Unbalanced and Unfun WvW

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

This actually was a free transfer to most people as a lot of people for 1k gems for free a few weeks or a month ago.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Jilora.9524 said:

Transfers were designed to occasionally transfer with your guild or to play with a friend not to mass transfer off 150 Dzag or WSR players to a med server in a coordinated effort to stack/avoid a 8 week stretch w/o a link.I'm not blaming the players remaining I'm blaming the 150 who left the players remaining on a dead server.What should they do with the transfer system?I say limit it to 2 a year or make it keep going up for the frequent transferring that bounce every 2 months 500 600 700 800 900 1000 even to a med pop server and just keep going up the more you transfer by 100 eventually the bandwagoners will be forced to stay somewhere.

Actually, this is a really great solution. Let's do it!

... but I have a tale that we should learn from ...

Waaaay back in the mists of time, transfers cost nothing.

When the tournaments happened people started transferring around with their guilds for the first time.

Some players (like me!) called on Arenanet to implement a fee for transferring, and they did. And here we are, many years later.

The lesson being that fees don't seem to have done anything to slow transfers (so far).

I was just thinking about the alliance system which allegedly should fix this so far Arena.NET wouldn't implement hard counters which basically would make to choose your guild as wvw guild impossible you can also overstack with the alliance system xD. The only alternative would be giving overstacked server/alliances a debuff after certain criterias are met.

But there is also catch at the moment you have linking server which are empty guilds could transfer there and so overstack the current active server without penalty. I the end I think it would normalize everything over the long run.

Its similar to the housing market in the western world atm how expensive it is often not trivial for the people who buy only penalties working, (e.g you can't increase rent prices in Berlin)

[Vardy.3592]

Theres no point in asking ANET to fix this system as they clearly won't. History shows that the servers that don't get a link languish in T4/5 for the majority of the linking period (the exception being BB due to off-hours PPT and artificially open). We will see the same next re-links where the player population will deicde what they want to do regardless of what ANET implement because ANET refuse to use their powers to fix it.

[Erdem.6213]

I read everything written, I don't understand some of them much, but okay, at least i got some answers, normally wvw feels so good after pve farms buuut so sad wvw is like that :( big lost potentialWhat is T4 T5 that someone uses?Are all those players who transferring to other servers with high wvw pop using gem? (if not everyone said servers changeable for free at first time or sometimes but i never saw something like that on my acc)Isn't servers just for wvw? other than all players can play with everyone who from other servers?

[Coeruleum.9164]

If you like WvW you should probably join a large server like Dragonbrand, Blackgate, Stormbluff Isles, Tarnished Coast, Yak's Pass etc. T1 and T2 WvW is generally pretty fun. T1 has better rewards and people usually prefer being T1 for that reason but T2 doesn't have horrible match-ups where you just can't win anything either. If you have a full account and haven't used the server transfer, and you like WvW at all even if it's not your main game mode, transferring to a large server sounds like it's worth doing. However, you might want to ask other people besides me, since transferring servers seems like a big deal. You can guest on servers, so guesting on some of the larger servers would probably be a good place to start.

[Coeruleum.9164]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Jilora.9524 said:

Transfers were designed to occasionally transfer with your guild or to play with a friend not to mass transfer off 150 Dzag or WSR players to a med server in a coordinated effort to stack/avoid a 8 week stretch w/o a link.I'm not blaming the players remaining I'm blaming the 150 who left the players remaining on a dead server.What should they do with the transfer system?I say limit it to 2 a year or make it keep going up for the frequent transferring that bounce every 2 months 500 600 700 800 900 1000 even to a med pop server and just keep going up the more you transfer by 100 eventually the bandwagoners will be forced to stay somewhere.

Actually, this is a really great solution. Let's do it!

... but I have a tale that we should learn from ...

Waaaay back in the mists of time, transfers cost nothing.

When the tournaments happened people started transferring around with their guilds for the first time.

Some players (like me!) called on Arenanet to implement a fee for transferring, and they did. And here we are, many years later.

