Guild Wars 2

Wow… is this thread really only 2 days old? I just opened it to say “Please stop necroing 2-year-old threads”…

Alteros.3019:

A lot of GW2 players such as myself are well compensated professionals with day jobs. We’re not going to take a vacation day or sick time to get a POI or Vista. The content of the game should be accessible to any player at any time of the day. I’m not saying that it should be effortless, but the situation on some servers makes it utterly inaccessible.

If Anet makes a change like this just so PvE players can get a specific weapon skin easier, then they’re going to need to fix a lot of PvE events as well. For instance, I’d really like to have some of the Tequatl ascended weapon skins, but Tequatl doesn’t get defeated that often, and is usually only defeated during certain times of the day, by organized guilds who completely fill up their map well BEFORE the event becomes available to start. And a single player, of course has NO CHANCE of defeating Tequatl. Even a small, organized group can’t do it, anymore than you and a few friends can take a defended Keep or Stonemist Castle; in fact, far more people have soloed Keeps than Tequatl, as I’ve NEVER seen a video of someone soloing Tequatl, or even any claim of it having been attempted. So my job basically makes it too difficult for me to finish Tequatl at all, let alone enough times to have a decent chance at finally getting one of those rare weapon drops. And those aren’t even Legendary, they’re just Ascended! So maybe Anet could give me the same chance of getting a Tequatl weapon skin every time I kill a Keep Lord as I would if I were defeating Tequatl, since my schedule doesn’t seem to prevent me from killing Keep Lords several times a week. This is just one of many PvE events that I don’t have time for, as a well-compensated professional. But I should still have access to the same weapon skins as everyone else, even if I never complete the events!!! Hurry up Anet and fix this game to better fit my schedule!!!

Gryph.8237:

So DPS spike classes (thief, mesmer, warrior, and some eles) prosper why classes that can’t do the massive spike as efficiently suffer.

So why are the zergs in Tier 1 made of at least 1/3 Guardians? Lots of guilds won’t even enter WvW to raid until a minimum number of Guardians have logged on! Also, most groups are using at least some of their Eles for healing and support, and Mesmer is generally a support class in the big fights in WvW as well.

Are you specifically talking about 1v1’s you’ve had in WvW or something?

IndigoSundown.5419:

There might be some resistance to this idea from those who are currently on servers with favorable participation ratios. This is more likely from those who spent money or gold to transfer

This is probably why server mergers haven’t happened already. If someone transferred from, for instance, SBI to a smaller server like ET, and we had a server merger that ended up with the player BACK on SBI, would Anet have to refund the money that that player had spent on Gems just to make the transfer? Would they need to refund money to EVERY player who had transferred to specific server that as then closed? It would feel, to many players, as though Anet one day said, “Hey, you know those permanent Axe/Pick/Sickle gathering tools that you spent real-life money to get? Well, the graphics are causing a problem, so we’re taking them out of the game and giving everyone a plain-looking, though equally permanent and effective gathering tool as a replacement.” I mean, sure, the game would go on pretty much as it had been, and the players wouldn’t actually be losing anything that affects gameplay, but lots of players bought those items because they wanted those specific items, and not some other thing that’s different, but works just as well. Lots of people paid to transfer to a specific server to play with a specific group of people in a certain type of setting or atmosphere. Shuffling people around through a server merger is fine, and I wouldn’t expect Anet to pay back the entire cost of the game or anything, as the game still works, but in paying for a transfer to a specific server, players were essentially paying for a very specific experience. If Anet decides to take that very specific server that they paid for out of the game entirely, would they need to refund the money people had spent to transfer to that particular server?

Personally, I think server mergers are actually a good idea, and would at least lessen the impact of many of the WvW population imbalances we see in the game now, however, I feel that 2 years of paid transfers would make a server merger very difficult.

Anything that doesn’t suffer from the ridiculous “Clipping” issues that make Legendaries practically disappear 1/2 the time now.

silvermember.8941:

1. Legendary is a tier not a status.
2. Legendaries is a tier not a status.
3. stop getting hung on the name “legendary” it is just a tier not a status.

Isaiah Cartwright, the game’s Lead Designer, kinda said the opposite. A Lot.

From his Blog:
“Legendary Weapons are the end result of an epic adventure in Guild Wars 2.”

“Legendary Weapons are an impressive meld of art and effects. They show off your accomplishments and allow you to change your character’s footprints, projectiles, and much more. "

“They’re designed to stand out and show everyone that you are a true master of Guild Wars 2.”

He talked about this a lot when the game first came out. Oh, and there are at least 2 videos of him discussing it, as well.

So, did anyone here feel like a “true master of Guild Wars 2” after finishing their legendary?

For reference: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/my-legend-grows-forging-your-first-legendary-weapon/

http://youtu.be/MdA4MlrF5mA

And there are plenty more to find if you want to look them up.

Will someone please just mail “skillze” some Blooming Passiflora so we can all move on with our lives?

