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Population limit on server and on WvWvW instance
IstrebiteI
Member Posts: 266
in Guild Wars 2
Greetings.
While waiting patiently for GW2 headstart, i was reading all those troll threads about GW2 which try to find negative points about the game, even going to the point of telling "since its popular before release, it'll suck like AoC or WaR or ToR... Those negative points are mostly false or misconceptions.
However, the more i think about one thing, the more i find out that no clear answer exists to the problem.
Population and limit on WvWvW instance player count.
In beta, WvWvW was unstable, often lagging, ANet had to take it down or change player limits, often all four instance would be full. Now, i am sure by release this will be fixed. Or at least a week or two after release. However, there is an inheritent flaw in the system that i see no way of fixing.
WvWvW instaces are made just like world maps. They have vistas, skill points. They have pve monsters to hunt, gathering nodes. They have PVE quests (events). They look great. And ANet emphasized that WvWvW is not supposed to be balanced, its supposed to be fun and supposed to be a better Open World PVP (so - it should have ganking, raiding each other etc). Now, you may or may not remember Alterac Valley from WoW. It had a quest each player had to do once to get a very useful item - quest that made you contribute zero to your team for several minutes, enough to lose some towers and get pinned down at your base. Here we have the same problem.
If ANet places limits on how many people can enter WvWvW instance, which are not dynamically increasing if all instances are full, we might get to a very bad situation where PVP HARDCORE people would rage and flame at casuals who join eternal battlegrounds just to get some skillpoints, for sightseeing, for killing some frogs or fighting nagags in the water, or for having fun with their friends. All that while their central keep is falling because PVP HARDCORE people of other realm got in and those of your realm couldnt because its full. Or, for example, you'd have a prepared PVP raid of 50 people get ready, and then 10 of them cant go in and then some of those who did get in notice that there are 10 people running around in a group getting vistas and skill points and not contributing whatsoever. Guess what happens next in the chat.
What if ANet, however, does not limit amount of people in WvWvW instnace (or makes it so that when every instance is full, limits are increased so that everybody can play) - by this i do not mean there would be no limit, of course thats physically impossible, but that the population limit on the server would be small enough so that generally speaking everybody who wants to can get in WvWvW. If there is no limit, then the server with more population, and amongst the servers with same population, the server with more hardcore pvpers percent, will always prevail. If your server is 50% pve 50% pvp and other server is 100% pvp, it can win 100% of objectives even if two servers like yours combine forces!
ANet took a very well thought-out path with GW2 to bring forth good in people, they removed any kind of grief or conflict between players from same realm (monsters shared, nodes shared, quest progress shared, no dueling no ganking etc etc). However, it seems to me that no matter how it is done, population limit in WvWvW is going to be the major hate and troll factor which will bring negative emotions between parties on the server, making them hate each other and fight each other instead of standing unitied together. PVErs that just want to get map completion will hate PVPers for flaming them and tell them to "get a life" and that "its just a game". PVPers will be mad that their server pride is "down" since they lost the central keep because PVErs were doing their stupid crap instead of contributing.
Am i missing something here? Is there a solution?
PS: Another smaller problem is the problem of WvWvW going on 24/7, while servers are clearly divided into regions. So, this means that during night time, and non-prime-time, points are worth as many as during prime time, uness ANet fixes that of course. This means that servers that want to win are going to need people from all round the globe to be successfull - someone must hold those points while you sleep and work. Nolifers that can play at weekdays from morning to evening will have a great advantage over people who can only play in the evenings.
While waiting patiently for GW2 headstart, i was reading all those troll threads about GW2 which try to find negative points about the game, even going to the point of telling "since its popular before release, it'll suck like AoC or WaR or ToR... Those negative points are mostly false or misconceptions.
However, the more i think about one thing, the more i find out that no clear answer exists to the problem.
Population and limit on WvWvW instance player count.
In beta, WvWvW was unstable, often lagging, ANet had to take it down or change player limits, often all four instance would be full. Now, i am sure by release this will be fixed. Or at least a week or two after release. However, there is an inheritent flaw in the system that i see no way of fixing.
