Guild Wars 2

Would it be possible to organize the data to correspond with the timezone coverage found at http://coveragewars2.com/timezone/

meltdown.5870:

There will never be a fix ..and im not sure it needs a fix…

BUT—right now we are ticking 450…and fow nightcrew came in and they will clear all maps in 1 hour or so ..and they will tick 600 for like the next 10 hours …lol….happends every night.

Wouldn’t you have a better game experience if you played someone better then FoW during your 450 tick time and FoW played someone better then you when they tick 600?

Unless you both really like PvD WvW.

soulsugger.5726:

Culling all over again…

I wonder if it would be easier to just bring back culling instead of implementing the fountains.

You know you’ve been in one place too long when things come around full circle.

Macilien.3078:

Swamurabi.7890:

It’s already been said by Anet devs that they don’t want a population biased scoring because it could lead to players harassing others on the same team that want to play.

Do you have any link for that statement and how recent was it?

It has to be over a year old, maybe two. We were discussing scoring and the thought of score based upon players on a map was brought up. The dev didn’t like the idea that a massive blob could flip an entire map and then leave the map while intimidating any who entered the map.

If I was good at searching three years of posts I’d find it.

Macilien.3078:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Not sure you understand how math works or that you understand what equal means.
If you want to use really bad analogies like building a house. Lets call the points your pay. You asking players to take less pay for the same real estate.

Sigh, I will put it in very simple words to give you a realistic chance to understand it:
many players = big influence; few players = little influence
this results in each player having the same influence.

Or, if you’re still with me, if you take an arbitrary subset of a given size of all players of a server each of these should have the same potential impact on the servers ranking and not be distorted by some being around when there is little resistance.

It’s already been said by Anet devs that they don’t want a population biased scoring because it could lead to players harassing others on the same team that want to play.

Synosius.9876:

The whole map is going away, topic is moot.

1. The maps may come back, so the point is valid.
2. A similar feature may be in use on current or future maps. There’s no reason why a poorly designed feature should be copied or re-used.

Anet should track individual players WvW play time and offer discounts to transfer prices to servers if the player is moving from an over represented server-timezone to one that needs players.

Of course doing this I can see how some players would auto log in during their target server’s weak time just to get a discount to transfer.

Chaba.5410:

Time-sliced scoring OK, but still doesn’t solve the issue with populations on one server not finding anyone to fight against on another server. Without needing to change scoring, have time-sliced glicko rating and match-ups. DB’s SEA can compete in their timezone against T3’s SBI SEA while DB’s NA can compete in their timezone against T4 servers. IoJ’s NA would be competitive in T8 while IoJ’s OCX would find competition in T5. LOL. Yea that won’t happen.

Maybe if they used EotM as a measure of when you play and then let you pick a WvW server that needs players in that time. Since new players can’t join WvW until they’re level 60, let them play EotM and then pick a WvW server based upon the times they do play.

Getting a waypoint in SMC is already a huge advantage.

The stealth fountains will be worse for EB and WvW then what bloodlust was for the BL’s. Bloodlust was eventually toned down.

Siegerazer is the only buff for an outmanned/outnumbered server that’s of any value and there are times when this fails.

Scoring, supply, upgrades, original bloodlust and now SMC stealth fountain are all part of a snowball mechanics that favor stacking populations.

Since EB is the map where you can always find action, especially for militia, having an organized opponent with the extra buff of stealth will just lower the moral and participation of the servers that really need more players.

Have you considered that all the upgrading/flipping you do in your prime time is causing your server to have a higher glicko score and tier then what the rest of your server should be at?

You have two choices within the current scoring system to achieve balance.

1. Add coverage in the other time zones to equalize the scoring.

2. Destack from your time zone to equalize the scoring.

Which one do you think is easier to do?

The only reason I’d use the stealth fountain is if my guild wanted to stealth into the spawn of one of the opponents, so long as it wasn’t to attack the golems stored there.

The only thing that’s known for sure about WvW populations is that any thread talking about that subject will be deleted.

