Guild Wars 2

sadly it is near three years too late for ANET to do this right but not supporting the world communities and helping them shape their identity in game or display it to prospective recruits has always been a bane of WvW. At this point in the games history with all the changes made since launch and with mega-servers for PvE maps, new players should not even be selecting their world to battle for in the mists until at least unlocking access to those features in game or joining a guild.

Jayne.9251:

Stage One: Change population to reflect active WvW players.

Stage Two: Wait for people to self-move and spread out.

If Stage Two fails: Reduce map cap on all maps to 60 per server permanently — or until the population regulates itself and spreads out.

Sounds good to me, I am always in favor of lower WvW map caps

It’s even better if you throw Stage OnePointFive in there by giving all accounts one free world transfer to help those sitting on the fence or unwilling to purchase a gem transfer to make better choices and spread things out a bit more evenly.

Hvaran.6327:

Terrahero.9358:

By far the most damaging thing ever to WvW was the lenghty free transfers that completely clumped all the wvw players into a very small pool of servers.

your post is 100% legit, sir

2nd’ed, beyond legit. This is a step in the right direction and it is up to us to make it work more quickly if we want it to.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

• I agree that asking new players to chose a World before doing anything in the game is odd, now that Worlds are a WvW concept. This isn’t something we can change easily, however, but I’ll keep it in mind if an occasion arises.

The simplest solution is to give every current account ONE free transfer and every new account from that day forward one world transfer token at creation with in-game mail from ANET explaining what is, why they are getting it, when the right time to use it might be and how to get more if needed (gem store plug). You guys have to making plenty of $$ off the world transfers and knowing human nature this wont hurt your profits that much as a certain subset will be back to world hopping in no time.

Giving all current accounts a free transfer all at once might induce a bit of chaos (and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!) but if properly supported could allow the players, guilds and communities to all get their ducks in a row with proper communication for more balanced WvW populations across more worlds more quickly. There are a lot of players would never pay to transfer or leave their friends who would never pay to transfer but might make different plans if everyone could move down together. Just a hopeful thought

lordkrall.7241:

Tiny Doom.4380:

I always thought allowing server transfers of any kind was a mistake but clearly most people aren’t interested in who they play for or support, just whether they win or get good fights or whatever.

Or maybe people have issues with certain people on your current server and needs to either stop playing or change server?
Or maybe they want to have less queues?
Or maybe they want to join their friends in WvW that started playing on another server?

There are many reasons to change servers. Not just “I change because I want to be on the winning server!!”

Sure, there are many legitimate reasons to change servers but not so much when it comes to world hopping every other month or bouncing back and forth between a few in the same tier. It should cost more the more often an account transfers and there ought to be a temporary penalty of some kind like getting your originating worlds rewards/bonuses for a few matches maybe so these are not decisions people make lightly with their daddy’s credit card. ANET has done so little support individual world communities that anything at all would be a bonus.

I’ve always thought a do-over knowing what we know now would be a good way to revitalize & fix a lot of the population imbalance problems. I am probably being a bit selfish since it would affect me personally and my world (JQ, likely TC as well) less than most given JQ started out as the “World Pride” choice for guilds that were not going to be into transferring. I see a lot of the same names around today in WvW as at launch plus a whole of new faces as well of course.

Rather than tearing guilds and communities apart with this solution ANET would have to bite the bullet (providing they really do have this active WvW population metric figured out) and allow guilds some kind of power to move members to their chosen WvW world (buy with influence maybe?) to ease the chaos of getting everyone back together again but still suitability distributed. I think this would require more communication from ANET than we currently accustomed to so we know where the full worlds will be the kinds of queues players will face and I can’t say communication is their strong suit so it going smoothly doesn’t seem likely.

Random.4691:

Jayne.9251:

If NA is smart, it’ll take this opportunity to emulate EU and spread out for the fights — not the blue ribbon (which is meaningless now).

You’re giving us far to much credit, we’re not that smart.

Sad but true . NA really needs to stop with the super-stack nonsense but now its been going on for so long that even if we manage to use this opportunity to move in the right direction the Glicko wont let us feel the results in a manner that will properly reinforce the use of logic and it will end with us returning to our bad habits before any sense of stability can be achieved. >.<

Xanoris.2379:

Good news, let Adam Smith come up with something dynamically changing the price demand/supply based.

