Guild Wars 2

PariahX.6970:

I am afraid they might have painted themselves into a corner with the concept of the “home” map system which requires 3 copies of an identical map for fairness so each side side always has the same point potential in three-way mirror images. I would love to see ANET break themselves out of that habit in some way that maintains the equality but gives us WvW access to all of the maps for more choice.

That might require some overhauls to the existing EotM & EB maps for better color balance and point total potentials. 4 maps, one of each if you add HoT & Alpine sounds like the ideal goal for once they start with the rotation plan at least until they make another map in a few years I guess. Just don’t think the regular WvW populations can take more than 4 maps unless they drastically lower the population caps on them which they might have to do when HoT hits anyways given how laggy every new thing always is.

+1

I’ve posted before (long post, lots of horrible words and terror) about both the idea of removing the home map idea, as well as having a system that can scale the amount of maps to the amount of players (which could have some interesting effects upon coverage/ppt as well as the feeling of dead maps/tumbleweeds).

But for once I shall word myself in brevity, and avoid repeating all that, so if interested search them back up

Regarding the turrets, unlike EotM where they are all over badlands. It looks like here they are located inside or very close to the 3 keeps. And you can disable them by claiming *2* of the shrines around the keep (which is going to be SO META to do before attacking a keep! that I’m more worried about ever getting to enjoy those bonuses during a siege...).

On to something entirely else. Judging from all the comments about "pve" in wvw maps... I would strongly urge ANet to make a copy of the good old "Alpine" BL, and put it up as an "extra" map, either under normal WvW match-up’s or under EotM matchups. AND REMOVE ALL NPC’s save Dolyak’s. All events, and remove PPT from it entirely. Just a blank empty map with dolyaks.

I would be bored out of my skull, but I’m very interested in how all these people would actually like that ?!

Pretty much agree with what Sorel and Dawdler said.

They stated somewhere that they hadn’t decided on how the rotation would work yet, and that it was one of the things they wanted to look closer at during beta testing. But yes all 3 borderlands will be changed out at release for a bunch of weeks, so everyone can explore the new map.

I would love Dawdler’s idea myself (EBG+Alpine+Hot+EotM), but I really have no idea how EotM would work as a BL, it sounds better as an extra EBG style map. (And as stated plenty of times before, I’m not a fan of the "home" map system, or we could have added EotM as an extra map with no issues).

Nuzt.7894:

joneirikb.7506:

hedix.1986:

Server merge (which is needed anyway) would be a much better solution to the population issue that removal of existing content – which only brought player grief in the past (cough Living Story) and caused a lot of people to quit the game.

There are some of us who don’t wish to play jumping puzzles. We can either stay content in EB and Alpine or leave GW2 completely.

Why do people wish for queue’s ? The problem isn’t “prime” time (for most servers), it is everything else. Server merging will just make even more people in prime time, and no change in everything else.

Merge’s wouldn’t create Queues on every server, there would still be lower populations (unless Anet went full kittened and merged everything into 3 servers). Here’s the thing, I personally understand some people like smaller populations for roaming or whatever their reason may be but, keeping a dead server active because the 2 people on that server like it that way is not good for business. At some point they will need to merge servers and those few people who love having no one to play with or against will either have to come to the realization that Anet is a business that needs to do whats best for the business or they can quit.

Right now if you go to any server T4 and under you can easily roam solo or small man without getting steam rolled by a blob every 10 min. That right there tells me that 1/2 the servers are dying a slow death. Sure the xpac will bring some players back and some might even stick around for the long haul but I down its going to rejuvenate all 24 servers.

Most silver servers can already queue about 2 maps on reset, 1 on other days.

Most bronze servers can queue EBG on reset, and randomly other days (Just ask SF).

At best, you could probably combine some of the bronze servers, and get them to silver status population in Prime time. And still be dead every other time. But even in T6 NA now the population in Prime time isn’t the main problem against T5 servers.

From what I read about the EU bottom tier servers, they might actually need it.

Now my wet dream would be to remove "Shadow Arts" trait line, so I could actually *fight* a thief, and not just see them repeatedly flash in and out of existence every 4 seconds.

hedix.1986:

Server merge (which is needed anyway) would be a much better solution to the population issue that removal of existing content – which only brought player grief in the past (cough Living Story) and caused a lot of people to quit the game.

