Guild Wars 2

Well, I have 3 ascended rings, and a staff (from WvW drops) with healing power on them, kittening junk… They all sit in my bank. Anet loves this! Congratulations YOU WIN….. absolutely nothing. RNG in your face!

Davey.7029:

The discussion ended so abruptly, I’m not sure if anything is going forward. Not a single word on server merges/alliances/battlegroups.

I guess Anet doesn’t want to support WvW anymore, which is really sad.

That dev got soooo obviously shut down it isn’t even funny. He went from all back and forth dialog to “thanks everyone!! see ya!” Anet can’t even fake interest in WvW anymore… LOL.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/first

I got pretty excited when the dev John Corpening (sp?) responded to that post, his first and second posts really looked like something was actually moving forward, but his last post was clearly more smokescreen than anything else. His boss probably sat him down and said, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON’T SAY ANYTHING!” The fact that the obvious big problems with WvW have sat untouched by the devs for sooooo long, I just don’t see them doing anything at this point. If EtoM didn’t solve your issues with WvW then you (we all) are kittened.

Ok, honestly I just want things to go back to the non-tournament WvW where it just kinda sucked, not this effin zerg fest… oh well, 2 more weeks I guess and we we can go back to the good ole’ crappy.

Wut? you really think any serious thought has been put into WvW in the last year? The “short quick tourney” was the easy button, but the easy button often fails. here we are.

I think it’s the game mechanics, not server stacking…

Discuss.

Luvpie.8350:

lol.. why you wasting your guys breath… Wasn’t there a population CDI in December of last year. That’s 9 months ago. Same info/suggestion gathering… Anet is buying time & has no interest in putting any effort in WvW. Last 3-4 months what WvW improvements have happened? Golem mastery & siege disablers.. pfft

Well, EotM was one solution to one problem and my guess is that megaserver was going to be another piece of the solution, but then the backlash over the idea of eliminating server identity moved that idea, fortunately, into the garbage can.
Some sort of alliance-based megaserver with server identities left intact is probably the solution but exactly how to do it is not going to be trivial. The real problem is that Anet has let this issue fester so long that there may not be time for a solution to be introduced before most of the WvW population moves on to something else….
My guess is that with the current debacle that is being called the fall tournament, we are already seeing significant dropoffs of WvW participation. Spoon

EnemyCrusher.7324:

John Corpening.9847:

snip

Merging servers or redistributing population would only be a short term fix. Alliances could help keep people playing together, but losing server identity would definitely hurt the WvW community. It’s not just about fighting alongside your friends, it’s about fighting for your server.

Have you considered my earlier suggestion of 2v2v2 matchups? Each server would be paired with another for each match. The highest ranked server could be paired with the lowest ranked server, etc. This system would automatically protect the lower ranked servers from falling into a state of hopelessness, and thereby reduce the urge for people to abandon low ranked servers.

This would result in half as many matchups though, so we would either need to raise map capacities or add additional WvW maps. I think that adding a fifth map on a weekly rotation would be the best solution to this, as it would also address players concerns about WvW becoming too repetitive. This would be a single map from a pool of balanced maps for each matchup, either randomly chosen or on a cycle. This would also allow for the addition of new maps into the cycle without having to worry about rebalancing player distribution among maps or getting rid of existing ones.

John, I would love you hear your opinions on these suggestions.

(On a related note, EU currently has 27 servers, which would not work for this system, so they would either need to gain 3 or lose 3, as the number needs to be divisible by 6.)

I also think something along the lines of 2v2v2 or 3v3v3 with random shuffling at periodic intervals and make the existing maps available to all the participants. There was an 8v8v8 idea proposed earlier and in thinking about it, 32 maps is just too many, but 6 or 9 borderlands with 2 or 3 EBGs would be tractable. You could easily implement this right now, then run it as server “speed dating” where each match-up lasts 1 week and that would give servers a real idea of who they might want to form an alliance with… I really like the alliance idea, but it must be server based, not guild based. Make the “speed dating” matchups random but like a shuffle that matches all the combinations. Run the weekly rounds and then at the end servers can propose alliances. Allow free transfers at the begining so everyone who has bandwagoned can return to their “home server” and prohibit transfers during the “dating”.
This would be doable very quickly and the “dating” matches would allow for development time to consider how to roll out alliances that actually balance the populations. At the very least, it would be something different to rejuvenate WvW while a more global solution gets developed and if we are going form alliances getting a good sense of the other servers is kind of essential. Spoon

Blaeys.3102:

silvermember.8941:

Blaeys.3102:

Fairly simple solution (from a player’s perspective) that takes server pride, griefing and 24/7 coverage into account -

Right now, in North America, we have eight matches spread across 32 maps (3 borderlands and one EBG per match).

