Guild Wars 2

PabbyGaul.9682:

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

Limiting rewards is completely counter-intuitive to the goal of this game type, but it’s typically ANets answer to things. We would actually want to bring more players to the mode and in turn not isolate higher pop servers “as the root problem”. More than anything, the migration has a lot to do with the modes design, there is simply more action and balance when maps are populated, not to mention people typically enjoy winning. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m vehemently opposed to “punishment” as a tool to force people to move. You limit things you introduce, not things that are already there. It highly uninspired to simply nerf one system, while neglecting others.

While there is a time when something needs to be lowered (exploits, high yield farming spots, etc.), rewards in WvW are definitely not one of them. While i agree, EotM is a bit to out of balance vs WvW, it’s really a design flaw, more than a need to purge EotM of rewards (not that you’re particular post is speaking to EotM). Players want rewarding content (rewarding can mean more than just loot, you know). The reward in top tier has far more to do with the design of the game mode, then the mostly junk that drops from loot bags.

I’d actually argue that top tier servers aren’t getting near as much champ bags as mid tier, since there’s more contest when they roll to an objective, slowing the income, I certainly don’t know this for a fact, however.

I personally would like to stop thinking terms of imposing limits on an already tightly monitored, fairly unrewarding (besides winning good fights) system. Caps that cause longer queues on highly pop servers, things that focus on high pop servers rewards, in order to “force” balance are simply crappy solutions, they are “one click fixes”. I think most of us are growing tired of those.

Otokomae.9356:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone official from Anet posting on the forums on Saturday or Sunday (which I really do understand), so you’ll have to wait until at least Monday, Mal.

Josh posted awhile ago. I think some of the dev team troll the forums on the weekends. I’d love to see this get the attentions it’s deserved for well over a year now.

Illysharia.7286:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Crash — I’m asking about that thread. I know it’s huge, and believe me, I hear you (and a thousand other forum members ) loud and clear. I don’t have an answer for you on that subject, but I know you’d like to know more about the status of that thread, if nothing else.

Thank you! Much, much appreciated!

^^ What he said.

There are a lot of people that have put in months of effort to get that thread properly addressed. Thank you, Gaile, for at least trying to get us its status in your office.

While you’re at it, how about a bump for the idea of getting un-megaserved somewhere so server communities can meet up?

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

My point is basically this. The server system isn’t broken (aside from having no PvE place to call home anymore), all we are doing is talking about changing something for the sake of it.

The system is not broken? How do you want to call a mean-balance of 3:1 and a actual balance of 13:1 between 2 server that are just 2 ranks apart? I can only call that broken. (see picture below)

munkiman.3068:

There is still population that stays on lower pop servers, by choice, so why remove that?

No one removes them. No one proposed to remove them. John asked what do we think if current servers would be named alliances from now on. And several alliances would be put together to play a match on the same side.

In my posts I tried to imagine solutions where they could play a better role, than they play in the current system when matched against a server 2 ranks higher. Currently they are only a gnat facing an elephant! How can they be turned in David facing Goliath (or a mice facing an elephant)?

I said the server (world) system isn’t broken. I clearly state that the scoring mechanics however are. You’re example also shows that very glaringly, which has a lot to do with matchmaking being broken to the extent that the scoring system simple won’t ever support it in it’s current form. Population isn’t the root of the problem, the scoring, the fact that peak times are scattered for players (coverage), the mechanics that cater to offense over defense, are all the issues we have with a scoring system that doesn’t scale well and doesn’t factor in anything about winning fights or population discrepancies, and coverage gaps. Add on top of that very little movement in the meta, and we get a stale and often times more frustrating than fun WvW. Until they tackle those things no amount of server merges or alliances is going to fix it, unless they force movement and lock players in, which would be an extremely temporary fix, since i’d bet half the population would just quit.

Asmodeus.5782:

I’d extend this to all cities, tbh, but every little thing counts… I miss Piken.

I think the only reason i would stay away from that is their focus on the NPE. If there was a place, tucked away, that a server could congregate, it would be less glaring to new players that would lead them to think servers are “the only” population in the game.

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

If you are going to change the scoring system, then why not just focus on that? If you go on about alliances then you’re just changing the system for the sake of it.

Because changing only scoring will never enable a fight between 2 diverse alliances to be fun. If you leave alliances (server) alone, you better never match an alliance that fields 200 in prime (only 2 maps) against one that fields 400 in prime (all 4 maps).

But if put the alliances into overal teams, such that the total team-man-power is equal,
The small alliance can fight against a large one, as it fights it on two maps only, which it is able to fill (where as its coalition-alliances take over the other maps)

My point is basically this. The server system isn’t broken (aside from having no PvE place to call home anymore), all we are doing is talking about changing something for the sake of it. There is still population that stays on lower pop servers, by choice, so why remove that?

The OP posted the imbalance forces repetitive “stale” match-ups, when from my PoV it’s not the repeating of match-ups that makes it stale (red is dead, and mostly anonymous), it’s the mechanics and scoring. The meta doesn’t change all that much either. It’s 2 years now with mostly minor changes, it’s going to feel stale, it’s only more glaring in lower populated match-ups. Folks from BG came in here and posted how they don’t mind fighting the same worlds over and over, that’s because the way the game mode is designed, doesn’t take into account smaller match-ups. But, there are ways they could “fix” it that would ultimately make the mode more fun for everyone while taking the focus away from only having more numbers on the field.

While i can’t speak for all players on NSP, they do seem overall happy with the server system in WvW and very often have really good fights, but the rest is really just flat out broken. The suggestions we need to address is improving the system, so it doesn’t feel stale, not forcing communities to play together for the sake of a more populated match-up. If i had issues that stemmed from being on a lower pop server, i’d move to a higher pop one.

It may not even be in ANets wheel-house to consider making such drastic sweeping changes like the ones i’ve suggested, and it’s likely quicker and easier to just talk merges at the expense of player frustration. The reality is though, as long as they keep the status qou, WvW will continue to lose players and they most definitely will if they if they further damage already established communities.

I’d really like to see a way to have a meeting place for our servers in the game that doesn’t impact WvW. It would also be really cool if we had a bulletin board for all the server news and events! Even better if we could feed that from an authorized site for each server. Since you can do all sorts of cool stuff with the TP web browser now, it’d be pretty stellar to be able to create a page we can view in game for all our server related needs.

phys.7689:

Roybe.5896:

Torsailr.8456:

I would like to have our actions actually be reflected in the world over time.

IE. Zhaitan is dead, over time (2-3 years) we should see fewer risen in the game.
If certain events aren’t done then we get a spontaneous raid event related to it such as if we don’t do the centaur events in Kessex then a large group raids Queensdale. Or vice versa if over farmed.

Maybe tie this into a meta map system similar to what Dry top has so people realize it’s going on?