There are some of us who don’t wish to play jumping puzzles. We can either stay content in EB and Alpine or leave GW2 completely.

Why do people wish for queue’s ? The problem isn’t “prime” time (for most servers), it is everything else. Server merging will just make even more people in prime time, and no change in everything else.

Finally. (+15 signs)

Just opening for 20vs20 in custom arenas would also go a long way.

Move the Obsidian Sanctum map from WvW match-up to EotM Match-up. (red/blue/green = more servers to play against. Spawning new maps when full. Doesn’t take up queue’s for other maps).

Keep hearing that SoS have the lowest NA population of the T2 servers, but stronger at other times. But someone with better knowledge should probably answer this.

They have not decided yet/not announced yet, how they are going to do the rotations. If they swap all 3 BL’s, or just some or random etc. They might give the existing "alpine" to the top server, and the new "Ziggurat/desert" to the lowest and randomize the middle etc.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Would it be a good thing ( let alone possible) for wvw to be changed so that high tier servers are paired up with a low tier server as one team?

Yeah this has been suggested a few times before, it isn’t a bad idea by itself, but it does have some problems.

• Coverage
• NA Prime Queue’s
• Communication
• Community
• Blaming each others.

An example: FA gets paired up with AR whom has a big NA Prime presence, but next to nothing outside of that, when FA already have enough queue’s many days that players can’t play. Where if DB got paired with Kaineng they would only get trivial number of people on NA Prime time, and perhaps some 20-30 at night time.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Not saying it would definitely balance things up, but I think it would make low tier players WANT to do wvw more without having to transfer servers.

There is also this, a good bunch of us down here in the “bronze wasteland” actually enjoy it here, you know the whole rugged survivors of hostile terrain and stuff :p

If this happened, and all bronze servers would be matched up with gold/silver servers, I would probably quit playing NA, and move my account over to EU, so I could play night time. I can’t stand zerging and really love the roaming down here.

Some of us like the lower population. Please leave 3 servers for us as well.

From the sound of things right now, more queue’s -_-’

I am both for and against this. I think Keeps and perhaps Towers could need some more guards in general, considering most of the people I often see when I play can solo them.

But I think camps are fine as they are, we do after all need something to do solo as well.

But I think a lot of this could be improved in other ways to, use more variation in the guards than just the two one used nowadays, add more cabalists and zealots etc to the usual guard rotation. Perhaps make more variants, like taking the NPC test dummies in HotM and use those as guards, could be interesting. Would make them slightly less predictable than the current ones.

At the same time, it really ticks me off when you randomly hit a deer or something with an aoe, and aggro the whole lot. Deer should flee first, not go red and berserk you. Wolves should attack in groups and only against few players, etc. This would also help for those that hates npc’s getting caught up in combat, if a Moa’s first reaction was to flee away from combats (even just being near them). While minotaurs might actually charge on the whole lot.

Shademehr.1397:

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

Every time I mention how coverage works to someone that isn’t familiar with this game, this is the response I get, so I think there might be something to it. I would love to see a test for this.

Tribio.8531:

Rieselle.5079:

We want server pride, but most players have no idea about their WvW server and never consciously chose it.

Ok, who is this “We” you are talking about?
I love my server, I have a perfect idea how low it’s ranked..

I think he/she was referring to PvE players etc, that pick a server and never again notice that server thing, until they try to get 100% map completion and have to go to WvW.

I read the "we" more as a generalization of what many players on these forums and in the game has talked loudly about. Not as an absolute "every single player that plays the game" style. And as a generalization of often voiced concerns, and how they often contradict each others, I think it worked.

But yes, in general don’t ever use the word "we" on this forum. When I first started reading here I thought this was just some sort of quirk for this forum, but the more I have read here, the more I just realized that so many people with so many different opinions often wrote "we", even if that idea was completely against my opinions etc, which then made for a whole lot of posts I wanted to reply just to say "I’m not part of this we".

It is sort of a "good manner" thing here on the forum.

That looks hillarious, wish I could join :p

And this just made me want to go and see this "fractals" thing people are talking about...

There is only one Legendary Commander: Ajax Blue !

Come to Kaineng and experience the Legend yourself!

I’m going to give some of my views on this, and what methods I’ve seen that could change or moderate the problems of these. Not the answer, but food for thought.

Rieselle.5079:

We want fair matches, but we don’t want the same stale matchups.

