Guild Wars 2

roamzero.9486:

Instead of merging low pop servers they should merge BL maps. 3 BL maps +SM is too much for low tiers.

Make it 1 BL + SM + New HoT map.

I’ve been thinking about this idea a whole lot, I made a thread about this earlier as well. But I think it should have a system to adapt the number of maps to the amount of players. Though there are obvious problems with the idea.

But yes, for the lower tiers a reduction in maps wouldn’t be a bad idea.

The moment you have 0 buffs (of any sort) auto de-claim.

Could probably still make a vitality buff and claim, but it would certainly cut down on the amount of troll-claims.

Another option, let each place be claimable by multiple guilds, they bonuses can stack, and either find a way to show multiple claims (like different logos on different banners), or just make the one with the most buffs running show.

PS: My only gripe with the first one, is that I can no longer go steal North Camp on enemies BL, claim it as a challenge to them :p love doing that.

Honestly the best thing you can do is find a guild that plays WvW in a way you’re interested in (Roaming, Havoc, Zerg, Fights, etc), and party up with them. They will teach you things just by playing with them, see what they do, ask them why they do things the way they do, and ask for help with things etc.

I’ve found all the web pages, build sites, forums etc are great helps, but becomes so much easier to understand after you’ve already gathered enough base understanding simply from playing, that you can put them in the right context right away.

And above else, have fun! It is the best way to learn anything.

I’d agree that it is a good start. I went a slightly different way than Ark though I think his advice is good.

I went full celestial myself because I’m to lazy to fine tune all the stats, I probably would get some better stats by mixing and tricking some with it, but as said I’m lazy on stats but it does give me fairly decent offensive output while still retaining a good amount of defensive stats.

I usually use 2/0/0/6/6 for fiery wrath to help on the offensive, or swap back to 0/0/2/6/6 for purity if going up against large groups etc, also tried 0/2/0/6/6 for the vulnerability on blind etc, test it around until you find what you like.

For small groups, I’ve found that 2 stability is a bit over the top, so I have started replacing Stand Your Ground with Retreat, for near permanent swift, combo with swords leap and teleport, and if you’re sure you don’t need it, Save Yourself and you’re very mobile as well.

I’m a big fan of the runes of Trooper, and get all angsty if I have to put them away, with the current Condi heavy meta, I’m already having trouble cleansing enough condis as it is.

Also, I’m a big fan of sigil or energy on the weapons, since you have the Dodge Heal, which is very good healing and stacks very well with Healing Power, so 2 more rolls is great. It certainly takes away some from the damage output though.

*snort* Just had to post this idea, turn the outnumbered bonus around, and make it an "Outnumbering" penalty, and downlevel the outnumbering players somehow equivalent to how much they outnumber the other team :p

Never going to fly, because they won’t mess with penalizing other players, and specifically not drastically shift the power levels between players (good thing).

Wow, if we’re using 60 as a number, then the next match-up with anyone vs Kaineng would probably end up at 0 ticks for a week, it would actually be a hilarious week, as the winner would be decided by killing Yak’s, sentries, and Bloodlust stomps!

*signs up!*

Please oh please ANet, sneak attack event with this!

Nothing wrong with better rewards, just saying that it isn’t the reason for the unbalanced match-ups or the population problems. Better rewards is a Quality of Life upgrade. The top post listed it as one thing to use for attracting new players to fix the population/unbalanced match-ups.

"Pocket.2740"

Coverage – Time slice a day into 3 or 4 segments and award points on which server manages the most PPT in each segment to help cap ‘runaway PPT’ for those servers who have more coverage.

I have been thinking about this system a lot lately, and I can’t predict exactly how it would affect the game and matches, but I think it could be a very good start to handle the "coverage" aspect of the problem with WvW. I’ll probably make a post about this later trying to discuss it further (aka, wall of text incoming).

The problem with unbalanced servers have no easy solution, the "obvious" solution is server mergers. But there are a lot of problems related to it.

* 24/7 match system means that stacking NA Prime time doesn’t mean much when you don’t have the Night and EU etc. You can have 80players x4 maps x3 teams = 960 players battle it out for 12 hours to a close fight. Then everyone goes to bed, and 5-10 players on a single server can be enough to turn the entire match around. So just merging servers together without somehow dealing with this will only mean ques for everyone in NA, and no change outside of that. (PPT, 24/7, Nightcap)

* Server Pride: Some servers have a very knit community, breaking that could make many of them leave. SoR is a good example of this, many there would be furious if they deleted their server and leave the game entirely.