They might as well split each server into four groups, NA, OCX, SEA and EU.
Each match is one week consisting of seven 6-hour time slices so there’s four resets on Friday and each group has their own glicko and possibly even tier.

At the end of the week you can have a total score based upon how each of the server’s four groups performed.

At least this way you won’t have night capping because you’ll be partitioned off relative to similar populations in the same time zone.

The problem is that server population balance isn’t the same as population balance across all time zones, especially since the population algorithm uses an average over time.

Still, balancing server population is the first small step to preventing the snowball affect of night capping ( score, supply, upgrades)

I always thought that since most of the players in WvW are level 80 and human, that the loot from them should be better then the loot in a level 80 PvE map.

I would like a customized autosalvage/auto open/sell options for loot though.

Jayne.9251:

ilmau.9781:

Jayne.9251:

ilmau.9781:

that s a good point :P

it is been more than 4 weeks already we are Outnumbered most of the time being Full while servers that outnumber us are Very High.

To me it smell like another big move from Anet TP Genius, it has been masked as “more balanced system” but truth is that servers who were loosing by 50k points / week one month ago are now winning of 50k points / week. Yeah, indeed a nice change, way more balanced now, Gz.

Only thing that changed is the fact that they had a huge numbers of players to hop server and i won t even imagine the amount of cash they got selling gems for trasnfers.

Well, balance wise nothing changed, but at last i m happy someone got a nice bonus on his salary.

Oh tinfoil hats. Brilliant!

It’s just an indication that SFR was overflowing with players before — WAY more than any other server — and now that you’re faced with “regular” numbers that the rest of EU has worked with over the years, it feels empty to you.

Time to rally those you have there and train them, instead of relying on just throwing numbers at a fight and winning that way.

Herm, when i say “Outnumbered” i don t mean a personal perception like i think our opponents has more than us, i’m talking about the buff itself :p

That happens when a massive blob leaves from one map to go to another. It takes the system a couple of minutes to register the shift in map population and resultant queues.

Anyhow threads like these are a bit odd. For the No.1 server it screams “we cannot fight other servers without a numbers advantage” and as a player shopping around for a new server, I’d hate to be wanted somewhere just to be fodder because my own server isn’t strong enough to fight with equal numbers.

It would be nice to see how the overstacked servers who are used to winning through numbers/coverage adjust to the level of the rest of the WvW servers, who play with less.

I just wish Anet would force returning players or inactive players to choose another server if the one they used to be on is currently full. I hope it doesn’t get to the point where full servers start buying accounts from players quitting the game so they can get current WvW players to bypass the transfer limitation.

Jayne.9251:

Swamurabi.7890:

Speculation is that the algorithm doesn’t adjust population levels quickly for accounts that transfer off a server.

Not quite true. FSP was deemed full for several weeks after the change, then one day dropped to Very High for a full day, then the next day back up to “full” again.

That seemed to indicate the updates on population change were pretty current. Heck, even SFR was “Very High” last week for a tiny bit.

Not sure what happened with FA, perhaps you had more “dormant” WvW players that didn’t move or moved more silently than your guild exits, and that was holding up your status.

One would need to ask someone on SFR if they got an influx of players from another server or if they got more participation from existing players.

FA didn’t get more players/guilds until after several weeks of being very high and still hasn’t hit full status.

If the algorithm hasn’t changed, then SFR’s population average must have just dipped below full status, only to have more players (internal or external), boost the average back above full status.

FA wasn’t nearly as overstacked as the NA T1 servers, lost several guilds to T3 and still took weeks to drop from full to very high.

The population algorithm looks at “active” WvW players (not PvE, PvP or EotM) over an unspecified period of time. It’s designed to even out the fluctuations over time so a server can’t use blackout tactics to change their status.

Nobody knows what an “active” WvW player is.
Nobody knows the length of time that is looked at, but it’s longer than one match.

Speculation is that the algorithm doesn’t adjust population levels quickly for accounts that transfer off a server.

