Thank you everyone for your feedback! I’ve been taking notes based on everyone’s perspectives on this particular subject, and will be releasing a revised version of the report.
I know this has been mentioned a few times in this thread, but how would you feel about a “trail run” of said changes? Such as removing the white swords in WvW. Which change would you like see implemented first? Why?Merging servers nor reducing pop map caps is not something that can be done temporarily. Really nothing that I can think of that would affect actual population can be attempted temporarily.
So these temp changes would need to be things that attempt to mitigate the imbalance. Or scoring type changes.
Some things I can think of:
- Give an incentive to attack the stronger/winning server. Could be more rewards or more score or a combination for taking the winning servers assets.
- Increase rewards/points for attacking the stronger/winning servers Home BL.
- Reduce the rewards/points for taking unupgraded structures. And/Or increase the rewards/points for taking upgraded structures.
- Give more rewards for player kills and less for taking a structure. (Could be combined with the previous suggestion).
- Turn off rezzing in combat.
- Turn off rally.
- Turn off downed state completely – oh yeah I said it.
I really like all of these ideas, however some of them will probably require more coding than others, and for temporary things we should probably prioritize based on dev time to impliment. That said, I REALLY REALLY LIKE turn off rally. This would probably be very easy to code, and while it wouldn’t do much for population, it WOULD change the gameplay in WvW significantly, no matter what it would freshen up WvW for a couple weeks with something really interesting. Second for me would be turning off the downed state, also very interesting. This is a very controversial topic, PERFECT for a couple weeks of experimentation!!
I am not sure if anyone has suggested something like this, but one way to balance PPT scoring issues would be to make an absolute lower threshold of map population for PPT to count towards all the server’s score. Make it, say 60 players across all 4 maps per server is required for PPT to added to any servers score. That way, if one server is completely dead in a particular timezone the other 2 can still paper their stuff, get karma and champ bags but the PPT holds until there are 60 players total from the “weak server”. Obviously 60 is an arbitrary number, but some minimum number could be determined. To simply the coding, just make it for any given PPT tick interval if there are 60 or more, no matter how long, that period will count in the server score.
Remember when you could go to Lions Arch to ask for help from your servermates in WvW? That’s dead and gone too thanks to megaservers.
not true, especially in places like Loins Arch, most of the players in that instance will be from your server…
Actually those seven servers are only overpopulated in WvW.
Actual server population is pretty even if we look at whatever “Very High” means.
We have four “Full” servers, three of them are T1, and the other had to fight hard for place #5.
Every other server is “Very High”(during NA EST at least), and it leads me to believe that its really just a matter of getting more PVE players into WvW.
I wouldn’t be surprised if “Very High” is inflated to sound better, like grade inflation. If you’re not giving metrics out to the public, it’d almost be foolish to not call your lowest population level “Very High.”
In any case though, you’re right, the goal should be to increase the overall WvW population, not declare defeat and consolidate those still playing WvW into fewer and fewer servers.
IMO the underlying problem is the staleness of WvW:
- lack of updates (new maps) and dev attention, combined with
- out of touch devs leading to failed updates (bloodlust ruins, EotM).
As we’ve seen, you can’t retain players this way.
I see no evidence Anet is doing anything about these two problems though, so maybe there is no hope?
I agree with you on the funkiness of “very high” server thing, but we are getting a new map and they are changing things to be more rewarding for holding and defending. So, it’s late but they are apparently learning, and I think that their original strategy for WvW was megaserver and when that was completely rejected by the players it threw their WvW plans down the toilet so to speak.
Also, EotM was a complete slap in the face for WvWers, since it’s clearly designed for PvEers to get WvW achievements done, not for WvWers to play while cued for the real WvW maps…. In general, the Devs are pretty tone def to what the WvW community wants… unfortunately.
There is no need for population reductions, the problem is the ppt system need to be changed, the servers with high population wins because they have coverage most of the day and got night teams, I remember there was a post about the ppt system and people wanted a match up to take a period time each day for certain hours and winner take point for the day the server with most points of the week wins, something like that if I am not mistaken, hopefully you will discuss the ppt system more with us and the devs.
THIS THIS THIS!!!! or something like this. Couldn’t we “try” a few modifications to PPT scoring just like we did with PPK and “white swords”? How about making the “outnumbered” buff actually be something that helps the server that is out manned, strengthen all the guards or reduce the amount of supply to complete upgrades.. something REAL. For 2 weeks at a time.