WvWvW instaces are made just like world maps. They have vistas, skill points. They have pve monsters to hunt, gathering nodes. They have PVE quests (events). They look great. And ANet emphasized that WvWvW is not supposed to be balanced, its supposed to be fun and supposed to be a better Open World PVP (so - it should have ganking, raiding each other etc). Now, you may or may not remember Alterac Valley from WoW. It had a quest each player had to do once to get a very useful item - quest that made you contribute zero to your team for several minutes, enough to lose some towers and get pinned down at your base. Here we have the same problem.
If ANet places limits on how many people can enter WvWvW instance, which are not dynamically increasing if all instances are full, we might get to a very bad situation where PVP HARDCORE people would rage and flame at casuals who join eternal battlegrounds just to get some skillpoints, for sightseeing, for killing some frogs or fighting nagags in the water, or for having fun with their friends. All that while their central keep is falling because PVP HARDCORE people of other realm got in and those of your realm couldnt because its full. Or, for example, you'd have a prepared PVP raid of 50 people get ready, and then 10 of them cant go in and then some of those who did get in notice that there are 10 people running around in a group getting vistas and skill points and not contributing whatsoever. Guess what happens next in the chat.
What if ANet, however, does not limit amount of people in WvWvW instnace (or makes it so that when every instance is full, limits are increased so that everybody can play) - by this i do not mean there would be no limit, of course thats physically impossible, but that the population limit on the server would be small enough so that generally speaking everybody who wants to can get in WvWvW. If there is no limit, then the server with more population, and amongst the servers with same population, the server with more hardcore pvpers percent, will always prevail. If your server is 50% pve 50% pvp and other server is 100% pvp, it can win 100% of objectives even if two servers like yours combine forces!
ANet took a very well thought-out path with GW2 to bring forth good in people, they removed any kind of grief or conflict between players from same realm (monsters shared, nodes shared, quest progress shared, no dueling no ganking etc etc). However, it seems to me that no matter how it is done, population limit in WvWvW is going to be the major hate and troll factor which will bring negative emotions between parties on the server, making them hate each other and fight each other instead of standing unitied together. PVErs that just want to get map completion will hate PVPers for flaming them and tell them to "get a life" and that "its just a game". PVPers will be mad that their server pride is "down" since they lost the central keep because PVErs were doing their stupid crap instead of contributing.
Am i missing something here? Is there a solution?
PS: Another smaller problem is the problem of WvWvW going on 24/7, while servers are clearly divided into regions. So, this means that during night time, and non-prime-time, points are worth as many as during prime time, uness ANet fixes that of course. This means that servers that want to win are going to need people from all round the globe to be successfull - someone must hold those points while you sleep and work. Nolifers that can play at weekdays from morning to evening will have a great advantage over people who can only play in the evenings.
Comments
People who can play games 24/7 will always have an advantage...
in mmorpgs that usually means better gear or character and in skill based games that means they have had more time to hone their skills..
Nothing you can do about that.
for some reason exist guilds forming alliances with diferent play time zones, that call strategy....
2 Caldrin
Well, i agree with your statement but it isnt exacty applicable. Best CS 1.6 team in the world, NaVi, only practice like 6 hours a day. You cant really practice 24/7 or even 16/7 or even 16/5, its too much. You need to revise, look back at what you're doing, plan, have time off, relax etc. In WvWvW, however, you will be inclined to play as much as you can.
Simply put, in progaming, after ~6 or so hours a day, additional hours spent playing has seriously diminishing returns. In WoW, you can play arena on evenings or weekends and thats enough to get weekly points and get better at game, additional gaming hours have almost no effect on points earned, and doubtful effect on getting better
On the countrary, each extra hour in WvWvW gives your realm a linear benefit of having a pro player on their side for one more hour. No diminishing returns at all.
2 p_c_sousa
Yeah i know they do, but it is kinda pointless to call it "EU" or "NA" server then, is it? And, they're forcing some people to play out of their region - which means higher ping.
The only thing you are missing is the Server ranking.
So let's say on day 1, Server X, with a mix of hardcore pvp types and casuals, get paired with erver Y and Z, both full to the brim with the top pvp guilds of the world.
So what happen is that in the WvWvW area, you would have Server X pvpers being outmatched by the veterans of Y and Z, also because a bunch of Xers are actually in WvWvW doing casual things like you said.
After 2 weeks of this, Server X rank is lowered and now they will fight against server T and U, that also lose their first 2 week bout.