I agree with this. My question then is, shouldn’t the personal story be abandoned at some point? Why would anyone need to run the personal story IF the quest line is in the past, the area has been renovated into ‘not Zhaitan’? My point is, everyone wants repeatable content in a ‘living world’. Sorry, but you shouldn’t be able to. If the world changes, stories change and become unavailable. You can say something different, but in a world that moves on, you cannot do that. You can’t fight the wars of your grandfathers, so why, in a game that was advertised as such, should a new character?

pretty common to be able to do exactly that in fiction. There is no timeline on new charachters, whenever a story happened is when that story happened.

Let say i make a charachter named Jim. unless Jims charachter describes him as born on X date, there is no logical reason he could not have been involved in something else before that moment.

It would be nice (although maybe technically difficult) to make it more apparent you’re going back in time, to experience things again. I think i’ve seen them comment on it before and it would probably be a boatload of work, but it would be very cool. Like when you do the personal story, you go into LA before it was all messed up, type of thing.

Sube Dai.8496:

SleepingDragon.1596:

Sorry, didn’t read everything here but after reading what one of Anet’s staff mention about “Alliances”, I’ll put my two cents in. It’ll probably be the deathblow like it is to “GW1’s Alliance Battles”. What purpose does a server have with Alliances and matches are based on Alliances? Servers will become meaningless even for PVE since there’s something called megaserver. Renaming the servers to the Alliances? Sounds good in theory, but it is basically just hitting the reset button and recreating new dominating servers. It’s like going back to the beginning where there are alliances formed by various guilds for WvW dominations. TA vs AA, but in this case… it’ll be different alliances. It’s going to be hard to try and promote something that is fair for all. Only way Anet can try to make this right is to auto/forced server pairings during WvW fights in which the server that outnumbered the other servers to the extreme are allied and can’t target each other at all. Example: BG vs TC & SOS this week. TC & SOS although gets different colors, they are not going to be “red” for each other and cannot be targetted or killed by one another. They’ll collectively be allowed to attack BG until the score is within 100 points or less. They can turn on each other and their territories can be taken by one another once the gaps are within 100 points. BG’s land can be taken by either SOS or TC. This will balance the matches out best and retains the existing servesr without having to redo the entire renaming of servers based on alliances.

You might be on to something here. Like you could still have 3 servers but force the bottom 2 to fight the top 1.

This kind of happens now with uneven match-ups, servers sometimes band together to compete. the difference is, that it’s the players choice to do it. I’m not sure how well that would fare when you force it to happen.

Hamster.4861:

They did it this way to get more consistent participation from people. They want folks to go hard all 4 weeks of the tournament, so they gave incentive for people to want to place first each week. They also would tend to hope that you read their announcements. I’d recommend submitting a support ticket and hoping that they’re kind.

This is actually one of the reasons I’m sitting this one out.

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

You can’t give the players the option otherwise you’ll have stacked alliances. No one wants random allys each week, if you actually think about it. You simple can’t have co-operative, organized play when you randomly rotate who you play with every week.

How good it works depends likely on how the scoring is done and how easy it is to distribute tasks.

• if a 100 person alliance needs to score 100 pts per hour to be equally good than a 1000 people scoring 1000 pts per hour, then I do not see a need to concentrate.
• if there is a split of individual scoring of an alliance (for permanent community building) and a common scoring of the whole team (for cooperation of random community) then having different alliances in a team and having a cooperation of the alliance I. The team make sense.
• if you think that a match consist of maybe more maps than today, an abstract task assignment could be: this small alliance is responsible for this map, this large alliance is responsible for these maps. You do not need strong coordination for different maps, but you need strong coordination on a single map.

If you are going to change the scoring system, then why not just focus on that? If you go on about alliances then you’re just changing the system for the sake of it.

A server can have a couple guilds that win every fight they face, but it doesn’t matter much. Bloodlust, while great for huge battles, when it comes to point tally, smaller group fights against numbers have to be mobile and will simply tap the downed instead of stopping for the stomp. I tend to agree (and this has been talked about ad nauseum since day one) that downed should either be heavily kitten (maybe the health bar drops a lot faster) or completely removed from WvW. While that’s another conversation to be had, there is no doubt in my mind that even when you win all your fights, you still lose to PPT. Which is why almost anyone that avidly plays WvW on my server doesn’t care at all about winning matches, it’s all about bags and enjoying a challenging fight. Which is totally because of the scoring system.

Edit: i shouldn’t say that. They do kinda care since they want to keep having good fights, which are fewer to be had on lower pop match-ups.

This actually already happens. Many guilds/friends/groups have paid for transfers in the past. If you look in the recruitment thread, you’ll see some people offering up to move and people offering to help them in the process.

Gudradain.3892:

Benefits of that solution

• Players are assured to continue to play with their friends week after week if they want.
• Each week you will be with new allies and face new enemies which bring diversity.
• Each week new coalitions will be formed in order to make each match up as balanced as possible.
• It gives the control to the players.
• It’s a long term viable solution. It will fix population imbalance immediately and permanently.

You can’t give the players the option otherwise you’ll have stacked alliances. No one wants random allys each week, if you actually think about it. You simply can’t have co-operative, organized play when you randomly rotate who you play with every week. Everything in this concept would entirely depend on locked and balanced sorting, completely out of the players hands. This also doesn’t address coverage issues (which isn’t a separate topic), you’ll still have alliances that have poor coverage being paired up. Some have spent the better part of 2 years cultivating our server communities.

If we can’t introduce mechanics and scoring that gives lower populated servers a fighting chance to, at the very least, not face a blow out, then we mine as well not have a discussion. Leave it as it and call it “working as intended”.

Karuna.1357:

Otokomae.9356:

You don’t really see more than 100 people total involved in a fight very often, and when that does happen, it’s either in Stonemist or someone’s Garrison. Now that you can’t Banner-Rez the Lord anymore, however, the massive 3-way battles (that sometimes pulled in numbers around 120+ from all 3 servers total) don’t happen as often, simply because the battles don’t last nearly as long as they used to. In open field, 30v30 would generally be a starting point for the larger guilds.

That is the sucky thing (to me anyway) about them taking out the Guild Lord bannering mechanic. It has that ‘king of the hill’ sort of mechanic to it, with all three sides trying to battle it out on the same spot for superiority. That was fun.

Now it is mostly just cap and move on.

I still wonder why they thought that wasn’t a good defense mechanic. I think a lot of people even in the lower tiers felt like that was a good thing. Maybe now that they are playing mano e mano it might make a difference? It feels like they take all the good bits out.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

We often get 20v40 fights on reset. I haven’t played in awhile though (like a month). I’d consider that large scale though.

