in place to help them defend their territories successfully as well as be rewarded for taking on the challenging task of fighting against great odds. So while I cannot dispute your point because it is valid I would say that you aren’t trying to look at the issue from my angle. I care more about keeping guilds and communities intact and allowing people of different time zones to be able to play together. I’m suggesting a solution that allows for every server to stay competitive in the weekly score regardless of population gap. Trying to force populations to be equivalent amongst all servers is a worthless goal anyways because this games population is volatile and changes daily. It would be better to search for solutions that are adaptive, will benefit everyone equally, and will work whether a server has a large population or a small population.

Tongku.5326:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

3. Increase the PPT value of upgraded structures based on each completed upgrade-tier by +5 points.

The reason I mention this is because while structures are more durable and there is a few quality of life benefits to having upgraded structures, you don’t actually get any increased value PPT/score-wise. My idea here basically is, when all of the Personnel and Structural upgrades are finished for a tier then you gain +5 points to that structure.

This would not only align well with Arenanet’s goals in HoT where upgrading is automated and follows a tiered system but also it would incentivize players to defend structures that are upgraded and would further motivate and justify saving a tier 3 tower over a tier 1 tower for example. But the main reason this would be a nice feature is because as servers transition between high and low coverage time zones their structures that are fully upgraded will have a higher tick even if it goes away over-time. Finally, enemy servers will have a greater sense of urgency to attack and seize upgraded towers because resetting them would be even more important.

Hi

Some of these are good ideas, but I disagree with your idea #3.

[Cut out your points so I could reply, but I did read your entire post @ Tongku.5326]

I can appreciate your perspective and I can see how my point #3 would mostly be useful in matchups that are currently more balanced amongst all time zones. As far as your suggestions I liked most of what you said except the idea of empty structures that aren’t being attended not being able to stand/tick. I have never been a fan of forcing people to sentry or making someone babysit a structure because it takes their ability to participate out of the game mode. Plus on low population servers this would be an absolute disaster because you would have almost no one in your groups because they would all be occupying structures. Sentry’ing unless voluntary is really not good for the game-mode. It would be ideal to give commanders more tools to respond to attacks and monitor upgrades/supply/etc. so that everyone can play instead of having to sit in TeamSpeak/Mumble and babysit a garrison or other structure.

DiscoJacen.1590:

Those are good ideas in an environment where there is already a WvW population playing.

The prob here is that this does not represent everyone.

There are several servers in EU (and prob in NA as well) that will gain nothing from your ideas simply because they have no more players to play the gamemode.

We’ve been asking for population balances:
-To either help move players from full servers (with queues) towards empty ones. (and no Medium transfer prices will not help anything even over time.)
-Or to merge us with upper tiers, save server space and make the experience better.

But no. Just a crappy renaming system that dubbed all the empty servers as “medium” so they’re sure they don’t have to face the fact that they have a real problem with population and still maintain relatively expensive prices to transfer even towards end tiers.

The gamemode needs the redesign it should have had after year 1 or it needs to be dropped officially and without the “wow we’re totally gonna focus on it at some point” lies.

Just no more lies and hypocrisy from Anet… That is just pathetic

I don’t know what server you play on but based on this weeks EU matchups my ideas would ideally be helping the tier 9 matchup: Underworld and Fissure of Woe who are fighting vs. Whiteside Ridge as well as helping the tier 6 matchup: Arborstone and Miller’s Sound against Aurora Glade and finally the tier 1 matchup: where Desolation and Gandara are struggling vs. Seafarer’s Rest most significantly. Those three matchups have a single server dominating the other two in an extreme way score-wise. My suggestions would hopefully help mitigate some of that gap in score for three matchups. Also, it would hopefully incentivize the people who do play on the weaker servers in those match-ups to play and feel like they have a fighting chance. Although just because I mention those three matchups doesn’t mean that my suggestion wouldn’t help servers with relatively closer scores as well, because it would, but you would see the “outnumbered” buff apply less often in those cases because there is going to be less downtime (most likely) where one server has far greater coverage than the other two when scores between 3 servers in a tier are close to each other and the match up is competitive.

