Guild Wars 2

Sorry, going to have to be a nit snarky here: WvW is Balanced for zergs ?! :p

Anyways, as long as pvp is in the game, it will have a decent small group balance. So 5vs5 is decent even in WvW. If anything it is the outfields that suffer, 1vs1 and 20+vs20+

The game isn’t balanced around zerg vs zerg at all, which is one part of the problem.

• Half the classes aren’t even viable in zerg
• Game mechanics like the target caps works in zergs favor, designed for 5 player
• AoE spam
• Boon spam

etc, basically, Zerging is just the easiest way to break the existing system, since it is designed around 5 vs 5 at its core (5man party for dungeon, OW, fractal etc, 5vs5 in pvp).

All of this is part of ANet’s “Care Bear Rule”, that it should never be negative to see another player on your team. It is a good concept for PVE, doesn’t work quite as well in WvW.

PS: If anything you’d think a game so focused around 5vs5 would be great for small group roaming!

It is Outnumbered Effect, not a buff.

Like the scale idea. You might as well remove the entire “no armor break” though, since repairs are now free at spawn anyway, that benefit got rendered pretty useless back when they removed cost for repair armor.

You could probably scale those rewards much higher, I’d probably use the existing rewards as the first step, and add it for every level. So:

Minor:

• 25% WXP
• 20% MF
• 50% Participation

Major:

• 50% WXP
• 40% MF
• 100% Participation

SPARTA!:

• 75% WXP
• 60% MF
• 150% Participation

Ok, maybe a little extreme, but if you make it 33/66/100% participation instead, it would probably work well. Imagine all those that want to grind track for legendary will be tempted by a +100% participation bonus. You could probably up the MF a good bit as well, I wouldn’t mind making all 3 33/66/100. Actually make people consider it.

Unfortunately, those that log out the moment they see Outnumbered, won’t stay for this or any other bonus. As long as outnumbered combat works as it does (no fun for most), they’re going to keep leaving the game the moment it goes against them.

On the whole I think the scaling outnumbered effect would be a boon for roamers and defenders. We would see a bit more pugs leaving earlier because minor outnumbered flashed (Oh my kittens! The end is nigh! They got 2 more players than us!).

On the whole there are a whole lot of other things I’d like to see done with Outnumbered, but I think this is a nice and clean idea, that should be relatively simple to implement, it would work better in many ways because of that.

Main problem is still that it doesn’t fix the biggest problem, fighting outnumbered suck in this game.

nerovergil.5408:

It is no fun when there is no goals.

What to fight when you cant win? Huge PPT different give moral breakdown on competitive players.

the purpose of this is to minimize the PPT gap.

Example:

100 enemy players fighting at your spawn points, you only have 20 players. Your home keep has been taken away.

So, with huge PPK in outnumbered buff, you can fight.

enemy kill you only give them 1 points. But when you kill them, you get more points!! let say 100 points per 1 of enemy killed!!! So they wont dare to fight at your spawn points!

Now PPT, if u can ninja 1 camp on this situations, the tick of the that camp will be crazy high!! that makes the PPT different become closer!!

You say “goals” and talk about points, now that is a matter of perspective. Now obviously I only know a small subset of players in WvW, but I don’t know a single one that care about points. The ones I know are mostly split evenly between roaming/fights, and guild/server pride. So obviously I have some trouble understanding why “points” would motivate anyone. Especially for us on guest-servers.

It is fun when a match-up is tied to the very end. But in all those cases I’ve found it fun because of the fights, because both or all servers battle it out until the end, and thus usually fairly even in numbers. If our server is tied with the enemy, and I see we’re winning on PPT, because we outnumber enemy, I’m not motivated to go into WvW at all etc.

What I see causing the most moral breakdown’s are being outnumbered and not feeling you can do/accomplish anything. That is when the pugs and fair-weathers leave the maps. The people I see left are the hardcore roamers, and whoever likes to fight outnumbered. I don’t think those would qualify as competitive (in points anyway) players.

And no matter how much you minimize the PPT gap, the fights are still NOT FUN when one side outnumbers the other. And until they address this (somehow, no idea how), they can adjust Points as much as they want, most people are going to leave the moment they’re outnumbered. This is where I think they should focus on developing, and possibly somehow make a handicap system (again, don’t know how, it’s tricky).

• Server A = 100 players on EBG
• and spawncamping server B
• Server B = 20 players
• Server B will get +100 PPK per kill (Outnumbered)
• Server A will get none. (Outnumbering)

In most cases that will result in Server B not getting any kills, Server A will just blob up and you can’t really kill any players before they kill some of yours back to rally or speed rez etc. So won’t make much difference, you might get 1 for 100 ppk.