Agreed. The real problem is PPT and server scoring. It encourages and rewards server stacking. Hence, in NA we now have 7 over populated servers and the rest in varying states of under population. Some combination of real outmanned buffs, and PPT scaling combined with increased player rewards would be a great start to motivating people to move off super populated servers and to get more PvE and PvPers into WvW…
It’s not a WvW specific thing, and yes you are correct, Marmatt is not going to bring any more dev attention to WvW than all the wasted posts here in the forum. We got our new map and that is probably it, just have to accept it.
Bear in mind, the forum “specialist” thing is across all the forums and not just for WvW. Honestly, the big issues and most of the smaller issues are fully known, and if there is a single dev that doesn’t already understand what needs to be done in WvW you can be sure nothing that Marmatt does is going to impact that dev. The forum specialist thing is cheap window dressing, nothing more…. nothing against Marmatt I am sure he will be diligent and try to be helpful.
LOLz How many of you thought this was gonna be troll city? but seriously, Marmatt mah man, how bout see if you can find out if there will be any more of of the temporary trial weeks of stuff like no white swords, PPK, etc… it was atleast implied that this change trials would be an ongoing thing? Or maybe you could solicit ideas from us here in the forums for more ideas temporary mechanic changes in WvW to address various issues. One think I’d love to see is a 5 minute or 3 minute tick, rather than the currrent 15 min tick. That would make of an interesting change for a week or two… Or when a map goes outnumbered make all the guards on the map strengthened to lvl 82 or even 84.
Well the new map will have the defending and holding forts with the ancillary tower,s camps, and keeps cause changes in the structure to block travel routes and other things like that, but I am pretty sure they said they were going to add some additional mechanics to the existing maps too, to make defending have value. We’ll see….
See my post as to why HoT will not be fixing WvW Population issues…. Even with the new stuff, it’s sort of hard to believe that WvW won’t continue to hemorrhage players since the new maps won’t change the fact that if there are only 10 defenders on a map versus 180 others from the 2 opposing servers, that server will be crushed….
HoT will probably bring more people to the game, and will probably bring more people to WvW, but it will do nothing to fix what is a massively broken server system. ANet does not have a solution to server stacking and lopsided timezone coverage. They know it’s a serious flaw in WvW, if they had a solution it would have rolled out with HoT, they did address the need for a new map, and the need to emphasize defending. What is really scarey is the prospect that a surge of new players will come to the game with HoT and they will all be directed to the low pop servers, thus creating servers with almost no experienced WvW players…
I sympathize with the Devs on this one, there is no easy fix and all of the kittenes entrail hosts of other problems with them… It would be a tremendous amount of work to adopt a “Alliance” based system so that is probably off the table. If they could figure out a way to de-incentivize server stacking the problem would be significantly reduced, but the entire glicko/WvW tournaments not only incentivize server stacking, they basically require it.
I am pretty sure you can report them as “botting” and it will get attention. You can also email directly to Mike Henniger (sp?)
email not registering for HOT mailing list?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Tspatula.9086
I also have not received a confirmation email.
It would be interesting to try a “no rally” test week or two, like PPK and white swords. I bet it would really have interesting impacts at all levels of WvW. Some of the elite fight guilds might get an eye-opener…
Personally I feel posters need to stop blaming the devs for avoiding the community, and start blaming the community and the fact that it makes threads like the one I linked.
Really? What a surprise!! by the way, Michael H. isn’t a developer, he is game support. He is doesn’t have ANYTHING to do making changes to WvW. nice try though… Do you even play WvW?
You should do some research before you make claims. He absolutely does participate in what occurs in wvw and the decision s the evil be it. Look it up.
post like the one you just made though are precisely why he may rue being hear at all. Good job at being part of the provlem and not the solution sir.
Seriously? While Michael H. is an awesome support guy, and I really really appreicate what he IS doing and what he is trying to do, he is definitely NOT a developer of game content, mechanics or storyline. So I guess we can assume from your answer that you pretty much only do your daily and monthly achievements in WvW and the rest of your play time is either PvE or PvP. So sad.
Personally I feel posters need to stop blaming the devs for avoiding the community, and start blaming the community and the fact that it makes threads like the one I linked.
