Guild Wars 2

I enjoyed WP’s summary video pausing the fly-through of the new map to chat on ideas. Mind you his perspective is more from the tPvP side of things but I think he makes a lot of good points and gets a bit carried away with some of his speculations, just like a lot of others here which is really half of the fun of waiting for new stuffs if you don’t get too obsessed with it.

I am looking forward to seeing more of the map at the Rezzed panel next week before I flip too far out one way or the other. Looks like there are some really cool ideas and possibly some really messy ones so waiting to get a better idea which side got the bigger collection of them.

I don’t think the new WvW map is limited to the expansion from what I remember of Angry Joe’s interview with Colin and they have not even decided how it will figure into the “rotation” or what “rotation” is going to mean yet so we need you WvW centric sorts to be vocal (& reasonable) during the beta process.

The map looks very pretty with some funky new stuff but so did EotM which became a farmfest mainly due to players overly efficient reaction. TBH we can have open field WvW in a lot of places if we choose to but the problem is people go where the rewards are biggest, not where the fights are the most fun which is kinda sad but human nature. Not a fan of tons of gimmicks or pinch points either but if helps to break up the zergs a bit that could be a good thing imo. I really do like teh pretteh

Reverence.6915:

@OP: You’re not looking in the right places. It’s also advisable to join a guild that looks for those kinds of battles if that’s what you’re interested in. You don’t really do anything in WvW as a pug.

I think this is what is making WvW in T1 less fun, for me at least. The map hopping, the zerg all in one place leaving 2 to 3 other maps completely bare while the enemy zerg is somewhere else. At times WvW is like EotM where it almost feels like zergs are avoiding each other on purpose. Yes the leaders are doing what they have to for PPT upkeep with the numbers they have but it isn’t exactly very fun, especially for the PUG material who basically just join WvW these days to get a couple easy daily rewards and then leave because no one says anything in map chat other than “get in TS”.

Saying one can’t do anything in WvW as a pug or if they don’t use voice chat is just writing off a chunk of those bodies who would be in WvW making everything more interesting if they weren’t repeatedly told their effort was “completely useless”. So they all end up in EotM instead where sometimes almost by complete accident you can have a really fun spontaneous battle break out or with the right comm, a really challenging adventure w/o the stress of PPT. We did this to ourselves I guess, sucked all the fun out of WvW but it seems like a waste of potential to me.

I thought Sorrows Furnace use to have a lot of Spanish speaking guilds, mostly from South America but I have no idea about current info.

Malthurius.6870:

On another note; when they were talking about the stability changes they mention it “coming sooner than you might think”. I don’t how anyone else reads into that, but I read a potential feature pack.

Yep, my thoughts exactly, there will probably be a big spring feature patch like the last 2 years with a lot of balance changes that will set the stones for HoT’s release later in the year, likely August to promote at all the big cons.

Rexx.1805:

Having him as a Legend would be amazing to the point i consider leaving him out a huge mistake. He’s loved by the GW Veterans and would “sell” the class to these players on it’s own. Not to mention his skills have really catchy names that match the Revenant theme like “Meditation of the Reaper”, “Riposting Shadows” and “Impossible Odds”.

So…bring SHIRO TAGACHI back A-Net! We’re counting on you!!!

yes please Shiro as a legend is a must and I’ll be super sad if I have to wait for Cantha but would understand if that means Cantha could get here more quickly

When I hear the word adventure all I can think of is Bilbo running out of Hobbiton yelling “I’m going on an adventure!” and nothing so far is sounding very hobbit adventure caliber yet so yeah trials might be a better term if it wasn’t for that awful stigma of DAoC Trials of Atlantis. icky Maybe what about peril or feat?

SuzukiMethod.4732:

DeWolfe.2174:

SuzukiMethod.4732:

A-net provided many servers to spread the population out and minimize performance issues. They can hardly be held accountable when the player base then elects to dog-pile onto a few select servers.

Anet provides a map population limit to keep player and server performance at an acceptable level. Anet is accountable for sudden drops in performance if it is from hardware or software issues. As that is not within the players control as we are simply playing within the limits provided.

So they should lower the map cap? I am for this 100%

2nded, I am all for lower WvW map population caps but I don’t think this recent issue would be helped much by it. Might be a huge ISP issue or something ANET is doing with preparations for HoT but even in PvE lag has been silly stupid this week.

I see no reason why the map of EotM couldn’t be rotated with the EB map layout from time to time (maybe in a 3 way rotation with the new HoT map). IMO it would only need the center aetherblade section to be converted into some kind of capture point. An open capture point worth the same as Stonemist would be hella fun to try and defend, maybe something like 3 caps within that all have to be controlled to take and aetherblade vets converting to your faction when you hold all 3 to help with the defense.