The lesson being that fees don't seem to have done anything to slow transfers (so far).

Mass transfers don't seem to be a thing on larger servers. Mass transfers appear to strip money from a certain type of person who I wouldn't want to be around anyways which seems fine by me.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

@Coeruleum.9164 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Jilora.9524 said:

Transfers were designed to occasionally transfer with your guild or to play with a friend not to mass transfer off 150 Dzag or WSR players to a med server in a coordinated effort to stack/avoid a 8 week stretch w/o a link.I'm not blaming the players remaining I'm blaming the 150 who left the players remaining on a dead server.What should they do with the transfer system?I say limit it to 2 a year or make it keep going up for the frequent transferring that bounce every 2 months 500 600 700 800 900 1000 even to a med pop server and just keep going up the more you transfer by 100 eventually the bandwagoners will be forced to stay somewhere.

Actually, this is a really great solution. Let's do it!

... but I have a tale that we should learn from ...

Waaaay back in the mists of time, transfers cost nothing.

When the tournaments happened people started transferring around with their guilds for the first time.

Some players (like me!) called on Arenanet to implement a fee for transferring, and they did. And here we are, many years later.

The lesson being that fees don't seem to have done anything to slow transfers (so far).

Mass transfers don't seem to be a thing on larger servers. Mass transfers appear to strip money from a certain type of person who I wouldn't want to be around anyways which seems fine by me.You mean properly Gold Barons? I heard on youtube once that on NA there was or is one who basically finance the transfers for multiply guilds. What I can say to this more is while there is no need for those people to go to the gold sellers a lot of money came from such sources most of the gold they got in the past they had from a gold dube at least that some hacker on youtube claimed a few years ago. The only way around this would be some blockchain mechanic which is a pretty overload for an MMO

[Deniara Devious.3948]

@"Coeruleum.9164" said:Mass transfers don't seem to be a thing on larger servers. Mass transfers appear to strip money from a certain type of person who I wouldn't want to be around anyways which seems fine by me.

It happened here in EU. Whiteside Ridge (WSR) went from full status on medium status in a period of 1-2 weeks, when several big guilds and many players transferred to Fort Ranik (FR). FR was medium and went to full. FR is linked to Aurora Glade (AG), which is the host server. It went from very high to full, just like I predicted. So we have two full servers linked to each other. Of course they are dominating tier 1. Talk about pay to win.

Now WSR. which used to be full and active, is stuck many weeks at the bottom tier 5, because they don't have enough population. My own server is also seriously lacking players. We don't have any queues nor any big WvWvW guilds left. Our off-time coverage puts us to higher tier than we should belong to. In prime time it seems that the opposing servers can fill multiple maps with many guild teams and blobs in prime time. And of course enemy wants good "fights" to pick on the side, who has outnumbered buff.

2 months waiting time for new relinks is a long time, considering that population statuses can change as radically as illustrated above, creating totally imbalanced match ups. The expectation that players and guilds would automatically spread more evenly on servers to create balanced match ups is not working. Instead the vast majority of players and commanders bangwagon to those server combinations, which offer easy wins.

One solution could be to make the transfers to the linked server as expensive to the host server. This of course cannot now fix the AG + FR problem. They are both full and guaranteed to dominate others.

[intox.6347]

Transfer for anet is cash to gem , so its fine.For WvW this is problem.... ppl hop to one and want to farm poor pugs... its not challenging also not fun...

Make transfer once a 6 months and it will be fine.

[Vardy.3592]

@Deniara Devious.3948 said:It happened here in EU. Whiteside Ridge (WSR) went from full status on medium status in a period of 1-2 weeks, when several big guilds and many players transferred to Fort Ranik (FR). FR was medium and went to full. FR is linked to Aurora Glade (AG), which is the host server. It went from very high to full, just like I predicted. So we have two full servers linked to each other. Of course they are dominating tier 1. Talk about pay to win.