Instead, give us one huge match every week that is basically 8v8v8 (evenly split servers – can adjust if populations dont match up well).

And, have that match on the exact same 32 maps. Every server would still have a “borderlands map” named after their server.

Players could queue for any of the following three: any enemy borderland, their own borderland (no other server in their battlegroup could), or any of the 8 EBGs (which would need unique names). This would give every player a total of 16 possible maps to play on each week – at any given time – with access to players from 8 different servers (which should fix the coverage problem as well).

To retain server identity, rewards would be two tiered. First, the servers in the winning battlegroup would get the same rewards winning servers get now.

Second, servers should get slight advantages while holding their own borderland, giving them something to hold/brag about. By limiting queues to server borderlands, it would retain server identity and reduce griefing. Griefing on other maps would be a non issue because guilds or server groups could simply move to another map to get away.

This seems like it would be easy to implement from a dev side as well – all we would need is a new interface (with new scoring) and player access to multiple maps.

This is probably the best idea. So have an 8v8v8 but instead on 32 maps have it about 16 to 24 (so 1 borderland for each server and 6 eternal battlegrounds) maps to allow for increased population on certain maps that are underutilized. This will allow for over flowing servers to go support others in their league that are under populated while keeping the bigger server’s imaginary “community” in tack.

Thanks.

I dont really see a down side. It would take the best parts of the megaserver without compromising server pride or identity – with the added benefit of giving us alot more people to play with 24/7. At the same time, it would virtually eliminate queues regardless of the server youre on.

At the same time, it would give powerhouse wvw guilds more to do – if they dominate a map and start finding it boring, they can just find another where their battlegroup needs help.

Most importantly, though, it has the potential to make WvW more fun for everyone – keeping the fights going somewhere regardless of population issues.

I am surprised more people aren’t jumping on this idea. The other big plus is that it is a small change to the existing structure and would be doable with the existing menus and megaserver code already written… They could even limit the maps you could look at based on whatever set of BLs and EBG you are currently on, and just use a drop down menu to move to another set.

silvermember.8941:

Blaeys.3102:

Fairly simple solution (from a player’s perspective) that takes server pride, griefing and 24/7 coverage into account -

Right now, in North America, we have eight matches spread across 32 maps (3 borderlands and one EBG per match).

Instead, give us one huge match every week that is basically 8v8v8 (evenly split servers – can adjust if populations dont match up well).

And, have that match on the exact same 32 maps. Every server would still have a “borderlands map” named after their server.

Players could queue for any of the following three: any enemy borderland, their own borderland (no other server in their battlegroup could), or any of the 8 EBGs (which would need unique names). This would give every player a total of 16 possible maps to play on each week – at any given time – with access to players from 8 different servers (which should fix the coverage problem as well).

To retain server identity, rewards would be two tiered. First, the servers in the winning battlegroup would get the same rewards winning servers get now.

Second, servers should get slight advantages while holding their own borderland, giving them something to hold/brag about. By limiting queues to server borderlands, it would retain server identity and reduce griefing. Griefing on other maps would be a non issue because guilds or server groups could simply move to another map to get away.

This seems like it would be easy to implement from a dev side as well – all we would need is a new interface (with new scoring) and player access to multiple maps.

This is probably the best idea. So have an 8v8v8 but instead on 32 maps have it about 16 to 24 (so 1 borderland for each server and 6 eternal battlegrounds) maps to allow for increased population on certain maps that are underutilized. This will allow for over flowing servers to go support others in their league that are under populated while keeping the bigger server’s imaginary “community” in tack.

