did anet change the NA's population algorithmic?

[FalconRN.6219]

right now we have 0 absolute 0 medium servers, 16 full servers ,16, that make no sense right now seeing how many player we have at our prime time. and off prime time ,it is even dead

[SWI.4127]

It seems they lowered the threshold for server limits like that across the board.  0 medium and 16 full is kind of ridiculous, especially when you look at EU and see populations are much lower despite the fact that they are much more active than NA servers.   I just wonder how long it's going to continue like that.  If so many servers are full, then how is the "full" threshold ever going to go up again?

[Ganz.3917]

The state of NA servers is absolutely ridiculous.  16 out of 24 servers are listed as full.  No movement of guilds anymore, servers are falling into place creating the same matchups every other week.  

[Heibi.4251]

And when I look at our ACTUAL numbers that our server(excluding link) puts up every day I can't see how my server is considered full. We watch other servers have map queues running around on multiple BLS and EBG while we can barely queue a single bl and might have a queue on EBG. 

The algorithm needs some serious adjustment. The way it's calculating server size is completely messed up. The way things are going, assuming a bunch of EU players are making accounts on NA servers, no new players will be able to buy the game and pick a server in a few weeks. Time to expand the size of FULL, ANET. Please.

[CrimsonRise.7650]

EU has been a bit of a mess too. Is there enough population for five tiers anymore?

 

In the past few weeks, there was one full server and one or two very high servers as far as I can recall. Deso and WSR who were and are still winning T1 every week by 100 victory points, dropped to high and many other servers to high and medium.

 

Now the algorithm changed once more and we have 3 full servers in the EU and 5 very high.

 

Deso had no Guilds with large active numbers transfer in, since being very high for two months and dropping to high during this link. The only transfers in that may of happened, must be mostly ppt fairweathers, who moved to the dominant t1 servers, even wsr has many guilds inactive right now.

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by CrimsonNeonite.1048

[MedievalThings.5417]

No change in population.  Anet just adjusts the levels from time to time.  I really don't get why.  We went from Full to Medium at one point, with the exact same number of people playing.  Then, we went back to full, with (no surprise) no more people then we had at medium.

[Hesione.9412]

The elephant in the room is how servers are paired with respect to coverage. As soon as any server pair manages to get over 200 war points from captured objectives, that is a seriously unbalanced population coverage. I've play OCX time and have seen my server pair get over 280 PPT from captured objectives. Conversely, during NA time, I've seen our PPT go below 60.

 

While the weekly scores are evened out by having only top/middle/bottom points awarded for each skirmish, that does nothing to making the game more enjoyable for players. It's not fun when it's hard to find anyone to fight, any objectives to seriously defend - rather than against the poor 3 players who eventually managed to get 2 catas up. It's also boring when you're outnumbered - you can't defend and you can't take (because you are now one of those poor 3 players).

 

That said, it's also a poor mindset amongst players. "Call out if anything is attacked on home bl" says a comm on EBG (which is likely queued). Home bl is paper everywhere. Call out is made. Objective is captured before anyone else can get to defend the objective, from EBG, because citadel has the only wp. "Why didn't you call out earlier?" "You need to hold the camps to get the towers, etc tiered up". Thanks, yeah we know that, but it's hard when there's something like 6 of you on home bl and another team's zerg arrived, and the bulk of the players seem to be chemically bonded to SMC. And that's when I exit wvw and go to pve.

[Svarty.8019]

3 hours ago, FalconRN.6219 said:

right now we have 0 absolute 0 medium servers, 16 full servers ,16, that make no sense right now seeing how many player we have at our prime time. and off prime time ,it is even dead

That's the squeezed middle, right there. Inequality writ large!

[Shining One.1635]

2 hours ago, Heibi.4251 said:

And when I look at our ACTUAL numbers that our server(excluding link) puts up every day I can't see how my server is considered full.

How are you seeing ACTUAL numbers?

[Leaa.2943]

Well compare that to how EU server population looks like, which is now tumbleweed. A year or so back we looked like NA now the links and tier 5 broke WvW in EU. 