And then you have an organized guild group of 20, that knows how to zerg-bust, and just kills all 100 for 10 000 PPK, and blows the score out.

In a way, I’d kind of like to see that, but it would pretty much hand WvW over to the GvG guilds, as they’re the ones that can pull that off reliably. The pugs and fair-weathers would quickly leave the game mode the moment they found a GvG guild on map.

@ nerovergil.5408

Basically you’re trying to use the Outnumbered effect in a way to balance in Points (PPT/PPK). There are a few reasons I don’t this will work, but mainly it is because I don’t think it will solve the problem itself.

The reason I don’t think it will work is because no matter how much Point rewards (or any other rewards) the fact is that most players doesn’t enjoy playing 10 vs 100, or 5 vs 20 etc. It just plain isn’t fun, so unless you’re rabid about Points (I haven’t met many) it just isn’t incentive enough to play against the odds.

Also, you might say that 10 vs 20 deserves a x2 points, but with equal skill among the players in question, it is much harder than just 2x as hard to get points as 10 vs 20. Gut guess would be about x4, but I really can’t say for certain. Those 20 have multiple tactics to take over 90% of the map, and those 10 can at best hold onto a corner/defensive position (keep or tower + 1-2 camps). Anything more, and the 20 can either outnumber them as 20, or split up to 10+10 and take things twice as fast, or keeping the 10 busy with 10, while the rest split up and take the map.

Anyway, the main issue really isn’t points. The real issue is that it should be FUN to fight against the enemy no matter the numbers. Basically a handicap system. As long as people can play 10 vs 20, and both feel it is a fun and engaging fight, and not just a pushover, people will play despite the points. But as other point out, I’m against any kind of handicap that interacts directly with combat/stats etc, so it would be hard to say how to solve it.

@ Deniara Devious.3948

Sadly, even if Outnumbered effect gave x10 the points, it wouldn’t matter much. Though I do agree on no PPK when Outnumbering.

But as others have said, Outnumbered isn’t an buff, it’s a warning. I definitively agree it could be solved much better, but it does do that function decently.

Johje Holan.4607:

Looking at MOS perhaps BP and Kain should have been not linked with higher tier servers. And instead one go to HoDEBayET and one go to NSPDHDR.

Yes please! Get me out of this kitten! >_<

tym.3791:

IMHO, while linkings do have there issues. The biggest issue is the casual’s. If Team A is zerging hard, Then the casuals on team B and C will simply Log out, and go do something else, or they see the score is lop sided, they wont even bother to log in to WvW.

The lovely Fair-Weathers, they do indeed make population an absolutely hopeless task. I consider this kind of mentality to be the biggest single problem for population balance, as long as players think this way, we’re never going to get something resembling fair fights in WvW.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Wow, I think I disagree with everything the OP said, or at least how he wants to execute things.

While I wouldn’t mind some of them, like smaller maps with lower population limits, I wouldn’t want 8 of them, and replacing the existing maps etc.

@ Ori

If you link up “Active Play” with enemy players, they would also have the tools to effectively deny the opponent zerg points. Though that is also a slippery slope as well, since it gives players a good bit of ability to game the point system. “Everyone waypoint out, don’t fight them so they get points!”

Personally I’m for a scaling of rewards in some manner, like what you suggested for example. But I don’t think ANet will ever implement that, because it goes against their design philosophy that “You should never feel negative about seeing another player.”

Pondering if the best we can salvage out of this might be to link some tremendous bonus rewards to the Outnumbered, so that skilled players are willing to move servers in order to increase personal rewards. Say +100% wxp, reward track, magic find, gold (or more).

If they where considering actually penalizing more players, I’d just go for divide the reward on the number of players. Both the personal rewards (track etc) and the points for capture considering how much less a feat it is.

As other (Johje) keep saying, stop thinking about the number of linked servers, what matters is the active population.

Atm EBay is in a tri-link.
Atm DH is in a tri-link.
against YB in a duo link.

So by that definition, you’re outnumbering YB. And see how little that matters ?

They could probably link the ENTIRE old Bronze league into one server, and it still wouldn’t dent BlackGate.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Johje Holan.4607:

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Xenesis.6389:

A flat grassland with 3 towers (just straight stairs leading to a room with no walls, when you capture the tower you get a cookie). Done!

I would like see how a city map works in WvW.

Something along the lines of Divinity’s Reach, Ebonhawke or the Black Citadel but with the standard set of objectives.

Black Citadel, are you kidding me? I can’t even stand to set foot in that place. Ugly and convoluted. The opposite of what we need in WvW.