* Server Density: Some players just enjoy lower population servers, and forcing everyone onto 6-9 servers etc would make many of them leave the WvW mode. Or heck, transfer to EU to play on their night crew (as I would). Unless you somehow adds specific maps for those that enjoy a low population game mode, or have own dedicated low population servers, or some other way to keep these players happy.

* Just merging servers will just create this same problem again at a later time when the player population changes again, and they will either have to create or delete servers again. If they want to fix this, it will need to be some sort of flexible system that can self adjust (without kittening people off). The "Alliance" system mentioned in the DCI population Discussion is one example that could work here, but would need to be implemented really well, even small design mistakes on that could leave a whole lot of angry people.

* WvW rewards itself is not a cure for the population problems, but a very good thing for existing WvW players, since many resent having to leave WvW unless they themselves want to. It would be a Quality Of Life change for WvW’ers. Unless the rewards are so out of whack that people realize that WvW would be the most rewarding game mode in the game, then they would make it a second EotM which no one wants.

* I should also mention that the Glicko system while not perfect, does what it supposed to do. The fact that Tier3 is a train Wreck has nothing to do with faults in the Glicko or "wrong match-ups", but that the servers are just that uneven, and have nowhere else to go. They probably could make some changes and tweaks to it to open up for more variation so the same servers doesn’t get stuck in T3 each week, but then you would get a lot of more bad match-ups for everyone else, like T1 finally getting broken up, and T8 vs T6 servers etc. While those that wants to close the match-ups further to keep as balanced matches as they can get, will lock this further up for T3 etc. Choose your poison.

There are a lot of different issues that all goes together to create the situation we’re inn, and requires multiple things to be fixed. Server merges alone is not going to make any positive changes.

"Troll Claims" I think they are called. One good suggestion I’ve seen about it, is to automatically "De-Claim" once you have no running upgrades of any sort etc.

Deamhan.9538:

Couldn’t ANet just lock it so players on server A can’t transfer to server B if population of server B is greater than server A?

I don’t think this would work well at the moment, due to how ANet calculates the server population. Which seemingly include the entire PvE population, inactive accounts, and probably all their ranger pets and minis… (All NA servers tend to show up as “very high” or “full” in na prime time.)

adrielle.2109:

joneirikb.7506:

My own guild could probably scrounge up at least 5 people interested in giving this a go, and depending on how they enjoyed that, they might get more from the guild to want to try it etc. But I strongly doubt we could get 10 in on a first try. We’re roamers first and foremost, and when spotting the enemy we still scatter like a pack of squirrels in a peanut-butter factory.

And Joneirikb, while I greatly appreciate you keeping an open mind… 5v5 is really just tpvp and if I wanted that I’d do a hotjoin in Heart of the Mists. What server does your pack of squirrels belong to? :P Maybe the next time VOX is out roaming with small numbers we’ll try to meet up with you

Kaineng (signature), you’ve probably ran into a bunch of us this last week

Yup, you can look here for the full list:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Server#List_of_worlds

And if they had made a server named after Herta in the same style as Baruch, I would have been there :p

Don’t worry, in a few weeks time, when the Glicko gets good and ready for some tectonic shifting again, Mag is going to rise back into Silver, and probably drop GoM (or someone else) down to play with us in bronze, and by that time we (Kaineng) will have come and replaced you in T6

Heck, because of Maguuma doing so well this week, you’re losing Glicko rating so fast we probably will catch up in ranking next week. So you should get back to T7 in a couple of weeks.

I think this could be a good initiative. We could use something different down in Bronze, fight nights etc on thursdays would probably be a good idea.

But I think you might have to reconsider the sizes, while a 15 or 20 man group might work in higher tiers, we generally/usually don’t have the same amount of people interested in the same style here. I think 5-10 would be a more realistic number.

My own guild could probably scrounge up at least 5 people interested in giving this a go, and depending on how they enjoyed that, they might get more from the guild to want to try it etc. But I strongly doubt we could get 10 in on a first try. We’re roamers first and foremost, and when spotting the enemy we still scatter like a pack of squirrels in a peanut-butter factory.

Johje Holan.4607:

I agree. I’d much rather be able to use a "regular" skill than any of my Ele elites like we could in GW1.