We’re all just skimming over the most important part of this post… which is that “Dracula” currently has an 80-hour work week~!!!

Well, there was this shortly after GW2’s release: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/14/ncsoft-licenses-unreal-engine-4

So yeah, an updated engine is possible, though I wouldn’t say it’s likely. The original minimum requirements are pretty low anyway (AMD Athlon, 2GB Ram, & literally ANY graphics card made in the last 10 years); I’m pretty sure my phone could probably meet the minimum specs at this point. So essentially anything more powerful than a potato should be able to run GW2 at Low settings, or with the resolution simply dropped to 720, if needed.

If you are actually using a potato to comment on these forums, however, you can buy an overclockable Intel G3258 Haswell CPU for $50 @ Microcenter now: http://www.microcenter.com/product/435187/G3258_32_GHz_LGA1150_Boxed_Processor
It’s getting harder and harder to even find a computer that won’t run GW2 at this point.

So, there will be a new WvW Map that is locked to people who haven’t purchased the expansion? And a new sPvP mode taht’s locked?

Wut? Also, where? Is this thing going to be in WvW, or just PvE, or just a few spots in PvE?

Mo Mo.1947:

Sorry, what is “CDI”?

Wow, it’s finally been so long since we’ve had an official CDI that there are now people on the forums who’ve never even heard of it…

I like Southsun the way it is; it’s like the GW2 version of an abandoned amusement park…

Yeah, if you add capes to the game, PLEASE just make them drop into the regular backpiece slot, not some new “cape” stat slot. We really don’t need a whole new piece of Ascended gear added to the game.

Reverence.6915:

Otokomae.9356:

Reverence.6915:

Jeknar.6184:

McWolfy.5924:

Btw a if they work on a dota mode i wont be angry (+wvw map ofc)

No plz…

yes pls…

Just replace the “Conquest Circles” in sPvP with the DotA 2 concepts of lanes and destroying structures, but keep GW2’s combat system. I mean, sPvP is already basically a MOBA, it’s just a bad one…

The concept isn’t new. Check out the game Smite. 3d 3rd person moba.

Yeah, but I’d want to keep GW2’s theorycrafting, rather than selecting from a list of playable characters like in Smite (or DotA, or LoL). Complex theorycrafting for individual characters is what’s really missing from those games, as any theorycrafting that happens in most MOBAs revolves simply around selecting together 5 compatible, pre-built characters.

WAY off-topic btw, sorry everyone. But yeah, if GW2 still has aspirations of making sPvP into an “esport”, emulating what works in some of the more popular MOBAs is a good start, but keeping what makes GW2 interesting is important as well, of course.

Reverence.6915:

Jeknar.6184:

McWolfy.5924:

Btw a if they work on a dota mode i wont be angry (+wvw map ofc)

No plz…

yes pls…

Just replace the “Conquest Circles” in sPvP with the DotA 2 concepts of lanes and destroying structures, but keep GW2’s combat system. I mean, sPvP is already basically a MOBA, it’s just a bad one…

Blackie.3912:

2) It’d never become a server issue, it’s just a fun friendly challenge between guilds

Yeah… can somebody help this guy out, please? I’m afraid he’s stumbled into the “WvW Forums” by accident; we need to direct him back to… whatever part of the game it is that’s “fun” and “friendly”. “Fractals” maybe? Is that still a thing?

Omg just merge the bottom 6 servers already so NA can have 3 Leagues of 6 servers each and we can all move on to fixing the rest of WvW.

Jeknar.6184:

Kaos.9162:

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I imagine uplevels will catch even more abuse once this kicks in, and that the game’s going to become blobbier in general.

They can always just award points for players that are 80.

This could be VERY interesting; it would be fun to see hardcore PPT servers running “uplevels ONLY” during Season as a new meta, simply to deny PPK from enemy servers.

azizul.8469:

implement 10 point per stomp now. argue later.

that way we can exclude kill by siege.

Yes, and can we get 25 Points for Knockback Off a Cliff, please? That’s gotta be worth at least the same a Keep! (^_^)

Scryeless.1924:

Actually, i feel like we need a Points Per Yak (PPY) score as well:P

We already have this; it’s 3 Points each time you kill a Yak (you deny the enemy server 3 Points each time you successfully defend a Yak).

Merge Servers please, so we can all move on with our lives…

Sube Dai.8496:

Tournament is over right? I think the match is just closer because half of SOS are taking a break…

This is happening all over, really. Take a look at the NA T1 Matchup, for instance; dat parity! Less than 10k between each server, and it’s already Wednesday! During Season, pretty much every match was decided by Monday already.

1.) GvG. I know that’s a different CDI, but if I’m listing the Top 3 most important things that I need to see in a Guild Hall, this is easily #1.

2.) WvW Achievements Display. It would really be a huge turnaround for the WvW section of the game if there were some sort of WvW guild achievements that could be displayed in the Guild Halls, like a statue that gets bigger with every 100 kills by guildies who are repping, or maybe based on the amount of Guild Influence earned in WvW, although Influence wouldn’t necessarily be optimal since it would be only based on how many events were completed.