Michelangelo.1742:

• You must hold your side of the map before you can gain and utilize Revenge to your advantage (excluding camps). Much like the Outmanned buff, it is effective only on the map you are currently on. You must hold your side on each of the other maps to gain Revenge on those particular maps.
• In Eternal Battlegrounds, your server needs to hold the four Towers and the one Keep that is closest to your spawn.
• In your home Borderland, your server needs to hold the two Towers adjacent to your spawn and the Garrison.
• In the enemy Borderlands, your server needs to hold either Bay Keep and Briar Tower or Hills Keep and Lake Tower depending what side your spawn is on.

This is my only issue with revenge:

If you are on a side that’s losing, it’s probably because you can’t hold your side of any map. The longer you can’t retake your side of the map the more players you’ll need to flip a t3 tower/keep.

I’ve been in so many matches where right after we flip our side of the map the first place server comes around and ktrains our side of the map.

Now with the server caps, a full server won’t be able to have coverage on all four maps.

The other issue that hasn’t been mentioned is that if a server wants to move up in NA, not only do they have to get the players to get the coverage, they also have to win each week by greater and greater margins in order to close the gap between the tiers.

This means your server has to be committed to spawn camping the other servers to move up a tier. Is that the style of gameplay you really want to promote?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an in-game tool where a new player or returning player or a veteran player could match up their playtime with a server’s needs BEFORE spending gems to transfer?

Based upon the level of participation in FA when its status went from full to very high, you’d probably have two maps queued at reset, with barely enough to fill one map the rest of the day.

Of course the server level is averaged over a length of time, so actual full status might be slightly more than that.

Sich.7103:

Delta.2093:

The AC is still very bad currently because backline can’t stand in AC fire and there’s no way to avoid it, no way to fight under AC fire — it’s the end of PvP (unless siege wars are considered PvP too, a different kind anyway).

If you want PvP just go to…. pvp….
WvW is not about PvP !! It’s about holding stuff, defending it, and fighting to take the ennemy stuff….
If you only want to fight without any siege / keep / wall / door go to pvp and stop asking to remove the Acs….

AC are so easy to counter, just build akitten.. cata or treb… Is that so difficult ?

Actually it take what 8H to fully upgrade a keep ? And you can take it down in 5min with your KT blob…. This is not balanced ! Defender need to be able to hold and slow down the ennemy blob to wait that the friendly blob can join to defend.
Canon are just useless, if you can use it 1 or 2 time it’s a miracle… We need defensive AC, they are a good tool for that. But offensive ac is stupid, wall are used against defender…

The really stupid thing is to see that a patch is out without being tested by the dev team…. That’s really incredible…

What you think WvW should be might not be what Anet thought WvW should be.

The reality is that it matters when you play, who you play against, and which tier you play in, which all affect how you play WvW. Siege isn’t equal in every situation, and it never will be.

OP, do you realize that some time ago it was discovered that Necros had considerably less health in downstate then every other profession?

Did you leave before this was fixed?

LunacyPolish.4602:

The problem with the whole lockout idea is that we’re stuck on a tier which is slowly dying of attrition. Instead of creating several populated tiers as intended all the lockout has done is ensure yet another dead tier. It will take a long time for that to happen because of so many WvW centric players like myself not seeing a better option than to keep going, but I can already tell our coverage is slipping.

Very seldom in any situation does sabotaging what is already good actually improve situations that aren’t so good.

You should create an alt and go to FA. FA recently went from FULL to VERY HIGH. It will give you an idea what FULL will become. This will show you how overstacked T1 is.

You’ll just have to get used to 20v20v20 on four maps instead of 60v60v60.

Hammerguard.9834:

Orochimaru.4730:

I love these “can I get into T1” threads!

First of all it shows how broken Anet allowed the servers to become, getting players to stack into the top 3-4 servers.

And the typical excuse of “I want to play with my friend”, is yet again hilarious! You dont see such tantrums on other games, yet here it’s like they think it’s their right to get into T1, like there isnt another tier available. :P

Anet waited too long to lock servers this way, and by still charging gems for transfers after PvE gets megaservers, it’s just another slap in the face for WvW players.

But although I laugh at them I am getting tired of seeing them. A mod really need to make a stick saying Full servers are full for a reason, select another server!

