What do you think of stacking?

Stacking is something often mentioned but never once there was a topic discussing details about it.

In what way do you consider a guild or individual is stacking server?

• A server became full after the guild transfer in?
• The timezone already has another guild(s)?
• The timezone already has population?
• The server already "Very High"?
• After the relink, to a guest server linked that is vastly populated?

What do you think is a poor justification of stacking?

• For fights?
• Timezone is "empty" (but server is full or very high with good amoun of pugs)?

What is your opinions on stacking?

• Negative?
• Positive?

Do you support stacking?

We are seeing this in the EU when one server is just filled with sad people that do not want to fight but just steamroll Pug groups. If that makes them think they are great players fine. It also can be over in a week when they all decide to repeat the same thing again, like they already did before.Strange that guild groups can ruin the game when the name of the game would suggest otherwise :)

In my opinion:

• After the relink, to a guest server linked that is vastly populated
• Timezone is "empty" (but server is full or very high with good amoun of pugs)
• Negative

"Do you support stacking?":The thing is, stacking is a result of the inherent flaws of the current server system. For one there are too many servers split among few players, so naturally alot of us gather on the highly populated ones for more around the clock activity. Sometimes if a server has a lot people leaving you just can't get fair fights anymore. With the addition of links it eased the pressure on already stacked worlds, and allowed some much needed fluidity to the system that made ot possible for links to carry the main server and therefore stay relevant, even becoming locked and receiving it's own links in the process. It used to be common practice for guilds of higher tiers to transfer down in order to climb that server up, although nowadays they seem more willing to tank instead.

There are good reasons for stacking, and there are bad ones. As long as this is up to players I feel it overall has a negative impact on the game because this leaves some servers empty and others filled to the brim with good guilds. Also locked server populations is making it harder to play with your friends in some cases. The linking system made quite a few workarounds for alot of these issues, and I believe the goal of the WvW rework is to eliminate them once and for all since stacking will no longer serve a purpose.

See what happened with EU guilds, where guilds for on the main server bandwagoned to the link, thus making the link a main server, and the main server ends up being empty. All this for dominance in fights against pugs from other servers. And this keeps making people theyre somehow better or elite in fights. Stacking servers, in my opinion, have more bad aspects than good ones. Thus, I do not support stacking.

I feel old, when I've read the thread title I thought OP meant "stacking" in terms of blobs positioning (it used to be a term described for multiple people standing basically ontop of the commander concentrating a strenght of 50 player group onto area that was supposed to be single player)

as for the actuall thread topic at hand....

well I don't really see difference between what you are describing and bandwagoning that used to be huge scourge on WvW gameplay.

and if you take into consideration that server I am currently at used to be top1 EU server at launch until a drama in main guild alliance started off whole bandwagoning train for month to come, leaving the server in today's state of being barely a link server to a bigger one it isn't hard to imagine what my opinion would be on anything resembling that.

I'd suppose that players from those servers that these....... very irresponsible fellas elevated to high tiers and then left there jumping towards next target would kinda share similar thoughts to mine on the subject.

as for why people were doing it?well the main guilds that initiated whole thing wanted to proof that they are "THE force" behind the server's success, so they hoped to the weakest one and were carrying it to top1 to proove their claim, but since they were not applauded for what they were doing process was being repeated few times - and they had alot of bandwagoners following them because people wanted to fight on the same server as "big guys"

so I suppose this would be same case here - some guilds feels insecure about their status on WvW arena so they are doing tis to "proove" to others that they and not rest of the server are the "pros"

I really hope that the server restructuring that AN is working on will leave no room for repeating this.

Considering what having one hyperstacked server has done to the dynamics in NA for so long, I can't say I'm a fan. It doesn't speak very well of ANet's population system when it requires multiple other servers working together to match the coverage of one server. I'm not making this into a post about how said server plays, this is solely about coverage across many timezones.

I think the primary indicator for stacking is when a server takes on enough coverage to overwhelm one or more timezones.

Stacking and serial bandwagoning is definitely one of the things that's ruined this game mode over time though imo. Not the only thing but definitely one of them.

@"SkyShroud.2865" said:Stacking is something often mentioned but never once there was a topic discussing details about it.

I can't speak to GW2 specifically, but when WoW developers talked about it, they basically identified a big problem with stacking -- basically, players stack to the most successful server, and if they can't do that, the next most successful, no matter what. Partly because it has the best other players, and partly because a big, active population is easier to win various sorts of fight in.