Aesthetics are irrelevant – I was talking conceptually.

I mean a tighter map where people are going to run into each other but roamers/havoc can avoid zergs by taking back streets, tunnels etc.

Wide maps like deserted BL are not fun – so I think a tight map like a city would be worth a try.

This, would really like to see a city warfare map, where you can take a small area and fill it with hiding spots, ambushes, choke holds, etc so you can ambush and ambush just to get ambushed :p

Ok not that extreme, but it would make for a very different feel. With people more compacted, but with more different types of spots to stand on an fight from. Where you could stand on top of roofs and pepper enemies under you with ranged attacks, only to have them run for cover in structures, or even use those structures to go up and fight them in melee.

As everything, it has its problems as well, but I think it could be really fun.

Generally like the suggestions from both Menaka and Tongku. Tying up score to active play is the best suggestion I’ve seen on the forums so far, and have advocated for it before. I also agree with others that there are problems with it.

Justine.6351:

Trinnitty.8256:

It would also be great if people that play wvw would have the option to have pvp/wvw gear(free) and not rely on pve gearing. This way as a competitive game mode everyone is always on equal footing. Makes having build changes less of a hassle.

For real? There are merchants in wvw spawns who trade exotic gear for badges. And even the reward tracks give chests with exotic gear in them.

I would love it if I could use the PVP build system if I wanted to, as a base standard that I could then perhaps get equipment for etc later on. It would give me a chance to try out sigils/runes/gear sets and play-styles etc I don’t have available, and perhaps don’t want to fork out money for unless I try it first.

Then again, I’m allergic to all kinds of grinding, and would love to use the PVP system for entire PVE as well. So what do I know.

Ruine.3519:

If Anet came up with a system to monetize WvW (gems or sub) while giving it more attention. Would you pay for it? Discuss.

Nope.

Reasons:

• I like GW2, not specifically for its WvW. If WvW was sub, I’d play the rest of the game instead.
• I’m allergic to subscriptions, because I usually play/leave games at whim, hate paying for something I might not play for multiple months.
• There are too many other games to play for me to throw money at subscriptions.
• Generally not a big MMO fan, but enjoy GW2 mainly because of the combat system, and the lack of the trinity roles. It makes combat fun.

Would like to see the Specializations tweked down to the Vanilla builds in power level. I expected them to be stronger at expansion launch, and then expected that they would tweak them (slowly) back to be even with the Vanilla builds. Obviously this has not happened.

An idea for a quick and dirty hot-fix:

• Reduce rewards on the number of people/Greatly increase rewards with outnumbered
• Make organized play more effective, let 20 players be able to take down 60+ blob through skilled play.

This should (hopefully) encourage more people to play more organized guild groups and the like, thus more medium size skill based guilds again. And these should thus be encouraged to go to a underdog server for the outnumbered buff/rewards for more bags.

Most likely the bandwagoners will start transfer off again to follow the guilds they trust to bring the bags, and then the guilds will transfer again to lootbag the same pugs

Lots of ifs and what ifs there, but yeah. Some of the changes lately (last 1-2 years) have weakened or discouraged running skill-groups against map zergs, which is just what the game need to counter a larger server. If this was encouraged again, I believe (hope, nay pray!) that those people interested in Skill-Group play would want to move to a outnumbered server for the fights, challenge, and increased rewards.

If not, well, we’re boned.

Edit just to say that I too enjoy lots of your posts Menaka.

The question is:

How?

And how many people are you willing to kitten off to accomplish it ?

Xenesis.6389:

A flat grassland with 3 towers (just straight stairs leading to a room with no walls, when you capture the tower you get a cookie). Done!

laughs

This seems to be exactly what people are asking for, that is kinda sad.

Jeknar.6184:

joneirikb.7506:

Oh kitten, we’re back in T1 again ? ugh, pve for me for 2 months then.

Transfering out of T1 is 500gems and you have several choices. Besides, to go back to your own server is 500gems, which you can easily gather in 2 months.

Don’t worry, I’m fine, got an EU account I can play on in worst case, but honestly I just don’t play enough WvW these days to make it worth transferring, it is really less problematic for me to just skip it 2 months :p

Sad, I know. But been too busy with real life and a few other games lately to play much anyways. And I only play WvW when I can gather the guild together anyways, which is like herding cats.

I can afford to transfer if I want to, but I just don’t think it is worth the hazzle for how little I’m going to be playing if I don’t play with guildies.

Oh kitten, we’re back in T1 again ? ugh, pve for me for 2 months then.

Balthazzarr.1349:

You did this last time too… where are the NA linkings?

