Why not make WvW a megaserver like the rest of the game?

[hunkamania.7561]

gw2 wvw is dead. Why are you guys in denial? Servers being unbalanced is always gonna be there with the current server system. Only reason people don't do eotm anymore is because of pips but there just isn't the population to cover eotm and wvw anymore so they just need to get rid of eotm and do 3 factions.

EU is definitely in a better state of server balance in primetime but when it comes to the off hours it's a mess as well. This system is flawed. sorry

[DeadlySynz.3471]

It's already heading that way, it's only a matter of time. There isn't enough population to decently populate 4 maps on any server (except for BG on select days). At best, we could remove 2 maps all together, and people wouldn't notice a difference in ques. Anybody who doesn't believe this is in denial.

It no longer makes sense to have 4 maps, let alone multiple servers. Once the change is made to 3 factions, people will wonder why this change wasn't implemented sooner.

[freedomtolove.5476]

I can see it happening now...Arenanet adding EOTM to replace 1 of the alpine WvWvW borderlands map. Hopefully it will just be an April Fool's Prank because nobody ever liked that map except trolls who feared zergs off cliffs to their deaths. Anyway as a #BeastGate player who listens to music, never uses teamspeak (used to represent my own guild of PUG LIFE CHOSE US [NOTS]) I believe there is a lack of server pride and sportsmanship nowadays.

@CETheLucid.3964 said:Why not just have WvW become a megaserver like thing where we do away with server identities altogether and have a constant Red/Blue/Green faction sort of matchup?Players of the same guild get thrown into the same instance, they get que priority to said instance. Unaffiliated/guildless players will have to choose a side every new matchup and be locked into it.They don't get cool bonuses because they're guildless losers/should be encouraged to join a guild but can still enjoy WvW as they see fit... or if they're smart they'll just use their friend/guild bank and get the bonuses like that and not be guildless losers!

I think I'll just copy/paste my answer to this quote: We recently had stronghold released in pvp and even the guild arena in guild halls did not suddenly make GvGing popular. Despite what guilds may think this game and especially WvWvW is running on life support and even T1 servers often have outnumbered on many maps.

I cannot agree with Forced GvGing. Even with all the rivalries between servers, the bandwagoning, “buying guilds”, spying in TS, etc. There are big server communities behind each server. Players work together and form real friendships in WvWvW.

I believe this is something GvGers forget about server based WvWvW. GW1 had GvG but I don’t think Arenanet will ever support it completely in GW2. The simplest is that unorganised zerging with “PUGs” is easily done with a commander tag.

This is just my opinion of course but I think that GvGers are too elitist and even mean sometimes to the players on a server. The militia fight for their server too. They may not all be on TS, some may even be on uplevels but without them at all WvWvW would be much more emptier place.

Please love the random players aka the PUGs of your server and teach them how to WvWvW even encourage them to join a guild or give advice on builds and gear. But don’t just hate on them for the sake of it. All running tagless does is force elitism into an already dying game mode.

[zinkz.7045]

@"Threather.9354" said:WvW isnt dead, it is just your timezone, transfer.

Depends on your definition of "dead", for many that definition is something along the lines of the activity (and the quality of that activity) in WvW has reached such a low point that it is no longer worth playing (or only worth playing a little).

Really even T1/T2 matchups today with 5+ servers combined only have maybe the activity level of low - mid Silver league servers back when the game was healthy, and that was just 3 servers in a matchup.

And sure, occasionally I've seen 3 or for a short time 4 maps queued at reset, but then nothing gets close to that for the rest of the week, where if you compare back to earlier in the game, and I don't mean 2012, but even back to 2015/16, if you took a big server then like FSP you could have 4 maps queued on a weekday at primetime with 100+ for EB, and that was one server, not 2 or 3 linked and primetime lasted a lot longer, not over by 10 PM as is often the case nowadays. Same for the number of guilds, and as for "roaming", well...