Really? What a surprise!! by the way, Michael H. isn’t a developer, he is game support. He is doesn’t have ANYTHING to do making changes to WvW. nice try though… Do you even play WvW?
they simply went with what…. appealed to them.
BINGO!!
Go check out how much dev feedback there is in the PvP forums… Wow, we really are the forgotten….
You are just hearing the sound of WvW’s death rattle. Transfer or not, ain’t gonna change anything.
“why are there no devs on the forum?”
“why is WvW not developed?”
Spend 1 year developing a map that is very different, varied and has some interesting ideas. See responses like this:
Undeniably well deserved “rage and hatred” because eotm is garbage.
never again!
I love fanbois. Spend a year making a map without any input from the players, bug test it, continue to ignore players, release it, proclaim new WvW content that is just more PvE content in reality, ignore players, see hundreds of negative posts about it, ignore players, do nothing in WvW.
Never again? really? How a bout “not gonna start”. You let me know when the devs START doing something for WvW.
They had semi-open beta for EotM where guilds could apply for access. Said beta went on for quite some time, and rather many things changed based on the feedback.
Stop telling lies. I am 100% certain you werent in the beta then.
The beta was about finding bugs of this map. Not about the features of the map. Most notable change that happened due to the beta are most of the fences you see around there so you dont get knocked off so easily.+1 to this. Stop using EoTM beta as an example. It was entirely a bug-checking exercise.
The design of the map remained completely un-changed, despite feedback being given that the map design constricted movement and forced 1-directional PvD blob play.
LOL the truth… oh it hurts… it hurts so much when I laugh! The devs collect a ton of feedback, the forums, CDIs, EotM beta…. they collect it all and file it straight into the garbage can!!
The devs barely comment in any of the forums.. they certainly aren’t going to spend all that much time in the forum for an abandoned game mode like WvW. If they were going to fix it, they would have before most of the lower tier servers imploded. WvW is the Humpty-Dumpty of this game…. unfortunately.
Does it matter when any CDIs start or end. There are pages and pages CDIs. Many many very good ideas have been distilled and packaged for the Devs see without even read more than a paragraph. Yet, we see zero action on virtually any of them and probably the ones that did see the light of day, were probably already being working on in one form or another, so would be put in to the game regardless of any CDI.
Heck, we got more action on issues in WvW after a few devs played with real WvW guilds in the fall tournament. But, not surprisingly, with the exception of changing some siege blueprint sizes (that must have been a MASSIVE task) changes like no white swords were never requested by anyone in a CDI or forum post.
The reality is, no amount CDI information is going to change how the devs see the direction and mechanics of the game. Unless you think another 40 pages of posts on a particular subject is going to change things.
Please move the crafting stations off the borderlands maps. Move them to Obs Sanctum or remove them entirely, or have the stations become disabled when the map ques. It is ridiculous that qued maps can have 20 or more players crafting, taking up spots for people wanting to actually fight.
like I said, I have read guides and watched videos on the bell ringing thing.. I have tried many many many times, I just never get any points.
I have tried many many times to do the jumping puzzle, I have had enough failures trying to do it, ok? I have also read guides, and watched videos on the bell chime thing and still never score any points, how many times do you expect me to repeat these stupid things? It’s not like I haven’t spent a fair amount of time trying. And what’s worse is that if you don’t score any points on the bell chime you get no credit for the daily, even though you spend 10 minutes trying. Thanks again Anet!! Merry Wintersday
I can’t do the jumping puzzle or the bell game thing. Happy Wintersday devs!!
They are removing white swords because of the adopt-a-dev program where some devs spent a short period of time in WvW gold league (2014 fall tourney) running with real WvW guilds and got some ideas based on that limited experience. And now, regardless of what the majority of the community is saying, we are going to try time for a couple weeks at a time. Remember, even after 1 hour in WvW, a dev KNOWS more than you’ll ever know about WvW….
On the other hand, it was great to see ANY effort on the part of ANET to do something about WvW. For that I am glad, but again, it seems that when decisions about what is important to WvW are made, we, the actually people doing it, have nothing to contribute… Honestly, we have massive threads, and CDIs about WvW, then the devs spend a couple hours in the top tiers playing with guilds and instead our our suggestions, we simply get their 10 minute brainstorm ideas…
Well proof that there is no monetization… No I can’t help…
However the $$, yea they don’t have any of that for wvw because if they did we might actually have more then one part time wvw dev. ( and that said dev might last longer than six months.)