ANET could leave the current version of the EotM map to function as a the overflow map for karma level farmers so I don’t see how the map itself would cause people to play stupidly. If the EotM map layout was in the EB map position WvW players would defend their keeps and it would become an entirely different dynamic. EotM can actually be pretty fun when you comms on all three sides going at it for the fights but for sure would want the option to WvW elsewhere from time to time or the choice to hit the borderlands for a break from fear of falling and stability builds.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Kungsmurfen.2861:

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Yeah, so the new borderland map joins the rotation with the borderlands we have today

Erm what current rotation is he talking about? O.o

I think he’s talking of a future rotation.

No, the way he has phrased it implies there is already a rotation, a rotation of one is not a rotation!

The reddit afterparty thread from PAX South indicates that ANET doesn’t know what the rotation is going to be or how it is going to work yet which is probably why it sounds weird. I assume this will be one of the things they want to test in beta and get player feedback on so have at it. There has already been a little bit of discussion on the borderland map thread and probably others but maybe it all needs to get gathered together. Maybe Devon has a CDI in mind for it.

I miss it too but I have to admit that no white swords made it a lot easier to do your daily in WvW quickly if you didn’t have much time to play and I haven’t been able to play in WvW as much since no white swords left so I might be biased. I thought the sneak attack was good fun for small scale on T1 as there were a lot more unscripted little skirmishes going on and the map chatter and scouting felt higher quality as well as more useful. Once defense gets a stronger emphasis for reward in HoT I think it Sneak Attack might even have less downsides for the lower tiers.

Fuzzion.2504:

Lets wait and see how they will roate the current map in BLs with the new HoT map that will be placed as a BL map.

This was my opinion as well until I read the reddit after party thread where it was indicated ANET doesn’t even know how they are going to rotate the new map in yet or what their definition of “rotate” is going to be. It is likely one of the things they want to test in beta and get player feedback on so as toxic as this community can be, I am sure we can still come with a few good ideas on how we would like to see new map rotation work.

There are couple of things we are still in dark about however that will make this conversation difficult. We don’t know yet if all accounts will have access to the new HoT WvW map (Ziggurat works for me but HoT is shorter) or only those that purchase the expansion pack. Given ANET’s use of the word rotation I am going to assume everyone will be able to play there but the possibility has to be considered. We also don’t know what if anything ANET has up their sleeves to address the population imbalance issue. I am optimistically hopeful HoT or the spring balance patch will do something to help with that but I’ve been burned so many times in the past already that I be wont be holding my breath.

Given how things work now and what we do know for sure I tend to agree with the OP’s sentiment that 3 identical borderland maps might limiting the WvW experience. Ideas on how to integrate the new HoT map into our current system with minimal impact should be interesting and a way to keep the number of maps the same or less might be the best way to go.

One possible solution would be to have only 3 maps to chose from, EB, new HoT and a borderland conglomeration which would be bigger size wise (like EotM size, I swear that map feels huge compared to EB but maybe it is my imagination due the empty space of cliffs making everything feel far away) where each side gets a Citadel & Garrison on the same map and center area commonly shared between them to fight over. Hopefully that would be relatively easy to implement for the map guys since it would not be a whole new map though I would suggest trimming down on the under used PvE areas NE and NW of the Garrison. It gets rather old playing the map hopping game across the three borderlands chasing after the enemy zerg and hoping for a fight instead of PvD so having all the borderland action on one map seems like it could be fun but might not make a lot of sense lore wise or in map congruency on the UI. Some might feel that is just too much like EB all over again but I think the Citadel to Garrison experience is unique and worth preserving.

Another way ANET could go would be to keep the three identical borderlands as is and have 3 maps that rotate in the center position of EB. The current EB map, EotM map (with a slight change) and the new HoT map. Then you would only see one of those 3 possible maps each match up and either make it a random switch, sequential or something the winning side from the previous match gets to pick (no idea how, maybe at reset as joining but could be a nice little bonus thing to fight for). The EotM map would get its center aetherblade spot turned into an open capture point situation (or maybe 3 cap points inside) with the aetherblades becoming allied NPCs upon cap and get all its structures and points held scored similarly to EB. The EotM map itself can be very fun when not used strictly as a karma train and the EotM as it currently functions could remain as the overflow option for those who enjoy it for leveling and such.

Given the current population levels and interest in WvW I really don’t see how ANET could have a 5th map work unless they’ve got some big merger / alliance plans, half of which a good portion of the WvW community might hate so another more boring option would be for them to replace EB or all three of the borderland maps with the new HoT map in rotation but hopefully they will find a more interesting way to implement it.

What are some other ways that could work?

getting kind of sick of the “GET ON TEAMSPEAK” screams in WvW all the time. There are plenty of people who will never be in community voice chat for whatever reason (that they are not required to justify to anyone either) and the game is still perfectly playable and enjoyable for them so don’t treat them like lepers . Discounting those members of your community gets you nothing and completely alienating them might lose you some talented resources. Can’t we just say instead “for another layer of WvW gameplay consider joining your community voice chat”.

