Server consolidation? 1 up, 1 down? Immersion?

Suggestion(s):

Consolidate servers from 24 (current) to 9 = 3 tiers-Rename the servers to eliminate any nostalgic server pride issues.Open the servers for a short period and let the WvW community heal itself? :/

Re-Implement Glicko system-1 up, 1 down has turned out to be a very bad thing. Servers are tanking matches to avoid BG. The immersion is gone - There is no reason to play this "game mode" in many people's eyes. The fights are "fun" and it's the only reason WvW hasn't completely imploded.

Remove Auto Upgrades, Structure Tactics-Automatic upgrades and structure tactics break the immersion as well. It used to be fun for smaller guilds to invest time and gold in upgrading and defending a tower/ keep/ camp etc. One of the things that appealed to me many years ago was the "Tower defense" element of WvW. All of that is gone now and there's literally no incentive to do anything but "Blob up" and KTrain, or fight during Prime-Time (If you're fortunate enough to be able to play during that time)

@Kilo.2539 said:Suggestion(s):

Consolidate servers from 24 (current) to 9 = 3 tiers-Rename the servers to eliminate any nostalgic server pride issues.Open the servers for a short period and let the WvW community heal itself? :/

Agreed with this section of your post.

why not give it a try? beta test

Let´s talk about immersion then:Why does the main keep not get leftover reinforcements when smaller keeps get sacked? It is a rare occurence that no one can flee a siege, especially when you can teleport and have airships.Where is the oil on the walls and not on gates only?No Deathzones inside the keep?No loopholes?Why are smaller keeps so close to the big keep that they can siege them?Where is the tross of the attackers supplying them with ammunition and stuff to eat?Who left the ruins standing around our weakest gate?I could go on for some time.

Upgrading keeps individually was first of all expensive. When you want to drive people away by making wvw not only largely unrewardable but also expensive, go ahead.

My personal approach would be to break people down into the smallest commando unit, guilds. Guilds should hold their own turf and been able to hire guildless roamers and foreign guild members who happen to be on their turf as conscripts or mercenaries when they are attacked. Conscripts would actually be superfunny, but it would probably break down to some reward structure.

@Torolan.5816 said:Let´s talk about immersion then:Why does the main keep not get leftover reinforcements when smaller keeps get sacked? It is a rare occurence that no one can flee a siege, especially when you can teleport and have airships.Where is the oil on the walls and not on gates only?No Deathzones inside the keep?No loopholes?Why are smaller keeps so close to the big keep that they can siege them?Where is the tross of the attackers supplying them with ammunition and stuff to eat?Who left the ruins standing around our weakest gate?I could go on for some time.

Upgrading keeps individually was first of all expensive. When you want to drive people away by making wvw not only largely unrewardable but also expensive, go ahead.

My personal approach would be to break people down into the smallest commando unit, guilds. Guilds should hold their own turf and been able to hire guildless roamers and foreign guild members who happen to be on their turf as conscripts or mercenaries when they are attacked. Conscripts would actually be superfunny, but it would probably break down to some reward structure.

I don't remember breaking the bank while upgrading a tower. I do remember when wvw wasn't rewarding at all in terms of loot/ gold but I think that has been taken care of with reward tracks and game mode specific loot etc.

I'm just throwing darts because as it is now - No server identity, No will to win, No reason to be there outside of a couple hours during PRIME TIME.

It was not breaking the bank. But upgrading the EB keep from T2 to T3 costed you at least 3 Gold, I found that pretty much as someone who was on a small server and no defenders in sight most of the time.

We can keep the basic setup now but, add a user input requirement so we actually have to "build up" the upgrades.

only agree 3 tier B)no need Rename the servers

The problem with consolidating is that it's going make queues really bad at certain times.

@"Kilo.2539" said:Suggestion(s):

Consolidate servers from 24 (current) to 9 = 3 tiers-

Extending the existing problems, all you do is delay the same problems until later. You still have all the problems and disadvantages with a server based system. Players will still stack them, and stack time zones, and we're back to the same problem again.

We need a dynamic system that actually prevents the same stagnation that servers allow. Ironically Linking actually does help a little bit about this, just not enough. Also EotM actually fixes most of this, but the hardcore playerbase would choke on their own wrath if that happened.

Rename the servers to eliminate any nostalgic server pride issues.

So destroy all remaining server pride and communities. At this point you might as well move what is left over to EotM, because that will likely be the last nail in server pride in this game. That will lose the mode a good deal of players that actually do those un-thankful tasks like scouting, babysitting towers/keeps, escorting yaks, and refresh siege etc.

Open the servers for a short period and let the WvW community heal itself? :/

"Heal" isn't the word I'd use. Looking back at history (tournaments etc, and most every time the major servers been opened last couple of years) I'd argue a 95+% chance that instead of healing the problem, players would stack the servers further.

Re-Implement Glicko system-1 up, 1 down has turned out to be a very bad thing. Servers are tanking matches to avoid BG. The immersion is gone - There is no reason to play this "game mode" in many people's eyes. The fights are "fun" and it's the only reason WvW hasn't completely imploded.

Honestly Glicko isn't going to fix that, it is only going to recreate the old T3 from a few years ago, when NSP+IoJ sat stuck in T3 with whatever T2 reject got thrown down for the week. It was a meatgrinder, with the t2 reject fighting tooth and nail to try to get out of t3 and back into t2. With NSP/IoJ stuck because of glicko, and couldn't even tank to get out of it. Iirc IoJ never recovered after that and dropped down to bottom tiers.

