Transfers

Was wondering with all the transferring that happens after relinking and thus making population unbalanced over and over again, what if..

Open up all servers (not the full ones obviously) on the Mon - Wed before relinking and close it until the next Mon - Wed before relinking.

• I think this would avoid all the transferring that's defeating the 'purpose' of relinking.
• It would also allow people to still transfer to promote their "preparing for alliance" with a fixed window of transfer.
• Allows Anet to still get their $$ with transfers.

Not sure if this was proposed or addressed before, but it's getting old with guilds moving just a week after relinking and leaving servers screwed over it.

ANet should do the next relink then lock all servers down. Relinking and then allowing transfers completely squashes the purpose of the relinks.

Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

@rektu.8209 said:Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

Exactly right. Money speaks louder than quality.

@Tac Mars.6170 said:Open up all servers (not the full ones obviously) on the Mon - Wed before relinking and close it until the next Mon - Wed before relinking.I like this, but . . .@Tac Mars.6170 said:

• Allows Anet to still get their $$ with transfers.. . . but why transfer some days before relinking? Ppl transfer to another server, just to, some days after, lose a link, or get linked with another server (maybe the one they left), or drop from top to bottom tier, or transfer to a server that loses guilds / ppl due to transfer from that server that same day. I guess, there would definitely be a drop in revenue from transfers.

Easier solution - raise all transfer cost.

I am not in favor of stopping people from transferring. However, establishing a system that would make it more difficult would be fine by me:

• Establish a 6 month rolling check.
• First transfer 500 gems (assuming medium pop server)
• Second transfer (any server) 1800 gems
• Third transfer (any server) 3600 gems
• Fourth transfer (any server) 5400 gems

So the fourth transfer would be the ‘most’ within 6 months if people are only moving on relink days.

After that, whatever number of transfer it is, within the 6 month ROLLING average would be the gem cost. So, by the 5th transfer, if people transferred every 8 weeks, it would always be 5400 gems.

Won’t stop transfers, but it will incentivize less.

(Of course I would LOVE to see those gems directly go to WvW stuffs but.., yeah, ain’t happenin)

A transfer cooldown that exponentially increases the prices of gems needed to transfer based on the transfer rate X wvw activity.

@rektu.8209 said:Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

+1

If they'd care about population balance there would be a system for that for a long time now.

Money talks.

A few days ago I asked people about recommendations as to where to transfer, but mostly I'm greeted with the same response - it's the same everywhere, and I believe them to be right. Most people directly encourage to just quit the game, unless it's more than WvW you're after.

It couldn't be more obvious how neglected this game mode by the company is. From what I hear they have exactly 1 developer for the Alliance system? All their efforts to squeeze out more money from the player base that do only WvW is by integrating PvE elements into it, but that's all. Same with PvP and crafting to get items > materials > PvE.

Transfers are useless unless you're part of a guild or have friends on a particular server you wish to play with. Else it's best to save money.

@Inoki.6048 said:

@"rektu.8209" said:Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

Truly imo there really is no reason to transfer. People transferring because they're "looking for fights" make me chuckle really. Most of the wvw players these days have hundreds of wvw xp, not over a thousand like the minority has. Considering wvw has been here for over 6 years now there should really be a huge number more people well over the 3k mark than there are. This shows how many have left wvw and in many cases, gw2 altogether.

SoS had a handful of guilds leave to find "better fights"... I'll never understand that.... unless they moved somewhere that they KNOW the enemy is organized better than anywhere else and gives them good fights.. AND they keep moving to fight them... We have a good OCX group so we tend to rise up the ranks because of course our ppt stays up there after most others have gone to sleep. Sooo.. we continue to get tons of enemy to fight. Even with this I guess it's not enough to keep people from bandwagoning off for "greener grass".

At the end of the day it is what it is. People do what they need to do to find their fun. If that means transfering every link then that's what they'll do and yes ANet will be happy to collect the money for gems because there's not that many people with that much gold to just convert just anytime they like... I think.

Transfers after relink destroy the purpose of the relink.

Blocking transfers would take money out of ANet's pocket. I'd like to see ANet get revenue for WvW so they can justify resource allocation to that game mode. However that being said, there appears to be little WvW changes over the years.

In my opinion, WvW is in the worst state it has ever been. Removing transfers now may kill the game mode entirely -- as in transfers may be the only thing keeping many players in the game. We need improvements in the game before killing it.

I'm surprised ANet hasn't already done this already, but let me suggest:

World Transfer = Pay Gems + Cost 75%-90% of a Player's Total earned Badge of Honors with a Minimum Cost of 1k-5k Badges

Let players transfer as much as they want if they can afford it & while EARNING the privilege.

Yours truly,Diku

See some of my past posts...please vote Helpful or Thumbs up if you agree.

