Guild Wars 2

Servers are balanced, game is balanced. The maps are not balanced, but not enough to account for your pictures.

It’s just that the players, like yourself, have flocked to a very small number of servers, looking for a “great community”, 24/7 fights and whatever spin the players on these very few servers have used the last two years to encourage low pop players to transfer.

It’s also the players on those few, very small number of servers who have helped pay the transfer costs of other players, mostly from lower tier servers.

It’s also the players on a particular server, who as a group, exploit the system by logging out so their server status changes from full (no transfers) to high (transfers allowed)

No, it’s never the players fault.

Thank you for being part of the problem.

The servers that overstack players to win today will be the alliances that overstack players to win tomorrow.

What’s going to change?

The aliases have been changed to protect the guilty.

I don’t think you’re going to get much support from off peak players telling them that they can only play with a map cap of 30 while peak players have a cap of 80, when for two years everyone has been playing with a map cap of 60-80.

Why should peak players get to keep their server pride but off peak players don’t?

Jim Hunter.6821:

Swamurabi.7890:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Aridia.3042:

Server merge/alliance/player cap solves nothing. Because you cannot prevent people from stacking. If you let it, they will stack.

How would a player cap not prevent stacking? It won’t fix everything that is wrong with WvW, that wasn’t my intention when posting this idea, but the one thing it will definitely fix is player stacking.

Set the cap too high and off peak coverage determines winners through stacking.
Set the cap too low and peak players might not get to play.

There’s no just right cap level because of population differences between peak and off peak.

Off peak can be affected by changes to the scoring system or by setting different caps for different times of the day. If there is a cap during peak preventing people on a certain server from playing but there is open space on any other server than it is up to the player to make the choice to move or sit in queue. That is what prevents stacking. People can say they don’t like it but they can’t argue that it wouldn’t prevent stacking.

You either have caps so that every match has 80v80v80 during peak times and 30v30v30 for off peak OR you have a few matches where you have 80v80v80 on peak and off peak but you also have other matches where you have 80v80v80 for peak and 0v0v0 for off peak.

Changing scoring does not change the fact that 10v80 is not fun.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Aridia.3042:

Server merge/alliance/player cap solves nothing. Because you cannot prevent people from stacking. If you let it, they will stack.

How would a player cap not prevent stacking? It won’t fix everything that is wrong with WvW, that wasn’t my intention when posting this idea, but the one thing it will definitely fix is player stacking.

Set the cap too high and off peak coverage determines winners through stacking.
Set the cap too low and peak players might not get to play.

There’s no just right cap level because of population differences between peak and off peak.

Berk.8561:

Swamurabi.7890:

Would Anet be open to having different cap levels for the different leagues?

I think that whatever they do needs to preserve multiple densities of play and they shouldn’t assume everyone is looking for a T1 experience. That’s the assumptions they made with the population caps on the megaservers in PvE and there are plenty of people who don’t like that at all.

The reason I asked is because there are some players who prefer to play on low population maps. There are other players who’s machines can’t handle the lag generated by high population maps.

John,

Would Anet be open to having different cap levels for the different leagues?

I would really like to know some data on the participation of players during the first week (best) and the second week (worst) of the current season.

Could you provide us with the WvW player-hours for NA and EU for the first and second week, divided up into four sections. Reset-6hrs, 6-12,12-18 and 18-24. You don’t have to organize it by server or give exact numbers. Just give totals as a percent of the max player-hours, so that we can see how the lowest pop times compare to the highest pop times as well as see if there’s a significant drop off from “competitive” first week matches and “blowout” second week matches.

Map caps, both static and dynamic as well as server mergers won’t solve the coverage issue in WvW. Battlegroups also presents a different problem.

I don’t have the numbers, but for the NA servers, there’s more NA players. EU, SEA and OCX all have smaller populations than NA. If you merged/capped servers, NA players would be on maps that allowed 80 per side, the other three would be considerably less. SoS has coverage issues and can’t compete against the T1 servers. FA can’t compete with SoS and it gets worse the farther down you go.