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

Too we have interaction here that’s incredibly effective. Yep, I’m thinking CDIs and I’m glad they’re back! (Even if I marvel how Chris is able to keep up the pace! )

Surveys are difficult to devise in a way that makes them unbiased and statistically accurate. That’s not to say it cannot be done, and the idea of surveys linked to an active game account certainly sounds better to me than those random Internet surveys, like “Who’s your favorite singer,” which get gamed through fan groups, artist management companies, publicists, agents, and the use of “ballot-box stuffing” methods, like vote, clear cache, vote again; vote, change computers, vote again; vote, set up 100 fake e-mail accounts, vote again.

Anyway, just wanted to add a couple of pennies about the subject, fwiw.

I definitely wonder how the team reads the threads and doesn’t want to throw a rock through the screen sometimes. If it were me i’d be setting more people straight (including myself sometimes), which would most likely just get me in trouble. Be nice to see more feedback from them though, even though they are surely busy making us shiny things.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

They should create a big giant red button at the end of an impossible dungeon..

(The account character interacting with it will be automaticly deleted)

ofcourse Anet should keep what happens when you press this button a secret.

There is your endgame.

Knowing ANet lately, the button would do one of three things, delete your character, load you with a pile of junk or open up the gem store :P

testpig.5018:

munkiman.3068:

Pretty much, lol. Spin to win and all. I mentioned in another thread personal buffs, like this one are a REALLY bad idea.

it’s not a personal buff.. it’s a siege buff. and again.. 5 golems when outmanned.,.. is still 5 golems when OUTMANNED. the blob has plenty of tools to kill them. Outmanned player siege will only deal 50% more damage, not take 50% less damage. Only GATES/WALLS and NPCs would take 50% less damage.
-1 Balistas.
-2 Arrow carts.
-3 more players then the outmanned team.
-4 disable trap
-5 more players then the outmanned team. etc etc

You have to be careful with conditional buffs and put them in spots where they can’t be too powerful. I think you’re example is probably in the category of OP.

I suggested buffing the defense and only when that particular objective is heavily contested with a smaller defense force, say a 30-50 PvD zerg, but i would definitely not go as far as 50%.

Otokomae.9356:

testpig.5018:

“Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers.”

not rewards… supports players that are outmanned and still wants to fight

“NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in”, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”.

if 5 guardians are in slow moving omega when outmanned… they are still outmanned.. and thus the players with the population simply have to show up and kill these 5 slow moving omegas. i’m having a hard time understanding your point. Outmanned still means you are OUTMANNED.

They’re not so slow-moving anymore; didn’t you read the patch notes? Golems get a buff to movement speed with the first points you spend in the new Golem Mastery line, which anyone planning to use this meta would take. But even without that, 1 mesmer could move them from structure to structure in relative safety if they wanted to avoid fighting, though I’m not sure they’d need to if they’re doing +50% to anyone who gets in their way…

Pretty much, lol. Spin to win and all. I mentioned in another thread personal buffs, like this one are a REALLY bad idea.

I like most of your ideas and most of them have been brought up several times. However, I don’t think we should ever buff individual players. Buff siege and objectives during defense events when you’re heavily outmanned, sure. Outnumbered is pretty much just an indicator and i personally believe that’s all it should ever be.

Jim Hunter.6821:

testpig.5018:

*First off, as many of you have pointed out, it will be impossible to create equal populations without moving people around. As several others have pointed out we don’t want to break apart communities. *

I think you are missing a point and solution to WvW imbalances. The issues are, the outmanned teams simply can’t compete, or even slow down the enemy enough to compete. I’m not referring to the open field fight, because 1v10 in open field should go to the 10.

I’m referring to the static structures that can be the ultimate form of WvW game play balance, that would still allow each player vs player interaction to remain equal. If we allow siege/structures/npcs to gain an outmanned buff we can see great balance happen in the game.

Outmanned buff:
-NPCS: all outmanned NPCs take 50% less damage, and deal 50% more damage
-Siege: All Outmanned Siege Deals 50% more damage.
-Structures: All outmanned Gates/walls take 50% less damage.

these simple simple changes would allow the realm that is outmanned to still stand a chance in the WvW game. Not only will they be able to have a better chance of defending their structures with less numbers against greater numbers. But they can also retake stuff much faster then if they were on equal footing.

And the great thing about this.. once that realm losing the outmanned buff, it means they should have enough population to defend the structures without the buff benefit on siege.

And Balance is easily found… This solution causes many things to happen:
-1 Creates a system that would allow underpopulated teams to actually take down very upgraded objectives from an overpopulated realm much easier.
-2 Would greatly support spreading out over multi zones
-3 Would support spreading troops out over the map instead of all trying to attack/defend one objective.
-4 Supports the outmanned way in a balanced equal footing fashion without creating class imbalance.

This only works if the outmanned buff takes the population of every map into consideration, otherwise you will have people blobbing up on 1 map while leaving a token force to hold things they capture on all of the other maps.

I’m also unsure how this would work in EB? The out-manned there would be pretty OP? I could only imagine what 50% more damage to Stone Mist would be like.

Rage The Numbers.7943:

I put my thoughts here

This is essentially merging 24 worlds into 12 and all the caveats that’s been discussed along with that.

nirvana.8245:

munkiman.3068:

eithinan.9841:

Conner.4702:

How to say this politely. Nothing in this thread is an actual solution to the population imbalance. Nothing adresses the 24/7 nature of WvW. There are only 2 solutions and neither will be implemented. Removing the aoe cap to make the difference in population moot or redoing the entire server architecture to make a true global wvw system and not this US and EU server crap.

Anything else will do nothing, but create more queues during primetime and still not enough people during off hours or create wins by some sort of point algorithm eventhough you got trampled all week anyway.

All this talk about alliances and grouping does not take into account that people are still going to play at teh time they always do and thus it will never be a solution. The population needs to be spread over timezones not just servers to truly fix an imbalance. removing the aoe cap would be second best, as it would give people a chance, though most liekly still lose in the end.

THIS is what ive been saying.

You mine as well just offer up a suggestion of turning WvW into a game of duck duck goose. I guess if you want to alienate all of EU for things like language barriers, higher latency and rather large social differences, then this is a stellar idea. Not to mention what it would cost to just scrap the whole thing.

It might be money better spent if ANet did a huge marketing campaign in oceanics and brought more players in from there

It was called internally a while back that Oceanic has been dead for a good six months now. In T1 the playerbase during Oceanic timezone on an average weeknight is like 10% Oceanic, 45% NA doing overtime staying up till 4am and 45% SEA logging in early. I can vouch that it is the opinion of the bulk of players in T1 that the timezone isn’t going to come back to life and its slowly going to dwindle. TBH I wouldn’t be opposed to a map cap reduction during this timezone and its one of the few changes that I don’t think many, if any, would be impacted negatively by and there certainly would be some who would be positively impacted by it. It would certainly alleviate the pressure on T1 NA to stay up late to fill that coverage gap and would reduce the impact of “PvD”. But you could really only have that cap between Monday and Thursday as there is significantly larger numbers who play on Friday/Saturday/Sunday nights.

