Guild Wars 2

testpig.5018:

“Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers.”

not rewards… supports players that are outmanned and still wants to fight

“NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in”, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”.

if 5 guardians are in slow moving omega when outmanned… they are still outmanned.. and thus the players with the population simply have to show up and kill these 5 slow moving omegas. i’m having a hard time understanding your point. Outmanned still means you are OUTMANNED.

They’re not so slow-moving anymore; didn’t you read the patch notes? Golems get a buff to movement speed with the first points you spend in the new Golem Mastery line, which anyone planning to use this meta would take. But even without that, 1 mesmer could move them from structure to structure in relative safety if they wanted to avoid fighting, though I’m not sure they’d need to if they’re doing +50% to anyone who gets in their way…

testpig.5018:

How great would it be, that even being outmanned, still thinking “yea, we can still try to take stone mist, and we might actually succeed if they don’t come and zergroll us”

it would force the blob servers to spread out, instead of blob, because if they blob, all the small man teams can just run around retaking everything that isn’t defended with some ease =)

balance.

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.

testpig.5018:

*First off, as many of you have pointed out, it will be impossible to create equal populations without moving people around. As several others have pointed out we don’t want to break apart communities. *

I think you are missing a point and solution to WvW imbalances. The issues are, the outmanned teams simply can’t compete, or even slow down the enemy enough to compete. I’m not referring to the open field fight, because 1v10 in open field should go to the 10.

I’m referring to the static structures that can be the ultimate form of WvW game play balance, that would still allow each player vs player interaction to remain equal. If we allow siege/structures/npcs to gain an outmanned buff we can see great balance happen in the game.

Outmanned buff:
-NPCS: all outmanned NPCs take 50% less damage, and deal 50% more damage
-Siege: All Outmanned Siege Deals 50% more damage.
-Structures: All outmanned Gates/walls take 50% less damage.

these simple simple changes would allow the realm that is outmanned to still stand a chance in the WvW game. Not only will they be able to have a better chance of defending their structures with less numbers against greater numbers. But they can also retake stuff much faster then if they were on equal footing.

And the great thing about this.. once that realm losing the outmanned buff, it means they should have enough population to defend the structures without the buff benefit on siege.

And Balance is easily found… This solution causes many things to happen:
-1 Creates a system that would allow underpopulated teams to actually take down very upgraded objectives from an overpopulated realm much easier.
-2 Would greatly support spreading out over multi zones
-3 Would support spreading troops out over the map instead of all trying to attack/defend one objective.
-4 Supports the outmanned way in a balanced equal footing fashion without creating class imbalance.

Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers. NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”. This wouldn’t be some “Buff to low pop servers”, it would simply become the new late-night Meta almost immediately.

Honestly, we needed server mergers BEFORE Season 1. It’s way past time, so no matter what other ideas you guys come up with, server mergers, at least for WvW purposes, need to happen FIRST.

munkiman.3068:

• Reward for successful defense should be equal to successful capture.

Well, this would have to added benefit of ending the annoying Meta of “Tapping Waypoints”, should those taps continue to set off the Defense the Keep event.

This would also, however, make Trolling an enemy server 1234987987314 times easier than ever before, since a solo-troll could simply set off defense events all over the map and walk away, handing points to the enemy server.

Cross.6437:

Lowest Animal.8014:

I agree with the idea of alliances as a solution to WvW population imbalance. Here is my vision of how it would work:

Alliance > Server > Guild

Using established server rankings, group servers into alliances such as:

Alliance A = Servers 1+24+21+18+15+12+9+6
Alliance B = Servers 2+23+20+17+14+11+8+5
Alliance C = Servers 3+21+19+16+13+10+7+4

The rankings used to divvy up the alliances should be a few matches or a tournament after locking transfers to prevent last minute mass transfers and let the rankings settle.

A better way to distribute the WvW population may exist this is just my best guess so far.

Next, make transfers to any server within your alliance free at any time with no restrictions. While at the same time making transfers to servers outside your alliance expensive with restrictions in place to hinder trolling or other bad behavior. This would be a permanent change.

For new players they should be locked out of WvW for at least the first 10 to 20 levels then asked to pick an alliance. The game then transfers them to a random middle tier server within their chosen alliance.

An alliance page could be added to the WvW window where news, goings on, PPT of all servers, and maybe an in game alliance only forum could be accessed. An alliance restricted part of the forums could be vital to encourage organization between allied guilds.

My hope is that with this system alliances reward guild organization and team work creating a tight knit community. Allied servers become battlefields guilds can move between so they can avoid queues, being too outnumbered in certain time zones, and maximize their impact on the match. This will make guilds will important beyond “which big guild zerg owns this map” and hopefully also solve the coverage problem.

Huh, I like the idea of keeping servers as they are and allying ourselves with a shared score via an alliance system. T1 still gets their intensity., and T8 still gets their “rural”/strategic feel.

Um, it actually sounds to me like no one gets ANY of these things in this system; if we’re all sharing maps with 8 other servers, even if they do a good job of grouping people together with their own servers, you’re still likely to see T1 zergs forming up in T8 anytime there’s a que higher than 10, and those players are just going to karma train unless the T8 (or whatever map the higher Tier servers go to while in que) players are able to up a serious resistance, since most player’s won’t be able to take the score seriously, if their PPT is tired to 8 other servers (or Teams, or Alliance, or whatever word you want to use here). Any lower Tier maps that start to take on players from other Tiers who are waiting in que are just going to watch their maps get turned into EotM 2.0.

This suggestion actually sounds WORSE than using the EotM grouping system, imo.

EFWinters.5421:

Otokomae.9356:

Snorcha.7586:

Can anyone point out any major flaws in my suggestion?

Battlegroups

Not too hard, you put it right at the beginning. The very first word was a major flaw, with about 50+ posts already pointing out why people don’t want this.