Now Server T and U are also not full of hardcore pvpers, there is a mix of them and other type of gamers and guess what?
WvWvW population will balance out. 30% hardcore pvpers that just go and conquer keeps, 30% pvpers that take out supply camps and do other useful activities and 40% casuals cotributing somewhat (cause all you do there will be useful to a point),
Might take more than one round to get the servers balanced, but eventually it will happen.
IF you are concerned that the non-pvpers take too many spots in WvW I am not really sure what you can do about that, beside paying for a transfer to a more active server. If you want true hardcore pvp with no interference, that is what sPvP is for. WvW is more a server wide thing. So you could try social engineering and convince the other people you share server with to help more in WvWvW. get your guild of badass to keep weekly training sessions and tactics boot camps, do what EVE corporations do with recruit. Improvise, adapt and overcome your weaknesses.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
This really depends on whether or not Anet are going to let EU servers play US servers in WvWvW, although its not the end of the world if they do. For the most part people joining EU servers will be from the EU. When night time comes, or early morning time comes populations will fall, this does mean less people defending your keeps but it also means less people attacking you keeps as well, allowing the NPC's in those keeps to put up more of a defence, so it is taking less people longer to zerg the map. Not to mention the few pople staying up late on your server will be fighting those staying up late on other servers.
The way you need to look at it is for every advantage your server gains during 'peak' times, your enemy servers gain the same advantage during theirs and the same goes for the negative from the 'down' times.
This may lead to circular fighting, where keeps are lost during the night and regained at day time. There really is not disadvantage, it will come down to who can retake all the keeps the quickiest for the most points, And the matchmaking system will keep the servers in some kinda of balance (hopefully)
If you continue to make sweeping statements like you know what everyone everywhere thinks about a certain topic then I am going to shout at you.
It easy to type 'I think this is the worst game ever'
Rather than the 'This is the worst game ever'
You bring up some great points. It is a difficult situation and would be hard to solve. I don't really think there is a very delicate way to handle this situation, the best solution is the caps with the ques currently in place I think though. On the other hand, the que system for it needs some improvements which will hopefully be in by launch.
The main improvements for it would be:
1) Que timer, yeah, its kinda goofy you don't get to see one
2) Afk timer in WvW areas that boots you out if you don't participate.
The problem with 2 is that they would have to have a pretty smart system in place to handle this and I don't think it is something they could have in by launch. WvW is not all about pvp exclusively. People could be attacking dynamic camps, standing around waiting for reinforcements to attack a keep,ect. There are certainly some situations where some less sophisticated systems would kick people out when they are actually helping.
I think we will most certainly see a que timer by launch or soon after but I doubt we will see more then that honestly. The main thing they will have to focus on is improving the capability of the WvW servers, but I think ultimately it won't be a HUGE issue. The biggest problem right now, to me anyways, is that there is no que timer. There is alot of other stuff to do in the game while I wait. There will surely be people who JUST want to do WvW and sadly they will probably be out of luck in this regard. I feel like most of those guys will just wait one time and stick around there entire play session though atleast.
Another issue here is what happens when the server populations start dropping after the initial honeymoon phase is over? I mean yeah, I am gonna go out on a limb and say GW2 is going to be awesome, but people will eventually stop slamming WvW so much. It could solve itself between that and ArenaNet improving the servers / raising the caps slowly.
Hate to go off topic too much here, but I feel like it is still related. Speaking of population..
The main thing that concerns me is the "full" server potential at launch. Currently (well, in all the previous betas) if a server was full and you had not made a character on your account yet you were out of luck and forced to pick another server or wait for it to not be full. I was under the impression (as I am sure many other people were as well) that the overflow servers would handle this, but they are actually for the individual zones themselves. Hopefully this either changes before launch or they allow a grace period for people to freely transfer once or twice in the first couple of weeks. I really don't want to be in a situation at launch where I am forced to pick the lowest population server that I can find to make sure all my friends can get on it.
Well it is a pvp zone first and foremost. Perhaps if a keep is at stake etc, then the pvers within a pvp zone should drop trying to get "completion" for five minutes and actually help out a bit? If you are capable of helping and the battle is raging hard, then you should help out.