Atherakhia.4086:

Are they considering merging some of the servers?
Are they considering changing WvW to follow the ‘worldserver’ approach to map cloning?
Are they considering anything?

The expansion map announcement does make it sound like they must be doing something further for WvW before HoT hits and since spring is usually when they do one of their semi-annual balance patches, I am going to assume we will see hints of that something by then. The question is what and which direction they are going to take it. I am not going to fret too much until I see more about about where they are heading as ANET usually has an idea of how they want things to be whether based in reality or not.

I can see several different possible ways to change WvW for the better and a couple of them could be huge so for now I just have to stay mellow and not dream too big or get my hopes too high. I imagine even if they told us stuff now and some of us hated it they would not be changing course anyways so might as well roll with it or find a new hobby. No sense in filling up forums too much with our WvW wet dreams.

Shiro of course! Undead Rurik would be cool too

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

The idea has been floating around on the forums for a little over a year, has had monumental support from the player base & has been discussed in depth about how it could be done & why it would be better.

Actually pretty sure ANET said something more along the lines that the megaserver idea would never be implemented for WvW but the more important point I think is the idea DOES NOT have monumental support from the WvW player base at all. Hard to know how much based on a forum no one reads anymore but there is a pretty good chunk of WvW players who have said the day WvW goes to an alliance based system is when they are done with GW2 for good. Now granted there are a lot of different ideas on how something like that would work and some of those might be more popular than others, especially those that can protect some sense of WvW community identity.

Putting OS in EotM sounds like a pretty decent way to side step a lot of messy problems. I would be in favor of using the EotM beta test holding area to dump people into from which they could then choose to join the OS or EotM map. I love to see a vault and maybe even crafting stations there as well.

Sreoom.3690:

Having Supply zeroed out at each map hop is a bad idea.

Map hopping is a meta strategy/tactic.

It might be meta these days due to low populations but you have to wonder if it is good for the game overall. I personally find it rather distracting as someone who is not following the map hopper blob when a friendly zerg runs thru a border to flip everything close by and then disappears. Which in turn brings out an enemy zerg to run back over it all again. Seems like a lot missed opportunities for good fights to me and feels a lot more like EotM with zergs avoiding each other even when unintentionally.

Maybe a supply reset on map load is another good flux to try and see what effect it has on the meta. I am enjoying some aspects of this months sneak attack flux for the number of smaller fights you bump into but in combo with the map hopper attitude it can still get a bit KTrain centric. Maybe with both at once we would see more map loyalty on all 3 sides and a higher value being placed on camps.

Junkpile.7439:

It should be megaserver like EotM.

/agreed

That has been brought up so many times and I don’t think we’ve seen an official note on if it would be possible or not so I’ve got to assume it is not within the realm of easy things for anet to do. Bummer tho, would have an added GvG outside of match-up draw that way as well. The final chest could use a bump in rewards for sure but it would be nice to hear from the devs on their thoughts for the place at this point.

can’t we just wait and see what it does before we go all bonkers? Yeah it might suck but isn’t trying something different better than nothing? Ever wonder if all the over reactionary screaming on these boards might be why we don’t get a lot red tags around here? What is left to say to such a bitter distraught crowd? I know a lot of people have tried the reasonable approach for a good long awhile and felt they weren’t getting anywhere but I fail to see how all tantrum pitching helps at all at this point. ><

I see nothing wrong with SoR deciding to be a casual WvW server and I don’t think GSCH has ever tried to be anything other than themselves so I have a lot of respect for that. There should be places for people to play for the fun of it and not stress out over PPT. From the sounds of it, those who didn’t care for the laid back casual attitude have moved on so just keep cultivating the kind of community you all want to embody and don’t worry about scores. Glad to hear a lot of drama guilds have moved off SoR, sounds like a lovely place to retire to someday.

and lag and disconnects have been more weird than “usual” lately so good to hear it is not forgotten, tho I expect growing LS and seasonal stuff is making it especially worse recently.

Swamurabi.7890:

All I’m suggesting is that if T1 is soooooo organized it shouldn’t be difficult for them to self-balance each time zone since T1 player attrition is outpacing recruiting to replace those players.

I think that might be the point of the discussion? There are actually a number of guilds in T1 that do this but it has been difficult in the past because there is so much mistrust and trash talk back and forth about servers recruiting methods. I sort of wish recruiting was never a thing because it feels like it has done more to tear communities apart then build anything lasting. Sounds like that is why they are asking for some “push” times outside of seasons so the guilds who want to help balance things out in T1 know exactly where in what time zone bodies are needed. Guilds looking for good battles know there is no joy playing when there is no competition.