As said above, and the “last time” they did the same. They will be posted AFTER they’ve been re-linked, so no-one knows before-hand. EU just have their reset a bunch of hours before NA, so the linking happens earlier.

Kinda hoping we get linked again, I’ve been so inactive last 2 months due to real life (and other games…) that I have barely seen you in game yet.

Infusion.7149:

WHY? We need less PvE stuff in WvW.

I got hung up a bit on this comment. So consumables are PVE ?

I mean we already have foods + util, which is considered essential while PVE players generaly doesn’t care much about them.

All the boosters, armor, strength, speed, rejuvenation boosters etc. I save them all for WvW, since I know for sure I won’t need them in PvE! WxP Boosters!

So I just don’t understand this reasoning. What makes “Consumables” into PVE ? I keep feeling that the whole “Less PVE!” has become a rallying cry for “I don’t like it” rather than actually trying to explain the difference between the two modes.

That said, I’m not in favor of enabling Revive Orbs in WvW, dying and running back is about the only penalty you get in this game, and there need to be a reason to not wanting to die.

Ruru.1302:

You shouldn’t be allowed to post on the forums.

He has every right to post, and to say what he wants. As long as he doesn’t break the rules, like being rude or offensive (hint).

Navi.9308:

I think this style of map is the best as a continuous ring around the ‘eternal battleground’ with the main keep only opening up for battle once in a while.

This requires teams to fight against both sides and there is a middle land for a ‘push and pull’ type point system. Once in a while the central area opens up and it’s a large battle to get in there and take everything for your team (this ends once the lord has been taken).

Looks pretty interesting, been wanting to see a proper city-fighting map for some time. Would be a good opportunity to bring lots of walls, and height etc, ambush spots, treb positions, and basically make one huge mess, but making everything closer together than what we’re used to. Could be very hectic.

Just to note on the donut idea. It has some severe drawbacks as well, it especially punishes roaming by blocking off most areas by walls. So you’ll need to cata walls down just to roam in enemy territory.

It’s mainly an instant gratification/action map, a more straight forward one, that ignores many of the intricacies of playing WvW, and I expect most of the veteran players would get bored of it pretty quickly. And it unfortunately would lead pretty heavy in the direction of Karma-Train map, it could potentially turn even worse than EotM.

Possible fix for that would be to require you to hold your home Keep in order to gain score/get reward, would be an interesting change (could be interesting in EotM as well, or just a reward penalty on reward track and everything while not holding keep. Correction, make it a BUFF to rewards wile holding home keep, watch players FROTH when they lose it!)

I still think it would be a good thing for ANet to make one such map, as long as it is one map and not replacing all maps. (This is also why I really want to remove home map system, because I want them to open up for more different STYLES of maps.)

/Disclaimer

(My own guild would have killed me if I was responsible for replacing all the BL maps with a donut map…)

Regarding recruiting and helping etc, this has become more in-game. Just ask around in WvW maps for guilds that take in new players, and ask them for an invite. Most WvW guilds wants more WvW playing recruits, and have people that will help.

Because of Megaserver and the age of the game, it’s the only way that really works.

Personally I can’t help but laugh every time I see a guild outside of WvW posting its recruit message in mapchat, listing PvX, does WvW etc. And then they don’t list their server :p

I want to see how it plays out with only 2 blood lusts. This will give incentive to fight for it, might actually make players care about it.

Ideally DBL should get its own something in the middle, but don’t just mindlessly rip off bloodlust. We’ve seen this over the last few years, people just claimed their homeBL bloodlust, and ignored it.

Rink.6108:

Yea, but that everyone goes to EB could also mean, that this is the map-type and the playstyle the “average” wvw player enjoys the most and the majority of the players may want to play it. Everyone likes different things. But we cannot expect arenanet to adapt to our personal wishes if they do not represent the wishes of the majority of players.

This always confused me, if EBG is the most popular map/style, why is it 1 EBG map and 3 Borderland maps ? Seems so backward.

Always thought it would be better with 3 EBG maps, and a single Borderland map that is actual 3 ways, but gives a fairly easy defensible home area, and some stuff inbetween “border areas” to fight for.

Still full in favor of making all maps true 3-ways, and remove “Home” map system. (As most should know by now). And basically what Johje said, single colored map is boring map.

Do like a lot of the suggestions here about what to do with the middle, shout-out to the “giant treb hill” idea, love it.

I’ve talked about some of the advantages/disadvantages about a Donut map design. I’ll try to keep it as short as I can this time.