Really? Because I’ve only seen mention of why BG would not want this.

Go back to page 1 and start over, then. The first argument AGAINST Battle Groups that I saw was on page 1, by a player from SBI, and it’s been pointed out by people in every Tier (including this thread’s OP, who is from Anvil Rock) why this would be bad for WvW for the past 15 pages.

Lol, we remember….. I was on SoS at the time, and I can’t tell you how mad people were when we heard that the Tier below us had had a Dolyak Parade, and WE didn’t get first crack at ruining it for them!

The “TC Rage” that came as a result of that night was awesome though; I think TC won that tier for the first time the very next week, didn’t they?

Snorcha.7586:

Can anyone point out any major flaws in my suggestion?

Battlegroups

Not too hard, you put it right at the beginning. The very first word was a major flaw, with about 50+ posts already pointing out why people don’t want this.

Yenn.9185:

I think this comes down on how entice more players to play wvw. If more players hop on wvw, it will come to point where each server can saturate their queues. At that point, there will be a balance population.

The rewards relative to effort and participation needs a hard look. Players who used to not like dungeons now play them, and got better at them, because of rewards, for example.

If you do something like this, the rewards would have to be once a week, for WINNING, not for karma-training the map in a big “Queensdale 2.0”-style loop. There have been lots of discussions about increasing rewards in WvW over the past 2 years, and the consensus has generally been that WvW players prefer to lower the costs of WvW, rather than increase the rewards to PvE or greater levels, simply because we don’t want WvW flooded with former dungeon-runners, who never look at the score, but simply want to “run the map, rinse, repeat”, looking for the best “gold-per-hour” in the game.

And of course, tying the rewards to server performance brings us back to the issue of “stacking”, so…

Deli.1302:

John Corpening.9847:

There are a number of great ideas circulating attacking the problem from different angles and with varying levels of magnitude of change. One note though, I really feel that scoring is a separate issue that needs to be addressed on it’s own. We will discuss that one after we wrap this one up. Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

Can you please elaborate further on this? Why do you think they are a separate issue? Population imbalance is a direct result of coverage issues which is a consequence of the scoring system. Honestly, if anet genuinely wants to fix this issue, then they need to hit it at it’s root. Right now we’re just trying to fix a symptom.

My guess would be that the “Conquest” system is also in place in sPvP, and causes a whole different set of problems there, and they’re likely looking at it as an enormous overhaul if they have to change that system anywhere. PPT is very different from the problems sPvP faces, but they’re somewhat related, and I feel like Anet is probably looking at this as one whole problem, rather than 2 very distinct ones. That might be the way to do it, even, I honestly don’t know. Just a guess.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Side note, the devs that have been adopted onto servers should really be looking at their servers internal discussions on this subject. I know TC has a thriving thread about this and I’m sure most other servers do as well. Heck the TC/FA/MAG match up thread is even talking about it.

BG is doing the same thing, having its own internal brainstorming, the purpose of which was supposed to be to weed out all of our bad or unworkable ideas and narrow it down to things we think might actually work, then at some point post those ideas here or hand them to Anet in some fashion. It’s part of the reason why you see so many BG posts in this Thread, a lot of us have had this problem on our minds already this week.

So what do people think? Is the current system working? Or should Kill Points be independent of Bloodlust? Or should there be NO Kill Points at all, even? Or perhaps the compromise suggested above?

Taken from the “Population Imbalance” thread, where it was somewhat irrelevant, but I personally think this is something worth looking into on its own:

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

This is separate from the issue of Population Imbalance, but I AGREE, the idea that holding Bloodlust determines whether or not you get points from Kills just doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can keep Bloodlust in the game, with the same small stat buffs it has now, and maybe you could even keep it tied to Stomp Points (make all Stomps worth 1 EXTRA point when you hold Bloodlust), but really, ALL KILLS should count for 1 point, independent of Bloodlust.

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

This is separate from the issue of Population Imbalance, but I AGREE, the idea that holding Bloodlust determines whether or not you get points from Kills just doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can keep Bloodlust in the game, with the same small stat buffs it has now, and maybe you could even keep it tied to Stomp Points (make all Stomps worth 1 EXTRA point when you hold Bloodlust), but really, ALL KILLS should count for 1 point, independent of Bloodlust.

NEW THREAD TIME!!!

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

So which server gets the advantage of the frozen map? Red, Blue, or Green? Frozen anything is bad.

No one. While it is frozen no one can enter it and it’s state doesn’t count in the tick.
It could be frozen when no team has more than 250 people in the match, i.e. all fit on the remaining 3 maps, and waked up when the first team reached queue on all 3 maps, i.e. there is a real demand for it.

What I think Neville means here is, will it be a Borderland map that is frozen? If so, whose HOME MAP will it be, because that server can easily be put at a disadvantage by this, since most servers tend to do better on their Home BL.

timmyf.1490:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Take a look at this weeks scores, think about why everyone of these matches is a blowout.

It’s because of the Swiss style system. Next week should be better matchups. It has nothing to do with systemic problems in WvW rankings.

Yup, this week is SUPPOSED to be the most imbalanced week of the entire Season. It’s BY DESIGN. Most matchups involve servers that are usually 3 tiers apart from each other.