Now that could be very interesting indeed.

Given the bad response to Golem Rush I doubt anyone of importance will get very deep into this thread but in the vein of removing the downed state ideas, I propose a Down and Out week where going into down state removes you from the map with insta auto spawn to LA like at reset. Would bring new meaning to the term pin sniping. Would also make death potentially encounter changing on queued maps.

Would be cool to see AP reward tracks or titles associated with event weeks that give something fun for being successful at whatever the gimmick is separate from regular WvW stuff.

Julenal.3907:

What I wouldn’t want to think is that ANet is staying in this system because this system is making them more money than others they have come up. Whatever the cause is there are people that find this system really unfair:

I think they are staying with this system because it is easy and for some reason WvW takes more resources and investment than it pays off. I find that hard to believe but I really don’t understand enough of what all goes on behind the scenes to make things work. They are a business first and if changes would make them significantly more money or not hurt the bottom line I am pretty sure they would be all over it, otherwise it is always safer to stick with the status quo. So it is not so much about greed but lack of desire to take a risk.

Josh XT.6053:

Anet doesn’t read or acknowledge this forum. It was a good read, but anyone reading this probably already knows and agrees with your points. Unfortunately, Anet is not amongst those people since they don’t understand the WvW player base. It is like we’re speaking a different language lol.

Well thought out detailed post OP. The kind we need to see more of and less of the one hit rants that offer no solutions.

I will have to disagree with the above a bit, I know ANET does read these forums, they just don’t respond unless they have something to say and yeah it is kind of sad how rare that is but in the past trying to stay involved with the WvW community hasn’t gone well for them. We are not exactly a simple lot with one clear idea of how things should be, read any of the WvW CDI’s and see just how diverse of opinions we have. The vitriol of the casual vs hardcore vs GvG debate alone is enough to turn anyone off to compromise. I wish there was one game mode that worked for all play styles and one solution that could improve it for everyone but magic bullets are more rare than red tags in the WvW forums.

I think ANET probably does understand a certain group within the WvW community fairly well but may have written off some of our fringe elements. The new HoT map suggests maybe they understand the EotM crowd a bit too well but that is a segment of their player-base and I guess only they actually know how big of one. I don’t like discovering I am in the minority either but I am starting to get use it.

DAoC as awesome as it was would never fly today with the current gamer culture and the biggest problem anyone has trying to replicate that magic is no one can actually agree on what made it so special in the first place. It was just a moment in time that worked, got us addicted and then dashed our hearts out on the rocks over years of really weird choices. All games have bumbs along the way but sometimes things just click long enough to come out just right long enough to turn on our inner pavlov.

I agree with the OP, Guild Wars 2 has a ton of wasted potential where WvW is concerned but I originally had a lot of respect for ANET saying this is what we are doing and want it to be and then sticking to their vision even on the stuff I didn’t agree with but that was 3 years ago and now I am not sure there is anyone there who knows what they want WvW to accomplish. I hope the new HoT map proves me wrong and while it looks pretty pretty with some cool stuff I doubt it’ll hit the mark for those dreaming of RvR DAoC days, might be best if we let that dream die. There is no going back again.

While I agree with sentiment that a week is too long for this kind of event and EoTM would have been the ideal place to maybe test it first, I am not sure flooding a forum the devs rarely visit with new threads on the same topic is actually all that helpful. So good luck with that and remember, you have the power to do something else in the meantime and that includes playing WvW the way you want to with other like minded individuals. From the number of threads kittening about the golem event here there ought to be enough to fill one map per world from all three sides. I nominate the red borderland as the “non-golem” event place to chill.

if I was a dev I wouldn’t post here either. No good ever comes from it these days even when they try to do something. It may be their own dang fault but this place has becomes a toxic cesspool of a very jaded player-base with repetitive topics and lack of reasonableness. There is a reason reddit threads gets more attention. Sadly this forum just isn’t worth employee time anymore.