Would it be fair to force OCX players to play 20 per map so things would be even for all servers? What if those players wanted to be on a 80 per map match?

No matter how you cap, merge, or battlegroup the players, the lower population timezones will end up playing a different game, think T6 or T7, than the more populated timezones which would be more like T1 or T2

This leaves two possible solutions. Either have time slice matches or change the scoring.

Time slice matches destroys the week long criteria for WvW matches. I can also see where even if you change the scoring, it doesn’t change the fact that 5-10 going up against 80 is never a fun game, especially when it usually ends up with the larger force spawn camping the smaller force.

Sorry to sound like a Dev here but your suggestions must also take into consideration:

1. Every player should be able to play. Sorry, but that’s why EotM was originally made. Having someone want to play but not being able to play is bad, very very bad.
2. Skill is supposed to win over all. How does your suggestion make skill the determining factor in who wins?
3. Does your suggestion make one player’s contribution in a specific time/map better or worse than another player in the same or different time?
4. Have you thought about ways that a player, guild, guilds or servers could take advantage of your suggestion?
5. How important is server pride in your suggestion? Server pride is a factor in why players stay on a server, even as it drops from gold to bronze.

Are there any other criteria you want in WvW?

It seems like the suggestions fall under one of four categories:

1. Map Caps (static or dynamic)
2. Teams (merge servers, battlegroup, faction)
3. Time Slice Matches
4. Handicap (Change scoring/stats to reduce impact of coverage/population)

Using Design for Six Sigma and a couple of Pugh charts with Anet and player supplied criteria should come up with a clear winner.

How about a forum rule that deletes any “X is OP” threads unless the player attaches their gameplay video so the community can debate whether “X” is OP or whether the player needs to change the way they play. Said video must also show build/traits to allow for informed discussion.

1. Outmanned players give no XP, WxP, points(bloodlust), or loot when defeated
2. Outmanned NPC’s give no XP, WxP, loot or chests when defeated
3. Outmanned players who defeat non-outmanned players get higher XP, WxP and loot
4. Outmanned players who defeat non-outmanned NPC’s get higher XP, WxP, loot and an extra chest(s)

Dayra.7405:

Balance is not a on or off, but a continuum. And we do not ask for “Give us total balance tomorrow”, we asked for “put anything in that helps to improve balance”

But in fact we only got 2 things from ANet that improve imbalance:
- EotM removed queue pressure from overstacked servers
- Season-rewards rewarding overstacking

You forgot Bloodlust, which also rewarded and even post nerf still rewards overstacking.

Also there was pre-season 2 free transfers which only helped the highest ranked free transfer server, HoD in NA, but after winning silver HoD are now a few tiers lower.

Ansau.7326:

Why to ask so many times to balance a game mode anet stated during betas WvW wasn’t meant to be balanced (interms of coverage and ppt), they didn’t have idea to change the way it is, and after 2 years is still the same unbalanced game mode, and still there is no sign it will change in the next years?

Maybe the players asking for balance realize that balanced matchups provide more intense gameplay, giving the players a reason to log in and play the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day.

It shouldn’t be too difficult for Anet to gather the data that proves or disproves whether close matches have more player-hours than blowout matches.

If WvW is not meant to be balanced and that imbalance is what is causing players to leave the game, I’d think (there I go thinking again), that Anet/NCsoft would want to change it. Driving customers away is no way to run a business.

It would be interesting to see what impressions, both good and bad, that the devs got by guesting during the tournament. It also would be nice to see what the guilds thought of thier time spent with the devs. While you’re at it also add in comments from the players on the other sides of the matchup.

Maybe the devs can add real data (numbers on maps) to go along with their experineces.

I need to test if Unholy Sanctuary prevents fatal fall damage.

How quick could you change the looking for group UI to include a WvW tab where you can have the options of Dev looking for Guild and Guild looking for Dev?

Dayra.7405:

People in EotM so far don’t have the patience for serious attacks against defended keeps.
And it’s hard to motivate this, as long as there is other stuff to take.

