Over stacked servers are demoralizing the playerbase.

Discuss.

No, perma locked servers is demoralizing the playerbase

So... one NA and one EU server are demoralizing the player base? Huh.

People are THAT soft?

To an extent, yes.

I'm on a server that hasn't stood on it's own for a long time, so I've seen the reaction of a few servers to the prospect of going up against BG since server matching began. It tends to be summed up as "puppy that, let's throw for a few weeks so we don't have to go up against them for a while".

My vote should have been no. This is what is demoralizing me anyway:

1> Guilds cannot recruit since the playerbase is static.2> Guilds flee (temporarily) to lower tiers to scoop up any player worth anything. Lower tiers get a temp boost, but not enough to make a difference. Some of these guilds survive the move, but most do not. The remaining players try to get back to the server they just left. But since they are locked, these players tend to quit or play on alts.3> Servers get boosted by 2> and a possible link or two. Gain major pug boost and rise up in the tiers.4> Relinks. Servers boosted by pugs fall down when pugs are gone. New servers take their place. Nothing changes.5> Anet fails to come up with a plan to fix any of this, so trots out the usual talking points and makes wild accusations like saying FA and BG are pretty much the same.6> Eventually, maybe, servers open. Guilds and players who left go back 'home' with their boosted playerbase, leaving the servers they left even more prone to falling if they are victims of the link boost. Then 4> happens again.7> ????8> Profit9> Btw it's still boring and terrible as heck to fight BG.

Should be obvious by now that Mo needs to give WvW to a fresh set of Devs. They aren't listening to the players as satisfaction and population in WvW continues to drop. Another issue is the forums are so scrubbed of negative feedback that it's insulating Anet from knowing how heated the players actually are.

The bigger problem is that several servers have been locked and classified "full" for ages, with no apparent reason. For example my server Desolation is classified full. Yet, even at reset we can create a short queue to one map. Usually there are no queues to any map, but 3/4 maps are giving us "outnumbered " buff.

The FULL classification should really mean the server is so full that people need to queue to enter WvWvW, not vice versa.

Full is relative to the other servers you're fighting.

If you have 100 players, and the other two have 50 combined, that makes for not fun gameplay.

I suspect the status of "full" is relational to help provide some semblance of balance.

I personally wouldn't say overstacked servers demoralizes to playerbase at all. I'd instead say that overstacked servers are more of a insult to the playerbase if anything. Here are the reasons why I say this.

In my 16 plus years of MMO gaming. GW2 is the first that this, has become such a issue in. Other MMOs I've played would have by.

• Permanently merged servers. (BnS and ESO are perfect examples of this.)
• Destroyed the servers who en masse exploited the population system. In order to overstack in the first place. (BnS was a perfect example of this.)
• Change the mechanics of the game mode, to adapt to the current population issues. In a way that gives more incentives to players to fight fairly. Rather than overstack and out blob others down and PvD, for easier rewards. (ESO is a perfect example of this, ZOS changed the mechanics of ESO twice to help with these issues.)
• Give players the tools to fight against outnumbered situations, through coordination and tactics. (Look towards ESO, Eve Online, PS, and DCUO for example of this)
• Give decent incentives for small groups on maps. (Look at ESO, and Eve Online for examples of this.)
• Make it somewhat difficult for one huge overwhelming K-Training omni blob to control the whole map. (ESO's Alliance War is a perfect example of this. Eve Online is still making active strives towards this goal.)

All of this is coming from my experience in PS2, Eve Online, DCUO, BnS, and ESO.

However none of these will ever happen in GW2. Because then god forbid if the casuals just can't stack and win. Oh no guys, the world would end if that came to past.

Which is why any discussion on population balance is in vain. Because population imbalance is ANet's tool of choice. To use to elevate the gamers who are just simply garbage. To levels above gamers who are actually quite decent or better. BG is a prime example of this. Look at the types of players who decided to stack the living crap out of that server, just for sure unimposed wins through sheer numbers. Also server imbalance provides ANet with extra money.

And players wonder why the WvW population, is not only in it low capacity state. But also in state of feeling so neglected and insulted to the point, Many have stopped players or no longer financially support the game.

Anet has one easy way to curb overstacking, and to deal with what we have today. Dynamic map caps.

That is the best way to make sure numbers are more even. Otherwise an overstacked server will always outnumber the other servers.

Honestly I don't really blame BG for this problem. They were playing the game as it stood, and were winning at it. Anet changed the game, and BG got caught with massive number imbalance, which led to other servers losing numbers, tanking, and otherwise griping and moaning without the ability to buy new guilds to their servers.

Anet could do a few things to fix it, but the easiest, and least riling to their players, would be dynamic map caps.

Edit: I don't care about overstacked servers. I used to, when I cared about winning the week. Now; just look for fun where I can find it.