ANET has acknowledged the WvW population balance problems before with CDI and such so it is not like this is news to them. Without any feedback we are only left to wonder if they have some super secret plan they are not ready to share with us yet (and if that is the case we are gonna need a hint PDQ cuz its getting hostile in here) or they honestly believe that HoT and the new map will somehow solve all their problems. I think it would take a lot more to sell me on the latter but I am willing to suspend disbelief for a bit longer while more HoT infos drop. After PAX I will be done waiting and start raging or find something else to distract me awhile. >.<

I don’t think worlds are going away any time soon for the reasons Johje mentions above but ANET really ought have a plan for the future of WvW beyond the new HoT map and you are not the only sitting on the fence wondering what that might be. I would hope they would share those plans with us sooner rather than later so we can all make more informed decisions.

I can see HoT’s release being a real quagmire for WvW without something being done as a bunch of players come back to the game to check things out and a bunch more venture in WvW to try out the map. Tier 1 worlds are going to be bursting at the seams and low tiers might give new players or returnee’s a bad taste in their mouth for lack of action or organization.

I am a lone player on a Tier 1 world who has remained loyal since BWE1 for “Realm Pride” but now really wants to move to find a new guild and home where casual playtime can still have meaning. I don’t want to be trapped in a T1 queue once HoT drops but I have been patiently waiting to hear what ANET has up their sleeve. I could easily buy the gems to transfer anytime but it is more a matter of principal for me. If I am going to transfer it will only be once and it is not something I take lightly cuz I am old school like that.

cuz Shiro is awesome? >^^<

I was always hoping sentries would evolve into something like DAoC patrol guards that broadcast a message about the number of enemies in the area when they die. Sure there would be ways to abuse the mechanic for a little trickery but zergs are hard to control and the comm that keeps his army from attacking sentries or can pull off a double feint deserves the reward of confused defenders.

since the megaservers happened people have been asking for Lions Arch to go back to server specific. I don’t know if we’ve seen any feedback back on why that is not possible or would pose a problem. Maybe it is just a mess to make one map set behave differently from the rest. I get the feeling ANET believes their map placement priority code of joining maps with friends & guild members first somehow addresses this but if that was their plan then it is way too hidden.

I often see a lot of the same names in Lion’s Arch chat of people I play with in WvW but I would never know if I am in the “most JQish version” of LA at any given time so it seems kind of pointless. Given how often it has been requested I would hope they are working on something but it is hard when we don’t see much acknowledgement from the team on these things.

I wish Guild Wars 2 could utilize the district version of city maps like the original game. It would be so simple for each city (or even just LA) to have a drop down list of 1-24 map districts named for their servers with as many additional overflows as needed at any given time and players default into their home-world version if not full but can select numbers beyond 24 to meet with friends from other worlds.

I like it too, the only PvP map I am interested in but now it has to go bye-bye again. seems pretty done to me, hope we can have a lot more Stronghold beta weekends while waiting for HoT cuz that feels really far away.

I do have to ask if I am the only one that can never find myself on the map. I have major troubles staying orientated to everything else that is going on every where else. The other player class icons seem to obscure my personal marker white target symbol to where I sometimes have no clue what is going on with a quick map look. May be user error in keeping the map too far zoomed out or having my personal music up too loud to pay proper attention.

Back when I started playing DAoC and was trying to find my main toon while still learning what an MMORPG was, there was a joke about how the Minstrel class needed a Xylophone as an instrument choice so when I decided to try one out I named her Xylla and used Phone her last name at first. Xylla quickly became my favorite toon and since she was musically inclined and in DAoC you could change your last name whenever you wanted, I started using a new favored song title as her last name each week since the Phone joke got lame very quickly.

After that I tried a lot of other Xyl names often times in combination with different song titles. Xyliah Pariah came when I started playing Guild Wars 1 at launch and my first toon was a monk, the image of Mhenlo on the box reminded me of the artwork on a Magic: the Gathering card called Pariah and there was a lot of talk early on about GW1 being similar to MtG so I thought it was fitting.