No, proof that a dev actually said something like that.
So it was stated by a player in another thread that “a dev” said basically that there wasn’t a way to monetize WvW and for that reason, there is almost no resources devoted to it. Does anyone actually have any real proof that this is the case? just curious.
Back in the adopt-a-dev, we had an admission straight from a dev that there’s been very little attention for WvW, and unlikely to ever be anything added in future, because they can’t find a way to monetize WvW.
Are you talking about a post in the forums or some direct coversation with a dev in game?
Dev goals WvW 2015
1) start CDI for population balance
2) start CDI for scoring
3) start CDI for New map ideasthree is a stretch goal.
Whoa whoa whoa, slow down there. I’m pretty sure the 2015 WvW goals are to agree on a process for doing CDIs better. WvW CDIs won’t be ready until 2016.
No, I do believe that Anet honestly thinks they can complete the process and get those CDIs out in 2015. What you are staying is the difference between goals and reality. That said, 2016 is gonna be a banner CDI year! I can feel it.
Dev goals WvW 2015
1) start CDI for population balance
2) start CDI for scoring
3) start CDI for New map ideas
three is a stretch goal.
The main reason is that mostly EotM is large zergs that simply PvD and PvBosses and almost never fight other zergs. That is by definition PvE, not WvW. There is nothing wrong with EotM, just like there is nothing wrong with PvE, but it’s not WvW. Ganking players in WvW for sport is like being a high school bully, if you truly want to test your skill against another player then PvP where the builds are at least somewhat even…
Hello All,
There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.
We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.
We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.Thanks,
John
This sounds great! A few weeks evaluation will be fun and a real change of pace. I personally don’t see either no swords or ppk as game breaking, if either was going be permanent I wouldn’t be happy, but a few weeks to see what it is like sounds pretty fun!
I will make sure to stress the importance of spreading out among all the tiers when this comes around again. But, neither I nor John can force their decisions in a voluntary program.
I did, however, want to clear up the misconception that nobody was playing on the lower tiers during this past tournamnet, because I know for a fact that some were and brought back feedback that directly relates to the experiences on the lower end.
We understand and have seen the feedback regarding the proposed white swords change and the team is discussing that feedback.
WOW! Backpedal much? Did you have one, no maybe two devs on a low tier server? You understand? The reality is that WE are finally starting to UNDERSTAND, the “dev team” is pretty much clueless about WvW, which is rather obvious to those of us who actually do it. But hey, thanks for more of the same, with a little “dev participation” thrown in to spice things up.
So, I guess that the server populations were just changed back to all “Very High” now that the tournament is over? Last week they were all varied in terms of population level and now they all say “Very High”
Speaking of which, did anyone notice the new server population rankings? I’m guessing they were adjusted for the WvW Fall Tournament.
@OP, you can not join a Full server at this time, and the other servers are ranked either Very High, High or Medium. It really makes little difference unless you are interested in WvW. Usually the higher ranked servers have more coverage in WvW, and do better.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is a cost to change servers, unless you delete all your characters and then you can transfer to another server at no cost once per week.
You can read more about Worlds and Transferring here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World
Welcome to Tyria, and good luck!
Very High = maximum gold to transfer = profit
Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.
This would be a mistake.
Very much so, it would be fine for full servers, but for those with low populations it would be a disaster….
“Very High” = maximum gold for transfer = money in Anet’s pocket. cha ching!
Anet promotes population imbalance.
They want it.
It fills their pockets.Those discussions threads are just a PR stunt.
This. Very High=most gold for transfering. With megaserver, server identity is completely arbitrary, so there really isn’t such a thing as medium/high/very high anymore.
1. Let WvW get really kittened up for about half of the servers.
2. Force anyone on those severs interested in WvW transfer to a “better server”
3. Rinse, repeat
4. Profit
1800 gold, around $20 per person real money. Genius. That is what I call a business model.
Hey everyone,
I had a blast playing with [CERN] on Tarnished Coast! That was some of the most intense WvWing I have experienced hands down. How fast everyone adapted to the new trick and the tactic every world brought to the table was amazing! The guild I was in was super nice and very hospitable. I really can’t say enough about everyone as the community playing and showing such passion for this game type, really thank you everyone. I hope I can see more of everyone in the coming months as I bounce around playing WvW and PvP.