3.) 24/7 Buffs, Food/Feasts, & Vendors Hopefully, accessing the Guild Halls would be easy to do from anywhere in the GW2 world, in which case, it would be great to be able to just spend Influence or some other currency to spawn Banners (or statues, or whatever) that last 24-hours, giving buffs that could be easily picked up before heading out into the world. It would also be a HUGE benefit to guilds if a crafted Feast could last longer than 5 minutes, but only if dropped in the Guild Halls. Also, Merchants, Guild Vendors, Laurel Vendors, etc; when you add these 3 things together, you can easily make the Guild Halls an important, central location for all guildies to gather.

Yeah… you were supposed to have gotten all the “alt-character” fun out of your system back in 2012. The game was promoted as “alt-friendly” back at release, and to be fair, it really was. That changed in 2013, however, and I don’t know if there’s any going back, to be honest.

Shadow.3475:

Add this here to.

Remake score system:
T0 (Paper) you get 0points for buildings both capping and owning.
T1 33% points for buildings both capping and owning.
T2 66% points for buildings both capping and owning.
T3 100% points for buildings both capping and owning.
1 Tear is Reinforced gate and walls, 1tear Fortify, 1tear (Mortar tower) (Waypoint Keep/SM). (for supply camp T1 2 first upgrades and then 1 T ever on second row.

If you want it in points, camp 0, 3, 6, 10, Tower 0, 5, 10, 15, Keep 0, 10, 20, 30 SM 0, 15, 25, 40

This system would work ENTIRELY in favor of the PvD servers. The main complaint people have with off-NA coverage in NA matchups is that they go to bed with the maps looking relatively even, then wake up to find that the server with the best coverage has FULL T3 STRUCTURES ON EVERY MAP!

Shadow.3475:

And then the most important part is that if your server have buildings for 400points you don’t autonomic ally tick that and how you solve that is simple, you count how many players there is on the 4 WvW maps and there you do 0% = 10% then for every 1% players you gain 1.5% in tick, so if there is 10% full on all 4 maps and your server have 400Points you will tick 20% of that with then mean tick is 80. When there is 60% full on all 4 maps and all 3 servers you tick 100%
Then to take a building that is fully upgraded and fully defended we say you get 100points (50k exp), then if there is 0defenders you get 10% 10points 5k exp and then race the points you get with how many defenders, say 10def camp, 20tower, 30keep/sm is what is needed to get to max.

First of all, this sounds extremely complicated, especially if the point tick is constantly changing every time a new guild decides to form up on a map, or whenever a guild ends their raid and starts going to bed. This is also one of those systems that would be easy to exploit, as the moment your main guilds start to log off or you see your server’s WvW population start to dip, you would immediately have Commanders yelling “EVERYONE OUT OF THE TOWERS NOW! Defending anything on this map only means handing bonus points to the enemy!” etc, etc.

Shadow.3475:

Escorting Dolys should give a buff were bronze give you +1supply you can carry Silver +2 Gold +3 supply you can carry and it last for 1hour (only successful escorts), it don’t stack but the 1hour is reset/you get higher if you had bronze and then do Gold you get +3 instead off +1 if you Escort again within the hour you have the buff.
When queue on the map lower AFK timeout to 5min and if you run against a wall to 2min, if you have scout buff and are in scout area AFK timer normal 10min.
And add so you get 1point for stomp without any bloodlust then +1 for every BL your server have.
That way it will be much harder to gain points with PVD, you will need to hold your building until they are upgraded with takes a lot off time and a small group can take supply camp / kill dolys with then stops upgrades.

I’m going to assume that you were NOT playing GW2 anytime time in 2012, or near release, as there is a good (albeit sad) reason why escorting Dolyaks doesn’t give any tangible rewards… back when the game came out, and for several months after, escorting a Dolyak to its respective tower/keep gave essentially the same rewards as taking a camp, but was 1,000 times easier, and could be repeated over and over again on a set schedule, for as long as you held the camp. As a result, back in 2012 we used to have massive armies of 50+ people doing NOTHING but escorting Yaks for hours on end, in every timezone, in every Tier!

What you have listed here is different, and isn’t really a bad idea, but it certainly doesn’t address any balance issues. This would likely work in favor of the higher population servers, actually, as it would simply become part of the meta to have your full zerg escort a Dolyak once an hour along the shortest available route. Hello, 20 Omega Golem rush from the most stacked server in the matchup…

Claudius.5381:

Otokomae.9356:

Claudius.5381:

coverage/population imbalance:

Another mechanism to approach the problem that servers with good coverage “run away” too fast would be to erase the lowest third of the tick ppt scores per day per server.

Currently in a 24 hour time period there are 96 ticks. For every server the worst 32 tick point results (the points earned in the 15 minute period of the tick) are erased. Only the remaining 64 “best ticks” remain for the score.