If you make a map fully circular, and close of some spots with tower and keep walls, you can create a constant 2(3) front fight going on. Where there are natural choke holds that you can fight in to hold back enemy, etc. For players that enjoy the actual mass combat and siege warfare this could be interesting. For those of us that likes roaming, less so.

The idea (example) is that if you have 3 keeps, and 6 towers in a circle, each tower blocks off the circle so you have to take it, or at least break down the wall to get past it. Each keep guards the only entry to the map from Spawn, and stands in a very defensive position.

Starting equal, each server will hold their own keep, and the two nearby towers. Fighting then starts for the neighbours towers. If Server A takes Server B’s tower, then they have access to attack either Server B’s keep or their other tower, if they’re willing to let Server B have free access to ambush them from behind.

At the same time, Server C might have taken Server B’s other tower, and Server A and C clash in front of Server B’s keep. Or, Server C taken Server A’s tower on the other side of the map, forcing Server A to move back to defend their keep and retake the tower.

This creates a system with 3 pushing fronts that will move back and forward (as the population changes). People that just want action, zerging and siege warfare can jump right in and instantly find where to go. And the 3 way system creates a pull and push.

Also if you lose your keep, you’ll have a spawn isnide a “tower” of a sort, that has a crazy defensive advantage (that can only be accessed by going through the keep, think an offshot cave or valley from the keep only). That makes it very easy to retake the keep, very hard to take for the enemy. But can be taken. Then the enemy can retake from spawn super easy if there is no defenders. Basically handicap more and more the further you’re pushed back. The “Spawn Tower” should be defend-able by 3-5 people. And anyone capable of taking a tower lord should be able to take it back if no enemies.

Both KN and ET were formerly linked to TC and BG respectively and the vast difference between their former hosts and current one may have lessened their enthusiasm in participating in WvW and wait for a better linkup.

You do realize that some of us also boycotted entire wvw when linked to those T1 servers, and rather enjoy life back in the lower tiers right ?

I do realize that some probably feel like you say, but on the other hand, don’t you think most of those already transfered off to another server or made up a new account ? Some of us actually like it down here.

“The glory of being linked with TC”, sure, some liked it. Personally I just started prioritizing housework instead, as I suddenly got a whole lot more time on my hand.

Ruins make for great dueling spots, gives you a way to counteract too much stealth and invulnerable as well, whoever ganks the other or caps the ruin first wins

Hexinx.1872:

We all know everyone plays ranger to try to be as good as AJAX, but they all just don’t measure up, just a bunch of mouthbreathers!

Laughs

Glorious glorious Ajax.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Before they make any changes to siege, the first thing they need to spend time on is enabling auto attack. On Rams this is a no brainer, on cata’s the projectile will go the minimum distance if you enable auto.

+1

Sarrs.4831:

IMO better solution

Damage increase as the catapult shot is charged; 100% charged shot deals more damage than a point blank tap

Damage increase = the number of extra shots you would get from point blank

Depending on how people feel about it, tune down catapult damage to match

Lets you put your catapult wherever you like and it’ll still be fully effective, people will naturally decide to put their catapults somewhere more sensible than melee

+1

HoneyBadger.5691:

Adding friendly fire to all siege would prolly be healthy.

+1

Jeknar.6184:

I think it would. It promote people to stop rellying on siege to win fights.

+1

Since the forum is being a donkey and refuse to store my +1 buttons today.

Regarding the local outnumbered, it sets a better basis for working with it in the future. If it is a local outnumbered, instead of a global/map wide, then you can actually give some relevant buffs to it.

Specifically I’d like to see all AoE skills gain +5 targets, or just a blank doubling of targets on skills in general while “local outnumbered”. So 30 vs 15, those 15 might stand a chance to accomplish something (assuming roughly equal skills).

But also for usage of supply, to counter the number advantage in sieges when outnumbered. Like +5 carry, faster repair and build etc.

50% damage while on walls when outnumbered :p

Xenesis.6389”

think that would just make the hamsters in the anet servers explode.

Every time you kill a player in WvW, it kills an ANet server hamster. Please think of the hamsters!

Straegen.2938:

The score is a measure of dominance in a particular category. Changing the score will have zero effect on the meta or actual enjoyment for most players of this game.

As we say around our office, stop counting widgets instead value production. This means the metrics (score) is relatively meaningless compared to the performance (in this case enjoyment) of a system. They need to fix the fun factor not the score.

Outside of breaking ANet’s iron grip on “You must be happy to see more players! Never hate other players!” mentality, the only other way I see to retain this is to remove the concept of “fair”, which would require large changes in map design, or other strong handicap systems.

Any thoughts ? This has been one of the hardest topics to find solutions to for the entire WvW lifetime.