TLDR I don’t think many Oceanics will come to GW2 now, they are all playing CS:GO :p

Agreed, it might be throwing good money at bad. I was kinda just being cheeky though.

DeadlySynz.3471:

This is how Alliance, aka guilds, aka factions, should work, at least IMO. This will also include “overflow” style maps.

First

Separate the matches into 3 match-ups throughout the day (12-8, 8-4, 4-Midnight). There is a PPT ticker for each time slot. Each time slot constitutes a “point”. For a team (alliance) to win, they have to win 2 out of 3 time slots. This stops those with a massive coverage advantage during a given time slot. The only way for an alliance to win is to have strong coverage through all 3 slots. Massive SEA coverage will no longer work.

Advantages – Strong coverage in one area no longer works
Disadvantages- ?

Second

Cap the amount of players per map to say 70ish. This is more so to help control lag. There will also be “overflow” maps which become available once that particular map gets close to capping. The “overflow” maps will also count towards PPT, as long as, there is at least 25 people per side. I think there would be enough players at any given time to fill all maps 2 times over

Advantages – No more ques & not likely to have population imbalances any longer
Disadvantages – Might not work for players who like small populated maps

Third

Introduce a new set of siege and achievements native to each alliance so it gives achievement hunters something to work towards. Make the achievements more in-line, unlike the current WvW achievements.

Fourth

Add some sort of dynamic questing schedule inside based on the current map conditions. Gw2 is built a lot around questing, so why not add WvW specific questing based on what’s going on the map at any given time. Completing the quests awards additional PPT. WvW specific questing would be things like capturing objectives or killing “X” number of players of each alliance.

While there’s some good ideas, it seems most people don’t want flat out mergers. There is also the technical issue, (ANet confirmed) that you can’t select an overflow shard (ala Districts in GW), so it would be fairly difficult to quickly run off an help your guild/team/party/squad in an overflow situation. Also, communication (via voice chat) would be extremely limited (most only handle 500 clients). Not to mention the fact that people actually enjoy having the option to play on lower populations.

Otokomae.9356:

munkiman.3068:

• Reward for successful defense should be equal to successful capture.

Well, this would have to added benefit of ending the annoying Meta of “Tapping Waypoints”, should those taps continue to set off the Defense the Keep event.

This would also, however, make Trolling an enemy server 1234987987314 times easier than ever before, since a solo-troll could simply set off defense events all over the map and walk away, handing points to the enemy server.

Well it would only do that if the point was actually manned. You could probably make it so at least 2 players were there to defend it. You could also add a timer on it so i could only trigger every so often (the reward/points).

Also wouldn’t that be a reverse troll? Why would an enemy troll want to give the server they are trolling points/rewards? Scratch that i see what you mean now… But don’t you have to do so much damage to toss up orange swords? I forget now how that works.

Swamurabi.7890:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Swamurabi.7890:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Aridia.3042:

Server merge/alliance/player cap solves nothing. Because you cannot prevent people from stacking. If you let it, they will stack.

How would a player cap not prevent stacking? It won’t fix everything that is wrong with WvW, that wasn’t my intention when posting this idea, but the one thing it will definitely fix is player stacking.

Set the cap too high and off peak coverage determines winners through stacking.
Set the cap too low and peak players might not get to play.

There’s no just right cap level because of population differences between peak and off peak.

Off peak can be affected by changes to the scoring system or by setting different caps for different times of the day. If there is a cap during peak preventing people on a certain server from playing but there is open space on any other server than it is up to the player to make the choice to move or sit in queue. That is what prevents stacking. People can say they don’t like it but they can’t argue that it wouldn’t prevent stacking.

You either have caps so that every match has 80v80v80 during peak times and 30v30v30 for off peak OR you have a few matches where you have 80v80v80 on peak and off peak but you also have other matches where you have 80v80v80 for peak and 0v0v0 for off peak.

Changing scoring does not change the fact that 10v80 is not fun.

Some things to consider here.

• Defense should be scaled, either in damage output from siege or in structural integrity or both when defenders are highly out manned. This wouldn’t affect undefended structures.
• Reward for successful defense should be equal to successful capture.
• Scoring should take into account population discrepancies and focus more on skill/tactics. Suggesting to remove PPT as a mechanism and replace it with event success (defensive and offensive) and player kills. Bloodlust should remain as a bonus point for a stomp.
• Unmanned objectives should neutralize – this gives off-peak players the ability to still score points during their play hours, once PPT is removed. It also gives them something to do once they completely flip a map. Yet, it also places a cap on how many points they can effectively rack up when there is less going on.

This also lowers the point system significantly. Point tallies will be smaller and will actually reflect player participation in any given tier. It should also give the added benefit for more movement in the ladder since point gaps will be tighter.

eithinan.9841:

Conner.4702:

How to say this politely. Nothing in this thread is an actual solution to the population imbalance. Nothing adresses the 24/7 nature of WvW. There are only 2 solutions and neither will be implemented. Removing the aoe cap to make the difference in population moot or redoing the entire server architecture to make a true global wvw system and not this US and EU server crap.

Anything else will do nothing, but create more queues during primetime and still not enough people during off hours or create wins by some sort of point algorithm eventhough you got trampled all week anyway.

All this talk about alliances and grouping does not take into account that people are still going to play at teh time they always do and thus it will never be a solution. The population needs to be spread over timezones not just servers to truly fix an imbalance. removing the aoe cap would be second best, as it would give people a chance, though most liekly still lose in the end.

THIS is what ive been saying.

You mine as well just offer up a suggestion of turning WvW into a game of duck duck goose. I guess if you want to alienate all of EU for things like language barriers, higher latency and rather large social differences, then this is a stellar idea. Not to mention what it would cost to just scrap the whole thing.

It might be money better spent if ANet did a huge marketing campaign in oceanics and brought more players in from there

Lowest Animal.8014:

I agree with the idea of alliances as a solution to WvW population imbalance. Here is my vision of how it would work:

Alliance > Server > Guild

Using established server rankings, group servers into alliances such as:

Alliance A = Servers 1+24+21+18+15+12+9+6
Alliance B = Servers 2+23+20+17+14+11+8+5
Alliance C = Servers 3+21+19+16+13+10+7+4

The rankings used to divvy up the alliances should be a few matches or a tournament after locking transfers to prevent last minute mass transfers and let the rankings settle.

A better way to distribute the WvW population may exist this is just my best guess so far.

Next, make transfers to any server within your alliance free at any time with no restrictions. While at the same time making transfers to servers outside your alliance expensive with restrictions in place to hinder trolling or other bad behavior. This would be a permanent change.