WSR were not the first in this linking to move and yet seem to be the only thing on peoples mind.Players on Dzago moved to Millers and the poulation update on the Monday after relinking showed the Elona/Millers link as both full.Lets also not forget last linking where FSP and UW were linked and both were also full at one point.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Think the only way you're going to fix this is to change the server transfer frequency or limit it to certain times, as others have already said. Making transfers once every 3 months only seems the most sensible to me personally.

[Deniara Devious.3948]

@Vardy.3592 said:WSR were not the first in this linking to move and yet seem to be the only thing on peoples mind.Players on Dzago moved to Millers and the poulation update on the Monday after relinking showed the Elona/Millers link as both full.Lets also not forget last linking where FSP and UW were linked and both were also full at one point.

That is true as well. Elona Reach (ER) and Miller's Sound (MS) are currently full + very high. MS might also become full, creating yet another full + full link, while Dzagonur is stuck to last tier 5, because they lost so many players.

I remember that FSP + UW were both full at one point and of course dominating tier 1 with massive population advantage. That was stupid as well.

Anyways, population imbalance created by these player mass migrations is creating totally lopsided match ups, which are not fun for a lot of players. This will lead to death spiral. Aranenet will lose GW2 players, who play WvWvW as their main mode. Not everybody is going to pay gems and transfer to the latest bandwagon servers.

Basically the developers inability to address this issue, will be the slow, but guaranteed death of this mode. A lot of good guilds have already quit for good. Even migrating to a new server didn't help, players just lost interest.

[Deniara Devious.3948]

Kill / death counts in EU tier #1 is large, which tells about big population imbalance. The lowest server has less than half of the total enemy kills, but also much less deaths.

EU tier #5 is much worse. The total kill count the lowest server is less than 1 / 10 (one tenth) of the other two servers and the death count is also 9 times less. Meaning that they probably have about 10 times less players than the two other servers.

Imagine playing WvWvW where enemy has 10 times more players than your side? That is just a bad joke! And Arenanet is doing nothing, not even replying these threads.

Source of information:https://wvwstats.com/eu

[Cyninja.2954]

There is a simple fix to this issue:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until two WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World

Would only need to be changed to:Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until X WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

X starts at 2, and increases for each server transfer which happens back to back. Transfer 1nce, it's 2. Transfer within the next re-link period, it's 4. Transfer within the one after that, it becomes 6. Etc.X resets if a re-link period sees no transfer for that account.

While at it, use the cumulative multiplier to increase transfer cost by it. Meaning if you transfer back to back 2 re-link periods in a row, you double your gem cost. Might as well let Arenanet make some money off of this.

This solves:

• continual server transfers are punished making constant server hoping undesirable. The penalty is cumulative which punishes continued transfers.
• it still allows for a regular transfer every 2nd re-link period, not punishing players who occasionally change server for what ever reason

[sitarskee.5738]

Server transfering should be removed from the gemstore and solved via support. No good reason to transfer = no transfer.

[Dayra.7405]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:There is a simple fix to this issue:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

two

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World

Would only need to be changed to:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

X

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

X

starts at

2

, and increases for each server transfer which happens back to back. Transfer 1nce, it's

2

. Transfer within the next re-link period, it's

4

. Transfer within the one after that, it becomes

6

. Etc.

X

resets if a re-link period sees no transfer for that account.

While at it, use the cumulative multiplier to increase transfer cost by it. Meaning if you transfer back to back 2 re-link periods in a row, you double your gem cost. Might as well let Arenanet make some money off of this.

This solves:

• continual server transfers are punished making constant server hoping undesirable. The penalty is cumulative which punishes continued transfers.
• it still allows for a regular transfer every 2nd re-link period, not punishing players who occasionally change server for what ever reason

Easier (no Counter per player needed) and better: no pips for the relink period of the transfer. If you transfer in the week before relink (and hinder a correct population count by that) no pips in the next relink period as well.