A server with great coverage loses more points than a server who cannot cover all times, giving them a better chance to fight back.

A modification would be to count stomps/player kills seperately (no deleting of points here). Reason for that would be that a server with lower coverage offers less opportunities for the more populous server to get stomp points because there are less potential victims to stomp on.

So, each server keeps their 64 “Best” Ticks, is that what you’re saying? Because that makes score gaps caused by coverage vastly worse than they are now! A server with 8 hours of massive coverage that their opponents don’t have might tick @ +500 several times during off-hours, while during NA, if even 2 of the 3 servers have decent coverage, it would be nearly impossible for any of the servers to match that +500 tick. This system greatly favors servers with better 24/7 coverage.

No. Simplified example with only 3 ticks:

Big server A: 500, 350, 380

Small server B: 110, 200, 180

Even smaller server C: 80, 140, 130

Currently the scores would be:

A: 1,230, B: 490, C: 350

My proposal would lead to:

A: 880, B: 380, C: 270

As you see the gaps are smaller. And I chose an extreme example with a very strong server A and 2 very weak servers (in these cases my proposal helps the least because these weak servers in the example are weak during all 3 ticks).

In your “Extreme” example here, your system makes a less than 5% difference in the scoring gap. Again, that is the “EXTREME” version. If we look at the current Gold League matchups for NA, giving an extra 5% to the 2nd and 3rd place servers in those matchups would still lead to the same runaway victory in both matches, and that’s with Blackgate being practically asleep this week. This system would only make a difference in matches that were already extremely close in score, and those are EXACTLY the kind of rare matchups that we DON’T want to mess with right now~! This whole thread is about searching for a way to fix completely lopsided matchups, which are relatively unaffected by your system.

Claudius.5381:

coverage/population imbalance:

Another mechanism to approach the problem that servers with good coverage “run away” too fast would be to erase the lowest third of the tick ppt scores per day per server.

Currently in a 24 hour time period there are 96 ticks. For every server the worst 32 tick point results (the points earned in the 15 minute period of the tick) are erased. Only the remaining 64 “best ticks” remain for the score.

A server with great coverage loses more points than a server who cannot cover all times, giving them a better chance to fight back.

A modification would be to count stomps/player kills seperately (no deleting of points here). Reason for that would be that a server with lower coverage offers less opportunities for the more populous server to get stomp points because there are less potential victims to stomp on.

So, each server keeps their 64 “Best” Ticks, is that what you’re saying? Because that makes score gaps caused by coverage vastly worse than they are now! A server with 8 hours of massive coverage that their opponents don’t have might tick @ +500 several times during off-hours, while during NA, if even 2 of the 3 servers have decent coverage, it would be nearly impossible for any of the servers to match that +500 tick. This system greatly favors servers with better 24/7 coverage.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Otokomae.9356:

John Corpening.9847:

• Add score for kills

I think pretty much everyone seems to be in favor of something like this. 1 point for Kills, 2-3 points for Stomps (with Bloodlust), or some variation. It honestly won’t do much to solve problems caused by population imbalance, but I think people would generally enjoy it more.

John Corpening.9847:

• Consider adjusting score based on placement

Let’s try to stay away from solutions that revolve around the “Reward servers who suck at WvW” theme. I know, everyone likes to assume that the ONLY difference between any 2 servers in this game is population, but if populations ever start to balance out, then this type of scoring will truly become a reward for bad WvW play.

John Corpening.9847:

• Adjust score of objectives based on upgrade level

This actually favors stacked servers, imo, and also favors servers with better off-hours coverage. I like the idea of rewarding players/servers who upgrade their structures, but this will actually make the score disparity WORSE, imo.

I can actually see all 3 working.

But only if they do away with “Servers” and instead go with something like alliances which have smaller caps placed upon their numbers.

That’s because it would ensure no server is winning because they simply outnumber the other to the point they can run right over them.

If you make a system in which everyone has relatively equal numbers, then “* Consider adjusting score based on placement” becomes completely pointless.

John Corpening.9847:

• Add score for kills

I think pretty much everyone seems to be in favor of something like this. 1 point for Kills, 2-3 points for Stomps (with Bloodlust), or some variation. It honestly won’t do much to solve problems caused by population imbalance, but I think people would generally enjoy it more.

John Corpening.9847:

• Consider adjusting score based on placement

Let’s try to stay away from solutions that revolve around the “Reward servers who suck at WvW” theme. I know, everyone likes to assume that the ONLY difference between any 2 servers in this game is population, but if populations ever start to balance out, then this type of scoring will truly become a reward for bad WvW play.

John Corpening.9847:

• Adjust score of objectives based on upgrade level

This actually favors stacked servers, imo, and also favors servers with better off-hours coverage. I like the idea of rewarding players/servers who upgrade their structures, but this will actually make the score disparity WORSE, imo.

TheFamster.7806:

For stagnation, it is the fault in match making and lack of people playing wvw. Since you have removed almost all farms for pve people, increase the drop rate of something for killing players in wvw so that people will come do wvw even just for the reward.

