Alternate to alliances; suggestion

[exeggcuter.8394]

So I've been thinking and talking with server mates about alliances / restructuring and the issue it's meant to solve.

The main issue its designed to solve is server population imbalance.

There are far cleaner and easier to program ways to achieve the same end, none of which require burning the current system and remaking it from scratch.

Guild wars 2 has stuff, like mithril ore. Loads of folks play WvW to get stuff, like gift of battle. I like stuff, people like stuff, skritt like stuff.

The devs could easily use that stuff to incentivize people to voluntarily swap servers.

Examples:

You are currently on a low population server? Ok, have a 100% bonus to reward track progress.

You are currently outnumbered? Ok, have a 50% bonus to reward track progress.

To compel people to actually swap servers though? Give people on a full server a discount to swap servers. Possibly even enough of a discount to make moving from a full server to a low pop server free, depending on if enough actually do this.

Any other ideas? Go nuts and toss them in the replies.

I fully expect ANet to not implement any of these ideas, since they seem to have fallen to the sunk cost fallacy with regards to alliances. It's clear, to me, that alliances will cause more problems than it will solve. But that's just from my own personal limited experience.

[XenesisII.1540]

World Restructuring is basically beyond the point of no return. So changes in regards to a server status will basically become obsolete.

Outnumbered already gives 50% more participation, which determines how much points you earn for progress on your reward track, I suppose changing it to like 50% more track progress instead (like the boosters do) would be better. But end of the day has no real impact on population shifting in the zone, only the limited people in the zone get the bonus, and there's no reason to advertise it to the other maps as the bonus could go away in 5mins due to getting more players(who probably wouldn't even get the bonus either due to outnumbered is only checked at the beginning for the next tick).

Lower gem prices to transfer to smaller servers is a server incentive, and it actually hurts the mode now with it allowing bandwagons to happen more often. Anything in regards to rewards will just encourage stacking. Something WR is suppose to help break up with it's monthly shuffle of players, although guilds will benefit from stacking with each other, it's the plebs that get the washing machine treatment.

The current system is quite open with it's status, multiple servers can be medium but there's no control on how many can be evenly moved to them, so you're never going to even out the populations along all servers, just a few will get benefited with bandwagons due to rewards, as 12 years of wvw history has shown.

This is why we can't have nice things in wvw, players always looking for the easy road to rewards. 🤷‍♂️

Edited March 19 by XenesisII.1540

[Chaba.5410]

4 hours ago, exeggcuter.8394 said:

To compel people to actually swap servers though? Give people on a full server a discount to swap servers. Possibly even enough of a discount to make moving from a full server to a low pop server free, depending on if enough actually do this.

It's been done.  It was a disaster.

At one time host servers were even locked to Full as means of compelling players to transfer to lower pop servers.  That quickly got removed too.

Do you know who takes the most advantage of these incentives?  Guilds.  Do you know what happens when a Full server has guilds leave?  They lose organization and commanders.  They become servers full of pugs that struggle to organize and get anything done and just complain about boonballs.

[Dawdler.8521]

Outnumbered already give bonuses and moving to a low pop server is on a discount. The suggestions in OP will achieve nothing. At best, you take a problem and shuffle it around a little.

There is no real “cleaner” and easier alternative to WR in order to even out populations on fixed intervals. It’s the easiest and simplest way within the current GW2 and WvW game mode structure while still giving people a steady community, ie their guild.

Whether one like it or not can be argued, because if you want an even easier alternative to the OP… just do nothing. Wallow in current WvW despair until the game dies at the end of its lifespan and some other, better game steal enough players to make it go below critical mass.

Edited March 20 by Dawdler.8521