For new players they should be locked out of WvW for at least the first 10 to 20 levels then asked to pick an alliance. The game then transfers them to a random middle tier server within their chosen alliance.

An alliance page could be added to the WvW window where news, goings on, PPT of all servers, and maybe an in game alliance only forum could be accessed. An alliance restricted part of the forums could be vital to encourage organization between allied guilds.

My hope is that with this system alliances reward guild organization and team work creating a tight knit community. Allied servers become battlefields guilds can move between so they can avoid queues, being too outnumbered in certain time zones, and maximize their impact on the match. This will make guilds will important beyond “which big guild zerg owns this map” and hopefully also solve the coverage problem.

I tend to think this is how John kinda envisioned it work too, in his post. But, it’s pretty much how EotM works now (in the “win”). I don’t know that i would have it so new players could only be randomly tossed on to a server though (maybe a “pick a server for me” button).

The one big caveat to this is organization/communication when a group from one server plays on anothers. There are also some pretty big rivalries in WvW already, which would make something like this really chaotic and at times, pretty toxic.

After 2+ years of players settling in to their server communities, this might ultimately do more harm than good, IMO. I also don’t think this would address scoring and coverage issues. I’d hate to just assume people would happily move around to help other servers in their alliances all that much. There’s definitely something to doing well in your own community, that mashing a win into an alliance system really takes away from. It might be better a while down the road, but it could be really bad (like continuing to lose players), which would basically force us to see merges.

I’d rather see changes that impact the mode itself, to bring in/back more players in general. One thing i would seriously consider is incorporating EotM into WvW or seriously nerfing the rewards from it. I really think it takes players that would normally play WvW out.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Aridia.3042:

Server merge/alliance/player cap solves nothing. Because you cannot prevent people from stacking. If you let it, they will stack.

How would a player cap not prevent stacking? It won’t fix everything that is wrong with WvW, that wasn’t my intention when posting this idea, but the one thing it will definitely fix is player stacking.

I think if ANet thought this was a viable solution they’d have done it already. I can’t imagine they haven’t tweaked the numbers at least once (most likely more) since release. I’m with the folks on tier 1 and 2 servers that already have a more robust WvW community that are against just a flat out cap. Half-baked solutions like this is what we have come accustom to seeing in the game anyway, so it’s kinda sad we have to dumb down suggestions for fixes since the probability ANet might implement them is higher.

Berk.8561:

Swamurabi.7890:

Would Anet be open to having different cap levels for the different leagues?

I think that whatever they do needs to preserve multiple densities of play and they shouldn’t assume everyone is looking for a T1 experience. That’s the assumptions they made with the population caps on the megaservers in PvE and there are plenty of people who don’t like that at all.

I think whatever system they ultimately decide on (if they do) it needs to be kept simple. Some of the suggestion have been either way too complicated or convoluted. Some actually haven’t been given much thought, nor have people read the many posts that discuss why an idea isn’t beneficial or are just unwanted. Some of us are here that represent a larger discussion with our servers amongst people that play the mode almost continuously. Those discussions have been going on for a long time.

Unfortunately, discussions like this need more red posts, which doesn’t seem to happen much outside of Chris’s CDIs.

EFWinters.5421:

Otokomae.9356:

Snorcha.7586:

Can anyone point out any major flaws in my suggestion?

Battlegroups

Not too hard, you put it right at the beginning. The very first word was a major flaw, with about 50+ posts already pointing out why people don’t want this.

Really? Because I’ve only seen mention of why BG would not want this.

I don’t want this either. It doesn’t improve the system.

Sube Dai.8496:

It doesn’t do anything to avoid stacking though, the result would be the same as we have now. Ultimately the players can’t be left to decide which alliance to join, because they won’t do it in a balanced fashion.

If you want a balanced matchup the system needs to say “Team 1 has 20 players, Team 2 has 10 players, therefore the next 10 players must join team 2.”

It sounds like ultimately the playerbase doesn’t want that, because they want to fight with their friends/guild/server…which is too bad because it would solve the problem easily.

Therefore we would need an alliance/matchup queue of sorts. If a guild of 80 people want to play a match then they have to wait in queue until an opposing guild or guilds/mercenaries equal to the same size sign up to play against them.

Or the system needs to be designed that avoids the ability to dominate almost solely based on numbers, there are plenty ideas here that try and tackle that. Regardless, I don’t mind losing as long as i’m having fun and i really do enjoy the community i’m in if you take that away i really have no reason to play anymore. As it is i don’t play much, the megaserver dismantled my social experience and any thought of a challenge in most world events.

I bugs me to no end that the answer is the easiest one with the least benefit to the game. There are probably a billion things the population could come up with that take time, money and manpower to implement.

If the answer is server merges, than the answer is no.
If the answer is lower caps, the answer is no.
If the answer is alliances, the answer is no.

All these thing impact the game mode in the easiest, but also in a very negative way. I love how the OP basically “settled” for what he though would fly, based on past experiences. It’s become a what would you rather do, cut off a finger or a toe.

Choppy.4183:

I couldn’t get through 15 pages, so not sure if it’s been brought up or not, but someone on my server proposed increasing the rewards for wvw. The rationale being, if people are grinding dungeons for rewards, perhaps they’d have more of a reason to enter wvw.

It wouldn’t address population and coverage balance, but it may increase wvw populations overall. Combine with the ol’ free transfers to lower tier servers (or establishing some sort of market dynamic), and it might help.

Or not. It’s clear I haven’t put nearly as much thought into this as others, so I’d defer to those who have. But I can say as a long time wvw’er on one of the lower tier servers that there isn’t much appetite there for server mergers. Most of the people who would have favoured that already transferred up to higher tier servers (it’s what dropped us from mid to lower tier in the first place).

It has, probably many times in many threads. even PvE is limited on the reward level. WvW has been pretty neglected on the rewards as well. Not that it’s not worth bringing up again and again though.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Ian.1349:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Allelya.6830:

I don’t want end-game anymore, I want more stuff. Two years and now we have dry, tasteless Living Story about two lesbians worrying more about each other than about Tyria.

…not only does that sound INCREDIBLY bigoted, but I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you even PLAYING the living story?

Also, I’m not the OP. My post was in reply to the ORIGINAL poster, who has since deleted his comment. So… yeah. Go ahead and step right in here, late to the discussion, and make assumptions about everything you missed over the last week.

The discussion has moved on FAR past these first comments. Either catch up to what is being discussed now, or just leave the old stuff drop. This comment is no longer relevant.

There wasn’t anything bigoted about that statement. The living story does spend a lot of time focusing on the Marjory and Kasmeer end of things. I guess you don’t know but they are lesbians.

But the fact that they are lesbians, in theory, should have nothing to do with your complaint. Certainly there’s little to complain about about their relationship being more important than Tyria.