On NA my ideas would most benefit tier 2, tier 7, and tier 8, but as I said above my ideas would help every server but you don’t see “outnumbered” as often in close matches.

Chobits.2430:

Another thought. If a zerg takes an objective of an outmanned team, they should receive no karma or experience. If there is no outmanned, then the reward should scale up based on the PPT value of the objective based on my above proposed changes. So you receive very little karma and experience for taking a completely un-upgraded objective and full reward for a capping a completely upgraded objective.

the population scheme that Arenanet is implementing is “supposed-to” force people to go to lower tier servers or non-full status/less populated ones. Im not sure why you think the opposite based on your first post.

Your idea about upgrades having PPT value is in my post but owning the structure in the first place should give a base value PPT amount like it currently does.

I 100% agree with you about implementing PPK permanently. Players should be equally rewarded for winning fights and being fights-focused just as they are for being map/structurally-focused.

I don’t like your suggestion about gaining nothing if you take structures when the other server is outmanned. People should be rewarded regardless of when they log in, it’s no ones fault that their server has a population advantage when they decide to play.

Dawdler.8521:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

2. Create more player-based incentives for players who are active during low-coverage time zones to still login and fight for their world by giving higher-than-normal rewards and/or unique rewards.

I havent read everything, but that is a horrible idea. Its the worst kind of game design. Loot or unique rewards should never be given to “special” players – its not the average players fault that normal people play during normal hours. There is enough problems with the PvE/WvW split in terms of loot, we dont need another split inside WvW.

Nightcapping/coverage is an issue purely revolving around static and inflexible PPT, not players.

I suggest you read the whole thing… All I said was to give the outnumbered buff a few more player-based incentives they don’t have to be out of this world things… like I suggest if you actually keep reading. I gave 3 examples (although this was only 1 part of my 3 part solution to the issue):

A. Allow players to carry double their regular supply capacity when under the effects of the “outnumbered” buff.

Explanation- This would help small groups build siege more easily when they have less people to shuffle back and forth from a supply depot allowing them to cut down on the time it takes to build siege and defend against large groups during low-coverage time zones.

B. +33% Gold Find

Explanation- When outnumbered, the amount of total kills and captures of structures is going to less anyways, so there should be things in place to give them a little extra for any successful endeavors they have while playing.

C. +33% Health and armor to structures and siege (previously described in Section 1)

Explanation- While this is mentioned above because it will help slow PPT/weekly score decay, I feel that this should be included as part of the “outnumbered” buff. This gives small groups a fighting chance at each structure they attempt to defend and increases the length of time that they will be able to effectively utilize siege without making structures or siege overpowered. It also allows small groups to have additional time to react to attacks and prepare for the next defense when a structure is lost.

Anyone on any server can receive the “outnumbered” buff it just depends on what is happening on that map. It’s not just limited to low-coverage time zones. Sometimes in NA prime you will have 1 map that is like that as well. I am suggesting something that is transparent and equal across tiers and time zones where a server may lack players on a map because it is adaptive and can be applied immediately based on large population discrepancies on a map. It applies to everyone equally because it’s already a component to every server and every tier, I am just adding to its design with my suggestions.

Just as a side.. there’s no point of commenting at all if you’re going to take a snippet of my post and ignore the rest of it…please give it a thorough read.