PariahX [PiXi] became my solo guild in GW1 when I was between having others to play with so I brought that with me to GW2 along with a lot of other GW1 names I used which still included a bunch of favorite song titles from my disposable PvP toons. And so the trend continues in GW2 with new favorite songs finding fitting race, looks & play-style combos and there is way too many of them to fit into a signature

Hubby on the other hand is so super creative that he just looks around the room when naming his toons to find a few random words to throw together or uses some obscure work abbreviation. /sigh

ANET needs to do a bunch of work to encourage server communities & loyalty before trying to start over otherwise we will end up back in the same situation in rather short order. Things to help worlds advertise and develop their personalities that lets new players make a more informed home world choice.

My idea of a server reset is actually to reset everyone’s account back to the server they initially started on and then provide one free guild server transfer (something that does not exist yet but some way for all members of a guild to get a notification of the guilds determined home world and an option for a free transfer there) and one free personal transfer after they find a different way to track server full status and lower the WvW map caps so players can figure out where to play without queues.

The only problem is they can’t do this (or much else) right after the release of HoT since WvW populations will be artificially inflated for awhile with everyone checking out the new map and goodies. In a perfect world something like this would have happened already but I am guessing they’ve been too busy with HoT so maybe early next year might be a better time frame to shoot for. If HoT doesn’t do something to drastically change population dynamics or if something isn’t talked about being the works shortly after HoT’s release I will have pretty much given up the idea of WvW ever reaching its full potential.

wow very nice, makes me wish I played with a guild more. Charr Motorcycle hype inc!

definitely been some weird lag / skill delay since last weeks patch for me and doesn’t seem to be a WvW only thing but a lot more noticeable there. Also having crappy lag in EotM which usually doesn’t lag at all for me even when everything else is being super sticky so not sure what changed this time but might be time to replace hamster #13.

I don’t think anyone really has to worry about GvG in guild halls replacing WvW or hurting the WvW population. The difference is pretty clear, open world PvP is all about the unexpected, wont be any of that in the guild hall arena and GvG matches will have to be planned for so definitely not a 24/7 thing. At first some guilds might spend a lot of time in there but in the end it will probably serve a pretty narrow purpose with use for special occasions or practice sessions.

That being said, guess it is time for me to go guild shopping for HoT since my little guild of one isn’t going to cut it for this kind of fun. The guild hall stuff looks pretty sweet but too bad it doesn’t come in more flavors, hopefully more styles can be added later . . . please not in the gem store tho ><

I am happy GvGers were given something more workable than OS even if it is something I am not personally going to be spending a lot of time on. Speaking of which, what becomes of OS when HoT comes out? Might it get a rework as well to go back into jumping puzzle status with maybe a more worthy reward? Still is a fun map to sneak around on if it saw more use.

Caedmon.6798:

Atm,sm in T1 is nothing but a place where zoneblobs gather to create massive lag for everyone,and afterwards they all complain, why is it so laggy ?.

sounds about right, ymmv

pretty sure those HoT t-shirts (or similar ones) will be give aways at all the cons this summer. I got a few GW2 shirts at PAX before release. The shirt alone (if green enough) might be enough to get me back to PAX this year.

There are some less expensive gaming mice (?!) like logitech that have 4 thumb buttons so it is not overly complex but still gives you a few extra places to bind important stuff. Weapon swap (and dodge roll) feel a much more a fluid part of combat when bound to the mouse for me anyways.

are people hoping by spreading false information and rumors as if it is fact that they will troll ANET into releasing hard data? Ok, well good luck with that.

It is policy for them to not release any specifics but there have been numerous red posts over the years discounting some the more wild and silly ideas. Whatever the number is, it is the same for all sides and it can be changed as needed.

If a WvW population cap is giving you problems then it might be time to start researching a lower tier world to hang out in. It is only going to get worse with HoT.

Kitiara.2706:

There was an idea bounced around once about Alliances – instead of Servers. Have we heard anything else on that?

That idea has only been “bounced around” by players and pretty much said would never happen by ANET so no. I think ANET was open to considering smaller stuff like different match length duration and shorter seasons but that was awhile ago and the fact they’ve been so quiet on the subject lately either means something is in the works for HoT or they think shiny new dessert laser beam map will somehow distract us from all of WvWs population problems long enough for them to come up with a better solution for 2016. Hope I can hold my breath that long.