Considering how difficult it is to get even amount of players on servers (the quote: “Like herding cats” comes to mind), a handicap system might work better. Not a handicap to PPT, since that will only strengthen the problem, but a handicap to fighting strength. Something like strengthening guards, make upgrades faster and cheaper, free supply X/timer, make normal siege function like superior etc. Preferably something that stacks in intensity, so when you’re down to Garri, n camp and perhaps the N towers, you can actually fight back hard. You’re still losing PPT hard, but at least you can still fight, and have some fun.

Make it so even overwhelming or underwhelming fights can still be fun, interesting and challenging ? One of the ideas I saw that could work in this manner, is that each team has a limited amount of npc guards and supply, and the more map you own the thinner they are spread out, while the less you have, the more is focused in that area. Imagine Garri with +100 guards.

Rieselle.5079:

We want to play anytime, but we don’t want coverage to be an unfair advantage.

I have seen propossed changes to the Point scoring that could fix a whole lot of this, I especially remember munkiman had some really good ideas about a point system that would change the whole coverage to still be an advantage, but not a decisive one. (I remember he posted that in the CDI population thread, if you’re interested).

Rieselle.5079:

We want to win, but we don’t want people to stack on the winning server.

I love this one, since there is practically no reason to win. But people are so hard-wired to fight to win, that they don’t even stop to consider that. 2 extra chests with blue/green is not exactly spectacular. I’ve started seeing win/lose more as a way that we can affect which servers we stand a better chance of fighting against. I consider a good match-up to be the “win”, and getting a bad match-up to be the “loss”. And if I was controlling the PPT efforts on my server, we would constantly be aiming toward sitting in the middle between 2 servers we liked to play against. Never ever trying to win just to win.

#specialsnowflake2015 or something :p

Rieselle.5079:

We want to have as many players in our map as we can, but we don’t want our opponents to have more players on the map than us.

I think answer 1+2 would help somewhat on this. But this is also dependent upon perspective, some (I admit the minority) actually like being outnumbered. organized groups and roamers for example. But being outnumbered would be less of an issue if you felt you could still fight back against them. I’d look at #1 for this.

Rieselle.5079:

We want to be able to fight in the numbers that we want (zerg/solo/roaming), but we don’t like bumping into a much larger group and getting insta-melted.

This is why I’m a large supporter of making different maps for different play styles, so people can go look for a style of play they favour (Unfortunately atm the home BL system makes this impossible). Several other things have been suggested,

I really liked the “sound indication” to zergs, so you could sort of hear the racket as a huge group got near, the larger the group the more sound (with a visual indicator as well).

Make objective champions scale with numbers, so 60 people take him down same speed as 30.

Rieselle.5079:

We want server pride, but most players have no idea about their WvW server and never consciously chose it.

We want Community, but we have no idea what sort of community we tie ourselves to when picking a server. I really think people should be encouraged to try other servers and find a place for themselves, not by having to read forums and visit server websites, but by playing with the people in question. But with the current server structure that is impossible.

But alternatives to servers is also poorly received because it would affect the existing communities. It is a delicate problem with no clear answers.

Rieselle.5079:

I guess this means that WvW will always be an unhappy balance between all of these opposing desires, and thus it will always be somewhat flawed?

“It is human to err, to err is to be human.”

If someone made a perfect game, then no other game would sell, ever again

But yes, WvW will always be “flawed”, the design in the first place won’t allow it to be perfect, simply because it is dependent upon other players to create the game mode itself. It definitively has potential for improvement, and it needs some actual safety guards vs players

Like this thread very much.

I think new players should somehow be allowed to wander about and find a community they want to be a part of before being forced to "settle down".

I think community is a great thing, and the single best aspect of this game mode.

I also agree that the community does not have to be "server based", but at this stage, to many feathers will be ruffled if this changes. People have grown to used to it.

Tspatula.9086:

It really doesn’t matter if the new map is EtoM lite or a super fun new map. The elephant in the room is Glicko score which rewards server stacking, and the problems associated with time zone population imbalances. A new map isn’t going to fix any of that. <snip>

Really the Glicko doesn’t cause the unbalanced match-ups, the problem is that the servers themselves are just so very different in “relative strength” that often there isn’t even 3 servers in the same power level to be matched up (even if you did manual matching), and even that would require a couple of servers to not get to play, since there honestly are no servers of similar power levels.