I never tried, but probably you can treb the east gate of the inner Overgrown keep from the top-platform of the observatory. Would be really hard to counter, if possible.

A serious battle against a defended inner keep of blue would probably go via the middle gate. the first gate you can pass, the second you can treb/cata without fearing the mortars, as soon as you oppend the 2nd you have access to the roof of the buildings surrounding the inner keep on west and south, which give you a position to clear the wall defenses. It could be a very cool fight if ever done.

On the WvW maps every siege spot is now known since ages, on EotM only a very small percentage of all the possibilities has been explored. (only the ram-spots are well explored and even the scorpion spots aren’t all explored so far. )

I rarely see offensive trebs in EotM. It’s either catas or rams.

On the defensive side, I do see use of cannons and especially oil used more. It amazes me everytime I see a zerg approach a gate and they don’t even look to see if the cannon or oil are built and they drop rams anyway. Spire and Perch have oil that’s well placed for a defender. The oil in the middle gates for FR are also well placed. Every other oil is too exposed. The oil on the altar side inner gate of OG is even difficult to get to as a defender. You have to stand on the top of the wall ledge just to use it.

XacTactX.6709:

Bottom line there are no rules against being able to pick your tournament standing. Dragonbrand has had the privelege of being borderline silver/gold during season 2 and again in season 3, it has the ability to pick where it wants to compete. If DB wants to make a consensus decision and compete in silver more power to them.

If DB/YB/CD all decided to take next match off would their glicko scores all drop because their match scores were lower than the expected totals or would they all stay relatively the same since thier glicko scores are close?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Swamurabi.7890:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

DaveGan.8065:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Too many play to win instead of playing as winners regardless of end results. If your server is so full of people who will only play if they win it might be good news for you if they go elsewhere…

When rewards are involved all bets and honor are off. We may not change your mind but there is no longer any guilt in manipulating the outcome taking a break from WvW for the next few weeks.

No wonder the world circle the drain…

WvW tournaments are like having a sPvP tournament where instead of 5 man teams, one side gets 5 and the other gets 4, or 3, or 2, or 1.

Would you play in that tournament? Didn’t think so.

Except they are not the same since it is accepted that it is unequal from the get go. It’s why they have STRUCTURED pvp where all is controlled and WvW where nothing is. BTW, YES, I would still try to win even alone.

And a WvW tournament isn’t “STRUCTURED”?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Swamurabi.7890:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

DaveGan.8065:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Too many play to win instead of playing as winners regardless of end results. If your server is so full of people who will only play if they win it might be good news for you if they go elsewhere…

When rewards are involved all bets and honor are off. We may not change your mind but there is no longer any guilt in manipulating the outcome taking a break from WvW for the next few weeks.

No wonder the world circle the drain…

WvW tournaments are like having a sPvP tournament where instead of 5 man teams, one side gets 5 and the other gets 4, or 3, or 2, or 1.

Would you play in that tournament? Didn’t think so.

Except they are not the same since it is accepted that it is unequal from the get go. It’s why they have STRUCTURED pvp where all is controlled and WvW where nothing is. BTW, YES, I would still try to win even alone.

But it wouldn’t be FUN, and not having FUN means you are not likely to continue doing it, which is why WvW is dying.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

DaveGan.8065:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Too many play to win instead of playing as winners regardless of end results. If your server is so full of people who will only play if they win it might be good news for you if they go elsewhere…

When rewards are involved all bets and honor are off. We may not change your mind but there is no longer any guilt in manipulating the outcome taking a break from WvW for the next few weeks.

No wonder the world circle the drain…

WvW tournaments are like having a sPvP tournament where instead of 5 man teams, one side gets 5 and the other gets 4, or 3, or 2, or 1.

Would you play in that tournament? Didn’t think so.

Straegen.2938:

Chris.3290:

Someone in T3 better grow some and be ready to move up because even if it doesn’t happen in season it will happen immediately afterwards.
Mag is dropping down, that’s a real thing; not a temporary thing that’s just happening for the Season.