Obviously the players can’t be trusted to balance themselves with free transfers considering the massive stack and crash worlds fad we witnessed in the first 5 mo’s before transfer got locked. TBH, that initial free transfer period probably did more harm than the year of population imbalance that followed. Not to say there are not ways ANET can do better to incentive wiser population spread but the easy simple fix isn’t going to cut it.

how about just make most instances of EotM a lvl 1 to 79 battleground map for the whole lvling, farming karma & learning some general WvW concepts and then make one copy of EotM as the overflow waiting in queue map for level 80’s only and see what kind of fun it morphs into with WvW minded players doing their thing on one version and levelers on another? EotM map can be pretty fun when played with some tactics and would be nice to see that option out there more often.

I have nothing against anyone elses playstyles but would be nice if ANET could something encourage de-stacking the top tiers.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the EotM map thrown into the WvW map rotation if they ever did actually make them rotate. While I like the idea of having something to do while waiting in a queue on reset nite, it is not worth the mega stack population problems it encourages.

you don’t have to stop playing the game just stop buying gems and stop transferring worlds if you are disatisfied with what world jumping does to the communities. Now if you are not having any fun in WvW then maybe yeah, take a break awhile but honestly, players did this to themselves and while maybe ANET could have done some things differently in the past they can’t put the horse back in the barn now so we are kind stuck with it.

I would have actually preferred it if world transfers were never allowed and do think WvW would be a lot more interesting with the populations more spread out across all the tiers instead of being so top heavy. Imagine how much fun it would be with 6 to 8 similarly ranked worlds never knowing who you would be fighting next.

ya’ll must be high on goofballs if you rather play with lag than suffer 10 fewer zerglings in your pile . . . seriously? For many other reasons, lower WvWmap population caps could be very good for the long term health of the game so lets not over react like spoiled drama queens whenever ANET does a little testing. We should be encouraging experimentation instead of bristling for minor changes.

Ever think that maybe there is a combination of things going on to make the queues longer lately? And actually NA t1 had a queue spike a few weeks ago (b4 the map cap was lowered for testing) but then it mellowed out significantly lately. Queues are the price we pay for insisting we cant play the game without 80 of our closest friends available 24/7 to jump into action. o.O You have the power to alter your reality if you so choose.

I use a lot of song titles or chorus phrases. Seems work pretty well most of the time, rarely have to get too creative and before that it was always Xyl in front of everything. 3 short words or a surname helps a ton as well.

I always check on the names I want before I create the character so I will know if any variation is needed since how the character looks is often a reflection of the name chosen like Bob vs Bob Jr or Little Bob, all going to need very different slider / color choices imo.

ANET never tells us hard numbers. It gets changed often, probably more often than we know but has been fairly stable for awhile now based on what comms report in threads like these. The guesses put EB in the 90 to 120 range for each team and borderlands somewhere around 80ish per side.

The populations caps were tweaked this weekend during the tech testing trying to track down the main source of this new lag plague. I assume they were changed back after the testing but maybe you’ll get some confirmation on that in the other thread.

Population caps in WvW have never been intentionally uneven, each side will always have the same map population cap as their foes. There have been bugs in the past that may have caused temporary problems related to this. There could have been an adjustment period over the weekend for a couple hours where maybe after the cap was lowered during testing one side had more than another until players logged off. It sounded like this testing was only done on the top tier servers but I do not know if all worlds saw lower population caps during that same time frame.

BrickFurious.7169:

2. Any plans relating to changes in WvW scoring and population balance.

This one is pretty important. I think a lot of players need to know the answer to this so we can plan accordingly. I don’t really want to leave T1 (mostly since JQ has been home since beta) but without changes I am going to have to and will want to have that all figured out before HoT launches.

it will only be permanent at first for a while when it is the new shiny thing on the block, then probably depending on feedback they will figure out some way to rotate between Alpine & Desert until enough time passes for them to get a 3rd jungle theme map done so the borderlands can each be a unique map like players have been whining for that since before EotM.