Right now it is pretty random how any given team turns out for reset nite itself let alone the whole match. Bummer that it is much more rewarding to hit EotM if you are PUG material anymore. I don’t know how they can create the kind of draw that seasons tend to do with PvEers but for the most part on JQ we are seriously lacking in the Pugmander department so any PvEers who do bother to venture into WvW don’t stay very long.

Johje Holan.4607:

Regarding the PPT vs. Fights people, when will you all realize you need both?

It was the same ole story in DAoC as well with the 8v8 crowd vs the casual zerg. They would rail against each other and their chosen play-styles and could never accept that RvR would become stagnant and boring without a mix of everything in the pot. Anytime a faction managed to purge itself to be strictly one or the other (see Lamorak) things went to pieces very quickly.

The reason RvR and to a lesser degree WvW work as a long term PvP mode is not knowing what you might find out there and having to be prepared for everything. It makes the game play more enjoyable for a lot longer so the more different kinds of play-styles that can be supported in one place the more varied the experiences and the longer it takes to get bored. That is also why too much build meta is bad, m’kay ><

Anyways, happy to hear t2 & t3 are getting awesome fights now even if it costs JQ dearly in the loss of SG. /goes off to cry alone in a corner

I hope this means t1 is ready to go into de-stack mode for a change and a few more guilds of consequence start making moves down the ladder in the name of balance. Imagine a season where no one knows who will be in the top 3? Now that sounds like fun.

Luvpie.8350:

Blaeys.3102:

I actually think the opposite needs to happen ASAP. Transfers to gold league servers should be locked until a better balance is reached, and free transfers should be offered for guilds wanting to move to silver and bronze from those servers – until they come up with a better solution for the population imbalance problem (and there are alot of good suggestions in another thread related to that topic).

That way your guild can join you on your server and work toward making WvW more competitive (again, until a real solution is implemented) – rather than just a competition to see who has the most people and after hours coverage.

+1 lock T1 server and SoS so we can’t receive any more transfers. Transfers from Top 4 servers to lower servers should be discounted or free to spread the pop!

Yeah and a whole lot of other stuff needs to happen at the same time to make the desired de-stack happen organically but ANET hasn’t been able to figure out how to do that yet so I am not gonna hold my breath. JQ and TC are probably going to go into recruitment mode again with BG being so dominate in S3 but really what we need is a change in attitude about how many players are enough across all worlds. Maybe it is ok not to have full maps ever anymore.

I am sure ANET has all the metrics they need to find a better way to cap world populations for WvW now that PvE has gone into megaserver mode. but they’ve shown no desire to so which is really too bad. I would think the GvG crowd would prefer to be anywhere but tier 1 with all the casual noobs but I guess things have changed with a lower active WvW population.

Something like this should have been the game since launch or at the very least a lame little title track. Really any sort of world loyalty incentive would have been nice in the rampant free transfer era. A lot of us who have been on the same world since the BWE’s take great pride in that fact. ANET seems rather loath to add another form of currency so I don’t see anything this in depth happening without being in conjunction with a major overhaul of the whole system but it is nice to dream.

It can be rather sad and frustrating to consider all the lost potential for WvW when you look back over the last couple of years but such is life sometimes. I was begging for world icons and better community building tools before launch but I think the time crunch hit the WvW team too hard due all the hardware & optimization issues they had early on and they never did get their feet back under them. I get the feeling the Living Story crowd just chews through content without any real appreciation whereas if a fraction of that time was spent on positive WvW changes we would be happy to enjoy the real end game for a good long while.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey guys,

It’s been an incredibly busy week for me and I’m not fully caught up yet but I am noticing patterns in the posts that I have been able to read. A lot of people are also saying that they can’t keep up so I think it is a good time to close this discussion out.

No, I think a separate thread is probably appropriate at this point mainly because if people choose to discuss it things in the original thread might get even more convoluted.

Not sure I want to touch this idea with a 10ft pole myself but it certainly would be an interesting environment to play in for a few weeks. o.O

On a side note more tangible rewards for winning do seem like a great way to increase the involvement but this would probably be too extreme for most players. I would love to see more guild involvement in WvW rewards and more guild focused WvW tools as well as some alternative ways to earn PvE rewards through WvW.

Fury.6281:

Servers placing 3rd in their respective tiers over a 8 week period will be closed down, and players forced to jump servers to one of a different tier for no charge!
You think your server is worth fighting for? Prove it!
Discuss…

Holly can of worms batman! . . . but given John has asked the discussion in this thread to end I would suggest starting a new one in another thread for any who want to go wild with that idea. It certainly provides a lot of food for thought. I have a feeling we would have to come up with so many exceptions to make it palatable enough to fly that it would no longer accomplish much tho.

My bad, you already have a new thread going here.