In fact that goes for just about any class I play. Elites in this game don’t feel very "elite".

Very much agreed, I would love to have a 4th utility skill instead of the elites.

And yes, I’d gladly give you one of the tomes in exchange for the FGS ! Might even consider giving away both...

Honestly, I used to love that I had picked Norn on my Guardian, since a couple of hte elite forms (Bear and Snow Leopard) gave me something that I didn’t have from before, a way to run away from fights that went south (as in bad, no south camp), especially Snow Leopard was great for this, activate the stealth, then un-target, aim direction and hit the rush, nobody could catch up with you. This obviously made a lot of people very angry, and ANet largely considered this to be a Bad Idea. So they changed how the Bear/SnowLeopard rush skills worked, now they are so slow that a thief can probably teleport arrow right next to you the entire rush. So yes, back to the 3 seconds invulnerable one again, for lack of better options.

Wish they kept Sanctuary as an Elite as they had originally intended it.

oscuro.9720:

Bristingr.5034:

Fuzzion.2504:

When you say wild life, are u referring to the hairy Charr ?

Shots fired.

Could we get rid of sylvan I too, they are plants, plants are a part of the environment, therefore no more sylvari or charr. While we are at it, humans and Norns all worship nature, so we should scrap them as well.
ASURANS ARE THE MASTER RACE!

There is something wrong with this forum, I can’t find the -1 button.

Don’t know much about tier 2-4 so can’t help you there, but I think there are some changes incoming again, looks like a couple of servers might fall a bit down, and others rise up again.

And I don’t know if there are servers without trolls and negativity (or cheaters). We’re thankfully pretty light on those on my own server, goes with the low numbers I guess. But on the other hand, our "community" is "We roam!", so yeah.

You should probably talk about what you are looking for in a server, things like a general sense of numbers, coverage, what type of guilds you’re interested in etc.

I could probably say Kaineng, but you probably wouldn’t be interested in a server that can perhaps field 20 people over 4 maps on reset night (and for the life of us can’t seem to ever do the same thing at the same time)

*puts on the glasses* "Tell us a bit more about yourself, what is your wishes and dreams young man?"

Can my Guardian have your Fiery Great Sword ? Please, I’ll trade you a tome for it...

I’m tempted to say that just remove the entire gift of exploration, but leave it as requirement for legendary. That way I won’t have to see any more of those ugly skins :p

I’m so getting bomb hated now...

Krustydog.3072:

oscuro.9720:

Kaineng Right now we are the “strong” server in our matchup, but we don’t have majority numbers by any means. We will usually have one main group of ~10-15, and a bunch of small groups. We don’t care who is who, we show up, kill people, and cap their stuff. Granted, you have to like fighting outmanned and be willing to die doing crazy things (attempting 5v20s)

Opening day/night we whooped your kitten . You have night coverage we do not. THATS what makes you the “strong” server. Am I jelly? Maybe a little.

As I’ve said above, our server is a freak of nature. We don’t have the NA prime population to fight of, well anyone really. But we got steady coverage through most of the day, so we night cap back. When faced with a server with strong night cap we’re screwed etc.

You should have seen us against FC all summer last year, they had some night presence, so we just auto lost against them every single time.

oscuro.9720:

Kaineng Right now we are the “strong” server in our matchup, but we don’t have majority numbers by any means. We will usually have one main group of ~10-15, and a bunch of small groups. We don’t care who is who, we show up, kill people, and cap their stuff. Granted, you have to like fighting outmanned and be willing to die doing crazy things (attempting 5v20s)

Seriously, our server is a freak of nature, and not a good example of anything in this game. And our current Match Up is probably the games weirdest Coverage Match Up ever.

As a whole server I seldom see this kind of tactic used. But often specific guilds or people will do just this. If a server have enough organization to actually have server wide goals it can happen, but most are to fractured etc. Even organized servers have pug’s or guilds that will just do their own thing for various reasons.

So the whole 2vs1 thing is largely hype, most people on servers doesn’t care, and those guilds that think they can pull this kind of thing off etc are often to arrogant to make it work anyways. I don’t worry.

Didn’t they change the server bonuses after mega server ? Thought those didn’t work in PvE any longer ? (Don’t know).

Well, since the server transfering and stuff is automated anyways, they could just setup PvE Server 1-10+ and transfer people with 0 WXP over there. Would be rather fun to come and see all servers at "empty".