I’m too lazy to go into the numbers and stuff, but it looks fairly fine except for little match variety.

Especially tier 1+4 would end up with 2 static servers and 1-2 that sometimes changed back and forth. And in case of T1 could possibly end up stagnant for 2-3 weeks in a row. On the positive side, even if say T3 is stable and competitive, the big server in T4 doing well enough could force a rotation, so I think it has some good sides.

It can create some interesting human interactions though. Like if 1-2 servers are just sick of another server they’re playing against, they can either focus it, or just take a break for a week and let them score run away, to get rid of them for a week. So expect some servers to game this.

Regarding competitive, I agree that if they want to actually make a competitive mode, go all the hog way. Make a GvG (like) mode, that functions like a PvP match on WvW maps. Pick one map (EBG, ABL, DBL, EOTM) and get together 2 or 3 guilds/teams of 40 each or more. And set off 2-4 hours and play. That is the only way to make it actually competitive.

Once they do that, normal wvw is likely going to get mashed into a EotM system to cement it as casual once and for all.

Chinchilla.1785

(That sounds like something I suggested once, forgot where)

Iirc I suggested that server split system as a way to use with the linking, it would sort of end up as only 1 tier having full time coverage, but essentially everyone would also be a part of those “off hours” servers, even if they didn’t play there.

Basically anyone that ever played later than NA prime, into NA night, would also be part of one of those 3 servers. So you could continue to play, but everyone at that time would be forced into 1 match-up.

Not certain exactly how that would work, but I suspect (Strongly) that it would have to function as a server transfer, and thus you would have to get thrown out of the game every 6 hours, to change servers for 5-10 minutes. Plus a whole slew of other problems, like different map states, and 4 auto throw outs a day etc.

Unless they worked some magic with the linking system, to temp swap everyone onto the other time servers, dunno how that work since I’m not a ANet engine dev :p

But for all practical purposes, this means, EotM during all non-prime hours. Still kinda like the idea, but not certain if I would want to see it implemented. Sorry for babbling.

(In no particular order or structure)

To those that says that “ANet needs to make Links actual fair and equal in size”. The only way to actually do that, is if the servers magically have the right numbers to mesh together at the right sizes, and even then, they would have to close all transfers, AND somehow force players on losing servers to keep playing, so the numbers holds up.

“Herding cats”

Regarding a Tier5, Kaineng vs Eredon Terrace vs Anvil Rock ! GO! I’d love it, but I don’t think most others would :p It would almost feel like an old school reunion or something, complete with the awkward steps of the first boy to walk over and ask a girl to dance, red in the face, and room wide snickering.

Xenesis.6389 + Johje Holan.4607

1) Bit random, but I think a mix of balanced matches, and changing match-ups would be a good thing. This is one reason why I’m a fan of the idea of reseting glicko each link, get bunch of random matches first month, and then have everyone settled into tiers the second month. Bit of both, bit of change, bit of stability.

2) So basically two leagues, high pop ad low pop. And just accept that they don’t mix. I think I suggested something similar for the old gold/silver/bronze once before, but I could see it work well with a more gold vs silver approach. Since most people doesn’t want to be on the old bronze style population. Also a big fan of having 6 servers in each group for rotation, unlike just 3.

3) All in favor of some sort of glicko reset, as said above partial to just reseting glicko back to 1500 on each reset for all servers and let them work itself out. Considering how each link is going to basically be a new “server” the idea of keeping old glicko ratings just feels dumb. The whole CD+++ situation showcased that pretty well.

It’s about as dumb as having a Chess tournament based on glicko rating, and then suddenly one of the players is changed out with another player that is lots better (or worse). Completely invalidates the purpose of glicko rating. Glicko needs a re-think, and to look into what purpose it is supposed to serve and how it needs to be changed (or replaced) to do so.

4) Agreed with Johje on this, hard merging will just remove any chance at all to try to counteract against stacking. While I can see the advantages from a community building perspective, it is also just begging for the old Tier lock’s to rebuild themselves. With linking, at least those can change every 2 months.

Do miss the frying pan.

Jeknar.6184:

rhayan.9580:

Doing manual adjustment was a mistake, please stop.

So you are saying that they should just have left CD stuck in T4 for the entire link?

On the bright side, CD is also draining glicko from YB/SoS, so next reset, I think all 4 servers are going to be closer to each others, but further apart from T2.

On the negative side, T4 is going to end up with “what T3 reject server do we get this week…”

They really should put some kind of locks on the Glicko, either a max/min number to avoid too rampant run-aways. Or a small adjuster each week, subtracting/adding a small amount to each server to slowly focus them back toward the median (1500). Or just reset it each linking and let the chaos sort itself out for a month, before it settles again.