I also think something along these lines is really interesting. It takes advantage of the existing structure, solves a lot of the que and population issues at once. Individual servers maintain identity and there would be lots of opportunities for getting the particular type of WvW play that groups would be looking for.
Determining the 8 server groups is an interesting issue. Random assignment is probably the best, clear the PPT run them for 1 month, rewards at the end based on server group score. Next month shuffle, reset PPT. Additional bonuses for keeping borderlands clear for individual servers could be interesting and perhaps another bonus for having all of your server group’s borderlands clear. That would reward server cooperation, it could be like bloodlust, or give some points towards a special title or armor or something. Spoon

how can you break what is already broken?

Chris Barrett.3280:

Thanks Tarnished Coast for putting up an amazing fight toward the end of Round 1. We were only 1.1k behind Jade Quarry at reset, and managed to close in to less than 700 behind at one point. Those were some great fights.

Well I would like to see the responses of Devs that are on server’s getting waffle-stomped. BS is continuously outnumbered on all maps, it was like that last week and again this week. It will be like that next week and the week after. I would like to see how fun the Devs think that is? Are there any Devs on servers at the bottom of tiers? It’s great to be on a competitive server but so many are not… Spoon

Dayra.7405:

Every single match looks like the first plays against last.
But in fact maximal distance is 7 out of 24/27.

Balance is broken and with it interest in it.

This is exactly the problem, server stacking, no balance, no plan from Anet.

Howell Qagan.9752:

Now I don’t want to give ideas to anyone… but literally any player can join any commander. Even from enemy servers. So this isn’t a solution, the troll would just have a few people join their squad from the other server. Or from the guild.

yeah, this is a problem for sure….

The ideas I like so far:
Having the person throwing the siege name on it
Having a map based voting system to ban trolls from building siege for a hour/day/week and make the ban work even if the player has logged off prior to the vote
Having a map based voting system to allow a player to destroy siege for a limited time 5,10,15 minutes

I would think that a modification of the party/squad system that allows for kicking players from parties could be adapted to such a purpose. This requires no mod input and is self policing.

Dayra.7405:

And this is the most balanced round in the whole season.

Next week will be the most imbalanced one.

Not in NA, there is only one really competitive match-up and one that is somewhat close. The rest are runaway victories… in fact there are only a couple competitive match ups for second place. Tournament = Joke.

Well, right now people have a lot of badges… soon enough their stockpile will start to dwindle, which is probably the intent, then people will think twice about disabling siege…

xvalkyrie.6742:

Maybe to fix this issue, anet can impose a limit on how many siege engines you can deploy. Yes, this would change how commanders deploy siege, but it would thoroughly limit a supply troll’s effectiveness if you can only drop say, 3 siege per account. When one is destroyed you can build another. If all are destroyed you can build 3 more. Thoughts?

This would be an awful solution. It would be much better to simply have anet actually do something about these people when they are reported, but as we all know, siege trolling tacitly approved of by Anet.

this is to prevent bots from killing npc stuff and getting xp because the Devs can’t be bothered to correct the botting problem with a real fix. That is the only explanation if you look at Jessica’s rational for the change, spawn camping and kill trading are not really the issue they are addressing….

so many posts like this, it gonna get deleted cuz you have a specific player named. Anet doesn’t care about seige trolls, it’s not against any of their rules…

So has anyone figured out what the relative average daily populations of WvW and PvE are? or has anyone got some “educated guesses”. I’ve discussed this with guildies before and they came up with WvW being less than 10% (not counting EtoM) of the total game populations, anyone thought about this? If we really are just 10% at any given time, I guess my hopes for Anet to do anything serious with WvW kinda go down the Mystic Toilet so to speak…

One concern I have is that often times the XP (or WXP) is the only way to be sure you’ve actually killed or stomped a player. Now, it can be quite difficult to tell if someone is killed if they WP immediately, especially if they were stealthed or go into a stealth downed state, PLEASE AWARD A MINIMUM of 1 WXP or XP on EVERY KILL. Also, from my perspective this is just another in a series of major WvW nerfs that was not needed, but yet another very poor band aid for inherent WvW issues that should be given a real fix.

hopefully, moving the commander tags back to the top layer won’t take too long, currently it’s confusing and annoying when all of a sudden the commander tag vanishes….