Dayra.7405:

Otokomae.9356:

The people who are complaining that their server is constantly outmanned, has no will to fight, or that they simply don’t/can’t field enough people to compete are precisely the ones who should see their servers merged.
…
There’s absolutely no logical reason to destroy only the servers where people are generally happy with the current WvW balance, whether it’s with a forced dismantling or merger, or whether it’s with some sort of passive means, such as punishing servers with a healthy WvW population by artificially inflating the ques there through some sort of new “Lower WvW Cap”.
…

When I see Blackgate in the signature and read such a text I can hardly suppress the interpretation: Don’t touch the system, in which I am winning

Really, it’s “Don’t touch the system where people are actually enjoying WvW”. It makes more sense than the suggestions of “Lower map caps so that everyone plays like Tier 8” or “Force those nasty Tier 1 guilds to come help us out, since no one on my server wants to fight, and I don’t want to move, but I still want to win”. I mean, there is a small minority on here from the lowest 2 Tiers whose main argument seems to be “I’m miserable because my server never wins WvW, so either bring everyone else down to our level or force them to fight for us.” These arguments just really don’t make any sense to me.

Jim Hunter.6821:

It shouldn’t be the case that a server can lose every fight but still win the match.

Has this ever happened? I mean, EVER? In Tier 1, this would be nearly impossible, as most weeks Points From Stomps are at least 1/3 of the winning server’s total.

What’s going on down there in Tier 8?

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zepher.7803:

Since people (and a lot of people do) transfer servers all of the time especially during the tournament, I would say the majority of people could care less about server identity they want to be somewhere where they can win.

So holding onto the server identity complaint is from the minority, and shouldn’t be an issue.

it’s derailing any hopes of something to change anytime this year or the next.

take the bottom 6 servers out(calculated from last 6 months performance), give players a month to switch, THEN start working on these other convoluted ideas.

this is just getting waaaaay overcomplicated.

and I also propose all Anvil Rock, Borlis Pass and Ehmry Bay peeps to find a way to land on the same side

So the people that did stick with their servers, instead of paying to win by transferring, should be the ones to lose their servers? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The people who are complaining that their server is constantly outmanned, has no will to fight, or that they simply don’t/can’t field enough people to compete are precisely the ones who should see their servers merged. There’s absolutely no logical reason to destroy only the servers where people are generally happy with the current WvW balance, whether it’s with a forced dismantling or merger, or whether it’s with some sort of passive means, such as punishing servers with a healthy WvW population by artificially inflating the ques there through some sort of new “Lower WvW Cap”.

I mean, you started this thread about how your server needs help with population &/or Outmanned issues, to such a degree that your server (which is in 2nd to last place, currently) can’t even compete consistently in Tiers 7 or 8; you can’t really believe that there’s no problem at all with Anvil Rock, and that this is somehow EVERYONE ELSE’S SERVERS FAULT, and therefore they need to change, not AR… can you? Because that really seems to be what you’ve been pushing this whole time: “Please Anet, bring the map caps down only the number of players that my NEXT-TO-LAST-PLACE SERVER can field, it’s the only way to save WvW!” I mean, it just doesn’t make sense! I have to ask here, was this whole thread originally based on a troll post? If so… you got us, man! Good one.

Dayra.7405:

Alliances are not blue, green, red, but blue, green, red are the teams of a match.
The initial alliances are the current servers, 1 today server = 1 future alliance.
Several alliances together are assigned to a team, such that teams have equal size.

Differences to today’s EotM

• EotM has no 24/7 match, alliance WvW will have 24/7 matches.
• alliances fight for their permant ranking in the leaderboard, whereas in EotM all score is forgotten after 4h

Imagine it as one gigantic map where all alliances are placed to fight for their score. 2/3 of the alliances are hostile, 1/3 of the alliances are friendly.

So “Alliances” in this instance are basically just like servers, and are going to be forced to play on “Teams” of servers, with whom they communicate through Map Chat, and these “Alliances” are not fighting for their own win, but are forced to rely on the performance of other “Alliances” that they’ve been grouped with that week. That is how EotM Battle Groups/Teams/RGB-style works. And it’s terrible for competition, and is probably the largest reason why no one even looks at the score in EotM, since they’re too busy making sure they go around the map at an even pace, so they never have to see any enemy “Teams”.

Would these “Teams” be permanent, or would be change periodically? Would the “Alliances” get to pick their teams, or is it random, or is it decided for them by some combination of Glicko/population/whatever? Because if the “Teams” are changed by Anet periodically, then they’ll never be able to form groups that can work together, communicate well, coordinate across maps, etc, and that’s how you turn WvW into “EotM Casual Mode”.

PLEASE do not let anything like this happen.

Dayra.7405:

Schtizzel.5497:

And then I can’t really grasp how an alliance system would help tackling night capping or off hour imbalances.

It allows new solutions to coverage. The root of the coverage problem is that the amount of players that want to play WvW is different all around the clock, whereas the match-capacity is equal all around the clock, i.e. the match-capacity per team is always fix around 400, while the number of players per team vary from 0-1000.

Let’s assume for a moment that we will have just ONE match in the future, where all the alliances are distributed over the 3 teams, such that overall man-power is nearly equal.

4 map is not enough for that in prime-time, we likely need 10-20 maps in primetime, but in off-time we need much less maps maybe only 4.

We have

• EB-map
• (rebalanced) EotM-map
• 3-BL-map (can be used only together due to their asymmetry)
• maybe new maps in the future

We may use them in two versions

• large (capacity is 100% of current)
• small (capacity is 50% of current)

We may have an 3-BLs-large map(s) that fits around 300 player per team, we may have a EB-medium map that fits around 50 player per team, etc..

These are the blocks ANet can setup the match-structure. ANet knows (could know) the man-power/time graphs! of all alliances from last week and can estimate the man-power/time graphs of the teams from it and can setup a match-structure that fits it well from it.

E.g. always the match consists of the match-structure of today

• EB-large
• 3BLs-large

thats 400 capacity per team.

In prime-time that’s far from sufficient to fit all player, we need more capacity for prime-time, so lets add maps that can only be played during prime-time each day

• 3-BLs-small ( + 150 capacity)
• EB-small ( + 50 capacity)
• EotM-large (+100 capacity)
• EotM-small (+ 100 capacity)
• …

till the capacity exceeds the estimated demand. The maps are saved when their demand ends and restored when they are demanded again.