@OP:

Agreed that Band-wagoning is the core of the problem, especially in the “fun” part of the game. You want to run around and find roughly same amount of people to fight from all sides at as many times as possible during the day. That is when the most players generally find it fun.

Unfortunately it seems these BW’s doesn’t like this type of fun, and find more fun in karma-train and PvD or something, possibly also running over lone roamers with 40 players and shouting about growing chest-hair.

Anyway, I think that the game should reward less, the more you rely on others for the job. Aka, divide the rewards on the amount of players around you. This would gut the ones that BW’s for the rewards, reward-tracks, karma-train etc. And rewarding people to split up into smaller groups and take things for yourself. It would sort of be a way to teach players to be more independent, and risk vs reward, to find a “size” that works for you.

Never going to happen though, because of ANet game design philosophy. Also, there are probably a dozen other problems with this that I can’t think of right now, that I’m going to get peppered for.

But basically, find their motivation to BW, and gut it.

Largely agree with you Yuffi, just commenting on this:

I agree that perhaps the right way to do linking would be to monitor (and publish) the scores for every server, and then create links based on score combinations. This method acknowledges that some players are more skilled.

I don’t know if that is the right thing to do, after all improving in the game should also be rewarded and skill should be a deciding factor for winning. Not just the outnumbered.

So I think them aiming for roughly equal participation/numbers, without looking at the overall skill-levels (however they would accomplish that) is fine.

Also, how are you going to count points from different servers when we have everything from 1-4 servers in the same team. :p that is going to get messy.

b)Server’s population is all about player on the server(pve, wvw, pvp)

This was changed, server population is based only on WvW activity (not counting EotM iirc).

Kaspar.3892:

So everyone always wants to have 24/7 coverage for their server in wvw in the higher tiers, right? Well, here’s an easy solution for you.

Mix EU/NA and ZH (if possible) servers.

Now you may have some concerns with latency issues. Simple solution to this, transition the server over time so that during EU prime time, the wvw servers are using an EU server as the host, during NA time, it uses an NA server, and if we can somehow fit ZH servers into the mix, have a ZH server active during ZH prime time.

Thoughts? I think it’d be a good place to start. If any devs have input they’d like to place as to why this wouldn’t be possible, that’d also be great, such as why EU and NA have to be separated and can’t be combined in this manner.

Not possible (as is). They have told us before that this can’t work, the way they work they have 2 different data-centers, and to change from one to another would be the same as a transfer. So this solution would disconnect everyone every 8 hours (example, if using 3 different time centers), to transfer the entire data-center over to the next one.

Unlike just a transfer, this would likely need to include a complete data-dump to get all the players that has player and done things the last 8 hours etc, and would likely take more time than the few minutes to transfer single account.

The only way to change this (that I can see) would be to either: Make 1 data-center for entire world, so who gets the lag? or: Completely redesign the server/data structure, which likely will be about as much work as building a new game engine.

Straegen.2938:

joneirikb.7506:

There are quite some threads about this already, and no one are really near any good solutions to it either. We just don’t have the metrics to really say anything.

Fair-weather players, school schedules, time zones, guild moves, etc make aligning matches very difficult. There isn’t an easy answer. The only “fix” is to leave the Server v Server system which is fundamentally flawed in every game that uses it but that just isn’t going to happen in a game where WvW is a side show.

Agree with this.

I think that the current T4 match-up was as close as they could get to “Balanced” when they made it according to their previous 2 months of data/activity etc. But the moment the new match-up’s where set up, everything changed.

As Straegen said: Fair-weathers, schedules, time zones, guild moves, etc.

If all of those shift around for every single match-up, how the kitten is ANet ever going to be able to create a “fair” match-up ? The “fair” part is removed after reset, when the majority of players have decided how the week is going to end, and thus doesn’t bother playing any more (self fulfilling prophecy btw).

A thought: Perhaps if we actually had server movement, so we would meet new servers each week, that it would stay fresh enough, that people would play and try for at least a few more days before giving up? Don’t know if that would work, but if match-up’s changed more often, we wouldn’t know exactly what we played, and with the links, the “servers” also change every now and then, so we would b even less certain what we where facing.

If you’re still leveling, gearing isn’t all critical yet. I think the most common thing (at least what I do and the people I know) is to just buy a set of blue/green as a complete set every 10 levels or so, from the Trade Post.

The major part of gearing comes once you reach level 80, where you will want to find a build you want to play, and buy gear after that.