At the very least your comment makes it feel like a heterosexual couple wouldn’t have received the same treatment.

Stating they are lesbians isnt really bigotted, it could be, but we cant really tell just from that. Because in the sentence its just a description.

But as far as them talking during the missions, its pretty annoying, because i dont care, it has nothing to do with me. Im not saying they shouldnt have discussions, but generally they are designed to be in the way of whatever is happening. Often unskippable. I think they should put most of this as optional side story stuff you have to actively engage in. I can understand them telling each other this stuff, but why do i have to listen to it public. Most people would tell their friends with this type of behavior irl to stop having big personal conversation material in the group setting.

Agreed, the cutesy story/discussion could be eliminated and i’d be totally fine with that. It’s fine that they have a relationship (are lovers and what not) and it was actually ok, but the one-liners and the really low level insights make me not give a kitten.

I do like Taimi however, i know she is hit or miss on the annoying level, but i dig her moxie even with her fragility. I do like Brahm too, even if he is on the level of Shaggy in a Scooby-doo episode.

nirvana.8245:

munkiman.3068:

nirvana.8245:

Virtute.8251:

Reverence.6915:

We already experience every single play style possible in T1 due to a diverse population.

I’m glad you think so.

To quote a former guildie who came from a lower tier server, “I always thought BG won because of numbers and coverage, then when I came over I realised how wrong I was and the reason they win so often is because of how they operate”. Given a scenario where lower tier servers where merged or placed in an alliance and otherwise placed in a scenario where they were matched against T1 servers you would be forced to play the same way as everyone else, follow the meta, or get rolled.

We’ve had several come from T1 and T2, to them it’s a far different story. Sure T1 probably has more skilled players, but it’s still a numbers game. If you lost 1/2 you’re pop you’d sink like a rock. Well a rock with a deflated life raft tied to it, since it would probably take 6 months for you to drop, given the current scoring system

We experience huge fluctuations in attendence. On any given night we could have 4 maps queued, or we could have a float team of 30 covering 4 maps. We would need to lose alot more than 50% to sink like a rock as you say, as we experience fluctuations substantially greater than that every week. I don’t think you have a clue what T1 is like tbh and your just rubbing your kitten.

I do have a pretty needy cat, for sure.

Anyway, relax man i’m not attacking anything, but the concept that tier 1 simply plays better is an exaggeration. You could probably loose 3 match in a row to a blow out and only move down the ladder one spot. It was more about the flaws in the scoring system than it was about tiers.

It’s a numbers game, get more bodies 24/7 win more brackets, everyone knows it. Ofc, i for sure don’t know the tier 1 meta, that’s about as obvious as the nose on my face. But every tier plays the same game, with the same mechanics and the same scoring problems.

nirvana.8245:

Virtute.8251:

Reverence.6915:

We already experience every single play style possible in T1 due to a diverse population.

I’m glad you think so.

To quote a former guildie who came from a lower tier server, “I always thought BG won because of numbers and coverage, then when I came over I realised how wrong I was and the reason they win so often is because of how they operate”. Given a scenario where lower tier servers where merged or placed in an alliance and otherwise placed in a scenario where they were matched against T1 servers you would be forced to play the same way as everyone else, follow the meta, or get rolled.

We’ve had several come from T1 and T2, to them it’s a far different story. Sure T1 probably has more skilled players, but it’s still a numbers game. If you lost 1/2 you’re pop you’d sink like a rock. Well a rock with a deflated life raft tied to it, since it would probably take 6 months for you to drop, given the current scoring system

Scipio.3204:

BlackGhostz.2483:

These forums are more entertaining than the game is.

I lol’d. And I agree. On your previous post though, feel lucky, since GW1 players waited 5 years for this, but saying that, GW2 was never going to be that kind of game. Open world combat was ruled out since the start, but maybe , if they bring back the kurzciks/luxons it may appear in some form.

Im in that boat too, at least in the fact i barely log in anymore. I’m here in the hopes we get back on track.

Otokomae.9356:

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

This is separate from the issue of Population Imbalance, but I AGREE, the idea that holding Bloodlust determines whether or not you get points from Kills just doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can keep Bloodlust in the game, with the same small stat buffs it has now, and maybe you could even keep it tied to Stomp Points (make all Stomps worth 1 EXTRA point when you hold Bloodlust), but really, ALL KILLS should count for 1 point, independent of Bloodlust.

NEW THREAD TIME!!!

This is the type of stuff i’ve been talking about. Let’s hope more people jump on the fixes to WvW so we can get back some of our lost and bring about the robust experience WvW was on release.

Jim Hunter.6821:

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

Yeah but you’re basically asking that servers that already face queues to endure longer ones. In the hopes that it does what? Motivates through contrived inconvenience to switch to servers that don’t experience queues. You like your server, you don’t want to move, why would you want to force that on T1-T2?

I’m highly sure if ANet actually put time into fixing the fundamentally broken scoring, built in mechanics that mostly affected the the population imbalances that allowed for lower pop servers to compete, we wouldn’t keep beating this same dead horse. Mix up the mode add new interesting worthwhile features to it and you might see more people coming back to play and definitely more movement in the ladders. For one thing, if they did away with PPT and lowered score tallies, you’d see the ladders move a lot faster than the cluster we have now.

NevilleDevil.4530:

I feel like there are a scary number of people in that thread who seem to think T1 is the problem rather than the goal, which scares the crap out of me.

“Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!”

We want to stay in our coverage and tier for a reason. Anyone who did’t like it left T1 already. Why can’t you see things from other’s perspective.

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

I personally don’t mind one bit that t1 exists and we aren’t part of it. So at least some of us are on your side. Some of us actually want to improve the mode, for everyone.

It’s been said since almost day one, the scoring system is horrible for this game mode. We’ve lost so many to that issue on top of the lack of updates, rewards and changes to WvW. ANet keeps saying they need to work on the fundamental issues of the game, yet here we are arguing over band aid solutions which will only get people riled up if implemented.

My exhaustive posts stem from this long standing problem, one that pushes people away from wanting to play WvW and causes sever burn-out. It’s completely frustrating that fixing the fundamental problems is not the focus.

We typically end up bleeding players to a lot of the design decisions ANets made and i’m pretty sure if they keep doing it this way, there won’t be much left in a year and they will have no choice but to merge the remaining top 6 servers.

Tekyn.5376:

John Corpening.9847:

Anyway, this discussion made it clear it is who you play with that’s important and a number of ideas in this thread preserved that without restricting the number of people who could play at a time. These have had a number of names but for the sake of discussion I’ll go with Alliances. The idea that I liked for Alliances is that it is a group of guilds and people that are guaranteed to stay together no matter how things are rearranged. There would probably need to be a size limit on Alliances and several of you pointed out that whatever limits are put in place it should be based on WvW participation.