It does make you wonder tho what we could have had instead of new maps since apparently we can’t get both new maps and WvW updates and it takes over a year for them to get new WvW map tested. ><

This post was more of a plea to Arena Net that if they are working a population balance fix they get out there before the release of HoT and preferably before Season 4 if possible and if there isn’t a fix in the works then to please let us know so those who’ve been foolishly waiting on fence since the CDI can make a more informed decision. ><

Granted there is also a bit of warning here for those contemplating a move to T1, no we don’t have massive queues right now (even went down again over the weekend but I suspect that is more to do with lag and the arrival of spring) but it is trending upwards. There is a harsh price to pay for 24/7 coverage. Can you imagine the kind of queues (and lag!) T1 could induce if everyone came back at once to check out something new & shiny? Over stacking to top has never been a good idea for the long term health of the game and I would expect ANET to be aware of that.

Sadly I’ve never belonged in T1 but my guild and friends have been on JQ since the betas with the goal of finding a home to stay loyal to so moving is not a choice I take lightly. I have always spoken against the idea of recruiting and am often advocating for lower borderland map population caps to discourage the super-stacking but so far to avail. My hopes lie with ANET and them coming up with a reasonable solution but given their track record in that department you can see why I am starting to feel anxious.

agreed, have seen this a lot lately and it is doubly annoying when you are having lag issues and the one skill that will fire is obstructed by nothing. >< I assume it is related to the direct pathing change for teleports somehow since that is when I started noticing it, but not sure how that is connected tho.

thebeaRRRRR.8640:

5) Will the player cap on the BL maps be increased or decreased?. Seeing as the map is so huge and that if a 2v1 were to take place, the defending team would be hard pressed to run from objectives to objectives.
6) Related to question 5, and if so, are you guys going to take any measures to make it any less laggier?

PariahX.6970:

Is the map population cap for the Desert map the same as the current Alpine borderland?

“Answer: Yes, the population cap on Desert will be similar to Alpline but they might make some adjustments if play testing indicates a need.”

We know they can change the borderland population caps when they want to and have lowered them some in the past in response to lag issues (and also raised them at other times) but it seems to be a last resort sort of thing so I am assuming they’ll do as much fine tuning as they can in the beta. Be sure to submit your feedback then on how it feels and hopefully some of those betas will give us experience testing from the outmanned position.

Last I heard Alpine border has a population cap around the 80 per side range. I have always been in favor of lower map caps for lots of reasons but usually that is not a popular stance. The Desert map is not really any bigger, just more 3 dimensional and all that extra open space is a good thing.

and no it is not all the 1/2 naked mesmers running around in a Cloud Fly zerg o.O

Since the announcement of the HoT expansion we’ve begun to see a lot of WvW players trickling back into the mix, from self imposed PvE land exile or other games grown stale, or new transfers still coming up from below looking for action 24/7. Its been gradual but it might be beginning to show with longer queue times, increased lag (something changed with the last patch we all know but if fewer players are around the lag is not as bad) and more random map rage with sailors getting salty.

This should come as no surprise to anyone as this forum has been warning for awhile of the consequences when everyone bandwagons to the top but it does make for some tough choices for those of us who want to play the game without lag but are very attached to the communities we started out with. I imagine it is only going to be getting worse the closer we get to HoT’s release.

I’ve been holding out hope beyond hope that ANET has some super secret population adjustment plan prior to HoT’s launch but I don’t how much longer that fading ember can keep smoldering. I imagine we will know the answer once Season 4 is announced and we see what transfer prices are set to and if any further incentives will be added but I am thinking some of us are going to want to start looking for new homes before then. Think I’ve got my plan B & C figured out but I would hate to leave the awesome JQ community behind. Please ANET, tell us there is a cure in the works.

After watching the live stream add the answers to questions if you got them so we get all the info in one thread maybe. I have to see a transcript to get more than my own out of it but they answered a ton of them.

PariahX.6970:

How set in stone is the decision to initially replace all three borderland maps with the new Desert map?

Answer: 100% set in stone, they already have the new layout with three copies of the Desert map around EB for testing. Bye-bye Alpine . . . for now.