If you transfer because of a real reason and not for WTJ transfer 8 days before relink giving you just 8 days without pips as today

[Cyninja.2954]

@Dayra.7405 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:There is a simple fix to this issue:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

two

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World

Would only need to be changed to:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

X

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

X

starts at

2

, and increases for each server transfer which happens back to back. Transfer 1nce, it's

2

. Transfer within the next re-link period, it's

4

. Transfer within the one after that, it becomes

6

. Etc.

X

resets if a re-link period sees no transfer for that account.

While at it, use the cumulative multiplier to increase transfer cost by it. Meaning if you transfer back to back 2 re-link periods in a row, you double your gem cost. Might as well let Arenanet make some money off of this.

This solves:

• continual server transfers are punished making constant server hoping undesirable. The penalty is cumulative which punishes continued transfers.
• it still allows for a regular transfer every 2nd re-link period, not punishing players who occasionally change server for what ever reason

Easier and better: no pips for the relink period of the transfer. If you transfer in the week before relink (and hinder a correct population count by that) no pips in the next relink period as well.

Sure that would also work, but this actually penalizes players and communities who have valid reasons to move or change server.

The suggestion I gave was intentionally adapted to not penalize regular use server transfers. If we assume that regular use and occasional transfers are beneficial to the game, for example because it allows guilds to gather or get their players together, or friends moving onto the same server to play together.

@Dayra.7405 said:If you transfer because of a real reason and not for WTJ transfer 8 days before relink giving you just 8 days without pips as today

That premise is based on an assumption that players know in advance that they want to transfer or that each and everyone keeps track of re-link periods. The occasional threads about not getting pips from less experienced WvW players already show that this is not the case.

The idea here is to punish abuse, not punish actual legitimate transfers.

[Vardy.3592]

Players transferring is not the problem. It's the symptom, not the cause.

It's about time we seriously considered deleting tier 5, thats either by deleting the now dead servers in it, or just going back to 3-server links.

[phreeak.1023]

@sitarskee.5738 said:Server transfering should be removed from the gemstore and solved via support. No good reason to transfer = no transfer.

No, but transfers should cost real money, no gems. 5 bucks for medium, 10 for high and 15 for very high. Transfers also should be disabled betweens 1 week before a relink and 3 weeks after.

[Dayra.7405]

@"Vardy.3592" said:Players transferring is not the problem. It's the symptom, not the cause.

No WTJ-stacking by transfers is THE problem of WvW since it's beginning.

• It started with Vizu as the french "we win"-EU WvW-Server, where a lot of french had a 1st or 2nd account to push it when it had no queue and play elsewhere if it had..
• short rise and fall of Blacktide with NA-nightcrew in month 3-4
• SFR as the dominating WvW-server by attracking most transfers for several years

And now it's: If we are not in the winning team of the link-period, we make the winning-team of the link-period with coordinated transfers in week 1 after relink. And this after every relink.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Dayra.7405 said:

@"Vardy.3592" said:Players transferring is not the problem. It's the symptom, not the cause.

No WTJ-stacking by transfers is THE problem of WvW since it's beginning.

• It started with Vizu as the french "we win"-EU WvW-Server, where a lot of french had a 1st or 2nd account to push it when it had no queue and play elsewhere if it had..
• short rise and fall of Blacktide with NA-nightcrew in month 3-4
• SFR as the dominating WvW-server by attracking most transfers for several years

And now it's: If we are not in the winning team of the link-period, we make the winning-team of the link-period with coordinated transfers in week 1 after relink. And this after every relink.

What he is referring to is that players going out of their way to get themselves better win conditions is the problem (or population issues, etc.), and the current transfer system allows for exploitation. It is not the root cause of why it is being abused or used the way it is.

[Svarty.8019]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:There is a simple fix to this issue:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

two

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World

Would only need to be changed to:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

X

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

X

starts at

2

, and increases for each server transfer which happens back to back. Transfer 1nce, it's

2

. Transfer within the next re-link period, it's

4

. Transfer within the one after that, it becomes

6

. Etc.