Final Thoughts:

There has been a lot of concern about how to fix the population/coverage issue as well as the current server lockout. The current attempt by Arenanet to fix this issue won’t work because it doesn’t go far enough, it has too many negative effects, it isn’t dynamic enough, it doesn’t consider the EU, OCX, and SEA communities on NA servers properly, and it’s reactive rather than proactive. We need to come up with a better solution that doesn’t revolve around locking people out of servers because that just divides communities and keeps people from buying the game and trying out WvW with their friends/family, amongst other things. Activity and world-rating are not the only two metrics that need to be considered to balance WvW, we have to be equally aware of intangible things that go beyond numbers, and pattern analysis. Just like Arenanet changed dailies so that people are incentivized to login every day Arenanet should incentivize players to play when “outnumbered” and be rewarded for toughing it out when the odds aren’t in their favor. My 3-part solution is pretty simple and if a tier is fairly balanced well then servers in that tier won’t receive the buff as often because they won’t need to and it won’t hurt those tiers, and if a tier has significant gaps then the new changes I am proposing will help compensate for the lack of players when it needs to in order to minimize population discrepancies in different time zones and on any tier. It would also be nice to also have some kind of symbol in the WvW panel that identifies what maps are outnumbered so players in PvE and PvP are incentivized to go there when they see that their server needs help as well as to take advantage of the extra benefits that could be implemented with a more robust “outnumbered” buff. Just for clarity, this post wasn’t designed to attack Arenanet either, I appreciate all of the things we have been given and all the work that’s being done on HoT and the base-game. I only attached Arenanet to the server lockout because it is their attempt at a fix to the issue. Please post your thoughts below! I am hoping for an interactive thread here

EDIT: 08/09/2015 I didn’t mention this when I originally posted but PPK should be re-introduced permanently into the WvW game mode.

Part II: Why Arenanet locking servers and trying an algorithm that requires long-term analysis will only hurt the WvW game-mode and its communities.

1. Locking servers prevents people from playing together and doesn’t allow people who want to encourage their friends/family to buy the game to play on the same server in WvW. Additionally, it doesn’t allow two people who already own the game but are on different servers to transfer to the same server if they become friends by first meeting in PvE or PvP.

2. The population imbalance won’t be fixed fast enough. My solutions that were previously listed are dynamic and can change quickly based on moment to moment changes in population on any map, at any time (based on how the “outnumbered” buff mechanic operates). While an algorithm can analyze patterns and find common trends it is not going to be able to accurately equate for the variable known as “real-life.” A very active player might take a hiatus and not play for months. Another player may return to the game but only be active for one week. A guild might transfer servers. If our current “band-aid” is to sit here and wait and analyze numbers and patterns for a long period of time then we won’t ever be able to be ahead of the issue. We will always be approaching population issues in a reactive manner rather than a proactive manner. It’s extremely important that we find solutions to the population issue that are proactive, dynamic, and don’t disrupt balance.

3. Locking servers is just wrong for certain North American servers right now like Fort Aspenwood (FA) and Sea of Sorrows (SoS). Yaks Bend is destroying them every day, and every week, yet Fort Aspenwood is at “full” status meaning the server cannot recruit and cannot compete with a Yaks Bend server that ticks between +300-500 PPT and out scores FA and SoS by 2-2.5x their score each week.

4. Server locking really hurts people who play during the European (EU), Oceanic (OCX), and Southeast Asian (SEA) time zones on North American servers. These groups of players are much smaller in population across all the servers. There might be 2-3 servers that are going to attractive to them where they can play with people who actually get online when they do and live in the region of the world they do which is important because there can be a language barrier between people of these timezones and North American players. If the servers are locked then people who might want to join an OCX community won’t be able to and may be discouraged from playing WvW or the game in general (if they don’t enjoy PvE or PvP).

5. We have no idea how long the “full” status and locked servers are going to last. People who might hold out hope that the server they want to join will somehow be available eventually might be waiting for many months or longer because Arenanet’s current solution doesn’t at a glance appear to provide any avenue to join servers which are tagged as “full.” This is an even bigger issue on the European servers where we have currently 8 “full” servers.