And the stacking is because the POINTS system and COVERAGE system allows it to let you “win”. NA Tier 1 might have ended up gaming the glicko system in order to make their own little world, but that to can be broken. And will if FA continues as they do.

A well thought out change to the “Points” system and how to deal with “Coverage” could potentially work. Or perhaps just give a sort of handicap system that focuses NOT on points, but simply by trying to still make it FUN to play while getting smashed in the PPT department.

I think the new map will be welcome, looking forward to explore a new map. I will see how it turns out when it is out, and I don’t think it will break WvW. The only thing I’m sad about is that this is another “borderland” map, which means we will be stuck with the “homeland” system forever, thus less map diversity.

Rotating teams ?

If you mean the weekly change of WvW colors, then that is based on Glicko randomization and rank. Each server gets a random number from -100 to +100 adjusted to its final glicko rating at reset, and new "rankings" are made for creating the match-up’s for the next week. Your servers placement in this after random defines what color you are.

So next week, if BG get higher points and rolls a larger RNG number on glicko adjustment, then you will not get green. If you’ve stayed the same color for a very long time then either RNG is randomly generatin numbers that doesn’t really change ranks, or the servers just have very large differences in rankings (example whatever T2 server gets dumped to T3 will be green, the glicko difference is just to darn large).

I’ve personally done WvW with groups/guild with up-level, and it can work, you just have to be aware of what you can and can’t do. Soloing camps is pretty much out of the picture for a long time. But I did start with an 80, so I was already familiar with WvW before that.

That being said, I found that there was always things you could do, even as an uplevel. Home BL scouting, upgrading, manning siege, building siege etc (Not claiming I’m good at any of that though, but it also teaches you to use the mortars and cannons etc, which can be handy).

But I have had lots of fun running in a group with up-levels, I try ti pick weapons and skills that I can use to help the party, setup CC and conditions for the rest of the party, since I don’t do all that much damage as up-level. For engineer I loved the rifle for knockdowns, pushbacks, and Imob. Kept running around just trying to setup enemies for my team mates to slaughter them. And the utility Mine that you can trigger for knockback and blast with healing turret. With thief I just loved using the imob shot, the various crippling daggers and arrows, and the interupt shot.

So if you have a group that don’t mind, you can still be plenty of useful

azizul.8469:

the flaw of PPT is that it only count at the final tick of the duration for the point, means server A could have hold structure X for a duration of 14 minutes, but server B can simply steal the points by capturing it just before the 15:00 tick.

they should pro-rate the point based on the time of holding per 15 minutes.

The main problem with that, is that it rewards the server outnumbering that can hold entire maps (T3 example). It will just give the dominating server even more points.

WvW is much more like what would be a "PvP server" in other games. Open World PvE with PvP enabled. And I think that is fine. The alternative, of enabling say PvP in the normal world map, well I sure would love to be able to PvP in Queensdale (to kill a bunch of those people in map-chat!) but it would make almost the entire PvE population rage-quit instantly.

So they made WvW. I don’t mind the "PvE elements", I even like a few of them, and how they have mostly placed some outside of the normal place (wurm, harpy, warg, grub, spirit etc, all placed outside where people usually run and fight).

Ideally however, they would be able to make more variation in maps, and cycle through them, so everyone could find at least 1-2 maps they liked. For example a map that is an abandoned ancient castle ruin, A map with no npc’s outside of spawn, perhaps just a couple of rats in corners, and lots of small and large rooms and halls, with broken walls, to run around and fight in.

I wouldn’t mind a map with more PvE stuff as well, to go to if sick of the other maps, or few people online etc. so you have something to do.

I’ve suggested before to split servers into groups depending on what game play you’re after. Gold = zerg server, Silver = fight server/all-round, Bronze = Roaming/duels servers. for example, and adjust the map caps accordingly.

That way people could pick a server depending on what type of gameplay they wanted. And then you stop the servers from mixing.

Obviously never going to happen.

... why ?

You guys change colors fairly frequently compared to many other servers, just check by ever friday after new match-up, you will get RED team soon, and you can just walk from citadel into garri and take it ?

Try being stuck in bottom 2 spots in T8, where due to glicko rating differences you have almost no chance at all, no matter how much random glicko adjustment you get, you simply can’t pull green at all. It took me 2 months to get green, and by then I’d gotten green BL map completion the hard way, one cata or ram at a time!