X

resets if a re-link period sees no transfer for that account.

While at it, use the cumulative multiplier to increase transfer cost by it. Meaning if you transfer back to back 2 re-link periods in a row, you double your gem cost. Might as well let Arenanet make some money off of this.

This solves:

• continual server transfers are punished making constant server hoping undesirable. The penalty is cumulative which punishes continued transfers.
• it still allows for a regular transfer every 2nd re-link period, not punishing players who occasionally change server for what ever reason

People play for these "Pip" things?! Why would they care once they're geared up anyway?

I know I don't.

[reddie.5861]

do what all the so called self pro claimed players do, cry about no fights.talk with all the big guilds on ur server transfer to another server and wonder why nothing changed, sometimes im amazed by amount of stupidness of players in gw2.

if ur server is so overstacked like wsr was and fort ranik is right now, then obviously u walk away from them instead of sticking together so u get to fight something.the problem is in this case not much of a overstacking tho.wsr just had these "guilds" where they have raids with like ~40 people same as open tag but much better ogranized, what u can do about it? not much get 2 guilds together to fight em and they will cry and ask for AMX to pull people.so ye same shit under diff name people will just avoid this server and if it happends they are in match up with em they will just not log or still avoid these non sense blob fights. your server will eventually be linked again and ull be fine for now have fun on this server ;)

[Cyninja.2954]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:There is a simple fix to this issue:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

two

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World

Would only need to be changed to:

Players who transfer will not earn pips in WvW until

X

WvW resets have occurred following your transfer (a maximum of just under 14 days, a minimum of just over 7). There is no other penalty.

X

starts at

2

, and increases for each server transfer which happens back to back. Transfer 1nce, it's

2

. Transfer within the next re-link period, it's

4

. Transfer within the one after that, it becomes

6

. Etc.

X

resets if a re-link period sees no transfer for that account.

While at it, use the cumulative multiplier to increase transfer cost by it. Meaning if you transfer back to back 2 re-link periods in a row, you double your gem cost. Might as well let Arenanet make some money off of this.

This solves:

• continual server transfers are punished making constant server hoping undesirable. The penalty is cumulative which punishes continued transfers.
• it still allows for a regular transfer every 2nd re-link period, not punishing players who occasionally change server for what ever reason

People play for these "Pip" things?! Why would they care once they're geared up anyway?

I know I don't.

and I'm sure many others who are at 10k+ skirmish tickets won't either, but I guarantee you, if even part of the players cares enough, they will stop bandwagoning. No pips = no skirmish tickets or any pip related rewards, and not every player is capped on those or will willingly forgo the couple of gold reward they get via the pip track.

If there is 1 universal truth, then it's that rewards motivate players. Reducing those rewards would thus have the opposite effect.

[ArchonWing.9480]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Jilora.9524 said:

Transfers were designed to occasionally transfer with your guild or to play with a friend not to mass transfer off 150 Dzag or WSR players to a med server in a coordinated effort to stack/avoid a 8 week stretch w/o a link.I'm not blaming the players remaining I'm blaming the 150 who left the players remaining on a dead server.What should they do with the transfer system?I say limit it to 2 a year or make it keep going up for the frequent transferring that bounce every 2 months 500 600 700 800 900 1000 even to a med pop server and just keep going up the more you transfer by 100 eventually the bandwagoners will be forced to stay somewhere.

Actually, this is a really great solution. Let's do it!

... but I have a tale that we should learn from ...

Waaaay back in the mists of time, transfers cost nothing.

When the tournaments happened people started transferring around with their guilds for the first time.

Some players (like me!) called on Arenanet to implement a fee for transferring, and they did. And here we are, many years later.

The lesson being that fees don't seem to have done anything to slow transfers (so far).

It does nothing to stop tryhard guilds as they can pool up large amounts of resources. But to your average bandwagoner, it's a little prohibitive to keep spending all that gold. Yes, it probably doesn't stop people with too much $/time of course, but it still weeds out some plebs.