Then outside prime the difference is even worse, which sort of highlights one of the problems with the server system, in how inflexible it is at dealing with population changes across the day / week, where a server(s) can basically be dead for hours at a time, yet then have queued maps for a couple of hours in the evening, other systems deal with that a lot better (ESO for example).

And then even with queued maps, the quality and number of fights is normally pitiful...

WvW is a pale imitation of what it once was, some people describe that as 'dead'.

[LetoII.3782]

@hunkamania.7561 said:

@"Namer.9750" said:Switching over to an EotM system is probably the least difficult long term option there is for WvW (disregarding battlegroups but that's never gonna happen lol).

As it is, server identity is meaningless and most people in WvW play for the fights (except for some silly people still stuck in 2014, sheesh). There're far too many problems with the current system, including but not limited to:

• Normal WvW encouraging boring af objective based gameplay
• Population imbalances where one server in a tier may only have one map queued and another might have three (leading to players on two maps from the first server getting blobbed down).
• Guilds willing to fight each other but multiple tiers apart not getting a chance to do so.
• Lack of overall population density in OCX and EU's NA and NA's EU timezones especially when spread across 4/5 tiers.

Megaserver-ing WvW solves

all

the listed problems. People whose idea of fun and interactive gameplay is autorunning beside dolyaks or pressing 1 on siege can still do so if instances are fully reloaded every 6 or 8 hours (i.e. NA, EU, OCX-SEA timezones). Population imbalances are smoothened out since all three sides ought to have almost the same number of players. Guilds can fight almost any other guild by using the squad/party interface to hop onto specific instances. And condensing all active players into 2-3 maps rather than 16 will help make offhours more active.

So, yeah, there are

literally no downsides

to switching over to an EotM-style megaserver system. The only issue would be a matter of maps, since EotM is fairly terrible in terms of design all things considered, with too many PvE elements, too many chokes and too many slopes, but otherwise the system itself is the best hope there is for WvW at this point.

Pretty much bang on right here.I can't agree an eotm system has "literally no downside". Us all being in the same player pool would have advantages for matchmaking, but the social impacts would be decidedly negative. If a new system isn't miraculously good to offset the loss of community incurred in it's implimentation, it would truly be WvW's death knell.

[Trajan.4953]

Those dedicated to the server above all else will cling to that and defend it tooth and nail even as the house burns down around them.

[LetoII.3782]

I'm no great fan of the server system, I believe transfers were kept free for so long intentionally to encourage the transfer culture.

But to deny these communities exist, or have relevance is to do the game a disservice. Heck, some people's whole gw2 experience is logging in to complain about the game with their friends.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@LetoII.3782 said:I'm no great fan of the server system, I believe transfers were kept free for so long intentionally to encourage the transfer culture.

They were free because guesting was broken when the game launched; without free transfers, there would have been no way for friends on different worlds to play PvE with each other.

Unfortunately, it created the potential for bandwagoning WvW from the start. ANet tried to tackle that by first limiting transfers to once daily then once a week and then reducing rewards for a time after transferring. But by the time they did that, a lot of the damage was done.

[Namer.9750]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Namer.9750 said:Population imbalances are smoothened out since all three sides ought to have almost the same number of players.Oh you mean like EoTM is now, perfectly balanced all the time? Sounds like a fantasy.

And if you are suggesting all play on one megaserver since you mention EU/NA/OCX timezones then no.

Just no

. Please do not try to actively kill GW2 WvW. I mean sure it has its flaws but its not like we need to go out of our way to find ways to make it unplayable for an entire region.

Why on earth would I suggest something that reet? Don't strawman me. I specifically mentioned NA's EU and EU's NA for a reason. Reading comprehension, please.

And a system that spontaneously generates new maps based on an upper limit will always be more balanced than one that has a predefined number of maps and relies on having enough players per server to fill it up. Also consider the relative numbers of players. Right now, a tier may have one server fielding 200 players in NA primetime one night, the second server fielding 150 and the third server 100 only. Compare this with one server fielding 2000, the second fielding 1800 and the third fielding 1600 in a megaserver'ed system.