And then I threw away my 2 gifts of exploration, because there is no way in kitten I’m ever going to grind all that trash to craft a legendary.

Kessex Hills especially got a lot of the Toxic events added to it, which has raised the difficulty on that map somewhat. Things like the Kraits and Spider Queen etc are events from the Toxic stuff, and is generally harder than most other stuff.

Also, ranger is surprisingly good at handling most of the usual champions around in PvE, especially with some pet traits and something tanky like a bear. One of the easiest classes to kill champions with, so depending on what new class you picked, it can be a rude awakening.

Also, personal pet peve, its RANGER not ARCHER. *grumple*

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

…

There was just really no reason that the #5 server should ever have been matched against #10 and #11, who were 400+ glicko behind them. I think manual matchup intervention may be necessary at some times, like the one the OP mentioned from 2 weeks ago.

The way Glicko works:

• week done, scores locked in.
• Each server gets randomly added +/- 100 “temp” glicko points for RNG.
• sort server by the new order (by the temp glicko change)
• start on top, take the first 3 = tier 1, the next 3 is tier 2, etc.

So what happened is that #4 got a low random number, putting it under the other 3 servers in the “temp rating” used for making match-ups. Meaning that 5+6+7 was actually ranked as 4+5+6 while setting up matches. Then 8+9+10+11 are so close in rating, that ANY of them can get a (un)lucky roll and go higher than the others, lets say HoD got a +100, putting them ranked efficiently as 8th in “temp glicko rating”.

Because of how close 4+5+6+7 is and how close 8+9+10+11 is, any mix up of those are likely. There was 50 points separating 8 and 11 after last week.

The whole X amount of glicko point difference doesn’t matter if there are no other servers to be matched with.

And yes, you got out of T2 this week, so have fun ! And DH finally bit the T2 bullet!

Really love the outfit, except for the crystals, absolutely hate those. Not going to spend on this one. Which is a real pity, as they finally made a desert themed outfit.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

It makes you wonder what they were thinking when they picked the values to earn those achievements.

“These gets divided by 1000 in the actual game right ?”

@Jski: That was what I had intended for white swords, looking back I think I worded myself badly on that, thanks. I like the idea of having a slightly faster capture, would be a great help for smaller team trying to take things before the cavalry comes, but if the white swords gets changed it becomes less important. Good alternative.

At most, these changes would help out in a 5 vs 10 largely because of the extra targets, 5 vs 20 should still be very hard, and these changes should hopefully only make it slightly closer.

@zerorogue: Good point on the rally/outnumbered being a clear sign, guessing that most will be able to figure it out before then though.

The PvD is mostly what I see zergs do when they get Siege Disabled, this would instead force them to run off take a camp, get more supply, return and try to set-up some cata from a longer range (for ex), or actually wait for the Siege Disabler to finish. Or ust learn to spread out siege in the first place.

Not so certain about the outnumbered part as I’ve often gotten outnumbered in Citadel when people spot enemy coming out of spawn or hitting the south camps. But a certain timer to it would be nice.

@insanemaniac: I am well aware that ANet works at the speed of Glacial Ice but I also believe that they look at the forum and pick up ideas from it (yes, yes, I’m Naive, deal with it!). So yes, I will have fun brainstorming!

This was also part of the idea with this, to find ways to change the Outnumbered buff that would only compensate for the numbers somehow, but not changing stats or how a "fair" fight works out (fighting advantage). With the exception of the "rally" part, the rest of these shouldn’t affect a 2 vs 2 at a camp in any way. I’m still surprised that ANet gave us stat buffs on Bloodlust.

Thank you all for comments!

This is another case of "Those Guys!"/"Server Pride" style Beer Googles. Server A has 20 and server B sees 40, and other way around. No point doing it, and both are likely wrong anyways.

Also, don’t make this into a match-up thread, or it will get shut down.

(Trying to find the last time we where on topic...)

@Sane: We do have our problems (TS) but for the most part I see people are willing to work together. Not perfect, but neither a cesspool.

@Teon: SIN always likes to see new people, and have people to roam with And every SN that I’ve encountered outside of zergs have been nice chaps and willing to try stuff. I don’t really run much in zergs, so can’t comment on that.