I actively avoid EotM when my world is OG but then I also tend to avoid WvW if my side is running up the score. It is dull and boring to steamroll everything and I would bet you actually get more rewards as FR & BL in prime time situations for having more stuff to take back more quickly not mention some good fights mixed in between.

I am going to go with the ’pug’mander angle here and say tier 1 prolly has less random unifying map chat wielding leaders since we’ve done so well organizing our WvW communities in VIOP. And as much as I love JQ for that, I am rarely following a pin and never in voice chat outside my guild for my own reasons so I gotta give mad props to those few commanders who can still marshal a zerg out of nothing or pound the pavement in the off peak hours to rally numbers using map chat.

For that I love chasin’ after Mance & Stonewall late PST, Gavi wherever our regular commanders are not and Firebrew or our resident frenchie Lectell on the early shifts since those guys all use the map chat liberally but I have to say in spite of the flack he sometmes gets, Cloud Fly always makes for an easy target to follow and gets a zerg rolling when there was only chaos before. He is also pretty awesome at making a defensive stand on short notice and rallying the troops so I’d call him a game changer. Haven’t seen a lot of the other more familiar names on lately or I’d keep going.

Of course back in the day Wahaa was always our off peak hours lion who put together so many great rushes but I still see some from that era like Good Taiwan Man & Sfeee out there from time to time. I think it is not surprising some of the best pugmanders do not speak English as a first language since it helps them be more efficient with the map chat and probably lets them ignore the peanut gallery as well.

EotM can be a stupid ktrain grind if you let it but I’ve also seen it used to great effect by some very skilled pugmanders to create some memorable battle tactics with only uplevels and map chat to work with. I would say that any commander who wants to improve his map chat effectiveness should spend some time in EotM to hone those skills or maybe that is just ploy to lure a few more fight orientated commanders into the mists once in awhile.

+infinity

This was asked for at launch (and I think in one of the BWE’s it sort of even worked that way on accident but then all 3 worlds could see each others chat which wasn’t so good) and at the time a dev explained why it was not possible with their server configuration.

It was asked for again much more loudly when the megaserver stuff began roll out crushing individual world identity outside of WvW maps. I do not believe we were ever given any answer about if the feasibility had changed since launch but usually no answer means the same as before. I dearly hope someone somewhere in the background is still working on a way to provide a world wide WvW chat channel but I won’t get my hopes up until I see a red tag post on it.

John Corpening.9847:

Anyway, this discussion made it clear it is who you play with that’s important and a number of ideas in this thread preserved that without restricting the number of people who could play at a time. These have had a number of names but for the sake of discussion I’ll go with Alliances. The idea that I liked for Alliances is that it is a group of guilds and people that are guaranteed to stay together no matter how things are rearranged. There would probably need to be a size limit on Alliances and several of you pointed out that whatever limits are put in place it should be based on WvW participation.

I appreciate you trying to make the distinction between Community based Alliances and some of the less appealing ideas that look more like something from EotM with its RvGvB John, but it still makes me a little nervous. I would agree with other posters who have suggested testing this method using the EotM map first to see how it shakes out. It would be interesting to see what kind of Alliance size limits have to be put in place to keep things fairly full but not highly queued.

Some of the larger communities would have to split apart for certain and that could create some uncomfortable choices for some but the option to keep things dynamic and reshuffled in the off-season could either help or exacerbate the problem while people scramble to get where they want to be and together with the people they want to play with. I cannot tell you how many new MMO’s I have tried to play where all my different groups of friends head off in all different directions and the game is totally ruined for me trying to either keep up with all of them or choosing one group over another.

This is the most important point however, regardless of what is done ANET needs to offer tools that better support the WvW communities and their creation if there is going to be any sort major reshuffling going on. I was deeply saddened by the lack of awareness prior to launch on ANET’s part on how to encourage the WvW communities formation. We did it all pretty much on our own and maybe that helped make it stronger in some cases but was a still a lot of work for a few smaller groups.

JQ and SoR to a lesser extent held together because they drew on players who were familiar with the idea of Realm Pride from previous games, other worlds came together around other online gaming or forum communities, SoS was king of castle for a good long while for being the Oceanic server of choice and TC got a close knit community by being the self declared RP world. Some of those communities could not build tight enough to withstand major upsets and some were made stronger by adversity. It sometimes seemed dependent on a few major personalities or guilds making choices.

Good foundations attracted other like minded guilds and the worlds grew in personality from there but it took time and a lot of dedication from a small number of folks to make it happen with no in game help and no in games tools to make Community personalities more easily broadcastable to new players. Any sort of new system will need all of those kinds of things put in place well ahead of time to be truly successful and I wish ANET the best of luck with that seeing how little staff time and devotion has gone into the WvW Community in the past.

If these new Community based Alliances worked similarly to how they were in GW1 with their own names, chat and UI panel for management it might be possible to create something that would be more fluid to weather all the dips in population as new games hit the market. It would be a little sad to lose those world connections at this point so I hope at least those names could be preserved or combined in the new Alliance system.