Since the weekly rewards are all that matter and every week there is going to be a “random” match-up that will have “obvious” 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ranking, for those who want to stack and maximize tickets, transferring every week is the way to go?

It seems the current patch as dropped the commander tags from the top layer of the graphics causing the tag to disappear quite often, it really needs to be on the top graphic layer, if one in the commander’s party the blue party dots completely obsure the tag if they are stacked on the commander…. (as an example)

Massive skill lag (delays then sometimes fast motion catch ups) and rubber banding. I ran both speedtest and pingtest.net with the game running, no issues. My FPS never dropped below 40 fps during these huge lag spikes.

Thems is Fugly

lagoriel.6475:

High setting in wvw? Not going to happen with 3.1-3.5Ghz, I’m afraid.

If you aim for that you should watch out for a CPU with free multiplier and clock it to 4.5 to 5ghz. You ought to buy another mainboard, preferably a Z89 or z97 as well.

On the short run you could start with decreasing the culling-options, shaders, reflections and texture-settings (especially the latter seem to be rather bugged since the last patch)

No. There is something that is borked in the latest patch.

Yes, never had any rubber banding or this wierd skill lag prior to the feature patch

Also, very bad skill lag and rubber-banding in San Francisco bay area. Running core i5 and GTX760 definitely new since patch….

I have an Nvidia GTX760 and was having really wierd skill lag regardless of the number of players on my screen at any given time. Also a lot of rubber-banding. My FPS was never lower than 40, my internet connection had no packet loss with 15Mbs bandwidth. Prepatch I never experienced this problem.

So not to be negative, as I like this idea a lot. There is a real problem with this as I see it. If one assumes that most of the “devs” aren’t in real WvW guilds, which I think is reasonable otherwise they wouldn’t need to do this, their experience is going to be pretty dang fantastic no matter what happens in the tourney.

Those of us who are in well organized WvW dedicated guilds all experienced that feeling when you joined that guild, finally figured out what people were talking about when they said “get on TS”, when you finally were able to understand why your zerg was stacked up and why they all turned right without any warning. And, of course, we all have gotten a lot better.

So, I doubt any participating dev is going to come away from the experience saying, “wow WvW really IS stale and boring”, no they are all going to high-five each other yelling “OMG! OMG! WvW is amazeballs!!, we win!!” The real problem is that we all experienced that a year or two ago and we have been doing the same thing over and over and over again for 1 or 2 years which is the real problem. WvW is AWESOME, BUT IT HASN’T CHANGED AND THAT IS BORING.
Maybe the best outcome is that the devs come away with the feeling, "hey this WvW stuff is really cool, we should spend more time “developing” it. But the other possibility is they come away saying “WvW was really fun, not sure what the problem is….”

pdavis.8031:

codiac.5642:

pdavis.8031:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Please-merge-the-servers/first#post4344432

Don’t merge the servers, and please merge the servers….hmmmm I don’t know what to do!?!?!

Well, since RNG is a favorite tool here abouts, merge a random number of servers!

But RNG being RNG, there also is a chance the no servers get merged, as well as all serveres get merged into one…

If it’s Anet’s RNG we’ll all be rolled into greens….

DeadlySynz.3471:

Well the in fact to eliminate coverage issues is to merge the servers; however, given there is a PvE population to think about, Anet cant do it.

This is a player issue, and if they want balance, they need to collectively get together and merge themselves on a few servers to strike balance.

So what you are saying is you missed all the server stacking in the last couple of tournaments…..

Filovirus.6258:

There is good things in EotM, but it can’t replace classic WvW. With all it’s problems and drawbacks, classic WvW gives far more and has far more ways of sustening the “fun” of people with multiple different ways of playing (EotM has basically 2 that can work with the stupid kitten landscape and running times : Ktrain farming or siege turtle/fear walls/Knockback off edges farming/griefing the Ktrain).