If you’re interested in small map wvw (small groups, roaming, havoc etc), then just about every single bronze server would fit. Top 3 recommendation would be FC, AR and Kaineng. FC always run a bunch of small to medium guilds that can accomplish more than their numbers really should allow them to. AR have traditionally been a "for the fights server" though they’re starting to run a bit more zerg heavy these days. And Kaineng is that weird server that can’t outnumber anyone in NA prime time, so we’re very good at roaming.

I’m not so familiar with the PvP aspect of servers, but I’d guess those 3 also are fairly active in pvp.

What is PPT ? Is that the stuff that makes glicko go weird and put us together with servers way out of or under our league ? I think the game mode would be more fun without. :p

And yes the NPC scaling (another not so popular topic). There are several ways this could work: Scaling number of NPC guards, strength of guards, strength of champion, more aoe attacks for guards etc. But I’m going to focus on the Champion Lord. Keep them as is for 5 or less players, start scaling them above that, the goal here is that it should take *almost* the same time killing the lord with 5 players, as 10 players as 40 players. It is ok if it goes slightly faster with more numbers, but not slower (ANet’s philosophy that you should never be punished for having more players around you). The idea here is that eventually people will realize that they can take 2 towers at the same speed as 1, since the lord dies just as fast to 20 as 40.

---

The more I think about it, the more I dislike how Outnumbered triggers. Would have liked to have it a more dynamic ability that comes when you’re heavily outnumbered where you are, not on the other side of the map. Playing with the idea of having the Outnumbered buff trigger when a certain amount of players (2:1 ratio) are within 2400 range of yourself. So the Outnumbered buff was actually a huge warning sign, sort of feeling the ground rumble as a horde of enemies rolls inn on you standing watch on a tower wall. This would also allow for different bonuses and advantages (example a speed buff to represent you run away in fear ).

---

Ok, I’m done, you may all sigh in relief now.

(Curse you forums and your stupid 5001 word limit!)

-Elrik, the overly verbose.

Hello, long post time again.

Been trying to come up with ways to change the Outnumbered buff to help the outnumbered fight against the outnumbering, without messing up the actual combat (to much). The goal here is to come up with ideas that will help the outnumbered deal with larger groups, but not change how small group fights works, for this I’ve set it at 5vs5 and anything up to this and below should be unchanged. As always I also try to limit this to as easy or simple solutions as possible, so no complete redesigns of WvW etc. Changing the Outnumbered buff alone will not fix everything, and not even fix fighting against zerg/blob’s, but should be a goof first step in combination with a couple of other changes as well.

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: No stat boosts, no invulnerability, no perma stability, or any other knee-jerk solution. No matter what small groups must still be able to fight on even terms. If you got 5 man and run on enemy BL where they have a full 40 players, and you run into 5 of their players when taking a camp, that 5 vs 5 should be FAIR (as fair as WvW allows at least).

First off: I haven’t found any place that list if 2 servers can have the outnumbered buff at the same time or not, from what I’ve seen I’m going to assume that only a single server gets the Outnumbered buff, but if anyone can confirm either or it would be great. It can change how a few of the ideas work or not.

The actual changes:

Outnumbered (buff):

• Increase the number of targets on skills with +X (ex +2, perhaps as high as +5)
• Increase supply capacity with +5, and Supply usage speed by +33% (Build/Repair/Gather)
• When you die, you don’t trigger “Rally” on enemy players.
• White Swords on objects (remove them if not outnumbered).

Extra changes:

• Remove Player damage vs doors, Siege or nothing.
• NPC scaling to number of players. (speed ratio of 0.75 ratio per 1)

More details:

The increased number of targets is to be able to hit more enemies with attacks, and affect more allies with buffs. This should let a smaller group (say 10 vs 40 as an example) put some more pressure on the larger group and protecting itself better, without unbalancing things to much (hopefully, I’m sure some of you will prove me wrong). Just how much the +X should be is a matter of balance but I think 2-5 should be the extreme ranges. I was also thinking about adding the opposite, so the larger groups could target less enemies, but that would have to be tied up into an “Outnumbering de-buff” and ANet would never add that, because it would encourage people to tell others to go away so they didn’t get the de-buff.

More supplied for outnumbered should be pretty obvious, lets a defending team bring more supply and use it a bit faster to counter an outnumbering enemy. Same with the faster usage, lets them get a siege up faster or repair a door a bit faster, might help against a larger enemy. The other side of the coin, is that it gives Roamers and Havoc’s some more tools to play with when fighting behind enemy lines, I don’t think that is a bad thing but some may disagree. (Another option here would be to tie this bonus in with your home borderland, giving defenders a boost).