~Best of luck in whichever direction things go from here but at least having the discussion is a start

Ansau.7326:

If people think lowering caps from 80 to 60 will solve something, really don’t know what is to be in a map during hours and seeing not a single enemy. The problem is not when it’s like 35vs40vs70. You can still defend or taking structures if you play smart.
The real problems start when things like 0vs5vs20 or 10vs15vs60 happen. Then it’s just PvD. If a single group of 5/6 people can flip half a map in about 1 hour, do you really think 60 max is much different than 80 or 100?

But guilds/players on higher population servers will have to destack for any hope of getting into WvW and by spreading out their population across worlds make the above 0vs5vs20 situation very rare. The lower map caps will do a lot of different things at once but might make for a very dynamic few months while things shift around, just that in itself would be pretty interesting to watch.

retsuya.4708:

Decrease WvW Map Cap,
Sorry but you have to spread out or play EotM while on Queue.

Off hours coverage might still be there but, 30 vs 80 (assumes 80 is the cap) is still a lot better than 30 vs 150

Staleness of match-ups.
If players are a bit spread out, the gap will be smaller and we can have a variety of match ups every week

This but the current map population caps are probably more around 80 already on the borderlands, so take them down to 60 and see how it goes. It solves so many problems at once. There is no real good reason we need fights bigger than 50v50v50 to feel like an MMO.

I don’t really get all the lower WvW map population caps hate I see in this thread. I don’t think most people are looking at as a destacking incentive which is the most important thing it should be used for. Now that guilds can take their unlocks with them there is nothing to hinder spreading the player base back the heck out. I would also be in favor of maybe some in game ways for guilds to earn world transfers or some tools to make it worth while for guilds to make a home-world declaration. And the mega guilds could decide to take over more than world if they wanted. Hopefully not ones that face each other regularly but maybe some guilds would like that?

the changes seem to be worse for some people and better for others, likely video card brand related. I’ve always had annoying lag issues and skill lag in the past for big fights but since the patch that has improved for me greatly. I do notice a lot more sticky “lag-dar” warnings of large forces nearby but that is just a bit of learning curve to figure out where it is coming from. Before this afternoons hotfix lag was horrid briefly but pretty much gone right afterwards. YMMV

The lag I’ve seen so far after todays patch is less of the debilitating skill lag type and more of the lagdar kind that just makes the map “feel” weird when a lot of enemies are nearby. I don’t mind the 2nd kind so much especially when running havoc and I can at least fire off my skills in a big battle but I haven’t been in a Garri or SM three-way yet to truly test that theory.

But on topic, I’ve always been in favor of lowering the WvW map population caps for many other reasons, lag only being one of them. It could fix so much all in one go and I can only hope that ANET has actually slowly been lowering those caps for months now a little at a time so we don’t notice.

/agreed what was the reason given for the change anyways? Just because of the week long AP set up?

it would also be grand if they could close all inward bound transferring to Tier 1 starting last month please. >< The full servers should stay closed imo.

EotM would benefit greatly from a few of the same things WvW maps would, mainly rewards for defending. Of course ANET still has to figure out a non-exploitable way to accomplish that but they’ve been working on it for over a year now. Must be getting close.

I will say that the recent increase of guilds and anti-karma farmers in EotM who try to defend and train bust are making things more entertaining at least so kudos to them. I use to level my alts in WvW but that has become more difficult and EotM was so mind numbingly boring for awhile there that I stopped bothering to try but its been more fun with defenders around lately. Sure you die a bit more often and level a tad slower, but the chat entertainment value skyrockets and sometimes you get into some great skirmishes. I do hate falling through hard to see holes in the terrain tho.

Rimmy.9217:

How about scattering the entire population of the gold tiers over the other eighteen servers instead? Makes about as much sense.

That actually might be the best idea ever, just close the T1 servers and give guilds a free world transfer where the guild leader can move everyone on the roster who was repping last time they played to the new destination world so the inactives are not lost when they show back up after a break. Sure some people might find themselves in the wrong place and it take awhile to things to settle down but it seems pretty clear to me that world transfers is how ANET makes $$ off of WvW so might as well let them soak up some more. >.<

T1 worlds do actually have pretty strong core communities but they’ve also weathered the most dramatic changes and learned a lot about how to work together so why not spread those gifts around a bit. Of course ANET would have to lower world and WvW map population caps a good deal to make sure the spread went over fairly even and didn’t just all end up stacking to a new home.

I expect a lot of lower tier worlds would find this method just as objectionable which is too bad. Shaking things up completely would do a lot to make S3 more interesting and might be the last best chance at finding some kind of population balance.

Johje Holan.4607:

I’ve only heard about DAOC never played. My question is how did DAOC deal with population and coverage? Was it an issue? Surely it wasn’t even all the time.