"lil devils x.6071"

That is why they need to make more maps like EBG, and resolve the issues with the borderlands. The problem is though the maps they are trying to fix the borderlands with will only make less people want to go to it instead of more if it is as linear( choke point to access map), and with " treacherous heights and traps" as their interviews suggest thus far. If they resolve the problem with the borderlands maps, and have more maps that are as enjoyable as EBG, then it will resolve the problem. Even low pop servers have everyone trying to go to EBG. If they had more than one map as enjoyable as EBG. They would be able to spread the population out on the different EBG style maps instead of have people who would rather sit in que for EBG while standing in Lions arch than go to a BL.

* We don’t know if it is more linear or not until we see HOW they have solved the tower->keep design and mechanics.
* We don’t know how the new heights and defensive mechanics will interact with the play style until we see the map and play on it.
* Not everyone find EBG the best, or only fun map. Entire guilds dedicate themselves to Borderlands.
* And nope, I can guarantee you that low tier servers does not ignore BL’s and only run EBG. At least no server I’ve ever played against (All of bronze save Maguuma, and half of silver).
* And those few that does refuse to go to BL’s, doesn’t bother stand in LA, they go roaming, patrolling, capturing, or defend things in EBG. Lower tiers is roaming territory.

"lil devils x.6071"

Honestly though, for the low population issues with NA, I do not see that being resolved unless they basically destroy all but 6 servers and add more maps to handle the population, since NA only has 24/7 coverage on 6 servers. IT is a player issue, or rather a lack there of, that causes the imbalance. They cannot force people to play, if there are not enough players there, there are just not enough players.

The problem is NOT that there isn’t enough players. The problem is that there are not enough players at all times of the day. The problem is PPT/Points and Coverage/Timezones, and this CAN NOT be solved by destroying servers. UNLESS you create so much quest that people aren’t allowed to play in NA Prime. That for one, would make me move back to EU server.

"lil devils x.6071"

IF they only had say 6 wvw servers, then they added and withdrew maps according to population times to handle the ques, it could solve the problem. They could have more maps during high population times, then take those maps away during low population times it would be much more balanced, and little to no ques.

Except for the whole 6 servers part, this is an interesting idea. Change the amount of maps to the amount of players. There are some problems with this:

* If you remove 1 Borderland it becomes very unfair, so you would need to remove ALL 3 borderlands at the same time.
* What happens with ownership, upgrades and PPT on borderlands ?
* How do you kick players ?
* How do you open them up again ?
* How long timers/safety margins are these builds around ?
* How does PPT change with the different amount of maps ?

(Note, ALL numbers are just examples I took out of my head on the fly)

With the current maps, I think that if the population falls under a certain number, removing all 3 borderlands by Freezing them, give a 15 minutes warning, after that just freeze them out, no PPT etc, and you can’t enter them except for your home map for the services at citadel. But put everything on RI or otherwise non-capture-able. When the numbers is large enough that you’re close to get a que on EBG again, open them up again.

If the numbers are large enough that you can start queing 3 maps, then open another copy of EBG. And keep it up until you no longer have the total number to fill more than 2 or 3 maps.

When maps are closed down, give a 15 minutes warning, then forcefully move them out of the map to another map, enemy BL to friendly BL, EBG" into EBG unless to many then select BL to go to.

Let us say that it counts the average over an hours period to decide if it needs more or less maps, to avoid sudden spikes or mass leaving the map (still game-able somewhat).

And since I have no idea how the current Glicko system counts the PPT points, just use percentages of the PPT to affect the glicko.

If we moved away from the "home map" system, this would be much easier, as we didn’t have to worry about the equality of home BL’s, and could just add or remove single maps as needed.

*

Also, please stop Blanket Stating.

Map completion at bottom tier:

* Get some friends/guildies and go night capping (weekdays best).
* Try to get people together for a zerg large enough to take out a specific map you need (repeat each week for maps you need).
* Sit patiently and wait, check every week until you randomly get the color you need.

That’s it. We really need a sticky on this.

Yes the last spot(s) tend to get the unlucky stick on color variation. Remember the same problem back when my own server was rank 23/24 etc.

On the bright side, in tier 8 you can get most map completion by either finding or organizing a zerg and take over green map, or capture things at night time, especially if you get a couple of friends to help out.

You can wait it out and get the colors (which is tedious and long).