While agree with your summation of EtoM completely, Red Green Blue will replace servers, ok they may call it something else, like “factions or alliances” but just look at where ALL the “improvements” are pointing. Guilds will now be merged across servers sharing bank space, influence, etc…. At this point, megaserver means there are no “servers” in PvE already. EtoM is “WvW” with no servers. In WvW if you are in the top tiers you have que problems if you are at the bottom you have empty maps. Most WvW guilds want fights not Ktrains, well ok, maybe a little Ktraining cuz the loots. My guess is that they let the “not allowed” stuff on EtoM, like opposing teams coordinate for ktraining, is because they are using EtoM to work out map issues and how to allow for large groups to be on a single map, or a que system for an EtoM type map structure, so they want the large populations there.
PvE had the same problems as WvW, wildly uneven population distributions, now that isn’t an issue any more in PvE. As soon as they figure out a non-server based scoring system you can say bye bye to your “server”. Spoon

It’s quite obvious that the direction Anet is going with the game is Megaserver and EtoM. We would probably already be there now if people didn’t scream bloody murder about eliminating server identity in WvW, but everything Anet is doing is moving in that direction. There is no way to “balance” the servers for WvW without que problems or time zone gaps. Free transfers or pay transfers makes no difference, enabling easy transfers makes individual servers irrelevant and deemphasizes “your home server” as a game concept and the tournaments are just population/complete timezone coverage rewards. Of course, eliminating servers is not going to happen overnight, but merging is not the way to go unless you just want to have map ques…
I think EtoM was too successful at what they wanted. I don’t think the devs realized it would become a coordinated karmatrain zergfest where opposing teams would agree to avoid actual fights and simply concentrate on flipping stuff without opposition. It’s extremely popular.
But, EtoM is fun for Trolling, which is done mostly at bridges and places it’s easy to fear people off the edge… LOL I never thought about that until now… Bridges-Trolls-LOLz Spoon

The OP is exactly what is very wrong about EotM and exactly why it will kill WvW and having a “home server”. We are all Red Green Blue now.

Mesket.5728:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Excursion.9752:

I keep reading this part does this mean traits will be unlocked when you level now or do we still have to do the chores.

Regarding unlocking traits, the New Player Experience will effectively be exactly the same, except in the way it’s presented to players.

But but but a few patches ago you completely destroyed leveling experience and now you want to bring it back without reverting what you did wrong? im confused

No you are missing it. The new “features” aren’t features at all, it’s what we have now, “presented” in a different way. Like most of this “feature pack” it another Nothing Burger…

Living story and China. Those two are enough to eat up all the dev time and leave nothing for WvW. The coming feature pack is going to do nothing to stop the bleeding in WvW, the colored tags are great, golem mastery?, siege disabling? Can you say nothing burger. Oh yes, and the massive success of EotM. It has been massively successful at killing WvW. I suspect that is the intention. And let’s not forget the tournaments, server stacking just makes things rigged from the beginning and encourages guilds to forgot any idea of a “home server”. Anet protests adamantly that they want to keep server identity….. Yet every single new addition to the server structure has been to dismantle server identity. PvE and China must be the cash cows for this game… I don’t see any server based WvW by this time next year.

Bring on Red vs Green vs Blue. Spoon

Hule.8794:

Why arent people angrier? Because Anet deletes all angry posts.

Let’s be honest here, if you sneeze wrong in a post it gets deleted. Anyway, who cares? The devs don’t post here in lonelyland woods aka WvW forum. So if a post gets deleted in the woods does a dev hear it cry? Spoon

WvW needs something now, not next year. So, why not add one copy of the EotM to the existing WvW maps? Make it count for PPT just like borderlands and eternal, maybe slightly less than the original maps but something significant and call it Battle of the Mists

The could leave EtoM as it is, a megaserver WvW map for ktrains and overflow. It seems like that could be a pretty low effort addition to WvW with low consequences, if things got really unbalanced just go back to the 4 maps. Make it a live beta test, I don’t think anyone in WvW would be upset to beta that map in regular WvW. The could start with the PPT contribution low and gradually increase it as needed. Spoon

You all realize that Megaserver pretty much Cluster-effed WvW and guilds in PvE. But, it really solved the empty map problem for new players and people leveling in 5 or less groups. Solve one problem create another…

EtoM is a perfect example of how very bad WvW would be for guilds if megasucker was implimented there. Until Anet make it possible for entire guilds to stay together megasucker is going to well… suck. I don’t see how server identity is going to exist going forward.