So the only thing that would change, is that whatever 2-3 servers that would get stuck playing against BG would be stuck there for a much longer time, and have no way to get out of the fight at all. That doesn't help those servers population at all, people get really sick of those matches and with no chance to get away from it, it's transfer away or just stop playing WvW (or gw2 entirely, depending on).

Remove Auto Upgrades, Structure Tactics-Automatic upgrades and structure tactics break the immersion as well. It used to be fun for smaller guilds to invest time and gold in upgrading and defending a tower/ keep/ camp etc. One of the things that appealed to me many years ago was the "Tower defense" element of WvW. All of that is gone now and there's literally no incentive to do anything but "Blob up" and KTrain, or fight during Prime-Time (If you're fortunate enough to be able to play during that time)

I see some people constantly wanting to bring this back, personally I like the new system much better, but I never really bothered to upgrade stuff in the old system at all. So I'm probably not the most qualified person to talk about this.

All in all I think your ideas basically boils down to "lets take all that is bad about the server structure and ramp it to 11 !!!". Can't agree.

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@"Kilo.2539" said:Suggestion(s):

Consolidate servers from 24 (current) to 9 = 3 tiers-

Rename

the servers to eliminate any nostalgic server pride issues.

Open the servers for a short period and let the WvW community heal itself? :/

Re-Implement Glicko system-1 up, 1 down has turned out to be a very bad thing. Servers are tanking matches to avoid BG. The immersion is gone - There is no reason to play this "game mode" in many people's eyes. The fights are "fun" and it's the only reason WvW hasn't completely imploded.

Remove Auto Upgrades, Structure Tactics-Automatic upgrades and structure tactics break the immersion as well. It used to be fun for smaller guilds to invest time and gold in upgrading and defending a tower/ keep/ camp etc. One of the things that appealed to me many years ago was the "Tower defense" element of WvW. All of that is gone now and there's literally no incentive to do anything but "Blob up" and KTrain, or fight during Prime-Time (If you're fortunate enough to be able to play during that time)

Agree to disagree I suppose. Would love to hear what you would do since your comments hint at you knowing everything.

@"Kilo.2539" said:Agree to disagree I suppose. Would love to hear what you would do since your comments hint at you knowing everything.

No worries, the first thing I learned on this forum is that every single WvW fan disagrees with every other WvW fan, on just about everything. :) (feel free to disagree on this as well!)

Regarding my own "ideas" about the matter, eh, the game mode as-is is probably not possible to "fix". ANet would first have to pick a direction/plan for it and stick to it at the cost of everything else. And I personally think that the first decision they have to make is: Competitive vs Casual ? Because I don't think they can satisfy both groups in the same system. And either way, they would likely have to do a massive re-construction of the mode. And I just don't see them having the will/money/manpower to do that.

And nope, don't know everything, if I did, I'd probably be hired by some game company to make this stuff work. I'm just interested in game design in general, and been following WvW for a bunch of years now, and seen all the dumb things that has happened before, and doesn't work.

"Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results."

• Machiavelli

@Djamonja.6453 said:The problem with consolidating is that it's going make queues really bad at certain times.

This is a non-issue because the only time this happens is server reset; so if a particular server is heavily suffering from this on reset and it bothers them, then it's time to destack to a server with less of a que time. This is the same premise as going from 4 maps to 2 maps (remove Desert BL and one of the borderlands). The population currently can't support 4 maps outside of reset, so there is no sense in having 4 maps; just like there is no sense in having 24 servers.

@DeadlySynz.3471 said:

@Djamonja.6453 said:The problem with consolidating is that it's going make queues really bad at certain times.

If they had to squeeze all the servers into 3 tiers the queues at reset would be like 100 on every map, and there wouldn't be anywhere to transfer to avoid those queues. The rest of the week it wouldn't be as bad, but there would still be map queues during primetime making it hard for guilds to get together on the same map. Of course it would be fine in off hours for most server-links, but it would be really bad in primetime when most people play.

If there are three tiers, more like it would be everyone trying to win T3 or tank out of T1 to be in the T2 "fights" tier. Really bad idea. Reverting to Glicko wouldn't cure that problem either since players can still tank or stack with it. It simply works slower.

@"Kilo.2539" said:Suggestion(s):

Consolidate servers from 24 (current) to 9 = 3 tiers-Rename the servers to eliminate any nostalgic server pride issues.Open the servers for a short period and let the WvW community heal itself? :/

Been suggesting this for 3 years

Re-Implement Glicko system-1 up, 1 down has turned out to be a very bad thing. Servers are tanking matches to avoid BG. The immersion is gone - There is no reason to play this "game mode" in many people's eyes. The fights are "fun" and it's the only reason WvW hasn't completely imploded.

Servers will tank and game the system no mater what. Gliko or 1 up is the same thing. The only difference is that Gliko might take 2 weeks rather than one at some points in time.

Remove Auto Upgrades, Structure Tactics-Automatic upgrades and structure tactics break the immersion as well. It used to be fun for smaller guilds to invest time and gold in upgrading and defending a tower/ keep/ camp etc. One of the things that appealed to me many years ago was the "Tower defense" element of WvW. All of that is gone now and there's literally no incentive to do anything but "Blob up" and KTrain, or fight during Prime-Time (If you're fortunate enough to be able to play during that time)

There is no auto upgrade system. That was briefly in the game whan HoT cam out and was quickly removed after a couple months. As a reminder, you need yaks to get into a keep to deliver supply to upgrade and a camp needs to get yaks to a structure in order for it to upgrade. A single player can have a huge impact on a map by killing yaks/flipping camps.