If you save up your badges of honor over the leveling, you will be able to buy a bunch of level 80 exotics for cheaper from the WvW Armor/weapon traders. Will still cost you a few gold, but much less than buying a set of the TP.

You can also buy some level 80 Exotic armors etc with Karma in PvE world (But these can’t be salvaged, just a warning so you don’t put expensive runes in them).

There are quite some threads about this already, and no one are really near any good solutions to it either. We just don’t have the metrics to really say anything.

I’d recommend to read the other relevant threads, and post in those instead of making a new one, and basically repeat the same arguments.

I thought Illconceived Was Na.9781’s post in the active thread of “Counting” was pretty spot on. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/counting/first#post6255542

Curious about this as well, but more in the angle “what was the numbers when they made the link, and how much did they change once people transfered around, and fair weathers dropped like dead fish.”

The impact of that movement is what I’m the most curious about.

When Reset changed back from Saturday to Friday, they held a poll on it. Where they stated specifically that there was absolutely no way it would go back to the same time on friday. And everyone pretty much went frothing at the mouth and screamed “YES FRIDAY!!!!!” and completely overlooked that it would have to be later.

Then everyone started complaining about it afterwards. Forgot when it was, somewhere around easter ?

Short version, ANet set down the foot, said you’re not getting it earlier, due to their release schedule of patches for friday if needed. Several threads ongoing about this, last one got locked. You’ll have to search to find the full stuff.

In short, just be glad it isn’t saturday.

Actually, in general WvW, instead of gliding, how about a parachute ? So we at least don’t jump over edges and expect to survive etc, while in reality we pummel to our Wily-E-Coyote impersonation 101 crash course.

Xenesis.6389:

Rayya.2591:

Akkeros.1675:

why dont we just remove the gates too?

That’s actualy a verry good ideea
Any decent scout would be able to give reports in time before enemy arrive at the objective , and you need over 30 seconds to kill the lord.
The terrain advantage is more than enough for defenders and close respawn
They need to fight if they want to defend not afk behind a dor

That basically turns everything into a camp, not sure how’s that a good idea other than wanting to k-train all the time.

Attackers always have the advantage when attacking structures, until they’re spotted by scouts that bother to report, and if that doesn’t happen then it’s up to the walls and gates to hold that force until defenders can be rallied to counter.

Also this would make thieves an even bigger pain being able to walk wherever and gank whomever they want, take out whatever seige they want. There wouldn’t be any point to scout, siege, or defend, might as well just let them have it and backcap everything.

Pssstt Sarcasm.

Couple of thoughts:

I would love a small Roaming Tier, however they would end up making that. But I do agree with others here that it really does take all types of play to make WvW. Focus on one aspect (Roamer, Havoc, Zerg, Scout, Defender, Dueler) and lessen/ignore the others, and the entire mode suffers.

One way to solve it, and that also fits into what Skynet quoted, is to create specific maps for specific play styles. So far we’ve had total of 4 maps, all designed around the roughly same principles. But what if they made entirely different maps, where there will be no advantage at all to zerg ?

Svarty.8019:

I find that the thing that’s missing is fights, not objectives.

It often seems that if your side can cap one keep without a fight, the map will turn your colour.

So the NUMBER of objectives is fine, in my opinion, but we need a way to make mismatched battles more viable encounters for smaller sides.

• At the moment small groups either avoid big battles or wipe.
• All-too-often we see a server’s small groups unable to participate in the game at all.
• Defending an objective with a small group is a fool’s errand and with the abundance of superior siege, almost impossible.

Well, I ended up railroading your thread, but it’s a related topic. Sorry.

Agreed, really don’t feel encouraged to fight enemy players in the current system. But the only way to give the smaller server a way to fight back is efficiently a handicap of some sort ?

Lots of problems with the current system, but I think this might be one of the largest ones:

1. Dying is frustrating when you don’t feel you could win

While I think it could be fun to try a week with no AC, I’d be more in favor of rethinking/redesigning them.

If AC’s did 0 damage, thus it for one thing can’t damage siege. But applies various conditions or other pests with the shots instead, to create a zone people don’t want to stand in for too long.

1. could be a basic bleed
2. the current cripple, perhaps with poison to counter healing/rez
3. make a own “Slow” that slows down siege skills

If balanced right, it would be a great tool to slow down, or create zones enemies doesn’t want to stand in too long, and to support and assist your own guys fighting them. But won’t let you kill enemies by itself (unless they stand in red circle with multiple bleed stacks).

The AC just feels a bit like the odd siege that seems to miss an actual design. Oh and also Ram’s, forgot the last time I’ve seen rams, it is much easier and just as fast to cata walls instead.