The problem is the community. It's in our nature to flock to the server that's winning and be a part of winning team. Anet can't fix this. If they stopped transfers, would help the WvW game mode?

@boolah.1325 said:The problem is the community. It's in our nature to flock to the server that's winning and be a part of winning team. Anet can't fix this. If they stopped transfers, would help the WvW game mode?

No ANet refuses to fix it is a big difference between Anet can't fix this. It's been proved to be fixable problem in other MMOs. Therefore it can be fixed in GW2 as well. That is if ANet is willing to invest and do the work required to fix it. Other MMO's did had completely change their game structure in order to bare decent results.

I guess other MMOs care way more about the quality of their full game than ANet does. Therein lies the whole of the problem.

When people fight to get away from facing a certain server, I'd say there's a problem.

Blow up all the other servers and move them to 2 others to make them compatible with the "overstacked" servers. Why penalize the ones that have played the game the way it was meant to be played with a combination of fighting and PPT.

I dont' get the current culture of penalizing the successful. it should be held as an example, not an example of what's wrong. If people really wanted to do it, they'd pick a lower ranked server and transfer en masse in one week. You'd have to work at it to get it organized, etc and that's where the problem really is, no one really wants to do the work to compete, they'd rather just make complaint threads on the forums rather than putting in the work.

@boolah.1325 said:The problem is the community. It's in our nature to flock to the server that's winning and be a part of winning team. Anet can't fix this. If they stopped transfers, would help the WvW game mode?

Actually, it can be fixed by Anet and there have been several ideas floating around the community on how to do so. The problem is that this forum and other routines for handling community feedback is rather poor with a preference for popularity-based decision making rather than discourse (I'm not just referring to the WvW polls). The ideas have never really been given attention or proper vetting or discussion because all such discussion tend to get drenched out in short-worded opinions and hyperbole. It is a drawback of trying to create a friendly and casual community with some methods applied here or routinely, even if they have other merits or are meant well.

In fact, there have been some very good ideas that do away with both the archaic queue system, population imbalance, night capping, winning conditions, the ability to have performance-based rewards, balance between ticks and kills (or captures and fights) and incentives to spread thin. Anet even already have the tech to implement most of these things. Those ideas have just been drenched out in inferior-argument critique and never made it to the developers or broad attention. Instead, either weaker systems or more sweeping hard-to-implement changes tend to be rehashed more popularily.

When it comes to player mentality and Anet's ability to form it, I would recommend everyone to listen to Roy's comment about server stacking and player mentality on the November 3rd WvW-themed Tea Time videocast (just Youtube Tea Time or find it through the Anet partnership thing). Roy explicitly mentions how many of the most experienced guilds and commanders actually tend to get together and actively try to counteract the stacking by making deals and spreading out. Those players pay gems to counter stacking in order to create content. My friends, you should let that sink in.

If the incentive to transfer to win (namely the population imbalance and how it affects scoring to take the competetive edge out of the mode) is adressed then the player base is more likely to solve the issue than not because the efforts Roy mentions will become far more effective. Those groups will spread out and there will be less incentive to follow the next "best" cluster around. The last time my guild and server did one of those "spread" resets was for the release of PoF and listening to the Tea Time segment there seems to be more of them in the works now again.

@Reaper Alim.4176 said:I personally wouldn't say overstacked servers demoralizes to playerbase at all. I'd instead say that overstacked servers are more of a insult to the playerbase if anything. Here are the reasons why I say this.

In my 16 plus years of MMO gaming. GW2 is the first that this, has become such a issue in. Other MMOs I've played would have by.

• Permanently merged servers. (BnS and ESO are perfect examples of this.)
• Destroyed the servers who en masse exploited the population system. In order to overstack in the first place. (BnS was a perfect example of this.)
• Change the mechanics of the game mode, to adapt to the current population issues. In a way that gives more incentives to players to fight fairly. Rather than overstack and out blob others down and PvD, for easier rewards. (ESO is a perfect example of this, ZOS changed the mechanics of ESO twice to help with these issues.)
• Give players the tools to fight against outnumbered situations, through coordination and tactics. (Look towards ESO, Eve Online, PS, and DCUO for example of this)
• Give decent incentives for small groups on maps. (Look at ESO, and Eve Online for examples of this.)
• Make it somewhat difficult for one huge overwhelming K-Training omni blob to control the whole map. (ESO's Alliance War is a perfect example of this. Eve Online is still making active strives towards this goal.)

All of this is coming from my experience in PS2, Eve Online, DCUO, BnS, and ESO.

However none of these will ever happen in GW2. Because then god forbid if the casuals just can't stack and win. Oh no guys, the world would end if that came to past.