Not everyone who plays GW2 is going to be interested in WvW and the players who are interested in WvW are going to stack on the servers that are also interested. Anet had nothing to do with players stacking on top tier servers and Anet has nothing to do with players continuing to try and join top tier servers. Tier 1 IS where the players who care most about WvW are going to be and there’s nothing wrong with other players who aren’t in Tier 1 wanting to be apart of that.

Stop trying to make yourself feel better about being on the server you’re on.

What’s best for tier 1 has been shown to be not best for WvW.

If T1 really cared about WvW we would have never gotten to a place where Anet limited transfers.

displayname.8315:

I saw and played in both of those seasons. Neither of those where 1 up 1 down.

Can someone please explain to me why the coverage gaps from 2 years ago are being used as current figures for server population?

Overstacking is a thing of the past, anet wasn’t about to boot people but they can only shrink now

We haven’t played in a 1u1d tournament, but season 2, since it was longer, eventually stabilized into a 1u1d format. Season 3 had the same scoring and started to stabilize into 1u1d.

As for overstacking, it may be a thing of the past, but based upon FA going from full to very high and the relative scores of NA T2 the past month, the four NA overstacked servers need to lose a significant number of players before they reach the lowest level of full.

You should go to either FABL or EB, the other two maps have more dolyaks than FA players.

If you play during a time where there’s only one map with a zerg, you should really try to get the players organized since you sound like a veteran player. FA needs to rebuild.

displayname.8315:

I agree that this destructive gameplay by the player base is caused by the glicko system.

As in previous threads a 1 up, 1 down system would put and end to both glicko manipulation and match stagnation. While also giving and actual meaning to first, second, and third place finishes.

With the differences in population/coverage between tiers in NA, a one up one down system has been shown (see tournament season 2 and 3) that every other week is a three tier matchup, which actually keeps players away from WvW.

Keira Ferland.5619:

Swamurabi.7890:

Keira Ferland.5619:

SpitfireIXA.1807:

Anet, since 1v1v1 is inherently unstable as a level playing field

WvW is not supposed to be a level playing field. 2v1s are supposed to happen.

Yes, for several weeks now, FA and SoS have been 2v1 first by YB, then BG, and now TC, just like WvW is supposed to be.

How can 2 servers be 2v1’d in a 3 server matchup?

Just look at the last month of NA T2 matchups and you’ll see how 2 servers can be on the wrong end of a 2v1. It also happens frequently in NA T8.

Keira Ferland.5619:

SpitfireIXA.1807:

Anet, since 1v1v1 is inherently unstable as a level playing field

WvW is not supposed to be a level playing field. 2v1s are supposed to happen.

Yes, for several weeks now, FA and SoS have been 2v1 first by YB, then BG, and now TC, just like WvW is supposed to be.

I think instead of changing it from 1v1v1 to a 2v2 because there are now 4 NA T1 servers, maybe the players on those overstacked servers should drop down to T2 and T3 to make nine equal servers to get a similar situation to what’s in EU currently.

How do you stop the bandwagoning if it’s a 1v1. WvW has already had enough bandwagoning for three years.

Do you think it should be a 1v1v1v1?
How about a 2v2?
How would you stop a JQ/BG alliance in those?

Yeah, for three years now the T1 servers have been stripping away the talent from the lower tiers with “we have fights 24/7” and a “great community”. They never cared that they were destroying the fights and community that the lower tiers had. They always said that the lower tiers could do better if they only recruited from their PvE player base better.

Now that T1 can’t get any more players to overstack their overfull servers, you get people whining about how they can’t play with their friends or guild.

You need to find new friends in another guild on another server, or play another game.

Based upon the population difference between the full servers of JQ/BG/TC/YB and the very high server FA, the top four servers will have to lose1/4 to 1/3 of their population before you can move to NA T1.

Targuil.3741:

ebslike.1852:

Swamurabi.7890:

Actually, Chess has 20 possible opening moves, which is more than GW2 has, and I’m not counting surrendering or asking for a draw. Chess modeling also has to take into consideratin the zone of control that a piece will have when moved, which will affect the opponents options or even set up a move later on.