There is no guarantee that Mag is dropping before seasons and looking at the current scores a decent chance they will stay T2 for the tournament. If Mag doesn’t drop, all the current T3 servers will be able to stay put until mid-October.

Everyone is making the assumption that Mag can and will drop but it will probably take a lucky match up roll in the next two weeks. Even then Mag may very well be a T5 or lower server before the bloodletting is done.

It’s more likely that Mag will continue to lose over 50 points the next two weeks and drop to 9th-10th ranked server regardless of what the T3 servers do. If Mag does happen to get paired with a T3 server the week before tournament they will lose even more points.

SoR imploded before last season losing 260 points in just three weeks, but SoR did fall from a higher rank. You can expect less and less Mag players in the next two weeks before the tournament starts as they transfer or take a break.

Yeah, I admit it. I’m an EotM troll. I look at the map to find out where the enemy zerg is and move to ambush them with a fear wall or drop oil on them when they think nobody is defending. I solo cap reactors to try to steer the zerg over a good fear spot. I repair walls/gates to give me time to move into a good fear spot.

I’m a Fearaholic.

DaveGan.8065:

DB never belonged in Gold last season and the fights were horrendous. The only reason we were in that position was because other servers tanked harder.

Get your facts straight. You are right that DB didn’t belong in Gold last season, but it wasn’t because of tanking.

DB got into gold by leapfrogging over Mag and FA because of the SoR implosion, not because of any tanking by FA or Mag. In fact both FA and Mag were trying their hardest to NOT go to silver, especially the GvG oriented guilds.

The last weeks before season 2 DB got over 160 glicko gain just from the three matches against a dying SoR to leapfrog over Mag and FA without even playing either of them. The last week before season 2 FA was against a T3 server and a T4 server, SoR had dropped out of T3. FA didn’t have enough spawn camping to catch up to DB’s 40 point lead or Mag’s 15 point lead.

Once FA was assured of silver, several guilds jumped from FA to SoS, Mag and DB just to avoid what happened in season 1.

I’d trade all my tournament reward tickets I have and will have for a “Yakslapper” title.

In EotM you must fear the Necros because they fear you.

Since OG dominates EotM population, I make it my personal mission to seek out their zerg and fear them, mortar their siege, and drop burning oil on their rams.

Just to clarify things.

DB got a lot of transfers before season two just because they were going to be Gold. FA lost lots of players to SoS, Mag and DB right before season 2 started.

DB made it to Gold because they were helped the most (glicko) from SoR’s decline. That and the last match before season 2 started DB was matched with T2 servers and FA was matched against T3 servers. Going up in tier guarantees a glicko boost and going down in tiers is a glicko loss.

T2 hasn’t been balanced since well before season 2, back when TC was in T2. The 5th and 6th ranked servers have for some time have lacked the coverage/population of the 4th server.

If failing an event on purpose to get better rewards is frowned upon in PvE, why is it tanking OK in WvW?

I seriously doubt that Necros are due for a nerf anytime soon. They’re lower tier sPvP and that’s where balancing is centered around.

I didn’t start doing FA/JQ until after HoM started. I needed map completion AND r12 Kurzick/Luxon.

By this time you could go to either side any time you wanted. You could even switch sides after each match.

There were times when there were tons of players, especially when FA/JQ were a featured achievement.

After zkeys became a hot currency and helped me buy GW1 titles, JQ started to become full of bots on both sides. I had nights were I could spot 30 bots. It got so bad the human players had to sync just to be sure you went in with at least 4 humans. My worst match was one where it was 2 humans-6 bots on Luxon and 1 human-7 bots Kurzick. There were times when the players moved to one side or the other because to get away from the bots. Lots of guaranteed wins then.

Nothing in GW1 ever got better then the Minion Apocalypse. Nothing.

So for we’ve had free transfers.

Followed by same price for any transfer.

Followed by discount to transfer to low pop PvE servers

Followed by scaled transfer prices prior to season 2.