PariahX.6970:

Is the map population cap for the Desert map the same as the current Alpine borderland?

Answer: Yes, the population cap on Desert will be similar to Alpline but they might make some adjustments if play testing indicates a need.

Thanks for the lovely tour guys and so many answers to so many detailed questions. Was nice to see them reading some of the questions word for word and making very complete answers. Have to say, no matter what concerns players might have about how WvW will be in this map, we all have to agree it is incredibly beautiful and well thought out. Human nature and our bad habits are really the biggest variable when it comes to seeing how fights evolve in the Desert. Definitely looking forward to exploring it soon. ~Cheers

I don’t have any experience outside of T1 having been on JQ since Beta but I would say the communities that have endured the longest are likely the most well built and those are not limited by what tier a world is currently in. There are worlds like YB, NSP, TC, SoR & others that build very tight knit communities early on because they had common interests tying them together.

The Jade Quarry community started off strong because it tried to draw in players familiar with the concept of “Realm Pride” from previous games and the idea that even in the era of free world transfers you stayed put. I was always very disappointed that ANET didn’t give the world communities a better way to show off their worlds personality. These days you just have to go hunting for a “feeling” from forum posters or guest around to all the community websites to get an idea what each one is all about. I don’t know about other worlds, but it seems like JQ goes through phases of that strong sense of world identity showing up in game and others of where you only feel it if you are part of the forums and TS.

I am probably the worst person in the world to start this topic since I don’t really pay all that much attention to PPT but I know there are those who do and would have some good arguments for and against the general concept so here are the questions assuming Desert map became Red team & Alpine map was Blue teams home borderland.

How would having the EB map as the new Green team borderland map affect scoring (see specifics below)?

Would it be too difficult to take a map with 8 more towers and re balance the scoring to be even with Alpine and Desert or would you even have to?

Would having one borderland map of a larger size be too problematic? Would you want the population cap of all three borderland maps to be the same? How does EB play with lower #’s per side?

How hard would it be to adjust the scoring of the center mechanics of Lazer on Red and Bloodlust on Blue team map to equal SM and would you even want to?

How much fuss would removing the crafting stations from Alpine Citadel cause? (can’t be the only map to have them and adding them everywhere else might take too much time for ANET to consider this option & yes I am one of those who jumps into WvW for vault and crafting access all the time but I would not be opposed to removing them, makes keeping your upgraded keeps more valuable as they should be & I honestly don’t know why I like to craft in WvW other than the map chat is more entertaining and sometimes something exciting is going on to go be part of instead)

Would having the EotM map in the center map position (replacing current EB) without changing its scoring structure be too problematic for PPT? I’d love to see how EotM played when the score actually mattered but I am not one to think too far down the PPT strategy to notice how it might affect things. I assume the map population cap for EotM is similar to EB as its size feels comparable but I am not sure.

How would these changes affect lower population worlds? Would they rather have access to all maps or smaller maps to keep PPT from snowballing out of control when outnumbered?

I think I’ve seen this mentioned in earlier threads discussing how map rotation might work in the future given the introduction of the new Desert (HoT) map but that was before we knew 3 identical copies of Desert would be replacing the current Alpine borderland for a time. So maybe instead of doing that and taking away the choice of which map to play on we accept that it might be better if the borderlands were not identical. Or would that cause too much PPT fairness rage?

I think the adjustment rage might be worth the fun of having 4 unique maps that play very differently to chose from and knowing that you’ll normally be facing opposing teams who prefer the kind of play style that the map you are on promotes, defense, offense, havoc, PPT or gimmicks & taking advantage of terrain or whatever.

are you talking about general everyday people on the map type of “communities”? Or are you using the word to describe the organization of a small percentage of a server who dedicates themselves to maintaining a world community website, forum & VOIP that give each world their unique flavor and who are usually more of the WvW focused?

I think those are two very different but equally important things and I’ve seen the word “community” used to describe both so you might get very different answers depending on what the poster responding assumed you meant. Just something to be aware of. Also EU, NA or both?

How set in stone is the decision to initially replace all three borderland maps with the new Desert map? Have any other rotation ideas been discussed or are still seriously being considered? Are you still open to suggestions from players as the beta progresses?