Merge servers…. I think that is what they are trying to make happen with the transfers, but they probably think they are trying to “balance them”. The tournaments and transfers really buggered that.. Spoon

Nick.6972:

Start by hiring people to actually work on WvW.

Yeah, I second this. Actually having the Devs work on WvW, that could be a very positive first step, because it does seem obvious by now that WvW isn’t fixing itself.

Or wait!! I have a brilliant idea, add aspect crystals to WvW!!! Winning!

There is no Dev action on WvW at all. Not a single dev post here in how long? So many people getting bored and leaving… Maybe some sort of coordinated effort for people to boycot WvW on specific days every couple weeks might get some kind of attention to the real problems, to make things worse, we (BP) have been in the same match-up for the last 3 weeks… Thanks ANET for reinforcing how stale WvW has become… Spoon

Yep, just ranged him with the occasional aspect crystal to break the shield. Waaaayyy too many hit points, not sure what the purpose of having all the NPCs down below is…

and having the aspect crystals as a movement mechanic in the permanent game is equally lame. ANET please consider designing other content preferably not using aspect crystals or boring very long tedious fights like Aerin. Spoon

DevonCarver.5370:

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

It has come to the point that as WvW has not received real updates since launch that we ourselves would not mind doing the testing.

I can appreciate that many people don’t like EotM, but don’t conflate a lack of updates that you personally like with a lack of updates. WvW has added a great deal of content and rewards over just the last calendar year.

Hopefully you will find more you like in future updates and we’ll continue to add to the game.

This is depressing. Clearly, a huge chunk of WvW development resources went into EotM which turned out to be PVE content where PVEers could get their WvW achievment points… it actually hurts WvW and exacerbates server population disparities.
So now, the WvW cookie jar is empty. I interpret this type of response with the comment it takes a year to do a map as expectation setting for us not to expect anything significant added to WvW this year… that sucks. Spoon

Lishtenbird.2814:

How many events in this game are “hard” at the moment? Teq, Wurm… Wait, that’s all. 99% of PvE is easy mode, almost everything can be soloed or done with people around you (thanks to megaservers).

……

So, you get a lot of soloable PvE and 2/3 of Living Story in soloable content. And now, what are those items which limit your progress and which you can’t get anywhere else than receiving Gold in Pavillion? Sorry, there ain’t any!

Rephrasing your post, “I think this thread could do with less casualism.”

Oh yes, and the other really awful trend in the LS raid events, the new enemy… your fellow gamer. How wonderful we can all now justify our negative comments about others who play the game differently than we do!! excellent, just what the game needs a new PVP mode, Chat and forum PVP. where’s mah loots? Spoon

This is absolutely correct. If you are new, or not in an big guild, or your guild doesn’t run this, you are penalized by double, less rewards and longer time. Every single living story big event has been FAIL, every single won has had a major patch/change, some a few patches, in response to the huge outcry by the players. We always have to put up with the poorly thought out design and the inherently punitive concepts for at least the first week of what is generally a two week event. The devs appear to have learned nothing from this experience, as the big event are just getting more punitive and ugly. Spoon

This is just a continuous repeat of the past living story raid events, if that is what you want to call them. the devs want a complicated and to their benefit, interesting world zerg raid mechanic. However, they can’t seem to come up with designs that work for the majority of the players. Most of the players need to be spoon-fed the concepts, there is nothing wrong with that, most players are on for a few hours a week, they want to log in, get some kills, use their skills, and loot stuff so they can make incremental improvements in their toons. The devs in this game seem to think that everyone wants a super complicated, totally unexplained, and honestly, non-intuitive raid mechanic. At the very minimum, the health of all 6 bosses could have been displayed, giving the tiniest hint that there might be a reason why you might need to know it. Not unlike the Lions arch knight fight, another complete disaster of a global event. To be honest, I don’t see any learning from past mistakes here. It seems more like pile on to a bad thing than any learning process. And so the forums are full of complaints…. no surprises here. Spoon