None of these have prevented/discouraged stacking.

The good part about JQ was that you could play both offense and defense. In FA one side was mostly offense and the other was mostly defense.

So what have we learned after two WvW tournaments….

1. Stacked servers win because coverage and population beat skill. Of course the stacked servers claim that recruiting/buying is part of the “skill” to build a great community.

2. The only way to beat a stacked server is to form a 2v1 alliance. This only works when the 2 have as many or more players than the 1 does.

3. Every announcement of a WvW tournament causes movement of players so that some servers are ranked above where they should be and others are ranked below where they should be.

4. Every attempt, one to be exact, to balance server populations so far has failed.

5 Season three will be just another repeat of season 1 and 2. There will be blowout matches. There will be 2v1 in a few matches. The difference will be that the PvE population won’t leave after getting the achievements after the first or second match and the shorter season won’t burnout the regular WvW players.

I have several issues with Outmanned:

1) Two of the three stat boosts do nothing. Exp means nothing to lvl 80’s. As for Magic Find…. everyone knows that WvW is the place to go for precursors now don’t we. And why is it when an exotic does drop for me it’s usually the Truth, Guild Defender or Exterminator? I’ve had multiples of these drop for me in WvW/EotM to the point where I think that’s the only exotics I’ll ever see in WvW.
WxP is fine, except when you realize that when you solo cap a camp for 5ppt and some WxP, in 4 minutes the enemy map blob drops in and caps it and gets 20-80 more players closer to Golem Mastery than your server. In this way going to and playing in an Outmanned map actually hurts your server MORE.

2) There’s no way to measure how many players would like to play WvW but won’t because they are Outmanned. At least when there were queues, you could count the number of players that wanted to play WvW but couldn’t. Outmanned to me means I don’t WANT to play so I choose to NOT play WvW.

3) There’s been several suggestion threads about Outmanned but we don’t even know if it’s on Anet’s radar to be worked on and if it is being worked on we’ll never know until it’s previewed.

The problem with Mag is the same thing that happened to FA.

In T2 for some time now you’ve had one server that’s basically T1.5(SoS now and TC before) who are just waiting for the next T1 server to implode.

The other two servers are/were full of guilds/players that are serious about fights, because they realize they don’t have and never will have the coverage to beat the T1.5 server. These players have been waiting for WvW to evolve from a coverage/population meta into a skill meta, or even GvG, but all we’ve been getting are minor changes and tournaments that continue to reward stacking over skill.

At some point these players lose faith that the game will become what they hope it can be and either take a break, move to find a happy place, or just leave the game.

Remember when

You could treb bay walls from garrison.

Defensive catas were built behind gates.

You followed the commander over a cliff because you didn’t know you’d die from fall damage.

Winner take all is just asking for a quicker WvW death as players stack on fewer and fewer servers where one side ticks over 600 PPT and the other two servers are in EotM.

There are many three tier matchups where even if you combine the two losing servers into an alliance they still won’t have the population/coverage to beat the one server.

Rimmy.9217:

Regardless of the motivation, if the two lower servers in a match team up against the top server in a match, it’s a good tactical decision.

Playing for first and second beats playing for second and third, any day.

The main problem with WvW tournaments is that in many matches:

only one team plays for first
only one team plays for second
only one team left that gets third

Zackie.8923:

Johje Holan.4607:

At least in this tournament each matchup will happen only once. So you can’t have a tournament long 2v1.

They need to change the ticket structure though. Make it:

First Place: 200 tickets
2nd Place: 100 tickets
3rd Place: 100 Tickets

That way to encourage people to fight for 1st. And not be lame and fight for 2nd.

yes, agreed, fight for first

Right, reward stacking for first. How about we all just get on one server and we can all be winners?

If you want a balanced casual tournament then it makes more sense to have it in EotM. At least there you can have balanced numbers on some instances.

Looking back, you have to realize that what happened in NA Gold in season 2 was a direct result of what happened in season 1.