I'm of the view that the only possible solution is the one we have seen ANet propose: ditch "servers", replace it with allocation of players as needed.

It's sometimes hard to avoid a "stacking" of a server when a guild needs to move. Usually it's for recruitment reasons (ie full server) or for better fights (because of a server hard locked to a tier)

I don't think it's that big of an issue because said stacked server will usually end up in T1 or whatever if they're too thick and, if on a link, they'll become a host server anyway (as WSR and soon to be Kaineng will be)

It's a problem that fixes itself within 2 months anyway, and will disappear when alliances happen.

The proposed reset of battlegroups every 8 weeks will solve a lot of stacked server problems. Now balancing dominant alliances will require some clever design. The expectations are high Anet, take your time, get it right.

I hate it. I believe server transfers and stacking is the main reason wvw is in the state it is today. It is for weak sheep bandwagon people who want to feel good and feel like winners.... possibly a guy thing. Server transfers should not have been allowed at all. As for looking for better fights, a lot of people go on about tanking for better fights... and thats another thing, tanking is for weak sheep people too.

For your 1st question: all of the above2nd question: both3rd question: negative

I say, bring on the alliance system. wvw is beyond stale. I'm tired of the server system. I'm tired. tired. tired of the server stacking, bandwagoning, tier tanking. Blow this whole thing up, I say. Screw "server pride".

I have been gaming for more than a decade during which I have played several mmorpgs and number of them is what others deemed as "hardcore" like grindy mmorpg with item drop on death. Stacking is common but it wasn't at the absurd level of gw2's. Stacking always bring negative impact to a game's well being and that has not change for years, in any combat oriented mmo. Personally, I also see stacking as a expression of weakness and weak people's attempt to fulfill that sense of victory and glory.

For the start, let's talk about the negative impact of stacking. All kind of players stack servers, be it good or bad. Still, due to the massive numbers in the server, naturally, the number of better players are higher than a server than has lesser numbers. It is just common sense. When this cycle of stacking keep repeating over and over again, eventually, the skill gap will grow between servers. When that happen, naturally, the server with more skilled players will start to roll over the one with less and when that do happen, people will start to quit and thus overall game populations start to decline, faster.

Next, it should be obvious that when players stack onto a server, it means that other servers destack, it is too a common sense. Question is, what happen to the servers that destack? What happen to the players that stay or don't want to pay (to win) to stack? These players got rolled over and then they too start to quit, thus overall game populations start to decline, faster.

Stacking occurred for so many cycles in gw2, just how many players quit directly and indirectly due to it?

Moving on to talk about this "absurd level" of stacking that I have seen here. For most part, stacking isn't something phenomenally occurred, it was initially manipulated by players themselves, then it become a culture, a very bad culture where people believe it is "alright" to do it and it is "correct" to keep silent or "get used to" about it when seeing others doing it.

Firstly, historically, gw2 has a lot of different stacked servers throughout but not many actually know the manipulating shilling and fuds done by many players. I have personally witness those sales pitches, is crazy. For example, there were servers that were stacked to brim in particular timezones and yet there were people still calling for more with some absurd sales pitch. It is fine if the buyers are not weak minded which unfortunately, plenty are. What these sales pitch in summary does is simply promising a land of eden. They buy into that and stacked on the servers then when things got boring and unchallenged due to the massive numbers they have, they hypocritically tell everyone that they needed more challenge. /shrugs

Second. People always talk about fights yet I have lost count of number of guilds and players who left their servers because things got hard, not because there weren't any fights. They simply got tired of getting squashed which obviously their destination is one of the stacked servers. Are they looking for fights or are they looking for easy wins? The answer is obvious but that is one of the problems in this game's community, it isn't obvious for majority. Many tried really hard to paint a positive social image, even if it is fake.

Third. I am sure some people have seen the "friends" argument on the forums. It goes like this, "I have friend on this full server, open it up so I can join". Some guild leaders or officers even tried to exploit that and make "discussion" thread about it.

Lastly. The real problem is the "political correctness" in this community. Many always trying to stay at one's good side and not call out others for stacking and attempt to make others stack. Sure, they are minority that do call out but they are minority thus naturally, it is quite easy to squash those vocal minority with fake positive vibe and proclaiming them as toxic. This simply helps strengthen stacking as positive instead of negative.

TLDR: Stacking is bad. If one leave their original servers which have fights of their own for another servers that is populated for fights, then is stacking. The culture of this game promotes stacking.