Or, start night capping with friends or guild, you can end up getting most things in a week if you or some of your friends knows a bit about WvW.

lil devils x.6071:

No, and I know people would leave GW2 over it if it happened, it is far too linear of a map.

This is why I don’t want it to replace EBG. EBG is to important for the mode and a huge part of the players. Even my server have people that near refuse to leave EBG, and we’re a very roaming heavy server with very little zerging.

But yes, putting EotM in instead of a single Borderland would cause problems with the “home map” system. Which is also part of why I suggested in another thread to remove the “home map” idea, so we could have more variety in the the three non EBG maps.

But yes, make a slight change to the existing Borderland map so its a stand alone single map, and then put in EotM as a second map, and the new Ziggurat map as a third for example. And naturally EBG in the middle. I think that would be a really fun week.

"lil devils x.6071"

...

Regarding the new map and the killbox idea, we haven’t seen it yet, but I would rather guess that it means that you have to take a TOWER in order to get access to a KEEP’s door. Not a complete block of the BL’s Spawn. That would be rather silly, and I do have confidence in ANet to not make that kind of silly mistakes. As said, we don’t know yet, either or any way at all. But it makes the most sense that they use towers as restrictions to get to the actual KEEPs. So hold your horses and don’t sell the eggs before they’re hatched etc.

And just because they said that the map will include more use of heights etc, does not mean EotM style you trip -> you die. And I personally think that a map with lots of small heights that can be used tactically in combat, would be great fun! It is something I’ve wished to see more of, that would encourage some new strategies. If all the heights are roughly the height of a keep wall, you’ll only get some minor fall damage, and just have to run around to get back into the action again. Tactical!

(1) So far we haven’t been told the actual player numbers in Stronghold, it might end up actually being larger than 5vs5, who knows (well, ANet). So until they announce this there is no point arguing on this point.

(2) Do agree on giving rewards on defence, anyone willing to defend deserves to be rewarded!

(3) If ANet gave out an expansion pack with nothing but bug fixes, they would be lynched :p Also bug fixes is the task of the support, not of the expansion pack devs. Now I absolutely think they should put some more people on the support section to get things fixed faster, but that is their choice and their business.

And I personally think that more WXP traits and siege variations of the same (like guild golem) is just silly toys we get tired of in a couple of days anyways. Would much rather see them actually come up with some new features and even *gasp* maps, every now and then.

Also, we already have EBG, and I still don’t like it. I think it is good that they make more different maps, instead of creating just more of the same, encourage more variation, new strategies, different styles of play.

(4) Ironically, I think that the new BL with the bust the towers to get to the keeps will actually get you lot of what you asked for here. People will (most likely) be defending the towers better, and when it falls fall back to the keeps, and you can end up having battles between tower/keep, where group tactics, proper siege use etc will be very important. It will telegraph over the map and get people running to defend in no time, since losing one tower, could spell losing half the map pretty quickly.

And just to be contrary: We do actually get new weapons and skills... (specialization for each class) heck we even get a new class...

(*) Do agree that we really should be able to be self sustaining in WvW

On the whole I don’t really disagree with a lot of what you say, but just don’t like the way you say it as if "we" as in everyone wants exactly what you say, and there are quite a few people on these forums that dislike that people try to talk for them. I think that many would like what you suggest, probably a whole lot of the existing upper tiers, but that doesn’t mean everyone does.

It is fun reading your posts though, so thanks

Synosius.9876:

What if i want everything?

After reading this post it occurs to me... ppl just have some rly weird expectations when it comes to wvw. Its almost as if they dont want an open pvp mode when they say they do. Why does everything have to be tightly controlled?

I see continuity with the other bring back OS thread. Ppl dont like being attacked when theyre not rdy. They cant handle... be rdy all the time! The more they start controlling wvw the less community we have.

Well for one thing, you can have a bit of everything in most servers, just not at every given time. Even down in the bottom tiers you can find zergs at least a couple of hours in prime time (except a few really weird servers). And lots of people report that you can indeed roam and evne solo roam on the Tier 1 servers, so everything is possible already. But how often can you do that ? If you like to zerg most of the time, and only rarely want to roam, then obviously you will like the higher tiers better than the bottom. And if you like me like to roam and get allergic rashes if staying in a zerg for more than 10 minutes, well, you’ll like it in the bottom tiers.