Please do not turn WvW into a loot-farming area.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Here’s a proposal I pieced together from several ideas posted by forum users:
(exactly one year ago! o_O)

http://youtu.be/qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Server “pairing” is a terrible idea. If you want to merge servers, just merge them, but temporary pairing makes communication, planning, coordination across guilds and maps, and several other important parts of WvW nearly impossible, and puts WvW into permanent “EtoM-style” casual mode.

Dayra.7405:

Otokomae.9356:

Omg, we’ve found the magic solution! …

Obviously, you are still not bored to dead/transfer. Just stay it will happen rather sooner than later.

Don’t forget: you are trapped in T1 outside season and when JQ and TC loose fun fighting you and transfer away, you will be alone in T1 till next season.

Actually, Tier 1 has been exactly like it is now for at least 1 year at this point…

Azumi.9572:

a major part of their game

Is this really how you think Anet views WvW these days?

Dayra.7405:

Jerus.4350:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Jerus.4350:

What I see here is a bunch of suggestions to merge servers without calling it merged servers.

@Dusty Moon, no, being able to float and defend an objective is IMO a pretty important part of the game. BGBL is boring enough as is, if the TC/SoS forces couldn’t float there in an attempt to catch us off guard or get us off other maps then it’d just be completely dead, and I’d be stuck there twiddling my thumbs hating WvW.

Not really – basically your server is your Alliance. If you cannot plan an Alliance general defense and plan (like what guilds go to what server and not just blob together) then the balance should or could be there. If your server doesn’t have a cohesive plan or is just so big it only cares about numbers in a blob COUGH BG COUGH then maybe it is time you have one.

You’re misunderstanding the issue. My guild is assigned to BGBL, thing is we’re stuck there twiddling our thumbs hoping TC/SOS will attack the majority of the time. The only time we get action is when TC/SoS floats to our BL to make an attempt, then they’ll bounce back off. TC will show up in massive number (full blob) hit something, do pretty well, eventually get pushed out, and then we’re back to twiddling our thumbs hoping they’ll do it again. If it wasn’t for their ability to float we’d probably not see any action all night.

The solution to this pseudo-problem is fully in your hand: transfer to TC or SOS and get as many action as you like by attacking BGBL. Problem solved.

Omg, we’ve found the magic solution! Just like ET, HoD, SoR, SoS, SBI & so many other servers before us, if we all just transfer off of BG ASAP we will fix WvW FOREVER!!! I mean, after all, no one from ET, HoD, SoR, SoS, or SBI has been on here discussing any of this “Population Imbalance” nonsense, have they…?

You get a zillion of them for doing Map Completion. You have to leave WvW to get enough of them, of course, but that’s what everyone else had to do as well to get theirs, it’s just how the game was designed.

Sube Dai.8496:

choovanski.5462:

i don’t think enough people are considering the impact of a badly implemented alliance feature. if it’s implemented, and either the execution fails or the design of the system is bad then Anet will not be able to patch it fast enough to retain the players. the risk involved in such a massive change is too high, and the consequences of failure are too great.

They can’t do nothing.

Of course they can! Where have you been the past 2 years?!?

Although it’s not “official”, this mercenary system is already in place. For example, it’s a well known “Forum Fact” that during Season 1, Blackgate hired a team of Russian Assassins to kill SoR while they were asleep, and clearly that worked, as SoR appears to be dead now (at least, I haven’t seen them since Season 1, so I assume SoR must be either dead or hiding).

But yeah, this idea is never going to happen. Btw, there’s already a thread about fixing the population imbalance, with a Dev involved.

Asglarek.8976:

Otokomae.9356:

TLDR: adding an official (good) GvG mode would make it easier to spread out guilds across servers/alliances, and would likely reduce the number guilds Tagging up to lead massive forces, with guilds playing WvW just for fun a lot more.

The problem you have by adding a GvG mode as a hypothetical wvw population fix is that the more stacked a server is like BG/JQ/TC the less of an impact it would have on them as it would on say a less stacked server. Its a numbers game and the only real fix with the least amount of impact is still IMO battle groups.

With caps you create ques where big servers with mega guilds that will fill wvw instantaneously forcing others to either stop wvw or transfer.

With technical changes to the scoring system or buffing or nerfing objectives you create a punitive system in essence you’ve taken the “unfair advantage” and flipped it you know “two wrongs don’t make a right”.

Closing servers and migrating the players to a predetermined server is always painful something no company wants to do but sometimes attrition is the best cure.

Which leaves grouping servers together as alliances where they share ques with others in there alliance so hypothetically you would take the top 6 servers and devide the remaining 18 based on internal metrics so maybe the top 3 servers only take the 2 of the lowest tier servers and the other 3 take the higher tiered.

In this scenario I can see increased wvw participation and a chance to grow communities the others not so much.