The direct disparity is just higher, but consider:

1. The relative disparity is lower. The difference between Green and Red with Megaservers is only 25%, versus anywhere from 10% to 200% that happens in the current system.
2. Fully instanced maps means, say, using the above numbers and 100 players per server per map, we have 16 maps with all 3 servers running full, then 2 more maps with mostly Green and Blue, and then the last map with Green ktraining. Each map only fills up to the maximum necessary

Most of the current numerical disparity you see in EotM current is because it's practically dead and most players are pushed to WvW, making the EotM population very inconsistent and occasional. If the people who play WvW currently all simply shifted to an EotM-style map, it would be far more balanced than it is now.

[LetoII.3782]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:

They were free because guesting was broken when the game launched; without free transfers, there would have been no way for friends on different worlds to play PvE with each other.

I'll buy 2 birds were killed with one stone, how about?There's way too much freemium gamesmanship going on in GW2 to not view Arenanets actions with cynicism.

[Dawdler.8521]

@getalifeturd.8139 said:We recently had stronghold released in pvp and even the guild arena in guild halls did not suddenly make GvGing popular.As recent as 2015, practicly yesterday!

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@LetoII.3782 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:

They were free because guesting was broken when the game launched; without free transfers, there would have been no way for friends on different worlds to play PvE with each other.

I'll buy 2 birds were killed with one stone, how about?There's way too much freemium gamesmanship going on in GW2 to not view Arenanets actions with cynicism.

Regardless, guesting didn't work on the first day of the game and not for months after, so they had no choice. Unless you really think they deliberately told us part of the game was broken just so that years later, they could cash in when linkages became a thing and bandwagoning became big enough to affect gold:gem ratios. Cynicism I can understand, but that much advance planning when the company was just barely able to manage the release schedule for Living World S1?

[freedomtolove.5476]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@getalifeturd.8139 said:We recently had stronghold released in pvp and even the guild arena in guild halls did not suddenly make GvGing popular.As recent as 2015, practicly yesterday!

Let's be honest with the time it takes for WvWvW to get an update...Practically yesterday is probably how long Arenanet thinks its been since the last update.

[Rampage.7145]

@CETheLucid.3964 said:Why not just have WvW become a megaserver like thing where we do away with server identities altogether and have a constant Red/Blue/Green faction sort of matchup? Have guilds picks between the three colors and boom. You've also added GvG on accident.

Completelly agree with the OP, this si very much needed for this game to be able to go back to be alive, so many people quit over the years because WvW problems, mega servers would solve all of them u name it ¨server imbalance, nightcaping, population disadvantage¨ Arenanet designed mega servers to help PVE players to be able to find gropus easier remember the pain it was back then to even find a group for a random dungeon. Megaservers in PVE did nothing but revitalize the game and they were a big success, i don´t see why they would be a success for WvW also, where those problems; finding groups or finding enemies to fight are way more problematic than problems to find PVE groups ever were. +100000000000000000000 votes for this post

Megaservers would bring back thousands of players, just make it simple no more 1 week matches, 2 or 3 hours per match, with 30 min of preparation between games, use the LFG tool to find groups, ¨WvW raid, no mic required, everyone welcome (need scouts)¨ ¨Guild KnT, WvW raid mic required LF 3 mesmers 2 guardians (will gear check)¨ u can have both super elitistic groups and more casual players happy with this change and coexisting with no problems.

[Rampage.7145]

@CETheLucid.3964 said:Why not just have WvW become a megaserver like thing where we do away with server identities altogether and have a constant Red/Blue/Green faction sort of matchup? Have guilds picks between the three colors and boom. You've also added GvG on accident.