As for when to do an action, NOT ACTING is an action and can be accounted for, so can moving to optimum range (kiting/closing).

Movement to a point and distance between points are also things that can be put in the decision matrix of the program.

You don’t have to model realisitcally, just by crunching the possible combinations you can judge the level of player skill needed to achieve a certain level of a build’s TTK.

What do you consider an opening move? Elementalist has 20 skills from just their weapon that they can open with and that is just 1 class….

To take it further, you could wait 1 frame, 2 frames… etc before and between excecuting skills, making them different actions. Add in ability to move in any direction at any point (relevant when judging skill ranges) and you already have thousands of options per skill per second of game time passed.

So let’s say eles have 30 moves, others have less than 20, there’s still a finite number of actions a player can take. Since it’s a finite number, you can come up with a model that looks at all the possible actions of one player against another and combines them in the best outcome, for both sides.

You can simplify movement as move towards, move away and strafe.

Self driving cars have more possibilities than GW2 combat.

Exedore.6320:

When you talk about an MMORPG, there are many more variables and possible decisions than in chess. And because it’s real-time – not turn-based – timing of each decision becomes a further variable. It becomes so ridiculously complex that you can’t realistically solve it. You can try and model it, but models aren’t trivial to do and aren’t perfect. But you can only model what normally happens.

Actually, Chess has 20 possible opening moves, which is more than GW2 has, and I’m not counting surrendering or asking for a draw. Chess modeling also has to take into consideratin the zone of control that a piece will have when moved, which will affect the opponents options or even set up a move later on.

As for when to do an action, NOT ACTING is an action and can be accounted for, so can moving to optimum range (kiting/closing).

Movement to a point and distance between points are also things that can be put in the decision matrix of the program.

You don’t have to model realisitcally, just by crunching the possible combinations you can judge the level of player skill needed to achieve a certain level of a build’s TTK.

FA navy FTW

You should have asked “What’s your server’s WvW community like when you play?”

Then if you wanted to know about transferring you should have said FULL servers need not respond.

Jayne.9251:

I’m actually impressed when I find a talented mesmer. We had one in NWT last night from Viz and he was really really good.

Sadly, we were better.

And took the time to find him.

That’s what is missing in WvW. There’s no sense of owning anything, because there’s only a few instances where an object you flip remains in your control when you log in the next day. If something does stay in your control then you’ve got more coverage and you will win anyway.

Flip a keep/tower, take supply, don’t upgrade, don’t look for mesmers, moving out in ten seconds to the next camp/tower/keep. It’s getting closer and closer to EotM.

Epidemic used to not be a LoS skill, then it was fixed to be a LoS skill.

What makes DT special?

lmperdigao.2567:

JDilla.3150:

It’s going to take some time before T2 gets back to how it was months ago. People need to understand that it’s not YB’s fault for destroying T2/or WvW in general. The people in Fort Aspenwood and Sea of Sorrows chose to leave. Now, if those suckers would’ve still been around then yes T2 would’ve still been fun. The guilds from T1 chose to come to YB on their own. We didn’t want them here, we never asked for them to come and no we didn’t pay a single gold/silver/copper to bring those guys. Some people in YB don’t like the idea of moving up to T1, and others do prefer to move up to T1. Yaks Bend knows they’re going to get stomped in Tier1 and they’re ready/preparing for it, it’s not going to be an easy fight. Now, I’ve been in YB for a long time and I’ve witnessed 2v1 matches and oh boy, YB sure knows how to defend themselves, even when our numbers were very low. I honestly don’t get why YB gets so much hate.

You are wrong.
It is YB’s fault. T2 wasn’t fun after the YB stack even before the guilds quit. Not only YB leadership had meetings with the T1 guilds before they moving, but YB did pay partially for their transfers.
I’m not even in T1 or T2, but its pretty clear whose fault is.

YB needs to realize that the only way they are going to get matches worth playing is to destack down to VERY HIGH level to balance out the population between FA/SoS/YB. YB can’t get any more players to be competitive in T1. Your alliance got you into a T1 match but you can’t compete.