If you’re going to quote someone, PLEASE don’t read only the “TLDR” at the end, read the whole post, and re-read it if you didn’t understand it the first time. Here is the bullet points version covering only a few of my points, since the admittedly “Wall of Text” version is probably overwhelming: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/page/18#post4450064

One of those points was that, contrary to what you’ve said here, Tier 1 would be heavily affected by a decent GvG game mode, since so many of the guilds in T1 came here essentially for GvG purposes. They tried making Tier 2 into the “GvG Tier”, but that effort fell apart, so many of the GvG guilds are now in Tier 1, since there is a diverse group to fight here, and you can ONLY GvG with other guilds in the same matchup as you. It would also ease the transition into something like the “Battle Groups” you’re suggesting, since turning all of WvW into a casual, EtoM-style affair would likely cause many players to leave WvW and/or the game altogether, unless they had a more competitive alternative for guilds within GW2 already in place.

Johje Holan.4607:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Guild Wars 1 was so successful because of the varying types of PvP. GvG, Heroes Ascent, Team PvP, Random Arenas, Alliance Battles. The variety created balance and not over population.

This plus it was just a much better game. The PvE was better too. I still can go in and play some PvE in GW1 and enjoy it. I can’t stand the PvE in GW2.

Back to your point and another posters – I don’t see how an official GvG is going to help with WvW population imbalance?

Well, I’m basically about to make bullet points from my previous “Wall of Text” post, since I doubt most people will read it, hopefully this will help:

1.) A lot of the stacking problems in this game are a DIRECT RESULT of GW2 having no official GvG game mode. This means that, not only is WvW people’s only option for “Unofficial GvG”, but people can only GvG with other guilds IN THE SAME TIER. This means that if you want to have a good GvG scene to fight in, you currently MUST stack just 1 Tier with as many GvG guilds as possible. This, in turn leads to massive numbers in WvW as well, since there is an enormous crossover between these game modes for most guilds.

2.) There is already a TON of resistance in this thread to any ideas of creating “EotM-style Battle Groups”, sometimes called “Alliances” in this thread, where several (or all) servers are lumped together in groups, hoping that across so many servers, the numbers will sort of “even out”, even in off-peak timezones. I believe the resistance to this kind of change would be FAR LESS if GvG were an official game mode, since that would give people an outlet for full-on competition, as lumping all the servers together would make WvW far less competitive for many people.

3.) As mentioned above, much of the massive stacking was caused by Guilds all congregating to a single tier in an effort to create a better GvG environment. If GvG were an official game mode which was INDEPENDENT of the Tier you are in or the server you play on, then it would be FAR EASIER to convince guilds to “de-stack”, and move around to less populated servers, and any changes made to WvW to promote spreading the population out would be received with far less crying from the current WvW community, since we would have another outlet for competing and even just hanging out with our friends from other guilds.

This is only part of my point, but I hope that gives you a few ideas of the benefits of adding GvG as a separate game mode, and how it could ease the transition from WvW’s current state to one in which the population is more evenly spread throughout the game.

Does anyone from EU want to weigh in on this? What do people over there think of GvG as a separate Game Mode, and how it might affect WvW?

I’m on Blackgate, and we’ve been fighting the same 2 servers EXCLUSIVELY for nearly a year now. And it was the same for a full year before that. There simply isn’t another fair matchup in this Tier, and many other Tiers are in a similar situation, as the difference between servers can be massive just from 1 Tier to the next.

Svarty.8019:

Xillllix.3485:

Hamster.4861:

Server being full has nothing to do with WvW. It’s EVERYONE. It has more to do with allocating server resources than anything else.

l2 get your PvE population into WvW like Yaks Bend does and you’ll do just fine.

Yeah but what’s the point of this with megaservers? Shouldn’t transferring be influenced by WvW population only?

^^ THis.

One way to get populations uncapped might be to shuffle non-WvW players around a bit.

We’ve got another thread on this kind of stuff already going: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/page/18#post4449437

There’s a Dev involved in the conversation, so feel free to hop in and voice your opinion. Most people seem to agree that we need some way to seperate population limits based on WvW population rather than PvE population, and there are 3 or 4 ideas in that thread about how to do that already.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

Well, this was a nice try, but most of your argument is inaccurate. First of all, bags don’t drop out of thin air in WvW, and the number of bags in WvW is limited… by the number of players ON THE OTHER SERVER. So if, say, BG went down to T8 for a week and fought Eredon Terrace and Anvil Rock, most of Blackgate’s players would already be getting FAR fewer bags than they’re used to, even without your Magic Find scaling, while the players from ET and AR would likely get more bags that week (at least, the bags would there, running around on the maps ready to be killed.)