The whole Rally thing, this is to give an outnumbered enemy the opportunity to actually fight an attrition against the larger enemy. It is far from perfect, if the larger group wins they can still hard resurrect, and if they are many enough they can still combat heal them up fast enough anyway. Just removing the fight swinging mechanic from one side.

White swords is still a hot topic, and I’m probably going to get a lot of flak for this one. But changing how white swords work depending on Outnumbered could be really interesting. Give the Outnumbered server the advantage of surprise and thus encourage/force the larger server/map presence to use more people to scout. This again interacts a bit weird with Home BL, and a lot of BL defenders are probably inscribing my name on silver bullets right now. But if you lose white swords, it means you also have the numbers to scout and control things.

Now for the other changes; Removing PvD means you’re locked to using siege to open up towers/keeps, a huge group can’t just stand whacking at the door any-longer. This would make it much easier to defend structures with less numbers, a well placed siege disabler could cripple an offensive. Now this would obviously make Siege Disablers even stronger, but it would encourage the attackers to try out different siege placement than the usual 5 rams packed on door, 5 catas packed right next to wall, and perhaps use the actual range, and have people stand guard to defend the siege against incoming players with possible siege disablers. This again would help an outnumbered defender to force the outnumbering attacker to spread and spend the supply more around, and take a longer time to take the objective.

Done map completion on a single character, just to have done it. Nowadays I find WvW map completion easier than the PvE part, mostly because I don’t fall asleep in WvW >_<

And repeating myself, but we really need a sticky for map completion...

There are lots of servers with no queue’s, and lots of times of the day as well. I can see that this wouldn’t be a problem if you have a huge map queue. But for servers that next to never queue, this can be irksome.

Thankfully not been bothered by this myself.

Atherakhia.4086:

They need to bring in some MOBA elements in WvW to help compensate for the coverage issues. Like when outnumbered your structures are guarded by an army of siege razors and the lord is replaced by tequatl type stuff.

laughs

Would love this for a sneak attack event! I can just imagine a server callin to its guild “PvE’ers, we’re in trouble we need help, Tequatl just spawned in WvW! Please send reinforcements!”

In general tier 4-8 are good for roaming. I’d say T3 but unfortunately that place is pretty messed up. Also all the servers of t3+4 are rotating in and out ot T3 so you would be getting a taste for it no matter what (Except Darkhaven, that keep RNG dodge T3).

Most of silver (t3-6) are a pretty happy medium, you will have map queue’s at prime time, and various amounts of presence outside of that. But you should always find some place where you can solo roam or small group roam and feel that you accomplish something.

Most of bronze (t6-8) are probably what you would call ghost towns, since next to none of us have coverage for anything outside of NA prime (Kaineng excepted, we got coverage for everything EXCEPT na prime! Woo, special snowflake!), but most servers can put enough for a single queue or so at reset nights and occationally a day outside of that. But there is lots of roaming down here, always something to do, and always useful as every man counts.

Think about what kind of experience you’re interested in, how much people, what kind of guilds, what kind of opponents that you want to meet etc. Ask more questions in that direction and contact people on servers you could be interested in.

If ANet went with server merges in some manner, they would also need to make overflow maps for NA Prime Time, to deal with the queue’s. If not, then say you fuse together 3 servers, lets say GoM+AR+SoR into one server because it matches some random metrics that ANet might have etc. You would end up with a server that had queue’s on everything for many hours in AN prime, and be a ghost town rest of the day.

So they would need to have overflow maps for NA prime, so everyone could play, say 1 or 2 extra copies of EBG.

Alternatively, almost half the server will be stuck in EotM for half a day. That is virtually the same as saying "Hey, you 1-2 servers there, you’re not allowed to play WvW, go play EotM instead!".

On the other hand, ANet would not be able to adjust the amount ofm aps down during the night, because if they fought against one of the T1 servers, they probably have enough players online during the off hours to keep 3-4 maps active.

Yup, as Dietere said. Our server isn’t very organized all over, so we don’t really have a own forum or website any longer, also we’re currently in a mess with 2-3 TS’s.