The idea of alliances sounds cool and I think it could work but i’m skeptical because I don’t see how it addresses the underlying problems in WvW. I see coverage still being a huge issue, i.e. one alliance could out-populate another alliance during off hours making this entire endeavor useless.

If more specifics were given as to how alliances would work then perhaps folks could get behind it but until then this sounds like an idea that would hurt WvW.

John Corpening.9847:

One note though, I really feel that scoring is a separate issue that needs to be addressed on it’s own. We will discuss that one after we wrap this one up. Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

With respect, I disagree here.

Population and Coverage are the two biggest factors that control who wins a weekly matchup. That’s why this thread exists. The scoring system is partly to blame for that because no added points are given to a tower that is held for 15 hours compared to 15 minutes. Nobody bothers to defend because it’s easier to recapture right before the tick. That tactic is derived and encouraged by having a population advantage. In essence, the most efficient path to winning a match is steamrolling through zones capturing everything you can as quick as you can with as many people as you can while giving no regard for defending what you capture and holding the territory that you control. Why bother to defend when it’s easier to recapture. Essentially, population imbalance is affecting the outcome of the match because of zerging and PvD tactics.

If you eliminate the effect population imbalance has on the outcome of the match you eliminate it from being a problem. A battle where you are outmanned but can still achieve victory is possible with the right tactics but when it comes to the War Score it’s still the PvD and zerg tactics that win. Shouldn’t teamwork and strategy be the more prevalent approach to winning then PvD and zerging?

Yes, in a perfect game all the servers would have equal populations at all times of the day, but that is never going to happen. The trick here and what I believe your goal should be is to diminish the impact population has on the outcome of the match as much as possible. Alliances is a good idea, but it doesn’t do that.

And for the record I’m not advocating that a change to the scoring system alone would fix things. Many things contribute to the effect population imbalance has on the outcome of a match, ideally we would address all of them.

Regards,

-Tekyn

This is pretty much it… Sadly, it’s probably not going to be addressed.

Here’s a breakdown: (in no particular order)

Map population cap lowered
*Proposed – Reduced lag → Less players (more queuing on higher pop servers making people want to move to lower ones)

Dynamic Map population cap
*Proposed – Changes as players leave and join a map → Limits uneven populations

Servers Merge
*Proposed – Forced balance to population

Change PPT and mechanics to help balance coverage and pop discrepancies
*Proposed – Keeps servers as is → Shakes up the meta

Scale PPT to pop
*Proposed – Keeps servers as is → Attempts balance pop gaps per match

Battle Groups
*Proposed – Keep the concept of servers →Pits higher and lower pop server into groups balancing via a soft merger.

Alliances
*Proposed – Removes all servers merging into less servers with new names based on chosen alliances

Alliances-2
*Proposed – Allows different tiers at ally together and fight in a guesting type way as need or desired.

Free or reduced transfer cost
*Proposed – allows players to freely or cheaper ability to move around.

2v2v2 or similar
*Proposed – Soft merger → Less match-ups

There’s a lot of stuff in this thread, i’m certain i’ve missed some…

Altie.4571:

Can someone clarify for me (I guess I’m slow) what we mean with the term “Alliances”.

Is it an alliance for specific color and then we just become… 3 alliances. Or alliances of X amount of servers to create a smaller group of competitors (say 24 worlds, become 12 alliances)?

I think the concept is servers in different tiers would be allied with each other. Basically “guesting” in a different tier if players wanted to. And, it would be swapped around every so often.

Galen Grey.4709:

munkiman.3068:

Galen Grey.4709:

mostly valid point
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Apprentice_armor

You can see its not the same model exactly across all races? Look at the neck area of the asura and charr. charr is open, the asuran one is closed Auran version has straps going round the neck, charr version has them on the shoulders. and they’re all pretty different then the human version

But human norn and sylvari are identical. so that I admit was a mistake on my part.

that being said I did forget gender, male and female have differnet models which I forgot to factor in. so even though to be fair races should be multiplied by 3 not by 2 you need to add a 2 multiplier for genders so number remains the same.

Its good to be right even when you’re wrong but yes

Actually, if you go by time frame (they were being generous by only talking about Cantha) You’d have to include Nightfall and Eye of the North in our current 2 year window. When you do that, you’ll see a DRASTIC disparity in armor (and possibly weapons), not to mention hero armors…

What it all boils down to, i think, is ANet just got too ambitious when they made GW2 and i really think they are in way over their heads trying to crank out content to keep players excited. It’s quite possible they haven’t developed the tools to ease content creation, lack focus and/or management and, if they are like almost all companies i’ve ever worked for, have pretty heavy communication issues. Not much we can do about that but talk about what we want and whats missing and hope they can pull it off.

Thats why I didnt stress on armor complexity so much. Because like you said in the same timeframe they had 3 expansions out which kinda more then makes up for the added complexity. Though it wouldnt be that drastic of a disparity, i believe factions had the largest variety of armors so multplied by 3 it would something like 870 for gw1 vs 435 for gw2 (excluding paid skins which would bring it nearly on par)

Well especially if they’re also working on an expansion or something big in the background which personally I think most likely they are. I was sceptic to be honest they would be able to keep the 2 week cadence for this long… but so far they did.

GW2 has 44 light armor sets. total sets for all weights approx 132. Including gem store.
GW1 has 254 gender sets (across all professions). Not including hero armor.

Also interesting to note that GW only had 5 pieces per set. And, as you pointed out, less complexity in the shaders.

Actually, they really aren’t pulling off a 2 week cycle, since they have breaks in between. Regardless, I think they bust there kittens just to pull off what they do. Pretty sure i’d be burned out after a year.

Here’s more..

312 pieces in GW2 in light armor, but that’s obviously shared amount each weight, not profession, like GW1. so just say a total on all weights 936.

So if you just include 3 professions and a single gender (versus 3 weight classes) that’s 420 pieces, all 6 (im just using the core professions and a single gender) 160×6= 960, again not including the 4 added professions, which have about 18 sets per gender.

And in the 4 extra professions that’s another 360 pieces making a grand total for a single gender 1320 across all professions.

eisberg.2379:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

Scipio.3204:

Ohh boy I see I have my homework for today! Lets try it with only cantha:

GW1 Armors in cantha, there was: Shing Jea, Kurzick/Luxon & Elite Version, Canthan, Elite Canthan. Thats for 6 professions and they had all these versions for Ritu/Sin+ Exotic Armor sets. That means 8 (Profession) * 7 (Version) * 5 (Armor Piece) + 10 ( For ritu/Sin exotic armor) That’s 290 different armor piece.