Credibility requires critical insight & time.

The last time I mention about anything related to bandwagoning, they delete my thread saying I keep repeating the topic "bandwagoning".

They don't like legitimate complains. They consider all complains as QQ. They won't do anything to it until years later.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:I am not in favor of stopping people from transferring. However, establishing a system that would make it more difficult would be fine by me:

• Establish a 6 month rolling check.
• First transfer 500 gems (assuming medium pop server)
• Second transfer (any server) 1800 gems
• Third transfer (any server) 3600 gems
• Fourth transfer (any server) 5400 gems

So the fourth transfer would be the ‘most’ within 6 months if people are only moving on relink days.

After that, whatever number of transfer it is, within the 6 month ROLLING average would be the gem cost. So, by the 5th transfer, if people transferred every 8 weeks, it would always be 5400 gems.

Won’t stop transfers, but it will incentivize less.

(Of course I would LOVE to see those gems directly go to WvW stuffs but.., yeah, ain’t happenin)So basicly, instead of balance you want people staying where they are, unhappy with their server in which case they are just going to troll and not play. Yeah that's sure to help WvW. Truly.

I mean what's WvW without a filled team chat amirite?

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Strider Pj.2193 said:I am not in favor of stopping people from transferring. However, establishing a system that would make it more difficult would be fine by me:

• Establish a 6 month rolling check.
• First transfer 500 gems (assuming medium pop server)
• Second transfer (any server) 1800 gems
• Third transfer (any server) 3600 gems
• Fourth transfer (any server) 5400 gems

So the fourth transfer would be the ‘most’ within 6 months if people are only moving on relink days.

After that, whatever number of transfer it is, within the 6 month ROLLING average would be the gem cost. So, by the 5th transfer, if people transferred every 8 weeks, it would always be 5400 gems.

Won’t stop transfers, but it will incentivize less.

(Of course I would LOVE to see those gems directly go to WvW stuffs but.., yeah, ain’t happenin)So basicly, instead of balance you want people staying where they are, unhappy with their server in which case they are just going to troll and not play. Yeah that's

sure

to help WvW. Truly.

Of course. That’s exactly my goal. /s

Why do links when their purpose is to try to balance population, then people move immediately after?

Of course, we can always have links like BG and ET. That would never be a problem.

Delete BG. Problem solved.

@rektu.8209 said:Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

I don't think Anet is getting as much as people think they are. It doesn't cost much gold to swap for gems to at least move to a medium server (which is where all the transferring is occurring).

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Strider Pj.2193 said:I am not in favor of stopping people from transferring. However, establishing a system that would make it more difficult would be fine by me:

• Establish a 6 month rolling check.
• First transfer 500 gems (assuming medium pop server)
• Second transfer (any server) 1800 gems
• Third transfer (any server) 3600 gems
• Fourth transfer (any server) 5400 gems

So the fourth transfer would be the ‘most’ within 6 months if people are only moving on relink days.

After that, whatever number of transfer it is, within the 6 month ROLLING average would be the gem cost. So, by the 5th transfer, if people transferred every 8 weeks, it would always be 5400 gems.

Won’t stop transfers, but it will incentivize less.

(Of course I would LOVE to see those gems directly go to WvW stuffs but.., yeah, ain’t happenin)So basicly, instead of balance you want people staying where they are, unhappy with their server in which case they are just going to troll and not play. Yeah that's

sure

to help WvW. Truly.

I guess that was the purpose of the linking to begin with... that is, rebalance populations for more equal fights. But of course people didn't like that idea and a lot of them now just server hop each time there's a relink, which simply makes the idea of relinking a waste of time. Even adjusting the number of servers to some lower number wouldn't stop bandwagoning. The only thing that will halt server hopping will be to close servers and that's not going to happen of course.

@rektu.8209 said:Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

People always say this, but are we sure this is actually a significant revenue stream, especially one for which they would compromise design decisions? Face it, the organized wvw pop is NOT that big. And I'm under the impression that the guilds that move don't pay real money for it anyway, they solicit/farm gold to convert to gems. I guess ultimately that drives the price of gems higher which is a small enticement for some other players to buy gems, but that's stretching the cause/effect motivator way past its limit, IMO.

Let's say 1000 players move each relink. Since usually just one or two servers get stacked up, that seems ballpark reasonable to me. Now let's say 80% of those costs are covered by guilds that are already gold-rich or by farming, the other 20% are whales paying money or assorted guild members willing to pony up. That's 200 people paying $10 every two months to stack up wvw. ANet is not breaking the game for an extra $2000 every other month. If someone wants to propose different numbers I'm all ears, but I can't see it being wildly more than this.

Far more likely they just don't have any good solution that won't cause them other headaches and/or is technically difficult with the time better spent on alliances.

Why would I transfer to another server before relink?