• This cannot be manipulated because it is estimated from last weeks demand.
• If all alliances are stable it will fit, and you will have no queue and no coverage problem
• Only if many alliances are rather unstable, you may have queue or coverage problems, but that’s your fault, be more predictable.

Blaeys.3102:

Instead of basing the alliances around guilds and players, base it on servers and add maps to the match to accomodate the numbers.

So, it would be Servers A, C and E vs Servers B, D and F vs Servers X,Y and Z playing across 12 maps (nine borderlands and 3 EBGs). And, make it so only your server can defend your borderlands (to give you somewhere to retain server pride).

Everyone wins.

Wait… what? So you’re saying that the “Alliances” are just the same old EotM-style Green/Blue/Red teams, with everyone playing on the same teams all the time, no more Tiers or unique matchups, and Servers and guilds who never see each other on the map or even speak to one another will now have to count each other in order to win each week?

Please, keep the casual, EotM-style teams OUT of WvW.

http://youtu.be/rJp86_tj9KQ

Vorpalblade.4376:

To solve the problem of this imbalance we need to buff the server that are outnumbered. This buff should be enough for 1 guy to take a camp with no upgrades!

Honestly, is there anyone in WvW who can’t already do this WITHOUT a buff? I regularly flip 2 camps per tick solo, upgraded or not, on any 1 of 4 different classes that I use. This is asking for a buff that makes players… average? Or gives really bad players the ability to solo-flip a camp without needing to get any better at the game? I’m not sure I get it.

or to take on a 2 vs 1 assuming the 2 guys make mistakes in their rotations etc. because currently there is NO chance for anyone to win in a 2 vs 1 situation assuming all things are relatively equal (build, class, trait, player skill)

It’s SO RARE that these things are completely balanced in a 2v1 situation, especially the “player skill” part. But it just sounds like you’re asking for a buff that makes a few players one 1 server “super-powered”, allowing bad players to easily 1v1 good players, and even take on 2v1’s without needing to gain any sort of skill or without ever needing to learn how to handle a 2v1.

Many players are in favor of a some sort of “Outmanned Buff” that would handicap the worst server in a matchup for some sort of PPT protection during their off-hours, but almost across the board, players are AGAINST any Buff that would affect small group play, particularly 1v1 thru 5v5 sized skirmishes. Making individual players “Super-powered” thru the Outmanned Buff is generally just a terrible idea.

roxybudgy.8205:

Can’t be bothered individually quoting all the people who made incorrect assumptions about what things are like in the lower tiers..

First of all, not all lower tier servers are poorly organised, or lack TeamSpeak, etc… I may not be able to speak for all servers as I have been on Ehmry Bay from day one, Ehmry Bay has TeamSpeak, and people do get organised. Yes, we are small, we have less people, and I’m ok with that. Historically, Ehmry Bay has never done much recruiting, not because we’re “unorganised” but because many of us feel that if people want to join us, great. If not, then whatever, server-hoppers should join a server that suits them. Small and organised, just the way I like it

Ghost town? As an oceanic, yes it tends to be quiet during the times I play, but there are always a dedicated group of players online at any given time, and when we band together, we can flip and defend objectives and still have fun. Or we spread out and solo roam, whatever tickles our fancy. I would much rather play with a small group of like-minded people than a horde that doesn’t give a toss about server pride.

So many ignorant posters proudly proclaim that merging servers is THE solution! But to what problem? I’m sure many low tier players like myself are happy with the way things are on the server of our choice. Why can’t we be left alone? Why should upper tier players trample over our wishes in a vain attempt to temporarily solve their coverage problems?

So, you’re saying that THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH POPULATION IMBALANCE in your Tier? Awesome, that’s 1 less server for Anet to worry about! Leave EBay alone Anet, they’re doing just fine (^_^).

Diem.3529:

I’ve heard countless people, from various guildmates, to friends, to strangers say “Why do WvW this week,” “It’s pointless,” “We don’t have a chance to win, so why try.”…

What we need is: A competitive atmosphere. Something that gives us a will to fight and a reason to try and win every week.

I hate to say it, but this sounds like a Ferguson’s Crossing problem, NOT a WvW problem…

I mean, Blackgate spent all of Season 2 in “Can’t Possibly Win” matchups, and we went from only having ques on Reset during Season 1, so suddenly having ques every night in Season 2, because everybody wanted a crack at that JQ/TC Alliance! Honestly, we knew that we had ZERO chance of winning Season 2 once the coordinated system of weekly win-trading started between JQ & TC, but our ques actually GOT BIGGER as Season 2 went on!

This attitude is one of the main reason why many people are against massive server mergers, and it is a very large part of why Blackgate trounces T1 on a regular basis; our server simply has a very competitive atmosphere when it comes to WvW! I mean, the core of BG’s WvW groups is made up of people & guilds who bought this game primarily JUST to play WvW, and not only to play it, but to WIN it. We don’t play for 2nd. Ever. And as the WvW population has shrunk, and other WvW servers have imploded, lots of like-minded guilds have gravitated towards Blackgate, because after fighting against us, they wanted to be part of that sort of competitive community, one that plays to win and never seems to go away.

I mean, if you’re on a server that doesn’t really care where they place, or doesn’t want to try if it looks like the win will be hard to get, then there’s really not much Anet can do to turn that around.
I mean, does your server have:

— it’s own forums?

— a server-wide TeamSpeak that everyone actually uses for WvW?

— weekly map assignments, to assure that everyone knows what guilds are taking which maps, and prevent your 5 biggest guilds from all queing up on the same map each Friday?

— Commander schedules, so you can see exactly where the gaps are in your coverage, and know who will be Tagged up on what map each day, and for how long?