Will take a stab at this one even though I mainly played on lower pop servers in DAoC. For 1 DAoC was not really that popular of a game so much lower numbers to start with. My regular servers had around 1,200 total players online in US primetime and often times a lot less across a whole lot of maps, 3 realms and a ton of RvR space. The big full servers could not hold more than 2,500 at first.

2nd there was no EU split so everyone was in it together but also I don’t think DAoC was very popular in Asia, not enough grind and shiny for the times. I don’t really remember any side having a big off peak hour crew running around outside of alarm clock raids. I do remember Albs being famous for going crazy on US holidays and times when most sane people would be away from the game (xmas, super bowl, 4th of July late nite).

Midgard was always the under populated realm to start with but they had some seriously OP classes to make up for it. The reason the community stayed so tight for a good long while is we needed each other to get things done. Leveling, PvE raids, RvR relic captures, gear & crafting took a lot of cooperation so we had to work together. You got to know the leaders and bad apples very quickly. And of course no server transfers where a huge part of it. You could start over in an opposing realm or buy more accounts but it took awhile for people to get into that. It also took 5 months to reach max level at first so yeah . . . there was that.

As to all the other points, yes put away the rose tinted glasses or get out the time machine. DAoC was the game of yesteryear and we can’t get it back now. GW2 WvW had (has?) a lot of potential and I was pretty excited for it but due to human nature nasty impatient destructive and divisive little creatures that we are, it just didn’t come together in a perfect storm of goodness and timing. Too bad, I had such high hopes.

The things ANET could do to help WvW they will never do now for fear of customer squawking. Lower WvW map pop caps would go a long way in improving a lot of other things all at once but would never be popular enough to fly. You have to realistic about things like getting rid of the AoE caps, bigger maps and larger group sizes. These are things ANET cannot do with what they’ve built without seriously hurting performance. And the little things they can do have not been well supported by the players so in the long run we probably have no one to blame but ourselves. O’wells, was fun while it lasted and is still prettiest 3 way thing around so will have to do. =/

not just WvW, all maps going nuts, somthin broke

Andrew Clear.1750:

Jeknar.6184:

Andrew Clear.1750:

Map cap isn’t going to help. Maybe in T1, so you can get the constant Map queue 24/7 and say it isn’t a numbers game (and T2 a little) but for the rest of WvW, map caps wouldn’t be beneficial, and would actually tick off some people on servers who would be able to queue multiple maps during primetime and not be able to play much.

Contantly queues on the stacked servers would likely force these people to move somewhere else unless they like waiting everytime they want to play. That may would make people go to lower population servers, but at this point, I think they would just quit doing WvW or the game entirely….

Didn’t happen for season 1, why do you think it would happen now? They would just stop playing the game before transferring, because many people in the higher tiers see T3 and below as inferior.

I think all the megaserver stuff along with EotM has done a lot to change tier 1 perceptions of the lower levels. They no longer have to fear empty PvE maps and dead WvW off-peak time zones with nothing to do or no alternative. Once the guild achievement unlock stuff is fixed for world transfers the last thing holding a lot of smaller guilds tied to tier 1 worlds for the good of their more diverse and casual members will be broken and you might see a lot more willingness to move around or start new communities.

If ANET does it right with a clearly thought out goal and information blitz campaign and lowers WvW map population caps in conjunction with some other major updates and limited low transfer pricing they could now accomplish a great deal of what was most complained about in the CDI. I am still holding out hope because lower WvW map population caps are probably the easiest thing they could do to solve a lot of issues all at once.

The thing I don’t get is why players think 50v50v50 isn’t big enough?! Seriously? How big of zergs do you need to have large scale combat? Have you ever been in a three-way lag fest in SM and thought to yourself “you know what would make this even more fun? More random numbers with more random boons, conditions & spell effects flying everywhere!” Do you have any idea how much more fun battles would be when the action is all spread out without major lag and skill combs actually mean something? 5v5v5 in tPvP is a bit small for my tastes but regular 25v15v20 unpredictable clashes sound pretty exciting to me, especially if you are on the underdog team taking the cake at the end.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Jman.1975:

If you want a “solution.” It shouldn’t be merging all the servers into super servers. Just lower the population cap down to 35-50. This gives servers with a lower population the ability to Que all the maps constantly, and fight servers with 5x the WvW population.

This is a much better idea. These maps are too small for more than 50 per side.

Yup, a lot of us have been asking for lower WvW map pop caps for a very long time now and I really thought EotM and the new transfer prices b4 S2 was the prelude to ANET actually listening to us on it but have yet to see any significant change. Please let this happen soon.

msalakka.4653:

How about fixing the old ones first?