[FalconRN.6219]

9 minutes ago, Leaa.2943 said:

Well compare that to how EU server population looks like, which is now tumbleweed. A year or so back we looked like NA now the links and tier 5 broke WvW in EU. 

i think u didn't get it, it's not like the NA's servers got a lot of players to have 16 full servers rights now , we have the same players but almost all server just increased in term of population like crazy., i will show u an exemple, t3 and t4 from NA, a FULL/Very high link don't have players to defend their bl even at their prime timezone,. YB/EB link for ex, don't have any queue besides ebg in the weekends or prime NA,

[CrimsonRise.7650]

1 hour ago, FalconRN.6219 said:

i think u didn't get it, it's not like the NA's servers got a lot of players to have 16 full servers rights now , we have the same players but almost all server just increased in term of population like crazy., i will show u an exemple, t3 and t4 from NA, a FULL/Very high link don't have players to defend their bl even at their prime timezone,. YB/EB link for ex, don't have any queue besides ebg in the weekends or prime NA,

 

Oddly enough, they've been tinkering with the population algorithm in the EU. Two weeks ago most servers were medium or high population, whilst there is still five tiers over here.

Edited May 11, 2021 by CrimsonNeonite.1048

[jul.7602]

There is no algorithm lol. Anet has a revenue quota for WvW that they need to hit every quarter. To meet that quota they open servers every now and then to quickly generate cash from gem transfers. 

[SWI.4127]

23 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

Well compare that to how EU server population looks like, which is now tumbleweed. A year or so back we looked like NA now the links and tier 5 broke WvW in EU. 

 

It's not like more people are playing in NA.  It's about the same or even less than a few months ago.  The problem is, there's a bunch of full/very high servers anyway with the same amount of activity.  Actual activity is lower than EU servers from what I've experienced.  If you look at sites that measure kills/deaths that seems to be the case. 

[Erze.7253]

On 5/10/2021 at 3:29 PM, Hesione.9412 said:

The elephant in the room is how servers are paired with respect to coverage. As soon as any server pair manages to get over 200 war points from captured objectives, that is a seriously unbalanced population coverage. I've play OCX time and have seen my server pair get over 280 PPT from captured objectives. Conversely, during NA time, I've seen our PPT go below 60.

 

While the weekly scores are evened out by having only top/middle/bottom points awarded for each skirmish, that does nothing to making the game more enjoyable for players. It's not fun when it's hard to find anyone to fight, any objectives to seriously defend - rather than against the poor 3 players who eventually managed to get 2 catas up. It's also boring when you're outnumbered - you can't defend and you can't take (because you are now one of those poor 3 players).

 

That said, it's also a poor mindset amongst players. "Call out if anything is attacked on home bl" says a comm on EBG (which is likely queued). Home bl is paper everywhere. Call out is made. Objective is captured before anyone else can get to defend the objective, from EBG, because citadel has the only wp. "Why didn't you call out earlier?" "You need to hold the camps to get the towers, etc tiered up". Thanks, yeah we know that, but it's hard when there's something like 6 of you on home bl and another team's zerg arrived, and the bulk of the players seem to be chemically bonded to SMC. And that's when I exit wvw and go to pve.

I see this a lot. As for being "chemically bonded" to smc, that might be because there was some estimable player once who said, "smc is worth more than all the targets in the game put together." And while it's worth more than ANY other target, it's not worth more than all of them together. And that sentence has continued to live in many Guild Founders' minds, which results in an inflated perceived value to taking SMC. And it's true that SMC, in terms of position and influence, is a high-value target. But it's not worth that much. I've been on teams that deliberately sacrificed it so they could take the owner's keep. Keep, two towers, and a camp, together, are worth more than SMC alone. Chances are, with the lower population caps in WvW, the team cannot defend both their keep and SMC at the same time.

 

And it's harder still when there are just three of you on homebl, instead of six. Not sure what can be done about this. Maybe make the borderland targets worth more? Or give some other bonus? What if having all three keeps in a bl provided the entire team, including EBG, a boon? Say "heals 75 points a second," or some other plus? What if the level of the boon depended on the level of the keeps? What if each thing taken was worth something in terms of general support, and the level depended on the level of that claim? What if taking the last two claims didn't add to that? Gotta give the enemy a toehold, right? Else it's no fun at all for them.

 

Idk. Just throwing out some ideas. If some of them stick on the devs' walls, great. If not, oh well.