Completelly agree with the OP, this is very much needed for this game to be able to go back to be alive, so many people quit over the years because WvW problems, mega servers would solve all of them u name it ¨server imbalance, nightcaping, population disadvantage¨ Arenanet designed mega servers to help PVE players to be able to find gropus easier remember the pain it was back then to even find a group for a random dungeon. Megaservers in PVE did nothing but revitalize the game and they were a big success, i don´t see why they would be a success for WvW also, where those problems; finding groups or finding enemies to fight are way more problematic than problems to find PVE groups ever were. +100000000000000000000 votes for this post

Megaservers would bring back thousands of players, just make it simple no more 1 week matches, 2 or 3 hours per match, with 30 min of preparation between games, use the LFG tool to find groups, ¨WvW raid, no mic required, everyone welcome (need scouts)¨ ¨Guild KnT, WvW raid mic required LF 3 mesmers 2 guardians (will gear check)¨ u can have both super elitistic groups and more casual players happy with this change and coexisting with no problems.

[LetoII.3782]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:

They were free because guesting was broken when the game launched; without free transfers, there would have been no way for friends on different worlds to play PvE with each other.

I'll buy 2 birds were killed with one stone, how about?There's way too much freemium gamesmanship going on in GW2 to not view Arenanets actions with cynicism.

Regardless, guesting didn't work on the first day of the game and not for months after, so they had no choice. Unless you really think they deliberately told us part of the game was broken just so that

years

later, they could cash in when linkages became a thing and bandwagoning became big enough to affect gold:gem ratios. Cynicism I can understand, but that much advance planning when the company was just barely able to manage the release schedule for Living World S1?

Many services on the internet start with an introductory period free of charge.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@LetoII.3782 said:Many services on the internet start with an introductory period free of charge.

While it's possible that ANet might have started off with allowing us one or more free transfers during the first month or longer, that wasn't what happened in 2012.

Transfers were free because ANet had promised that we could play with friends regardless of choice of world and the underlying mechanics to enable that (guesting) weren't ready at launch. Free transfers were made available as a kludge to allow people to play with friends.

[Justine.6351]

The game isn't setup with the notion of 3 main faction's like ESO is with the Ebonheart Pact, Daggerfall Covenant and Aldermeri Dominion. Identity is important or nobody cares and win trading type things can happen.

If we ever saw cantha maybe we could get 3 faction's like,

KurzickLuxonImperial

But that would likely come with AB maps not WvW.

Part of the issue imo is that they never added an NPC faction, which made wvw strictly players only. Without the dynamic of an always aggressive and present balancing force on the map, ktraining ensues. Without an NPC faction there is "no story" and wvw becomes as boring as the players who are present at any given time.

WvW is 100% player driven, which is why it can be amazing or a complete bore.

People may think I'm stupid for wanting more pve in wvw but it's even more stupid to ask for content in a mode that has none by design and by extension, a system to pit no-identity teams against each other forever, expecting players to be permanently hooked.

[LetoII.3782]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Transfers were free because ANet had promised that we could play with friends regardless of choice of world and the underlying mechanics to enable that (guesting) weren't ready at launch. Free transfers were made available as a kludge to allow people to play with friends.

I'd love to continue, but the mods keep dinging me for derailing threads.

[xihorus.2804]

The idea you proposed already exists. It's called EotM. The only difference I see is that it is using the WvW maps instead of the EotM one.

If you add sweet rewards to the winning color team, then people will just stack that color to get the rewards. It would be the tournament bandwagon all over again, just with colors instead of servers. I am aware that you suggested:

@CETheLucid.3964 said:Make some kind of mist instability lore reason that sometimes guilds will get their color changed out from under them to combat stacking and other forms of manipulation/to balance out colors that are over or under picked for a season.

But how would you decide who gets changed and when? And what would be the incentive for the affected guilds to not just quit playing, or come back into a new instance as the color they originally desired? More likely a domino effect would happen: Guild X rolls green to stack with other guilds, green begins to steamroll blue and red. The system decides to swap Guild X to blue, who now realizes they are up against a horribly stacked opponent, and quits. What then? Keep swapping guilds until the match is a ghost town?

I appreciate a system like this might appeal to the GvG crowd, but there are much better methods that could be implemented without destroying WvW in its current form. Imagine if you could enter a private instance of EotM or OS as the color of your choice, or if the arena in OS was made into a separate instance for GvG.