3. Increase the PPT value of upgraded structures based on each completed upgrade-tier by +5 points.

The reason I mention this is because while structures are more durable and there is a few quality of life benefits to having upgraded structures, you don’t actually get any increased value PPT/score-wise. My idea here basically is, when all of the Personnel and Structural upgrades are finished for a tier then you gain +5 points to that structure.

This would not only align well with Arenanet’s goals in HoT where upgrading is automated and follows a tiered system but also it would incentivize players to defend structures that are upgraded and would further motivate and justify saving a tier 3 tower over a tier 1 tower for example. But the main reason this would be a nice feature is because as servers transition between high and low coverage time zones their structures that are fully upgraded will have a higher tick even if it goes away over-time. Finally, enemy servers will have a greater sense of urgency to attack and seize upgraded towers because resetting them would be even more important.

These 3 solutions would help entice WvW players to play during times where they are at a disadvantage because they would have things in place to help them maintain relevancy/an impact on a map even at low numbers. Along with that, they would be recognized for their commitment to playing under less than ideal circumstances by higher-than normal rewards.

2. Create more player-based incentives when under the influence of the “outnumbered” buff.

Here’s what the outnumbered buff currently does:

+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

I would argue that this isn’t enough to encourage people to fight for their server when the odds aren’t in their favor. If people have more reasons to stay logged in when they are facing greater odds then they will continue to participate in low-coverage time zones which will increase their score and ability to recover. Also, if more people are motivated to play in “outnumbered” situations then over time you will see slight increases in total numbers during low-coverage time zones.

How can this be achieved? Give players who are playing on any map where the “outnumbered” buff is active enough tools to both defend versus the enemy and also receive higher-than-normal rewards for participating in a dire situation. Obviously we don’t want to give player stat-increases because that creates imbalances in small skirmishes but we can give players who are under the effects of the “outnumbered” buff non-player buffs that will keep them on the map. Finally, I think it would be beneficial to show the “outnumbered” buff in the WvW panel so that people who aren’t currently on map can take advantage of the buff and its increased rewards (if greater “outnumbered” buff rewards were implemented).

There is a lot of possibilities here for Arenanet and the WvW community to come up with but I do think adding more rewards to the “outnumbered” buff would be 1 of many necessary steps to fixing the population issue.

Here’s a few example ideas:

A. Allow players to carry double their regular supply capacity when under the effects of the “outnumbered” buff.

Explanation- This would help small groups build siege more easily when they have less people to shuffle back and forth from a supply depot allowing them to cut down on the time it takes to build siege and defend against large groups during low-coverage time zones.

B. +33% Gold Find

Explanation- When outnumbered, the amount of total kills and captures of structures is going to less anyways, so there should be things in place to give them a little extra for any successful endeavors they have while playing.

C. +33% Health and armor to structures and siege (previously described in Section 1)

Explanation- While this is mentioned above because it will help slow PPT/weekly score decay, I feel that this should be included as part of the “outnumbered” buff. This gives small groups a fighting chance at each structure they attempt to defend and increases the length of time that they will be able to effectively utilize siege without making structures or siege overpowered. It also allows small groups to have additional time to react to attacks and prepare for the next defense when a structure is lost.

Possible Fixes Explained:

1. Fix the rate of decay of PPT/weekly score.

The separation of score values and their unevenness after a full week is the glaring issue as far as having close match-ups in every tier is concerned. The main idea here is to reduce the sudden drop in PPT during low-coverage time zones daily so that the end result after a week is a closer, more competitive score. In order to fix this problem we need to increase the durability of structures and siege during those times when a server is “outnumbered” and clearly in a low-coverage time zone. For example, “when outnumbered a server gains +33% health and armor to structures and siege.” This would allow players to defend what they owned when they were strongest more easily while they are weakest. It also helps out the outnumbered server because each structure will take longer to be capped by enemy servers when there is an overwhelming disadvantage. Sure, a server that is massively out-gunned is still going to lose the majority of their stuff but the whole idea is to slow the bleeding not stop it and this also allows for strategies like back capping to be slightly more effective and increases the value of small groups during weak coverage areas. Since things will take longer to cap and are more easily defended, an “outnumbered” server could manage themselves more effectively when they are lacking players. Not to mention, this incentivizes people who play during high-coverage time zones to tick siege for their allies who play when the odds aren’t in their favor during low-coverage time zones.