FA and SoS are to the point where if nobody shows up they won’t lose much glicko, whether its a matchup with YB or one of the T1 servers.

T2 will be stuck with FA/SoS/YB and there’s only one way for it to be fixed.

Too bad for BG that most of the fight guilds left T2 so you’re left going against groups that haven’t the organization that would make it a challenge for you.

Jay.7546:

Swamurabi.7890:

Should be an easy week for BG, even without a “PUSH”

I don’t think SoS or FA went to BGBL at reset.

BG is 1v1 in SoSBL and FABL. Even then BG has three guild groups per map that coordinate better than FA or SoS because all the guilds that have moved to T3 don’t leave much left to organize.

That is an awful lot to assume about FA and SOS after a few hours, no? BG lost people to YB and they are no longer being propped up by JQ so lets see how it plays out when people from FA and SOS come on and see its not the YB blob to fight. So far in EB I’ve not been impressed by BG. Lost their keep immediately, chased out of FAs soon after. SMC flipping.

Once the grind of the week starts we will see.

What I did see was FA only was at Red and EB portal at reset.

What I did see was no SoS on FABL until 3 hours after reset, there was 10-15 flipping camps.

What I also saw was only a few minutes after reset, BGBL was solid green.

It’s going to be tough for BG to motivate their players to spawn camp now that they’re ticking at 585, but that’s what they’ll need to do to not drop glicko.

Funny thing is, FA and SoS are eventually going to get to the point where even ticking at under 50 they won’t lose glicko, because that’s what they’re supposed to be at.

Should be an easy week for BG, even without a “PUSH”

I don’t think SoS or FA went to BGBL at reset.

BG is 1v1 in SoSBL and FABL. Even then BG has three guild groups per map that coordinate better than FA or SoS because all the guilds that have moved to T3 don’t leave much left to organize.

Chaba.5410:

coglin.1867:

We had tournaments that were straight up set so the winner moves up and the loser moved down, with no floor or ceiling at all. Some servers did drop through the floor.

What? We never had any tournaments where there were no floor or ceiling. Gold, Silver, and Bronze are brackets that no server could cross even if their population size dictated the necessity. I think it is highly telling of these brackets that EU has a 9 server rotation that corresponds to their 9 server Gold league while NA had 6 servers locked at the top, which corresponds to NA’s 6 server Gold league.

The Swiss-style matches from Season 3 were to me nothing more than a FASTER METHOD to sort servers by population and coverage than glicko. I thought that was excellent.

The two biggest problems with the NA tournaments were the fact that there was a lot of player movement right before the tournaments and that there’s such a huge difference in population/coverage between the tiers that any match with servers from three tiers in it was a joke.

Add to this the fact that sometimes the PvE players kept regular WvW players from playing and you can see why there is a lot of dislike for tournaments.

Until you can even out the population of the overstacked servers I wouldn’t want a 1U1D system.

I would much rather have a three tier WvW, a high cap, mid cap and low cap brackets, but the cap for each tier would be set based upon the population/coverage of the lowest server in each bracket.

I think any system where the players have the ability to game the system, the system will be gamed.

When my guild was running around back when T2 was the place for fights, we’d pass by roamers (squirrels) and I always wondered what that other player was thinking as 20-30 people ran by them like they were an ambient mob.

I saw three YB guild groups chase a single player, all jumping around. I usually cheer/laugh when I see stuff like that.

It might be fun to go out, but as soon as we wipe one YB group, three guild groups come on the map and retake everything.

It’s rare that we even get the chance to paper one of your T3 keeps. We’re lucky to drop a gate and before we start hitting inner there’s the map blob to wipe us and repair outer. After the guild groups show up we’ll switch to another map and the scouts you leave in the T3 towers will bring in the same guild groups.

It’s much easier for you to destack your server than for us to organize a 2v1.

One up one down only works with equal populations through several tiers.

Allowing returning players for HoT to return to their overstacked servers will just delay the balancing of populations.

It could take years to evenly spread out the populations. Even then this doesn’t guarantee a balanced population in each timezone.