Second, this isn’t really a solution to anything. I’m on Blackgate, which according to these forums is the stackiest of stacked servers in any game anywhere ever, and I’ve never known or even heard of anyone transferring here for the easy XP! lol
The players who “stacked” the top servers level outside of WvW because it’s faster, and no one really appreciates having the rally-bait tag along during competition. And it’s pretty well-known that WvW is probably the WORST place in the game to farm for bags or gold, especially when you consider that much of WvW is already a gold sink. If you look at this thread, you’ll see many people are even advocating that we RAISE Magic Find on EVERYONE in WvW, just to get more people out there! I don’t agree with that, but you could make all of WvW a “No-Drops Zone”, with absolutely no loot at all, and it wouldn’t have much affect on the Population Imbalance that this thread is here to discuss, because server populations are not based on the “Awesome Loot” found in WvW, the population difference in WvW at the moment are based on people moving around looking for a competitive environment that they enjoy (large-scale, small-scale, easy-wins, underdogs, etc) and/or people not moving for the sake of server-loyalty or simply wanting to stay put and play with their friends. People go to EotM for Loot, if they’re really trying to avoid PvE (they run dungeons if they need Loot in a hurry).

So feel free to scale Magic Find, Experience, Karma, whatever, or even remove rewards in WvW altogether, it won’t have any real effect on Population Imbalance.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone official from Anet posting on the forums on Saturday or Sunday (which I really do understand), so you’ll have to wait until at least Monday, Mal.

^this guy gets it
……………………………..

Maybe he checked the GW2 Wiki? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/WvW_Fall_Tournament_2014#Tournament_Standings

It wasn’t a secret.

Well, I know this subject is a bit taboo on the forums, but 1 fix for the WvW population imbalances would be to simply introduce something people have been asking since AT LEAST mid-Beta: GvG. REAL GvG, with leaderboards, some type of scoring (not based on “Conquest” mechanics, please), and team sizes that are more realistic than 5-man parties, or 8-man, or whatever the sPvP max size was for a while.

This would do a lot of things for people whining about WvW imbalance. GvG arenas would have to pit evenly matched teams in terms of numbers (10v10, 15v15, 25v25, etc), and if it were its own game mode, who you fight wouldn’t have to be based on the Tier your in; since Jim Hunter believes that

With relatively equal numbers ET would absolutely destroy BG.

We could finally TEST that theory in GvG~! Also, a real, competitive GvG mode, with winners, losers, and an Official ranking system, would pull a LOT of guilds out of the Top Tiers of WvW, and decrease the size of the zergs there probably from Day 1. It would also make it much, MUCH easier to spread sizable WvW guilds around throughout the servers with far less tears, since hardcore Fighter Guilds would be able to get their fights in GvG no matter where they; you can speculate all you want about the “quality” of the fights/guilds/zergs in Tier 1, but the majority of the organized guilds who moved to Tier 1 moved there for FIGHTS, not wins. This would allow these guilds to get good fights against similarly-ranked guilds anytime, no matter what server they were on, and “stacking” servers at this point would be something only considered by true “bandwagonners”, who generally add much more to a server’s que-times than they add to their PPT score, anyway.

This would also satiate a lot of people’s need for “diversity” in fights, since you could challenge other guilds to official (and hopefully, even “practice”) GvG matches, without the stifling limitation of having to “meet in Obsidian Sanctum”, which limits you to ONLY challenging guilds in your current matchup, and then hoping that no one else is there GvGing already, and beyond that, hoping that no one trolls the match (1 troll player can ruin a GvG solo) that the other guild runs the agreed upon numbers, etc. Obsidian Sanctum has been a compromise that no one is happy with so far.

But I honestly think this would solve a lot of the problems with WvW Imbalance, and provide a safe-haven for those who want a more even-numbered matchup (and one that doesn’t last a whole week, encompassing several different timezones, etc).

The downside would be that much of the competitive atmosphere of WvW would be eroded by this over time, and it’s likely that WvW would eventually become the more casual, PvE player-friendly PvP zone that Anet originally described many times before the game’s release. This seems to be what a lot of people want anyway, however, and an actual GvG zone would give highly competitive guilds and groups an arena within the game to test themselves against others with the same numbers! If this were in the game, a lot of these “Alliance” ideas would be just fine, as people would be a lot less worried about being able to control the PPT score without having to worry about how good or bad the other 2-8 servers they got paired with are doing. You could blend bunches of servers together EotM-style (as many have advocated here), evening out the distribution of players in WvW, with far less tears if there were an official, competitive GvG mode to the game.

Now at this point, someone will probably say “what about people who don’t want to join a Guild?” Those people have a tough time in any game of this type. They can still go out an solo WvW, and will probably have an easier time of it at that, but they’ve CHOSEN a hard road, no one forced them to stay guildless for their entire tenure in a game called “GUILD Wars”. So this is kind of like asking “How do you balance Counter Strike for players who don’t like guns?” There’s really no reason, imo, to even try to balance things around players who are actively trying to avoid the something that is, essentially, the entire basis of the game.

TLDR: adding an official (good) GvG mode would make it easier to spread out guilds across servers/alliances, and would likely reduce the number guilds Tagging up to lead massive forces, with guilds playing WvW just for fun a lot more.