Which is why any discussion on population balance is in vain. Because population imbalance is ANet's tool of choice. To use to elevate the gamers who are just simply garbage. To levels above gamers who are actually quite decent or better. BG is a prime example of this. Look at the types of players who decided to stack the living crap out of that server, just for sure unimposed wins through sheer numbers. Also server imbalance provides ANet with extra money.

And players wonder why the WvW population, is not only in it low capacity state. But also in state of feeling so neglected and insulted to the point, Many have stopped players or no longer financially support the game.

Warhammer Online, towards the end, implemented a unique system to reduce rewards for the overstacked faction.A great idea too late to matter for WAR, ignored by every MMO since.

i hope top management reads our plea. why? because i love wvw. would hate to see this burn out by losing good players to different games.

help us out by 1. resetting wvw 2. removing some tiers. 3. opening closed homes. 4. tourney 5. make char cart a pve mount skin for raptor. =)

Blame the whole World...

@Subversion.2580 said:When it comes to player mentality and Anet's ability to form it, I would recommend everyone to listen to Roy's comment about server stacking and player mentality on the November 3rd WvW-themed Tea Time videocast (just Youtube Tea Time or find it through the Anet partnership thing). Roy explicitly mentions how many of the most experienced guilds and commanders actually tend to get together and actively try to counteract the stacking by making deals and spreading out. Those players pay gems to counter stacking in order to create content. My friends, you should let that sink in.

Correct! The best thing Anet can do is increase World population limits back to launch levels, remove the darn locks, and give players the freedom to fix the game ourselves

@MasterYoda.8563 said:No, perma locked servers is demoralizing the playerbase

well in all fairness this and the OP are both true. Its demoralizing to know you can't be apart of the servers who are destined to win.

ego = norevenue. so hopefully the bosses of devs ego will let it go and start listening to us

Personally, I don't care enough, but I have seen many that refuse to logon when they draw a certain matchup enough that the answer seems pretty clear.

@zhonnika.1784 said:My vote should have been no. This is what is demoralizing me anyway:

1> Guilds cannot recruit since the playerbase is static.

That seems to be the worst thing; lacking coverage or people but still being "locked" so you can't even do anything about it leading to some to attempt manipulation of activity.

At this point, it seems to me that server caps just haven't worked, so why bother?

@MasterYoda.8563 said:No, perma locked servers is demoralizing the playerbaseThis and...

ANET and players demoralized the playerbase. One is slow to react, and the other is taking the path of least resistance because psychology! Take your pick which is what.

At first it was!

I was in for the ride of my life trying to start and establish a new quality guild on a low-medium pop server. I found others to share in my vision, and together we've started to go on a journey like no other.

The psychology of all of this is simple. Anet temps the smaller servers' players base (which we recruit from) to want to transfer to the fuller servers they are partnered with, even guilds are transferring away from smaller servers, sadly. however, Aurora Glade is fighting back daily and we're growing, from the ashes we're slowly rising and we're going a different route. Players are coming to us from various servers, even much higher ranked than our own.

Why fight for some top server, to defend another guy's victory of his top spot, when all you ever did was log onto their? When you can rather fight for the underdog, a server people used to make fun off and gain glory along the way?

I believe we at Aurora Glade have the most amazing server culture that we're all building, there's the Aurora Glade community which I found was most friendly and welcoming to my Guild and various other strong Guilds. Sadly in middle of the year +- we had an exodus of the past Guilds, before our time and the many new Guilds that are on the Block. There remained some good guilds, that we support, we enjoy working with them. We drop upgrades into each other's captures, we roam together, we blob together and jump roam squad together. We defend each others claims like our lives really depended on it and we have a good night crew too.

Our Guild which the part of the "GTDM Golden Alliance" which is being built with the intent to protect and grow Aurora Glade, is part of the restoring project we wish others would share with, and others have indeed come.

We' are starting small, in all areas, and we will be hosting events for the broader community, soon. We're friendly towards our allied servers and wish to have good sportsmanship. We hope to see past Aurora Glade Guilds return and others flourish, eventually. We also focus on growing our own separate community/Guilds system internally within our Aurora Glade structure, giving an olive branch for other Aurora Glad Guilds to reach out to us, either directly or via their memberships at the Aurora Glade community.

Why fight for some top server, to defend another guy's victory of his top spot, when you can fight for the underdog, and earn it together - have some honour and come and get your glory here with us.

We're growing and building our teams, the moral is very high, in fact we Aurora Gladers are proud folks and the one's still here, are fighting back and it seems to be spreading, since we're winning the hearts of others, from other servers too!

Say yes to having a reason, to fight for your server, say yes to having a cause, say yes to glory, say yes to joining Aurora Glade where moral is high!

Say yes to GTDM: https://www.guardiansofthedarkmelody.com

that is some recruitment message. =)

hoping servers open