— Weekly server meetings for guild leaders and officers, to discuss where your server’s weaknesses are and how to fix them?

This is just a tiny part of the system of organization that my server uses, a system that we used in Sea of Sorrows starting in November, 2012, and which we brought over to Blackgate in February, 2013, and which we still use now. If you don’t have things like this going already, then simply adding more players (players you’ve never worked with before, who were FORCED to your server) won’t really solve any of your “Competitive Atmosphere” problems. There have been plenty of servers already who’ve proven that having numbers, coverage, a few great guilds, lots of good individual PvPers, or any of the other things that people seem to THINKshould matter, won’t keep your server from toppling when it hits a wall of server-wide organization & Tryhards (SBI’s brief stay in T1, comes to mind).

So maybe Ferguson’s Crossings problems could be solved by a server-merger, but if so, it won’t be because of the extra bodies out in WvW, it will be because you were lucky enough to be merged with a server that has a completely different mindset from the one you have now, with good Commanders out on the maps EVERY night, leading by example, good communication between guilds and across maps, people willing to scout towers and keeps, and Commanders ready to respond if they call for help. It will be because you were lucky enough to be merged with a group of people who ALREADY PLAY TO WIN, simply adding another 1,000 or so players who give up as soon as they fall behind in score won’t change Ferguson’s Crossings’ fortunes in WvW at all.

Snowreap.5174:

population imbalance would be less of a problem if the difficulty of capturing new objectives became progressively harder the more objectives your team already had, and if the ease of defending objectives increased the fewer you had left to defend.

a big part of the reason that population imbalance causes such a problem is that the team with a numbers advantage keeps that advantage regardless of how many objectives they take, leading a zerg to naturally try to sweep the map (a zerg big enough to wipe you at this objective, is probably large enough to wipe you at any objective, and no amount of falling back will change this). there is no need (or incentive) to leave players behind to defend, so the same advantage that lets you take one thing can be used to take every thing.

there are numerous ways to make it harder to sweep a map (or more to the point, to accumulate a lot of PPT). one option is to dynamically scale guard strength according to the defender’s current PPT (a low PPT server will hve stronger guards). another option is to change the PPT rules so that you get few points for a freshly captured objective, but comparitively more points for objectives held for a long time or upgraded (to encourage defense, and to put downward pressure on the size of zergs — you cannot have your whole team attacking one thing if the bulk of your team is chasing PPT by defending/upgrading objectives).

-ken

No one scouts in your Tier? Just zergs constantly back-capping each other, like EotM?

Anyway, sounds like you haven’t really looked into how these matches are being decided, but capturing objectives is only a SMALL part of it. Here’s last week’s Matchup from T1 NA, one of the most roflstomp matches of the Season so far:

http://www.gw2score.com/server/Blackgate?match=1

If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see a pie chart showing “Points From Tick” and “Points NOT From Tick”; 78.66% of Blackgate’s points in this match came NOT from Tick".

So asking Anet to simply hand an NPC army over to outmatched servers won’t really help imbalance, it just adds more PvE to WvW, which probably has too much of this already. And seriously, is “handicapping” every match really the solution people want to see here?

Just fix the Rune of Evasion set, so it grants Vigor on dodge, or on crit or some other bonus that actually helps you “Evade” more often. This rune set is so close to being something a P/P or even D/D Thief could use, but it just isn’t quite there yet, and it honestly doesn’t have real synergy with any class that I can think of except for maybe a few specific, niche, dodge-heavy Ranger builds, and even those guys aren’t using this set!

3. It’s the same type of behavior that WvW players get in PvE for having something like a single piece of PVT gear on during a dungeon run. Frankly, I think it’s ridiculous that SO much of the WvW maps are required for Map Completion in the first place; it really should’ve been about 1/3 of what it currently is, imo. But that doesn’t get enemy Map Completionists any free POI’s from my server, regardless.

Maxwell.7843:

To me having a degree of respect towards fellow GW2 players seems just natural, since we are on different sides just to have fun and there isn’t real conflict (it’s a make-believe war, not a real one).

Oh it’s real… it’s SO real~!!!

^I just had to put that in, because if I simply replied “3”, I’m sure someone would say “Of course the guy from Blackgate doesn’t let anyone get Map Completion!”

Well, I’m sure I’ll get flamed for even suggesting this, but Blackgate really does have the most tight-knit WvW community I’ve come across anywhere. It’s one of the best communities I’ve seen in any GAME, in fact. We have a 500-slot community TeamSpeak, our server forums are nearly as active as this official Anet forum is, our guilds all coordinate with one another extremely well, we have dedicated scouts who rarely, if ever, allow siege to expire, and we defend the heck out of practically every objective we take. In short, BG is prolly the last of the real “Tryhard” servers left in the game. We have a lot of casual weeks during off-season/non-tournament times, but we schedule at least one real “push” week a month for our PPT players, and when Seasons roll around… well, let’s just say we NEVER play for 2nd! We set out schedules and assigned maps for all the larger guilds to avoid or minimize ques, schedule Commander times so everybody knows when we’ll have pins up on various maps and when there will be gaps; all the stuff servers used to do back in the early part of the game, when PPT was “super serious”. A lot of the roflstomping you see in T1 is due to the fact that “trying” for the other T1 servers basically means showing up at the usual times, and maybe having 1 or 2 guilds extend their raid times by an hour. We also have some of the best Havoc Teams in the game already (they’ve been here since 2012); for reference just check out [Opp] or [RIOT] streams or videos, just for starters.

That said, if you’re looking for tough competition during Seasons, you may not find it here with the current system in place. As it stands now, the only way BG can really lose a match is if we decide on our own to just take the week off (which never happens during Seasons), or if JQ and TC are able to form up “EotM-Style” as a single server to fight against us, the way they did in Season 2; which was EXTREMELY fun for all of us on BG, btw!