Move along everyone, nothing to see here.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

Here’s a pretty average night for my Guild in WvW, T1:
http://youtu.be/VZKte8RH3gg

You don’t really see more than 100 people total involved in a fight very often, and when that does happen, it’s either in Stonemist or someone’s Garrison. Now that you can’t Banner-Rez the Lord anymore, however, the massive 3-way battles (that sometimes pulled in numbers around 120+ from all 3 servers total) don’t happen as often, simply because the battles don’t last nearly as long as they used to. In open field, 30v30 would generally be a starting point for the larger guilds.

testpig.5018:

Yes, give the outmanned realm a siege buff to take down walls and gates slightly faster

Taking anything you want on the map 50% faster is not slightly faster, that incredibly fast. And then being able to hold everything you take 50% longer? This is just rewarding your server for NOT coming out to fight. If you honestly NEED this kind of buff to compete, then your server is clearly in the wrong Tier, and needs to move down anyway.

testpig.5018:

If the blob doesn’t want to take 50% more damage form an AC… lets do the math… avg AC damage is 2k per tick. so +50% of that would be…. 1k… so total damage is now 3k. yea.. breaking the bank…. how about getting out of range of the tower.

Ok, now do the rest of the math:
Superior Arrow Carts do an extra +50% damage already
Arrow Cart Mastery adds +25%, I think
Siege Might adds another +5%

Add in your “+50% Siege Buff to all Outmanned” and we’re at nearly 6k per hit with Arrow Carts, hitting up to 50 people at a time; allowing 1 person on an AC to do nearly 300,000 Damage every time he presses the “2” button! That, my friend, is giving yourself a super power.

shadaux.5192:

As soon as there is an enemy in a tower, it stops giving PPT, unless the forces in there spend more than 60% (Balanceable) of their time in stealth.

This actually seems meaningless; if there are enemies IN a tower, it’s about to stop giving PPT to your server anyway…

shadaux.5192:

Remove ALL Seige, make doors scale in HP with number of players so that 1 player in full soldiers= 1 min (I know this sounds short but read whole post before complaining, defending too easy=no fun fights), 2 players still takes roughly a min all the way up to a full 70 man zerg. Reinforced door= 2 mins.

This would just create a new, lazy meta, as with anything else in WvW that works on a timer. If we all know that killing a door means doing damage for “x amount of minutes”, instead of doing “x amount of damage”, and that the difference between 1 person hitting the door and 10-20 people hitting it is negligible, then every server is going to start sending out Stealth classes to take down doors, then simply call the zerg in when the timer’s almost up.

shadaux.5192:

Door scaling means outnumbered sides can still ninja Garrisons if enemy is slacking, forces people to spread across maps and use brains. It doesn’t entirely solve the server stacking and mushing everything else with pure numbers but it will help that and fix almost all the other issues.

If this is about combatting servers with much larger numbers during a certain timezone or something like that, you’re going the wrong way with it. It’s always easier for a server with larger numbers to be in several places at once than it is for a server with smaller numbers. This system would seem to benefit the larger population servers.

testpig.5018:

Otokomae.9356:

Who are the “blob servers” you’re fighting against down there in T5-6? Do they really just run 1 single blob all the time? If you’re thinking this would allow lower Tier servers to compete in T1, this won’t do it; we already leave Scouts in every important structure we take. Keeps are scouted 24/7 until we’ve secured the win on my server, so we don’t have to back-cap constantly.

you not thinking clearly, as you are from a blob server. most servers don’t care about t1…Many WvW players in the lower tiers don’t care about moving up or moving down. They care about being able to enjoy themselves in the fight they are currently in.

Outmanned players can’t really compete much in the open field against large blobs. So their best bet would be to take an objective(tower) and use it as a place to compete against the larger blobs. But with the current scope of the game, that option is nearly impossible to do against the blob servers..(even more impossible now with disable trap).

So with that, do you see how an outmanned buff that benefits siege damage output can actually help the outmanned server? Do you see how an outmanned buff that reduces damage to outmanned teams gate/walls by 50% would give the outmanned team a better chance of having a better fight, and holding off the enemy large enough to flash build 10 cats and snipe down a wall 60 seconds? That a system that helps the outmanned team would increase that timer to 120 seconds, which can open up windows for possible more defenders to arrive or for anything to allow them to fight the good fight.

Blob servers don’t have logic. because they have population. Avg servers don’t have that population.. or that coverage. We are the outmanned. We play with that icon forever on our Hero.

Wow, well, you’ve really had quite a turnaround in your ideas, I guess, since your days running with the blob on SoR. This is you here, right?

testpig.5018:

Your night, is someone elses day.

Night capping is not an issue. The issue is, what you do during your day to make up for it.

And now you’re saying “Give us Super-powers, so that we can walk thru walls (50% faster), and have our towers and even camps guarded by mini-bosses, and make every one our Arrow Cart attacks equal to a Thief’s Backstab.” That’s really quite a change in philosophy since you moved to Borlis Pass…