Is the map population cap for the Desert map the same as the current Alpine borderland? (we know ANET doesn’t deal in solid #’s when it comes their map caps but most of us assume the borderlands cap still falls around 80 players per side range) Have you been able to test the map with different sized population caps in place? Do you set a map population cap based on what the map can hold without performance issues or what # of players it “plays” most dynamically with?

Pixelninja.6971:

Kasteros.9847:

Pixelninja.6971:

6 Borderland-maps would make coverage imbalances even worse.

I hope that they reduce the Borderland-maps to just 1 Map. It would suck during reset night, but would make for better balanced fights during the reset of the week.

Well not with those servers, U alrwady have amazing lags with 100 vs 100, what woudl happend with 300 vs 300 or even more? Cos it is sure that ppl will blob at new map, they will always blob now, cos u blob u win with new stabillity

1 BL-Map and leave the max number per Map like it is now. Screw the overstacked servers, let’em play EOTM.

Hmmm how about 3 total WvW maps instead, one copy each of Alpine, EB & Desert (new HoT) maps. Yes T1&2 would have huge queues in certain time zones and the people that wanted to WvW during those hours would have to consider transferring down. If done in conjunction with some kind of responsible population rebalancing effort, pre Season 4 reduced transfer costs to lower tiers and some way of changing how active world population is calculated to more reflective of WvW population in the age of megaservers then it might be successful or at least a lot better than the feast or famine thing we having going on now.

I’d be in favor of lower WvW map population caps as well for the lag problems but ANET has never seemed to try that option after all this time so kind of doubt they will now. Seems like it should have been a no brainer choice awhile back that never materialized so there has to be reason for that right?

I am afraid they might have painted themselves into a corner with the concept of the “home” map system which requires 3 copies of an identical map for fairness so each side always has the same point potential in three-way mirror images. I would love to see ANET break themselves out of that habit in some way that maintains the equality but gives us WvW access to all of the maps for more choice.

That might require some overhauls to the existing EotM & EB maps for better color balance and point total potentials. 4 maps, one of each if you add HoT & Alpine sounds like the ideal goal for once they start with the rotation plan at least until they make another map in a few years I guess. Just don’t think the regular WvW populations can take more than 4 maps unless they drastically lower the population caps on them which they might have to do when HoT hits anyways given how laggy every new thing always is.

I love a lot of the ideas on the new HoT WvW map that look to be designed to help split apart zergs for more effective gameplay but the question remains if gamers will actually play it that way. Also a bit leery of the lag consequences on layer heavy map like this but that will have to wait and see for launch.

I wish they did not need to take away the Alpine Borderland map even if only temporarily, choice is a good thing and letting players decide which map fits their preferred playstyle seems like a better way to go. I guess in the distant future that might mean there would be 3 unique borderland maps to pick from but waiting another 2 years for another map might not cut it. I would have rather seen the layout for EB, EotM and this new desert map going into rotation as the 4th center choice but I am sure ANET has plans to work things out.

Looking forward to seeing some BETA news soon.

really pretty map looks really interesting but I get some of the concerns being voiced here about maybe relying on gimmicks a bit much. Human nature is such that it is hard to trust other players to have the most fun with they’ve been given without kittening something up. Some of you tho need to ease up on the sour grapes a bit & have a Cucumber Collins. It might surprise you & end up as entertaining as it looks.

My main worry is all about the “rotation” part of this concoction, more choices would be better, too bad they don’t have 3 different borderland maps ready to go now with alpine, desert & jungle. And then of course I have to wonder about how much extra lag all the pretty gimmicky stuff brings us.

with the new reward system for defense we might have k-turtles next o.O

As weird as it might feel at first, I think it would be interesting if the center WuvWuv map (currently EB) cycled between EotM, EB & the new HoT map for more variety. To make things more interesting maybe the Overflow map for WvW (currently EotM) should rotate too and up the anti by making the side that wins (for both center WuvWuv and overflow map) vote up the map flavor they want next while getting kicked for the reset. Imagine the different kind of attention that would bring to the end of matches. Heck, it might even make people in overflow try to win scores sometimes.