You’ll also run into the fact that our server has Full status most of the time, & you’d probably have to log in at 3am EST or something to get in.

I can say that I know a lot of people who moved to Ft Aspenwood from SoS when that server disbanded after lording over T1 for 2 months, and they said that they really enjoyed the atmosphere there, that it was a lot more laid-back while still being somewhat competitive. T2 is kind of weird right now, but I still feel like Ft Aspenwood will probably bounce back to remain in T2, as it just seems like they’ve always been there somehow. I actually can’t think of anything bad that I’ve ever really heard about FA as a server, so that would be my recommendation, out of the servers you said you’re interested in.
(^_^)

tpcalc.com

Use it.

Tringsh.2380:

Just to keep people updated I switched out the traveler runes for Scholar and traited out mug for Fleet Shadow. My kill rate has gone way up without impacting on movement or survivability.

Yeah, Scholar is more of a pure DPS set, and people were using it on Thief even before the Ferocity change.

Fleet Shadow is a decent trait, the main reason it’s so rarely used in WvW is that it’s been bugged since release, & I believe it still only grants a few seconds of Swiftness, rather than the +50% movement speed stated.

Tringsh.2380:

I tried running short bow along side D/D but I found I was using heart seeker to dart across the map more thank skill 5 on SB and dropped it for P/P for unload. The great thing now is that I’m catching those pesky players that try to run away where as I wasn’t with SB. Very happy.

Yeah, if you have a Main-Hand Pistol you can switch you, you can just STOP people from running away in the first place, since Pistol #2 skill is a SPAMMABLE Immobilize with NO Cooldown! lol

Anybody know what happened? I mean, Ori prices always drop a bit after the weekend, but Ori has remained stable, with Place Order prices sitting above 4.50s since before WvW Season 1, and suddenly in the last 4 hours or so even the Buy-It-Now price has dropped to below 4.50s!

Was there a sudden influx of Orichalcum Ore over the last few hours? What happened?

I used to use Travelers Runes on D/D for WvW, before the “Ferocity” change earlier in the year. For D/D Thieves in WvW, Traveler’s + Valkyrie Gear + “Hidden Killer” trait was kind of the standard build from Launch until the Ferocity change. Now when running D/D, it just feels like I need to super-stack Ferocity, which is why I wanted to like the new Rune of Evasion so bad, but unfortunately that set just isn’t quite there… if only it dropped Vigor on each Dodge roll or something like it, it might be more viable.

As it stands now, the Rune of Air set might be better suited for Backstab + Movement Speed builds, or if you want pure damage and don’t mind slotting Signet of Shadows, the Rune of Rage set is also works well for D/D Backstab builds, especially if you run with a Warrior often. Rune of the Wurm or Rune of the Scholar seem to be the sets people are using more often for survivability + dps in WvW, however.

Brow.9425:

At this point, since they are unwilling and unable to fix it, they should go back to the 24 hour matches we had 24 months ago.

What’s hilarious is that 24 months ago, Anet made it clear that “Real WvW” would be 14-day matchups, and that the 7-day matchups we’re all complaining about were just to get accurate ratings for the start of 2-week matches. We all dodged a bullet on that one! lol

But yeah, I don’t really know what to do about the population difference, but something does need to be done eventually. Honestly, just adding a competitive GvG component to the game might be enough for Anet to realize their original dream of WvW as a “Casual PvP” zone…

99% of the complaints I see about Thief are really about 1 specific build, the one that has been least affected by all the changes to Thief class since the game came out: the Dagger/Pistol Thief. This one build annoys everyone, including other D/P Thieves, as they do have the ability to stack up several seconds of stealth very easily, runaway, and with no cooldown they can simply restack stealth again until they’re completely out of view. Several people have already shown that you can crisscross an entire Borderlands map without ever leaving Stealth if you really want to (it’s boring, since you have to keep stopping to re-stealth, & you can’t attack anything).

This is also, of course, the Thief build with the lowest amount of skill required to stay alive. Shadow’s Refuge and other stealth skills are, of course, annoying to people, but they are not in the same league as the no Cooldown Stealth-Stacking that Dagger/Pistol builds have available to them. I saw someone here mentioned Cloak & Dagger, but C&D is really a setup move for most Thieves, and a temporary disengage at best; it’s not the get-out-of-jail-free-card that the OP seems to be describing. If you can’t catch a Thief because he Cloak and Daggered you and then got a 1.5-2 second headstart, then he probably could’ve left the fight at anytime regardless, because that means you’re using a build with little-to-no mobility anyway, especially by Warrior standards.

Anyway, I agree that something should probably be done about the Dagger/Pistol Thief’s stealth stacking, as it’s been abused in every way imaginable since Launch, and I really believe it’s the basis for almost every reasonable complaint I’ve seen on the forums regarding Stealth in WvW.

I opened this Thread 100% expecting it to be a Necroed Thread from 2012… that’s how long it has already lasted.

John Corpening.9847:

A general note, when we are kicking around ideas like this we try not to get bogged down with numbers. 5 minutes, stacks, players etc. can easily be 1, 10, 100. That’s all balance and tuning as Tekyn pointed out. The question is if there is any number that would make it work. If there isn’t we can eliminate that idea.

Well, as many people have pointed out here, the biggest problem with exhaustion stacks, and voting to dismantle siege, etc, is that the optimum number of people to vote on something like that, or the optimum amount of siege someone can throw, or the number of things you have to do to wipe your exhaustion stacks really is different for most Tiers. In Tier 1, it would be easy for an anonymous Troll (one whose name we don’t all recognize) to find 4 people whom he can talk into voting down a piece of siege, because there are so many people around. On Tier 7 server, however, if a legitimate player needed 4 people to come vote down a piece of siege that might be 1/2 the population of the map at some hours!