But join KBL and hang around with different tags, and talk with people. Most guilds will be happy to take you in. SN is a good guild for people new to WvW, SIN and Owls are more roaming based if you like that play-style.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

DH was nearly 40 glicko points higher than us. How in the heck did we jump them to get matchup up with SoS? Its because they don’t mitigate the glicko differences except between T1 and T2. And, if there was ever a spot to not work on the difference, that would be the place.

Flip the logic, and work from the bottom up. Yes, a few servers (mine included) would get boned but it would help limit the number of go rounds in the Tier of hades.

Watching IOJ and NSP suffer for months. Now DH, HOD and SBI moving into that torture chamber, you’d think that Anet would have made at least a token effort to do something. Kitten kitten kitten kitten kitten

Remember that each server is given a random amount of points +/- 100 in order to randomize things up, so you’re not stuck with the same servers constantly. That is why DH had 40 points more, you still got rolled (DH could get -30 and you could get +30 for example). Without this, every server would meet the same servers every week until they shifted glicko with arctic glacier speed. This is also the reason we change colours in WvW, ever. So if we removed this, those seeking map completion would be completely boned until the server rise slowly 2 steps up or down in rating.

And working up or down does not matter, because after they add the random scores, they just move the servers after the new rating bonus they got, and match up the 3 closest no matter what side you start on.

The problem with the system is that it’s meant to work with a bunch of servers with fairly similar rating. Something we don’t have, the differences between servers are so big, that even 1-2 rankings difference means complete death (Just look at out match-up with crystal desert this week, that is server #14, #17 and #18, or SoR in T7 it is rated #19 and should be in T7, but doesn’t fit in any longer).

Glicko would have worked well, if the servers where even remotely similar in size. This is a problem that players have created, and ANet is sitting trying to figure out how to deal with. I wouldn’t be surprised if MegaServer was the answer they will end up with (EotM mode), because no matter what they do, people will be unhappy.

Personally I’m hoping they just completely remove points.

Pray to the RNG that it will be gentle with you, it’s the only thing to do for now.

@Mizu; @Jim: So very true

@Teon: Welcome back!

@Lapiy: Most of the players I talk to on Kaineng have no real desire to go to silver either, so at least the feeling is mutual. (We happen to like bronze)

Jim Hunter.6821:

party buddy.4956:

well you could replace AR with CD – im not saying these are perfect matchups, but maybe anet has better stats and could make an evenly matched event, I think it could be fun.

… You’re missing the point. Our servers have good primetime coverage, but we lack off hours coverage. Why would we want to trade our fun matchups with relatively equal sized servers for a match where we spend primetime sitting in queue and the rest of the time our server is getting kitten stomped by vastly superior numbers?

This. The higher tiers have eaten up most of the off time coverage. So even 5 people in off-hours makes a huge difference on bronze. So for example if you combined SoR and AR you would just get lots of queue’s at NA prime time, and still get ghost towns during the off hours. They might be able to get approx 5 people going through most of the off hours from both servers combined, which is then supposed to go up against however many a T1/2 server can field ?

arron.7348:

i know the higher tier servers have to deal with it all the time, but kitten . when servers like crystal desert get pushed all the way down to the bottom with small servers like mine, it’s just not fair. kaineng, at its peak, cannot even match the numbers of crystal deserts’ havoc parties that they have spread across every single map. no matter what the map is, i have the outnumber buff.

so for this, i bring forth a suggestion: remove the outnumber buff, at least on smaller servers, and just stop letting large servers pour in endless numbers when they already outnumber to such an extreme. there is no reason for it. simply start the queuing when there’s too many on one side.

Man up kitten ! :p

Kaineng can’t match any server on NA prime time. Just get used to it, go out there do what is fun, don’t do what’s not. Are we going to lose this week, well probably, sure looks like it. But since when did winning in WvW matter ?

Sure miss the GoMmi bears though.

You can buy normal blueprints with Badges of Honor from the second tabs at siege vendors. So you can save yourself some gold there.

Upgrading objectives still cost silver/gold.

And if you want superior blueprints, that tends to cost a bit on TP, or if you have the materials etc, you can make them yourself in Mystic.

Also, if you want to run the very best foods and utilities, they cost a good bit.

But nope, you’re not getting rich playing WvW. But it depends a bit further upon what play-style you like. I like Roaming myself, and end up going a bit in plus, but nothing much, perhaps 50s-1G on a normal day.