[Thustlewhumber.7416]

EOTM's Megaserver resulted in 1) green server constantly rolling blue and red, or 2) just rotating keeps over and over. Turning all of WvW into EOTM isn't the answer, and you would LOSE players... not gain them.

[hunkamania.7561]

@Thustlewhumber.7416 said:EOTM's Megaserver resulted in 1) green server constantly rolling blue and red, or 2) just rotating keeps over and over. Turning all of WvW into EOTM isn't the answer, and you would LOSE players... not gain them.

Of course green would always rollover everyone. All the greens are from the bandwagon servers. So the server system which is unbalanced even screws over EOTM. You can't do the megaservers like that. A megaserver system would bring players back into the game since most leave because there's nothing to do in WVW PRIMETIME!

[Baldrick.8967]

@Namer.9750 said:

So, yeah, there are

literally no downsides

to switching over to an EotM-style megaserver system.

Apart from the very obvious language problem in the EU servers, seeing as we have French, German and English speaking servers.

Who will run the megaserver TS?

How will I play with people I am familiar with?

Megaservers would ensure that wvw becomes totally filled with casual pve'rs for a few weeks then it would die a death, as in the meantime servers with a good cohesion would just quit.

The only way to launch megaservers into wvw would be to totally restructure wvw from the ground up- which is way too much work for Anet given we're lucky if a dev remembers it exists once a month.

[SkyShroud.2865]

@"Justine.6351" said:The game isn't setup with the notion of 3 main faction's like ESO is with the Ebonheart Pact, Daggerfall Covenant and Aldermeri Dominion. Identity is important or nobody cares and win trading type things can happen.

If we ever saw cantha maybe we could get 3 faction's like,

KurzickLuxonImperial

But that would likely come with AB maps not WvW.

Part of the issue imo is that they never added an NPC faction, which made wvw strictly players only. Without the dynamic of an always aggressive and present balancing force on the map, ktraining ensues. Without an NPC faction there is "no story" and wvw becomes as boring as the players who are present at any given time.

WvW is 100% player driven, which is why it can be amazing or a complete bore.

People may think I'm stupid for wanting more pve in wvw but it's even more stupid to ask for content in a mode that has none by design and by extension, a system to pit no-identity teams against each other forever, expecting players to be permanently hooked.

It is setup as fractions, called servers. Though the identity is not as strong as the one you have on pvp mmorpgs with all the supporting mechanism to make it more involving and interesting. Nevertheless, it is still a fraction.

Since I mentioned pvp mmorpg, I think everybody should understand gw2 isn't a pvp mmorpg, don't get your hope too high.

[Rampage.7145]

@Baldrick.8967 said:

@Namer.9750 said:

So, yeah, there are

literally no downsides

to switching over to an EotM-style megaserver system.

Apart from the very obvious language problem in the EU servers, seeing as we have French, German and English speaking servers.

Who will run the megaserver TS?

How will I play with people I am familiar with?

Language is not a problem, you will just run with your guild or friends that speak the same language you do, use LFG to find a group that meets what you are looking for, etc that is why there need to be a 30 min preparation period between matches, you might be put on a map and play alongside a German guild and your guild is french, you can still use English to communicate basic stuff with each other.

TS is dead people just use discord to be honest, you find a group on LFG u join their discord they assign u a temp role , once you are done with that u get automatically kicked or whatever there are many ways to make that work, it is very simple any discord admin knows this.

You will always have a friends list if you happen to run with a commander you like or a guild u are interested to join after playing with then you can always add them to friends and talk to them and whatnot, you know like normal people.

Mega servers were put in PVE back in the day cuz it was extremely hard to find parties to do basic stuff not to mention find people arround the world questing and whatnot, megaservers just resolves any population problems you may have by dynamically scaling up and down the number of instanced maps according to activity, it was a huge success in PVE i dont see why not implement it in WvW where you have the exact same problems we once had in PVE, literally all the problems people ever complained about WvW over the years would be resolved with mega server +short duration matchups (2-3hours)