Now on GW2 Non-gemstore armor pieces
2 new PvP set , Ascended armor . Thats three version from each means 9 different armor with 6 individual piece. 54 in all , now let’s count small things:
In the recent patch 6 new backpacks for every crafting profession : 48
Living story backpacks since release ( Check it on wiki if you don’t believe me): 30
+ 1 PvP Backpack
3 craftable, god themed back & fractal backs (4)
Collection reward backpack (1)
Standalon armors (Like dry top glasses etc, counted on wiki) : 27

Total Individual armor number: 165 ,

and Just for fun!
GW2 Gemstore Armor pieces since release!

6 Gemstore armor packs have been released ( means 6 medium, 6 light, 6 heavy.)
That means : 18*6 individual armor piece : 108
Number of individual armor pieces: 43 + 5 from black lion chest.
Also costumes: 8 added since release, lets count with two/ each : 16

Total armor pieces added to gemstore since release : 172 Individual armor piece

If I miscalculated something feel free to correct me.

ohh homework havent had dont in years

anyway.. you forgot to factor in races as well as forgot radiant and hellfire sets though to be fair until last update they were missing 2 pieces.

so its actually 5 sets x 3 version x 5 races x 6 pieces = 405 pieces

according to this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Gem_Store_armor_sets

there were 21 armor skin variants in the gem store x 5 races x 6 pieces = 630 pieces

so in all its 1035 pieces

thats not factoring in that gw2 armor pieces are more elaborate then the gw1 models too.

There were also a truckload of weapon skins released. like 34 unique skins released with the champion reward updates.. The ones that were tied to living story like the aetherized weapons, dragon weapons etc.. The new set tied to dry top. etc.. thats quite a number of skins there too.

but even counting just the none gem shop skins thats 1035 armor pieces + 165 misc (calculated by yourself thanks ) = 1200 thats about 4x more then your count for factions

factoring in multiple races is kind of stretching it. Its the same gear/skin on a different shaped body.

i think now you are just reaching. I guess by that token AION has like near infinite gear sets, since they have a robust body customization option.

I think the point is, pick a charachter, how many different options can you have with that charachter.

mostly valid point
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Apprentice_armor

You can see its not the same model exactly across all races? Look at the neck area of the asura and charr. charr is open, the asuran one is closed Auran version has straps going round the neck, charr version has them on the shoulders. and they’re all pretty different then the human version

But human norn and sylvari are identical. so that I admit was a mistake on my part.

that being said I did forget gender, male and female have differnet models which I forgot to factor in. so even though to be fair races should be multiplied by 3 not by 2 you need to add a 2 multiplier for genders so number remains the same.

Its good to be right even when you’re wrong but yes

Still reaching, both gw1 and gw2 have male and female models (aka it cancels out)
changing 3 things on an armor doesnt really make it a new armor. and even if you wanted to claim it does, that doesnt happen for every peice, or every armor. Some armors are exactly the same except warped for a new body type.
Also IF you want to bring female/male into this, you would have to realize that asura uses identical male/female armor for some peices.

regardless i would say its pointless to even look at races or sex, because that doesnt increase the amount of options you have for a specific charachter. Female char will never be able to wear male clothes, and never be able to wear whatever skin looks slightly different on a human.

The same can be said about the armors in Guild Wars 1, Necromancer will never be able to wear Elementalist gear. So really, a more fair comparison, if comparisons needs to be made, should be how much gear options does 1 character have in choices.

Counting pieces overall about 160 for the six main professions, less for the added professions, not including costumes (which adds 17 looks).

Galen Grey.4709:

mostly valid point
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Apprentice_armor

You can see its not the same model exactly across all races? Look at the neck area of the asura and charr. charr is open, the asuran one is closed Auran version has straps going round the neck, charr version has them on the shoulders. and they’re all pretty different then the human version

But human norn and sylvari are identical. so that I admit was a mistake on my part.

that being said I did forget gender, male and female have differnet models which I forgot to factor in. so even though to be fair races should be multiplied by 3 not by 2 you need to add a 2 multiplier for genders so number remains the same.

Its good to be right even when you’re wrong but yes

Actually, if you go by time frame (they were being generous by only talking about Cantha) You’d have to include Nightfall and Eye of the North in our current 2 year window. When you do that, you’ll see a DRASTIC disparity in armor (and possibly weapons), not to mention hero armors…

What it all boils down to, i think, is ANet just got too ambitious when they made GW2 and i really think they are in way over their heads trying to crank out content to keep players excited. It’s quite possible they haven’t developed the tools to ease content creation, lack focus and/or management and, if they are like almost all companies i’ve ever worked for, have pretty heavy communication issues. Not much we can do about that but talk about what we want and whats missing and hope they can pull it off.

phys.7689:

eisberg.2379:

munkiman.3068:

Galen Grey.4709:

ohh homework havent had dont in years

anyway.. you forgot to factor in races as well as forgot radiant and hellfire sets though to be fair until last update they were missing 2 pieces.

so its actually 5 sets x 3 version x 5 races x 6 pieces = 405 pieces

according to this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Gem_Store_armor_sets

there were 21 armor skin variants in the gem store x 5 races x 6 pieces = 630 pieces

so in all its 1035 pieces

thats not factoring in that gw2 armor pieces are more elaborate then the gw1 models too.

There were also a truckload of weapon skins released. like 34 unique skins released with the champion reward updates.. The ones that were tied to living story like the aetherized weapons, dragon weapons etc.. The new set tied to dry top. etc.. thats quite a number of skins there too.

but even counting just the none gem shop skins thats 1035 armor pieces + 165 misc (calculated by yourself thanks ) = 1200 thats about 4x more then your count for factions

Well, to be fair he/she didn’t account for male and female variants either (which is relevant in both games). If you’re comparing between the original and GW2, you can’t take into account races. While it’s also fair to say, that’s a decent bit of work in and of itself, to make armors work on all races, if we just talk about sets themselves, that’s more telling.

It’s obviously a lot harder in this game to create armor, so it’s probably overall unfair to compare an apple to a banana.

That is a good point. Also, Guild Wars 2 seems to have more diversity in how people look, because of mixing armor pieces from different sets/pieces. I don’t remember nearly as much diversity in Guild Wars 1 because people didn’t seem to veer to far, if at all, away from the armor sets.

the lack of diversity, was mostly because you didnt see most players. The ones you did see were generally using show off pieces, like chaos gloves elite armors etc.
When you spend like a month getting a vabbian set, you will probably wear it almost exclusively

They also didn’t have a wardrobe or an easier way to change your looks around. Tie that with more limited storage, and you mostly had people only holding 1-3 sets, less if you had multiple toons.

Jim Hunter.6821:

That’s what I took away from it as well.. This sounds like setting up a system for people to voluntarily merge servers. While that is better than forced merges, it still doesn’t fix the problems.

After all the discussion now, since you’re the OP, where do you stand on the solution? Do you still feel a lower map cap is going to help address population imbalance?

I miss the ANet of those days. It seems like budget constraints and chaos is all we have left