And yes I agree, we have a huge amount of people, that all look for something different. Humans are wired like that, we never ever agree (Gotta love ’em, they makes life interesting!). And ideally we would have a setup that gave everyone the freedom so play as they liked at any given time, but when that includes other players it gets incredibly hard to accomplish.

Long winded way of saying I agree to pretty much everything you said.

nekretaal.6485:

I am in Borliss Pass.

We are in last place of the worst tier. Yet, we queued maps last night in prime time. Our server is not dead. Our problem is night capping and times of the day when we have no coverage.

This thread pops up every 2 weeks.. Always some poster from t2 or t3 wants to merge off the bronze servers to solve their coverage gaps. However, the bronze servers have the same coverage gaps in the same times as you do!

So merging servers accomplishes nothing.

The problem is the 24/7 game mode and the china/europe/NA split. Games are decided by who has coverage in the off hours. Until this is fixed, WvW populations will flock to the servers who do have coverage in off hours, making he problem worse.

What needs to be done is a total overhaul of scoring.

Let’s say there is a pole and every 15 minutes you can whack it for one point. If 150 people whack it, 150 points. If 20 whack it 20 points. This would be an improvement over current scoring, because the work of 20 people at 5 am doesn’t disproportionately affect the match. But even this doesn’t solve coverage.

First of all, I take offence to you calling T8 "the worst tier", I have fond memories of Tier8, and almost always enjoy the games I have there (top or bottom, doesn’t matter, we’ve been all over it).

Also, very curious how you think I encourage to destroy or merge servers ? I’ve specifically said in both my earlier posts that I do NOT want to Merge/Destroy servers! And heck, I’ve also listed my server in my signature, Kaineng definitively is not in T1-3 :p we fought you last week!

And yup, I know you guys can still que maps, we felt it! (We can’t!)

But aside from those minor points I completely agree with everything else you said. This is not supposed to be a fix for Coverage/Population/PPT (Which I also stated in a previous post), it is merely a "What if" scenario to think a bit out of the box, and hopefully get some good discussion.

Personally I agree that PPT needs an overhaul, but I don’t like the suggestion you had there, that is merely making PPT more worth it in NA Prime than any other time, which will kitten off the people playing at other hours. I’m very fond of a suggested Point alternative posted my munkiman.3068 in the CDI threads if you’re interested in looking it up.

---

thank you all for the posts!

Yeah had to check this after reading this thread earlier, and 3 servers full, the remaining 21 very high.

Oh definitively, this is not a fix for PPT, Coverage, or really population. This is mostly just about encouraging people to find a play-style then can enjoy.

*If* this was to be a *part* of a complete solution to WvW, it would only be as a minor part of a whole lot of other things that actually fixed the main problems.

This is only meant as food for thought, and that we should try to retain different play-styles, so the largest amount of people can find a place to play the game how they like. Which certainly is not caused by deleting the top or bottom 6 servers. Nor by making WvW into EotM mode, as that would probably make huge parts of the lower tiers stop playing.

This idea was centered around marking different servers for different play styles, in this case by population limits. Basically codifying the existing trend of stacking servers for the play-style they enjoy.

Hmm, from what I understood, they haven’t specified how they are going to rotate the maps yet. So yes my earlier statement did contain a bit of "guess work" on that part. I suspect that this is one of the things they want to find out during testing of the ExPack, how to solve the rotation.

I for one hope they actually don’t make all 3 BL maps identical each week, I would like to actually go to "the other map" when I want to.

I am in favour for adding EotM to the WvW map rotation, but never to replace EBG.

Longer explanation (Because I seemingly love walls of text):

First of all I think that EBG forms the core of WvW, and should never ever be replaced or removed. It forms a basis that the rest of the mode is built around, without that map we would lose the focal point of the game-mode. Hmm, difficult to explain exactly what I mean, it’s a bit like cutting the heart out of the mode. (Even though personally I don’t like the map and avoid it).

Secondly I think the EotM map is a very interesting and different map, new concepts, ideas, styles, terrain etc. So it would be great to play on in WvW just for the sake of variation. The map does need a few small changes for balance, notably something about the Scorpion form, and probably more but I’m no expert on the map. But I am very curious how the map would play out in a proper WvW scenario with actual PPT over the PvD/Karma-training that the EotM-mode has become so famous for.