See you in the mists . . . either friend or foe. . . prepare for glory!
Hugh
Maybe you should try Borlis Pass where the entire tournament was a disaster and pretty much all of the WvW guilds are leaving for other servers. But then all those transfers make you money…. There are no “coming months” for BP WvW. Spoon
Yes, that’s definitely true. As Mike O’Brien said in a recent post, “We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.”
We truly understand the interest that our loyal players have in knowing more, but we’re not able to share too much at this juncture for the reasons that are stated above and outlined in more detail in Mike’s post.
Rest assured — and my daily e-mails confirm this — the devs are reading the forums daily to keep abreast of your input on a wide variety of game elements, in addition to which they’re analyzing, prioritizing, weighing whether to and how to address areas of concern, considering how to implement positive changes, and much more, based on the input you give us on the forums.
As Mike also said in his post, much value has come through the CDI’s. I just prowled the hallways to see if I could find out more about the timeline for the current and future CDI. Alas, Chris Whiteside is in a meeting, but I know he’s committed to the format so I hope you’ll be involved in those and if there are some dates he or I can provide one of us will do that later.
This is such completely absurd idea. There is no reason you can’t disclose things you are/would like to work on/change. If it’s going slowly or becomes unworkable you can simply be honest and say it. More ANET FAIL.
I can’t speak for everyone but the developer that I played with was for kind, and actually asked for player feedback. Several times during the week we would have at least 10 people from the server discussing ideas and possible solutions.
Anet is trying, they are listening. Now we need to wait and see if they are willing to fix things.
No no no. You can’t equate having a personal conversation with one dev to a real action plan that will have traction and get done in a reasonable time frame.
No one doubts that the devs have “good intentions”, but we have already been shown by those same devs that “good intentions” don’t get translated into real changes, they simply gather dust. You want to drink their kool-aid, be my guest, but I and many others here already tasted that flavor and don’t care for it anymore. Spoon
It sure would be nice to get some interaction and commentary from a dev.
You mean like these recent threads?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437596
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/4472575
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Siege-Troll-Discussion/4422954
Vague, open-ended, fantasy threads. There is no indication that any of them will lead to anything in the near (6 months) term. There has been no indication that anything will be done in WvW in the near term.
It’s more of the same attempt to appease the serious outrage in the forums and in game by creating these threads to give the false sense that actual changes are going to be made. As sooo many people have pointed out, we had a CDI session over a year ago and got NOTHING. I guess the newer players are going to buy it…
@Grotesque
I think it is the first time I see/read that a Dev (Jessica Boettinger) really talked about WvW with guilds and I would like to see how she reacted to some questions.
I still consider the “Adopt a Dev” initiative (as it happened) as a failed opportunity to identify the problems of WvW at their roots:
The vast majority (as I could read in the adopt sticky) spend their time in big guilds, in the gold leagues, where coverage is not an issue and where big numbers of players are. They rarely visited silver or bronze league, ran with PUGs, went to off-times e.g. EU night time (which is great for the Devs based in PST time zone).
The goal of the initiative was to get a good picture of the state of the game in its entirety. With the approach that is documented so far, they chose to see the “puffy clouds and butterflies” side of WvW and not the dark sides and problems we so often talked about here on the forums.You’re making the false assumption that the participating developers took nothing away from their time with their adoptive guilds. This is untrue, many of our developers came back with feedback from interactions with their respective guilds, and in fact, we have a meeting today to discuss feedback, lessons learned and other relevant discussion around the program.
Don’t set yourself up to see changes immediately. The tournament just ended and the team still needs time to parse the feedback, identify issues and prioritize solutions. If you expect immediate change just because the tournament is over, you will be disappointed. Change takes time and careful consideration.
After your meeting and compiling feedback, can you make a post summarizing what you learned? I know you can’t make promises as to what you can fix, but it would be nice to see what’s being talked about.
YES! please at least summarize those places where you would like to see changes even if they may not be practical in the short term. It would be really nice to at least see a little honesty about what they think are problems and what might have a chance of being address at some point rather than either, a completely unstructured open conversation about fantasy ideas (ie the CDIs and the 2 discussions about populations and coverage in these forums) or the normal complete vacuum of dev discussion about WvW.
What are you talking about, this is absurd. Next you are going to suggest making healing power worth something. What’s next, fixing WvW?
This is ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous is the lack of action by Anet… lame.