John Corpening.9847:

Here is the new proposal based on your ideas:

• Siege Dismantling
  • You DO NOT get exhaustion from placing siege
  • If you own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Dismantle” that will drop the timer down to one minute
  • If you do not own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Vote Dismantle”
    • If a piece of siege gets 5 votes:
      • The timer on the siege drops to 5 minutes
      • The player who placed the siege gets a stack of exhaustion
        • In this proposal this is the only way to get exhaustion
  • When a siege timer is reduced to 0 it is dismantled
    • All siege that is dismantled drops 25% of the supply it took to construct
• Exhaustion
  • A player who has 5 stacks of exhaustion can no longer place siege until they have 0 stacks of exhaustion
  • A stack of exhaustion is removed:
    • After 5 minutes
      • For commanders this time is reduced by 2 minutes for each member of your squad for up to 20 minutes
    • For each enemy player defeated
    • For each objective taken

This proposal has these properties:

• Play is not affected at all for anyone unless they repeatedly place siege that is repeatedly voted down
• Players are encouraged to clean up their siege to get a refund and to prevent their siege being voted down
• Players can police themselves by voting down bad siege
• Players who get exhaustion incorrectly can easily remove it by playing WvW normally
• The more siege that gets placed that is left unattended the easier it will be to lose the privilege of placing siege.
• Commanders who actually have people following them can bypass the bulk of the penalty and should easily remove the rest through normal play

It really should be more than 5 people required to vote down Siege, and Siege that has already been used to damage a structure or attack enemy players should be excluded, so that legitimate siege isn’t dismantled (a Troll can easily find 4 unsuspecting people that he can talk into voting down a piece of siege, probably by telling them that useful siege is, in fact, “Troll Siege”).

Another reason why siege that has already been used to damage a structure should NOT be disabled is that it would make zergs even stronger, tbh, by allowing a group to ram or catapult a door or wall down, then dismantle the siege they’ve just used in order to build more siege on Inner Gates of Keeps or Castle.

Otherwise, I think what you have outlined above is something I can live with. We just don’t want to open up a new avenue for Trolling by creating a new “Siege Dismantle Troll”, so I really think it should require more than 5 people to vote a piece of siege down, even though I realize that this means that solo Scouts will have to call large parties back to their structures to deal with said troll once in a while.

I haven’t really seen anyone doing this in big fights, like Keeps or Towers, but it’s long been done in small Camp fights.

What I’ve been seeing in T1 is suddenly people are building Golems in the Lord’s Room of EVERY Tower or Keep that they plan to defend, so if you Lord gets dropped, you simply hop in a Golem (with 5 billion health or whatever) and Rez the Lord! Seriously, I’ve seen as many as 3 Golems used simply to troll the circle at a Supply Camp this week!

So yeah, Golems are the new Warbanner…

Well, out side of Dodge, the only other Evade that’s really available to Warriors is the greatsword’s Whirlwind Attack, and you will see some Warriors who use that skill every 10 seconds like clockwork.

The “Full Signet Warrior” is something you see in solo WvW sometimes, but it’s not common in WvW afaik. And only 1 of those signets actually affects how often you can Dodge.

I don’t know exactly how many Dodges/minute you will get, but all the information needed for making a “Maximum Dodge Warrior” is in this thread. The video you saw (I’ve seen a few like that) was probably a Warrior who was very good at Dodge/Evades, but there isn’t an actual Infinite-Evasion Warrior. There are a couple of videos showing a Guardian with permanent Evade from mid-2013, but that was actually a glitch related to the WXP Upgrades, and was fixed the next day.

Anyway, built and geared correctly, you will get a lot of Dodge/Evades out of your Warrior. You won’t get a lot of kills, but you will get lots of Dodge. (^_^)

Lord Kuru.3685:

You stop siege trolling, they’ll buy merchants during an attack. You stop that, they’ll suicide golems. You stop that, they’ll run around your towers, turning all your siege backwards (yes, I’ve seen this).

You have to stop the trolls directly.

Just look at the dungeon exploit situation in this very game. Band-aid fixes like invisible walls for two years did nothing but temporarily slow down exploiters. And now (finally) Anet has GMs joining parties to ban people.

So far I’ve been championing what I see as the better ideas in this thread simply to avoid getting any obviously unworkable ideas (such as an across-the-board limit on throwing siege for everyone), and because this thread was started with the premise that we needed to find ideas OTHER than banning the known siege trolls, some of whom have been around since launch.

However… I have to admit, the best solution is, of course, the most obvious one, which is to have some sort of system for reporting people who are obviously trolling WvW on alt accounts, and banning them ASAP once enough evidence has been gathered. Bans really are the ANSWER, the rest of the ideas here are mostly just putting a band-aid on a missing limb; however, if a band-aid is all we can get, I’d like the best, cleanest band-aid possible please! One that doesn’t introduce a whole new set of problems.

Vayne.8563:

Torsailr.8456:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

The exhaustion idea has merit, however, a limit of three seems a bit small considering you may want to quickly build a number of defensive siege when you see a blob storming your keep. I’d wager the griefers won’t be dissuaded no matter what cap is put in place. They’d just wait it out.

One small tweak, perhaps, would be to not allow flame rams to be created inside a tower, camp or inner keep (SM & Garrison). At least force the griefers to use something that has a modicum of value.

I think a system that allows siege to be destroyed by the player base would be a better way to go. Some sort of approval where some number of players concur that a piece of siege should be destroyed in any given area. It would be a lot harder to get a group of griefers together to remove siege than it is for them to create it.

Allow a squad to salvage siege for a percentage of supplies used to build it? Share those supplies among the squad members that aren’t full?

Then trolls could salvage your legit siege equipment.