One main concern is the sheer size of it, it would dwarf the existing Borderlands, so replacing a borderland with EotM could become problematic, as one server would have that much more to defend. There is also the fact that a lot of people hate it on sheer principle because they associate it with the EotM-mode and would just flat out avoid it (and rather go to other maps, could make it easier for you to defend it, or harder for you to defend it as team mates refuse to stay). There is also the fact that many people just hate the instant death drops everywhere, and would just leave the map. From what I hear on the forums, Badlands need some help as it is supposed to be the weakest side on the map, but I really don’t know (Give it to green).

Edit: Good point about the rewards, I thought of them as part of the EotM mode and not as inherently in the map. Hmm, if we said the rewards stuck with the mode and not the map, then everything I said above still stands from my pov.

Dawdler: I saw another user post something similar in the DCI threads (munkiman.3068), and I think his version looked pretty good. Worth a look if you’re interested.

This is definitively something that needs to be looked at, and solved.

ammayhem.5962:

coglin.1867:

Neglect? Like all of the changes coming up in the expansion?

You mean adding another map the lower servers don’t have the people to cover? In addition to the already empty maps that are currently in…

The new WvW map is not making a 5th map in the weekly match-ups, it is another “borderland” map, which will begin to rotate the other borderland maps. So each week you will get EBG + 3 borderland maps, and the borderland maps will be a random mix of the OLD BL and the NEW BL. So you can end up with 2 new BL’s and 1 old BL for example.

TLDR: Still 4 maps.

Actually, it looks like we will get a lot of what was discussed in DCI threads in the new expansion pack. Naturally in one way or another.

First of all a statement: I do not want to see servers merged or destroyed, ever. This post is meant as an idea to be discussed, more along the lines of how things could have been made to avoid the situation we are in now, etc.

…Foreword…

So a lot of people are complaining about this and that in WvW, my server is dead, my server has que’s, I just want to play with my friends (and then loop back one one of the previous two). Fact is we start playing the game, and the very first thing you do when you start the game is pick a totally random server completely uninformed. You have no idea about the amount of players you get to play with, and no idea what sort of play-style you will find etc. I think that is a fairly bad deal.

Thus we have people wanting to tear down the tier 1-2 to populate teh rest, and then others want to scrap the bottom 12+ servers and redistribute them on the rest. All of them have their own view of how they want the game to be played, everyone one of them has found, or are looking for, a server with a play-style they can enjoy. The populations is only the most obvious cause of why the game isn’t playing the way you want.

…moving right along…

So in a perfect world (with dancing unicorns, and little fairies bringing chocolate and candy to everyone!) we would have some way to divide the servers by different criteria, and since it will be to difficult to make a whole “All roamers step into the server on the left, zerglings please walk straight ahead to the blue blinking neon light, and you guild group guys please stand on the right side and wait for your guild leaders!” the easiest way to sort people are probably by population limits (Yes I said limits, bad word, Santa is skipping my chimney this year).

So, how about this idea ? Split the servers according to Gold/Silver/Bronze, and set different restrictions for each of them. Gold could stay where they are which seems pretty much the limit of the server capabilities any ways. Where Silver could get a slight reduction to map limit (for ex 60) which will allow it to have large groups, but avoid the worst lag issues. And little Bronze might even be limited as far down as 40, forcing people to spread out more across the maps, thus populating each one a bit more. Obviously the servers would have to be locked into each type this way, so that when you pick a server you pick one based on what style you want to play, not so that your Silver server gets knocked down to Bronze and gets limited by the crazy low map limit when you’re interested in larger battles (just without the lag and stuff).

…Soon, the end…

This would probably have worked best with 18 servers, 6 servers in each rank. I have no idea how that could be solved right now, without a whole lot of hate in every direction. It is far from perfect, but at least it would give a player some say in what kind of play experience he would get into when picking a server. I also think that you should pick a server later, it isn’t like a server pick matters until you actually go into WvW. One option could be that when you join a guild, it asks you if you want to join the same server as the rest of your guild so that you can play with them. Or just give you a selection the first time you try to go into WvW.

…finally!…

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

How does this system intend to deal with larger servers ? If server size A>B>C and server A takes and hold its entire borderland, upgrades it, and the other servers are unable to touch even their south towers. But things on B and C’s borderland will keep flipping by each others and server A’s roamers and zergs. This will result in server A sitting on a crazy amount of PPT.