The only incentives to move are:

• To join WvW friends
• My guild was recruited
• To get more fights of the sort I like

There is absolutely no easy fix to the effects of bandwagoning on matchups because the problem is built into the mechanics. Restructuring has a chance to resolve the underlying systemic issue, by changing the size of the balancing unit from World to Alliance/Guild. Instead of trying to balance entire worlds (WvW at launch) or 2-3 linkages (WvW today), the future allows ANet to reallocate in blocks of 500-1000 (or even less).

There might or might not be opportunities to "game" that system also... and it will be tricky at best to figure out which blocks should be grouped with witch. Matchmaking will become so complex that most of us won't have a good understanding of why our alliance got matched with or against any other one.But it will mean that there will be a reasonable chance that the match ups could be balanced enough to feel like fair fights most of the time.

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:

@rektu.8209 said:Why would anet do that? They are getting money every relink.. They are just gonna milk it out till alliances come, and even after alliances, they will milk it out even more till gw3 comes out.

You're counting guilds, the following pug population is much larger. Only 200 people transferring per matchup.. really? Across NA, EU and CN? I think you're off by orders of magnitude.Every gem traded for gold was purchased with real money. Last time I transferred I bought $35 in gems. 1200 me's pays a Dev salary for the year. Yeah, that's a big deal.

The matchups are so lopsided lots of players only play reset. Whole guilds take weeks off. My servers teamspeak during na time has 10 players on. The link servers should be eliminated. Transfers should be controlled. If money wasn't a factor WVW would be fun again. In the meantime we can look forward to 60 against 1 fights.

@"LetoII.3782" said:You're counting guilds, the following pug population is much larger. Only 200 people transferring per matchup.. really? Across NA, EU and CN? I think you're off by orders of magnitude.Every gem traded for gold was purchased with real money. Last time I transferred I bought $35 in gems. 1200 me's pays a Dev salary for the year. Yeah, that's a big deal.

I said only 200 people paying cash money to transfer. And that was just a guess given my knowledge of guild transfers (guilds I've been a part of that transferred, and server conversation for many years of guilds coming and going). I've never seen any guild leader ask members to pay, nor heard anybody say they paid to transfer. I HAVE heard guilds talk about gathering or soliciting the gold they need to give to members to transfer, or offering to assist with gold for members' transfers. My feeling is that few people are willing to bankroll out of their own pockets in real money for their guild to move, so that's why I guessed a low number.

I really don't have the feeling that there are a large number of pugs that transfer to chase winning servers. In my view that is entirely a guild thing. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong with some data or anecdotes to the contrary, but it doesn't make sense to me as a player anyway to transfer unless it's with a group I want to play with.

I know nothing about the CN WvW scene or if it even has one. I had only been talking EU, so if you double my number it still doesn't change the argument. What would a number high enough to make ANet take notice be in your estimation?

Look at it another way. Devs have already said that for alliances they are targeting worlds to be roughly 500-1000 players total. Assuming that is roughly the size of an active server population now, it gives you some idea of just how small the wvw pop is. Given that the movement primarily takes place to, again, one or two servers each reset, and all servers have permanent pop that won't move, I can't see how you can arrive at "orders of magnitude" more people transferring. Fight/wvw guilds tend to be relatively small, and not everyone will move even when their leadership does. The math just isnt there for me. Please feel free to suggest where I'm mistaken though.

I'll give you an example, Kaineng.Six months ago it was the deadest of the dead servers. One of NA's trial alliances moved there.. About 200 people by itself. Now, the server queues maps even without any significant guild presence. It's gone from a "medium" link to a "full".Second example Sanctum of Rall, right down there with Kaineng.. goes full one relink, right back to medium the very next relink.

@"LetoII.3782" said:I'll give you an example, Kaineng.Six months ago it was the deadest of the dead servers. One of NA's trial alliances moved there.. About 200 people by itself. Now, the server queues maps even without any significant guild presence. It's gone from a "medium" link to a "full".Second example Sanctum of Rall, right down there with Kaineng.. goes full one relink, right back to medium the very next relink.

Yes, those are the servers that stacked up the last couple of relinks. But your numbers there are reinforcing my point - a 200-person alliance moves, maybe a few other guilds and hangers on... which bumps a server population from medium (let's say 700) to full (1000). Only about 80-90 people can be on a map per side. So a full server should have no trouble queuing, especially if those new transfers are active guilds with known commanders who tag up for blocks of time where people will stick around and follow. Again, there's just not really a path to thousands and thousands of people transferring every relink, much less thousands of them paying out of pocket for it. Yeah, the transfers have an effect on gem exchange rate, but I assure you FAR FAR more gems get bought by PvE people for skins and keys and such, and the bump in gem to gold exchange is a minor incentive at best.