Why would this work? It would work because it isn’t a player-buff and so it wouldn’t disrupt balance. Additionally, for servers that are already evenly matched you wouldn’t see much change because this buff would hardly come into effect but for servers with noticeable coverage gaps you would see less of a negative impact during those coverage gaps.

HOW TO FIX WORLD VERSUS WORLD POPULATION WITHOUT LOCKING SERVERS
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Introduction:

In this post I am going to present a few possible ways to fix population coverage issues and then beneath them explain how this would help with WvW’s current population/weekly score imbalances. First, I will outline the threads main points and then below I will expand on each of them. Additionally, I will explain why Arenanet’s current attempt to fix population coverage issues is bad and won’t help the WvW community. Please post your thoughts below, my hope is that this thread will have a lot of interaction from other people who enjoy the WvW game-mode just as much as I do (and hopefully someone at Arenanet sees this thread as well).

Briefly on my WvW experience:

I’ve been a commander for almost 3 years, I have 6,500 hours played in Guild Wars 2 and I have spent the majority of my time in tier 1 and tier 2 servers on North America. I also participated in the Adopt-A-Dev program that Arenanet set up by submitting a letter to the program and being chosen for the program. I tried to come up with solutions that do not negatively effect anyone that plays WvW regardless of how they play the game mode. The solutions below should either benefit a particular play style or not negatively effect a play style at all. When I say “play style” I am referring to the PPT’er, the GvG’er, the roamer, the scout, the havoc team, the PPK’er if they bring it back, and anyone else I am missing.

Part I: Possible Solutions to the Population Issue.

Before I explain the issues, I would like to say that I do think the population issue is multi-faceted and there isn’t one-thing that is going to fix it. My ideal scenario would be to see all three of possible solutions outlined below implemented together because they all address different parts of the population issue.

Outline:

1. Fix the rate of decay of PPT/weekly score during low-coverage time zones.

2. Create more player-based incentives for players who are active during low-coverage time zones to still login and fight for their world by giving higher-than-normal rewards and/or unique rewards.

3. Increase the PPT value of upgraded structures based on each completed upgrade-tier by +5 points so that when a server transitions from a high-coverage time zone to a low-coverage time zone there is more incentive to defend it and more points will accumulate before everything is papered.

My Computer Specs:

i5 3570k @ 4.2 Ghz
32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 @ 1600 Mhz
256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD
1TB WD HDD @ 7200 Rpm
Two GTX 670’s in SLI (Gigabyte Windforce OC Cards)
Corsair AX 1200i PSU

Here’s a link to an image of my PC:

http://imgur.com/3zOx8f2

(No, I do not keep my system on the floor, I keep it on a desk, it was just for this picture)

I’m currently playing on Windows 10, BUT I had this same error log on Windows 7. I just re-installed the game today after installing Windows 10 so the game install is fresh.

Anyone have any idea whats going on based on the log? It looks like a memory leak to me.

This has been going on for over a year now. I made a post about it 9 months ago which you can see here (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/I-have-a-3-000-dollar-PC-Crashing-In-WvW/first#post3706766) I am reposting because it’s still an issue. I had the pleasure of talking with Planningfallacy (an anet dev) who took the log from my older post about a week ago but since it just happened again tonight I thought it might be useful to post again with an updated log. I am not sure how identical the two logs are but there’s definitely an issue going on with the game and they seem similar at first glance. Hopefully this information is useful to someone at anet who can both provide me some insight for what’s going on and also help with solving the issue.