Just using your tower point example here, with 10 vs 29 ppt, would that mean that Server A would receive close to 290 PPT for holding that one map, while the other 2 maps would be worth around 100 PPT each because being constantly flipped ?

Rimmy.9217:

I’m honestly not looking forward to guild halls being implemented into the game. I’ll wait and see, but I’m worried that they will instance people away from where the social interactions usually take place (i.e. the cities). Yes, I remember them in GW1 and yes, I liked them just fine then.

I hope that whatever impact they have in GW2, it’s not a negative one.

I’m really torn on this. On one hand we’ve already lost a large part of the social aspect (from a WvW perspective) by MegaServer, so we no longer have the server based cities. On the other hand I don’t really use the cities anyways, so really don’t know.

Toying with the idea of making a single server guild, to have a guild hall, so we can have our own "mini city". But yeah probably not going to work out well. Though I think we could fit most of our server on a medium guild hall :p

Really don’t know what to expect from a Guild Hall in this game, I automatically think back to GW1 and my small friend guild and our Wizards Isle, and just not really seeing that in this current format.

Anyways, Small/medium/large Guild halls for different sized guilds with different prices would be great. And I’m going to go by GW1’s example of adding upgrade vendors etc to the Guild Hall, so we have a useful meeting spot for the members would be a great thing. Loved my bank access in GW1 guild hall.

I’m hoping we get some different styles and looks, since this sounds like it will be centered around the Maguuma jungle area, and I’m not really that fond of the jungle look in this game. (a Small guild hall like a Norn Home/hunters Lodge would be really nice).

Mostly I’m wondering what would a Guild Hall specifically do in regards to WvW ? would it have any features or functions specifically aimed at WvW population ? Since it isn’t likely to be usable as the old GW1 gvg map ?

Okie, I can’t resist this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ZcmMK64Ok

oscuro.9720:

But if a revenant can 1v3, and the small server has a zerg of revenants, and the large server has a larger zerg of revenants, which would win?
I think that reventant will be a skill based class, and will be raged at like the thief and mesmer and ele are, but few people will be capable at playing it proficiently. All classes are capable at doing a 1v3, just those that take a certain amount of skill are better at things that are harder to do.

He also specified that you could ONLY play the class if you had the outnumbered buff :p learn to read kiddo

But yeah, he is joking. Might as well just make the Outnumbered buff something crazy instead. Reminds me a bit about one of the “feats” from Munchkin RPG “Scripted Immunity: Unless they are ALL trying to kill you, you’re invulnerable.”

On the other hand, it amazes me that players are willing to spend 1800 gems or so to get 2 extra chests with blue/greens for a couple of weeks. Are people actually doing that ?

I’m very curious about what new class abilities we would get etc, but from the video Ranger seemed to keep the pet at least, so no idea what the changes is there really. Anyways, haven’t seen any confirmations for any other class ability changes yet.

I think another option would be to allow Glicko to change things faster, so that servers doesn’t get stuck in Glicko-locks for weeks or months. So servers like DR, BP etc that have been plummeting through the ranks the last months would fall quicker to the ranks where they can have more fair matches. And other way around as well.

hedix.1986:

I’d be worried about the balance. If all maps are completely different, some may be easier to defend/attack. Best example is the Red in EotM – always gets farmed and its easiest to cap.

Also, they’ve already removed too much content in this game. I’m not a fan of that strategy.

If 3 of the 4 maps are: EBG, BL, and Ziggurat, I don’t think balance would be a problem, the question then would be any future maps ? I do have that much faith in ANet that they won’t intentionally release an un-balanced WvW map.

And if we took the current BL, and just made a couple of tiny changes so it is playable like an EBG map instead, 1 copy, all services at each spawn etc. I’d say that red gets Citadel for a slight advantage to the red team (usually the weakest one in the match-up). Then we wouldn’t really lose any content, the same map would still be there (and probably a bit more active with all 3 trying to claim it as their turf).

The idea was not to remove anything, but remove duplicate content, to make space for more content in the future that could help give more variation to the play-styles. The only thing I can see that would be removed is the “Home” definition of a singular map, that and all the fancy alternative names for the camps and towers.

From the posts I’ve seen over the last months, there has also been a lot of people that liked the no-white-swords, and not only from the upper tiers. But notably more people from the upper servers seems to have liked it, while less of the lower population servers seemed to like it.

Personally I’m entirely undecided, almost a month after it ended, and I’m still not certain which I liked better.