Seconded, this game has plenty of other things that need some TLC well before we should be worrying about new maps, let alone untested buggy ones. ANET are way too much professionals to be that callous with their game. No band-aid fixes plz. ><

If you have that short of attention span that WvW is boring to you unless you get new maps well guess what . . . those maps will only feel “new” for a short time and then what? Start crying all over again? Just take a break and play a different game for awhile instead of trying to drag this one down. Come back after 6mo’s and everything will seem new again.

I’d just like to point out that while EotM while technically was not an update for WvW, it did take a huge amount of pressure off the queues of top tiers and whines about about barren waste lands in the lower tiers. The WvW community was also very vocal more than a year ago about needing new maps so ANET tried to fix everything at once in one shot.

I like to think of EotM as the fix they had to implement first before they could address the hard stuff (map caps and population imbalance) but I am just a little confused about what is taking phase II so long. Gonna guess it has something to do with seasons and China launch.

Just a reminder to be careful what you wish for. And for goodness sake, stop asking for more maps until we get some of the other stuff fixed. ><

Jeknar.6184:

I still think WvW have much worse issues to be fixed than map terrain…

Yeah this, tired of people saying if only we had new maps everything would be happy sunshine sparkle time . . . ok so you want to put more lipstick on that pig? o.O

did the megaserver stuff fix guild unlocks going with the transfer yet? I haven’t actually been paying attention lately but initially the megaserver stuff I thought was going to happen over months then ended up complete after a couple weeks and the guild unlocks transferring to new worlds was going to be in the last batch of things to happen. Anyone know what the status is on that? It might be something that is still keeping a lot of the smaller casual guilds tied to the overpopulated worlds they started out on . . . maybe?

I expect ANET has the numbers and can tell if they should be closing the bottom 3 worlds down or not. I hope now with EotM and the megaserver tech it would be less painful for everyone involved. I certainly don’t feel like there is any PvE reason left to worry about at least. I wouldn’t mind having a few PvE maps be a little less full sometimes but maybe that is just me. As for WvW, hasn’t the communities all suffered so much at this point that there really isn’t that much left to try and preserve? Sad but kind of how it feels lately. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet for the good of the game as a whole for a change.

NonToxic.9185:

I would lower the max players per map, forcing players from enormous servers to spread out amongst all the other servers to avoid queues.

This is the number 1 easiest thing ANET could do today that would actually make a difference without any effort on their part but if they did it without a few other perks thrown in it might not go over very well.

EotM made it more possible and manageable (a map to go without queues for those not ready to move) and megaservers (which still need some drastic tweaking imo, PvE maps need smaller population caps during boss events and more or all cities should be server specific) made it less threatening to spread things out even more. Ideally it should be done in conjunction with a season reboot that involves some a limited time free transfers, shorter match-ups after to rebalanced the tiers faster, minor WvW map make-over to introduce more variety with the bloodlust and outmanned mechanics that also makes the NW and NE corners of the borderland maps useful along with a major commander and squad overhaul that lets the players have more control over how they want play and some sort of loot/reward incentive change (stuff unique to WvW from badges or whatever). . .

so yeah . . . all of that at once for a huge shake up ought to get things moving in the right direction. Otherwise it is just another accessory part of an MMO that is bound to get stale after several months of the same day to day. PvP can only carry a game without change if it is truly full of unexpected and unpredictable encounters but sadly that is not what WvW is right now. I pretty much know exactly what I will find going on out there and that rarely changes from day to day like it should.

seems like a legit use of the megaserver tech . . . unlike say . . . all cities being merged ><
has been pretty quiet in there a while now besides the very first nite of season 2.

Wouldn’t it have to be instanced like EotM or the megaservers to work or am I misunderstanding what you mean by “instanced”? Maybe like districts in GW1 and there should always be more than one copy of the map where you can choose which one you want instead of joining others in their instance?

if it has to happen then season 3 should at least be shorter with all the world transfer stuff way ahead of time. NA vs EU vs CN is never going to happen so stop asking for it silly gooses.

And new maps will take a ton of resources away from fixing the real problems. I am sorry but New Frontiers in DAoC did not really do much to quell the exodus and happened 4 years after launch not 2. Give ANET some time to do things right because them rushing around to please our short attentions spans is only making things worse right now. Think before you ask.

Anet has long ago said it was “impossible” to do any kind of cross EU/NA action due to the way they set up the tech for the two server sets, housed on different continents and such. Of course which level of “impossible” they were talking about could be up for debate.

But if it were possible then one might hope a true EU/NA merger would have been discussed long before or to accompany the megaserver nonsense as a coverage issue solution. Either way, China servers are playing a different version of GW2 from the rest of us due to regulations of all kinds and would never be allowed to join the fun. We do love our H. K. friends tho.

On top of all that, the horrid racist culture bashing that was map chat in the original Guild Wars Hall of Heroes when battles were different country districts against each other is really not something we need to see even an inkling of in WvW imo.