Just be greatful that the 2v1 didn’t continue after the season and push you down to T2, because that could have happened. I wonder how many players would have jumped off the new T2 server to stay in T1, breaking up your “great community”?

I didn’t know there was teamspeak in EotM.

Not much to worry about in EotM, just the Fearomancer, the occasional guild group, the solo defender on oil or arrow cart.

pets smell bad

Maybe if you were more friendly you’d be on the “2” side of the 2v1 instead of the “1” side

Deniara Devious.3948:

Swamurabi.7890:

It’s a Swiss-style tournament, meaning that you face off against servers closer to your own, not that you play each server once.

Are you sure? Here is a quote from Arenanet blog message:
The shorter format will ensure that worlds will not be repeatedly matched against one another, which will more closely resemble a true Swiss-style tournament. Each matchup will be unique, and every win—or upset—will make a huge difference!

I hope there will be an official response and clarification how servers will be matched against each other.

The more weeks you have the tournament, like season 2, the more it becomes a one up one down.

With no upsets, for a 9 team league, week 4 will be the same as week 1. If the tournament was extended, the matchups from week 3 and week 4 would be repeated, which is what happened in season 2.

Deniara Devious.3948:

4 weeks long tournament is definitely an improvement. In 9 server league it means that each server is facing the other 8 servers exactly once. The rewards are also better: up to 800 tickets for the winner of all 4 weeks.

I am just worried about the upcoming queues. Desolation has been a really great server to play on. We haven’t had much any queues (besides a regular 2-30 man queue to EB during prime) in past 2 months. No queues = no waiting. When the Fall Tournament will start I am sure we will have long queues as we are currently rising to EU rank #1. This is one of the main reasons why I haven’t been actively recruiting any more, as I want to keep up the relatively queue free situation and rather have the opposing servers suffer from the queues.

I really hope there won’t be any free transfers to the top servers. The bottom servers need help (and merging).

It’s a Swiss-style tournament, meaning that you face off against servers closer to your own, not that you play each server once.

I hope Anet learned their lesson from HoD in season 2 that allowing free transfers doesn’t translate into permanent population shifts.

Even with match fixing like what happened in NA Gold last season, since there’s only 4 weeks the totals would look like

1) 600 tickets
2) 750 tickets
3) 650 tickets
4) 600 tickets
5) 600 tickets
6) 400 tickets

This assumes that 2nd and 3rd ranked servers match fix when they go against the 1st ranked server. If the 2nd and 3rd servers also match fixed the matches against the 4th ranked server they’d both end up with 700 tickets.

Bloodwort MacFangho.4638:

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

There will be still have major population disperancies which would make the PPT irrelevant, that is unless Anet comes up with a way to balance things out before the Season starts.

Or do they think the shorter duration will keep the majority of players fighting for the duration of the the tournament? Let’s say Desolation has hour long queues for the entire 4 weeks, tell me how is that good?

The thought occurs to me that now what server you are on makes not the slightest bit of difference in PvE, it might be PvE Guilds that may be tempted to move to a lower population server since they will be less inclined to want to wait on lengthy queues to get on with their achievements.

A big ask, I know, but distinctly possible.

And with the rewards being match-up specific rather than the overall tourney winner, servers lower down the tiers have just as much chance of getting a lot of the rewards as someone on T1. The incentive to move up tiers is dampened. In fact, there’s now an incentive to move down tier, if you’re after rewards.

What happened in most of the leagues (NA Gold the exception) was that there was one server that won every match, one server that lost every match. The other servers either came in second every match or flipped between 1st and 3rd. This ended up stabilizing into a one up one down system with each team flipping between two possible matchups.

There were only a couple “upsets” in each league during season 2.

For a 9 team league, swiss style matches for season 3, the expected results should be…

1) 800 tickets
2) 650 tickets
3) 600 tickets
4) 650 tickets
5) 600 tickets
6) 550 tickets
7) 600 tickets
8) 550 tickets
9) 400 tickets

So if you are in the tournament for the tickets, stack the best server and avoid the 9th server as well the 6th and 8th ranked servers.