A SQUAD of Trolls? Has anyone actually seen, or even HEARD OF, a 10-20 manTroll group running together on a map, all at once?

dtzy.5901:

I believe that we should focus on a specific problem instead of trying to solve everything with a general ‘solution.’

Personally, I find the biggest problem with siege trolls is that they can burn keep supplies easily and siege cap that keep. Use the exhaustion thing only when inside your keep’s range.

Siege trolling in open field is a lesser problem since most groups use comms anyway and even a somewhat organized group will be able to tell which siege to build.

This is actually a pretty good point.

Oh, yeah, there’s no such thing as an “Infinite Evade” Warrior. In fact, if you simply want to Evade using 1, single skill (such as “Dodge”), you won’t be able to do it all the time on ANY Class. Classes such as Thief, Ranger, & Mesmer all have multiple Evade skills: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade

You can increase the frequency of your Dodges on Warrior by constantly refilling Endurance, but there is only 1 Warrior Signet related to that: the “Signet of Stamina”. This refills your Endurance 50% faster AS LONG AS YOU DON’T USE THE SIGNET; it’s basically like having the Vigor boon all the time, but you give up a Utility slot for it. Also, it doesn’t stack with anything.

The Warrior Trait “Building Momentum” will also help you by refilling your Endurance everytime you use a Burst Skill (F1 on your Weapon Skills). This will give you an extra Dodge every minute or so, but only gives you 15 Endurance (a Dodge uses 50), and if you are Dodging a LOT, then you won’t refill your Adrenaline as fast, which is needed to use your Burst Skills.

The “Sigil of Energy” is very popular with WvW Warriors, however, as it refills 50% of your Endurance on Weapon Swap, giving you up to 3 Dodges in a row before running out. It has a 9 second Cooldown, however, and traited Warriors can Weapon Swap every 5 seconds, so you will see Warriors sometimes using this Sigil on BOTH weapons for the extra Dodge.

Then there’s food… the “Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew” gives you 40% Endurance regeneration (+ Might on Dodge), but I don’t know if it stacks with “Signet of Stamina”. I’ve heard that it does, I’ve heard that it doesn, I’ve heard that it used to but not anymore, but I personally haven’t tested it lately (I run Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup on my Warrior these days). If it stacks then you would have INSANE Endurance regeneration, and combined with the gear listed above, you would be able to Dodge A LOT, though still not quite infinitely…

I can confirm that this food works fine with the Thief trait “Feline Grace”, but that technically returns some of the Endurance on each Dodge, and is not considered “Endurance Regeneration”. Thief and Ranger do, get very, very close to infinite Evade if traited and geared correctly, but to reach the “nearly infinite” level they have to use Evade Skills other than just Dodge.

Yeah, I personally like the Siege Disablers. Sounded stupid the first time I read about it, but I think they are working well. The 45-second timer might be a bit too long, and if anything, they are making Golems just a bit OP in comparison. I think it should have been a flat, 30-second timer for ALL siege, but I’m sure people would just complain about that, too.

To be honest, one of the reasons you don’t see a lot of “Evade Build” Warriors is because it takes away from many of the Warrior’s strengths, and Warriors will never be as good at it as other classes. WvW Warriors DO Dodge Roll often in large, zerg fights, but in small group/1v1 type of fights, the Warrior is FAR better off simply popping Stances that prevent any incoming damage, or give several seconds of Stability, or just healing themselves with Shouts (while cleansing conditions) & Signet auto-heals. In short, a Warrior simply muscles thru attacks, rather than dodging them.

Thief, Mesmer, and Ranger, however, get all kinds of bonuses for Dodging. The Mesmer can trait to drop clones on every dodge! That can be very frustrating in small group fights or 1v1’s! Thief can gain Swiftness, Might, drop Caltrops, remove Conditions, AND they get some of their Endurance BACK on each Dodge! The best thing a Warrior gets is an (admittedly decent) AoE damage on Dodge that they can trait for. That’s it. And it only triggers when you’re already in combat, you can’t open with it (you wouldn’t anyway.)

Zaxares.5419:

Great to see that we’re finally getting some momentum on this issue!

Almost 7,300 Views and 167 Replies in 6 hours… I’d say this is an issue worth tackling! I can’t wait to see how this turns out; “No Siege Trolls” would certainly be 1 less frustration in WvW, and would hopefully lessen some of the animosity that occurs when a Troll claims to be from a rival server or something like that.

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

even if you reduce commander exhaustion it is going to be detrimental to scouts and small group ninja roamers.

I would really need to see the math on this one…

I mean, are you suggesting that Scouts are solo-building siege at a rate significantly faster than 1 piece of siege per minute?

And “small group ninja roamers”; how small is this group? Let’s say 5 people, for example: it is MUCH easier for small groups like this to coordinate throwing out siege than it is for large (20+) groups, so your small roaming group could have, say, 2 people throwing down siege instead of one. This would allow you “small ninja roamers” group to throw out 6 pieces of siege every 3 minutes, more than enough for 5 people to get into a Tower or Keep. Get to an Inner Door of a Keep and needs more rams? Have a 3rd person throw down siege. now your up to 9 pieces of siege every 3 minutes, which should be easily enough for even a larger, 10-man “ninja group”, much less the smaller 5-man group I was using in the example.

What sort of problems, specifically, do you forsee for scouts or smaller roaming groups?

Rashmika Els.8215:

A claiming guild (keeps towers etc) should be allowed to dismantle troll siege and similarly to avadore suggests have an option to lock down siege placement within that keep or open it for all. This would also give guilds another incentive to claim keeps.

This is another suggestion that I think works well, though it is hampered by the fact that 2nd Account trolls can still start their own guild. It would, however, give larger WvW guilds an incentive to claim Keeps and Towers quickly, and a “Despawn” or Timer on Guild Claims is a good idea (every 12 hours, for instance, things need to be “reclaimed”)