I remember in SWG when the devs thought it would be a great idea to spawn The Hand in Restuss, a pvp zone. If you were pvping against a number of the enemy nearby, the pvers waiting for The Hand to spawn would just stand there and watch you get slaughtered, hoping to get their "complete" before the enemy killed you and moved to them. As opposed to actually helping out.
As for a group with 100% dedicated pvpers having an advantage over a group with 50% dedicated and 50% non dedicated, within a pvp zone, well I can't see the issue with that.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
the problem with this isn't really EU or late night US people. i think EU gets matched with EU and US gets matched with US.
the only issue is the oceanic timezones. they weren't given their own servers so are playing on the US servers. they love to pile onto one or two servers so they have people with them while they are playing during their prime time which occurs at the US night time.
they create unofficial oceanic servers. they did this in the beta on Sea of Sorrows, Gates of Madness, and i think one other.
and yes, when we got matched against them.. they had 100% map control from US late night all the way into our morning/noon hours giving them a huge point lead and putting them at the top of the rankings even if they fell behind during the day.
the points didn't bother me.. the sitting in base while all of Australia surrounds and camps 2 or 3 of us because they have nothing else to do was a little frustrating.. for us and them...
i don't think there really is a solution to this, but i'm just pointing out this is where the late night imbalances are coming from.. not a couple of folks staying up all night.
This happened in the last beta where on the higher population servers there was a queue to enter WvW while on lower pop ones there wasn't.
As an example, I started last beta weekend on Sea of Sorrows with the intention of spending the whole time doing WvW but soon found myself unable to enter any WvW zone. So I transferred my characters to Borlis Pass, a low population server, and happily was able to spend the rest of the weekend in WvW with no queues at all.
Then there was that bug where the queue system stopped working and the WvW servers crashed with all the people flooding into them or at best they lagged horribly. So you can see why they are limiting the population per WvW server.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
But those oceanic people will have a peak time and a down time so when they go to asleep you retake the entire map and they wake up in the same situation you did when you woke up. If your server is unable to retake the map due to the amount of US ppl still on the unofficla oceanic server then you would hope that they would get rematched to a server with similar strength in the WvWvW.
The way I see if it in man power and not time of day etc. After a few months of match making all the servers should be matched against servers with a similar manpower in WvW. this could equal something like average of 10000 hours of players in WVW over the 2 week period.
now these 10000 hours could be the result of 20000 hours however its avereged down to 10000 due a lot of players going in WvW to do PVE stuff or players who go solo in WvW and therefore arent really contributing.
Once the contribution levels on all the servers are averaged out and placed against servers with a similar contribution after the 2weeks I think you will find that the fights become fair, whether or not they are night/daytime cycles of attack and defend, or mass peak time battles. Either way after match making you would hope that your server can stand against its enemies regardless of their unofficial timezone.
If you continue to make sweeping statements like you know what everyone everywhere thinks about a certain topic then I am going to shout at you.
It easy to type 'I think this is the worst game ever'
Rather than the 'This is the worst game ever'
all true.
but the matchmaking is only so smart.
matching oceanics vs. oceanics would give some good fights.. but then the US server that gets matched with them would be completely worthless as far as WvW at night for those 2 weeks+ the match was in effect.
not to mention the oceanics themselves if matched against 2 US servers would have no opposition during their prime time.
so the rankings may lead to good matches.. point-wise.. but they wouldn't take into account the amount of crappiness the whole situation would bring to WvW during long stretches during the US night time where we are hugging safe zones.
i'm not trying to doom and gloom.. this is all just based on what i saw in the beta.. i wouldn't mind hearing reasons this won't happen at release but from what i've seen the oceanics in fact DO plan to pile onto the same 2 or 3 servers again. and i'm not going to blame them for that.
I see your point, more about gameplay and experience than about fairness or points.
Hopefully GW2 have put some code into their match making that takes into account of what times servers are at their peak for WvW population and when they are not and avoid matching servers in WvW with an obvious peak time vs down time problem.
If you continue to make sweeping statements like you know what everyone everywhere thinks about a certain topic then I am going to shout at you.
It easy to type 'I think this is the worst game ever'
Rather than the 'This is the worst game ever'
Btw, another problem with oceanic vs american servers could be the following:
Basically, at business days, you have litle people playing during day, many people playing during evening, and almost noone playing during night. So, it goes Little -> Much -> None. One time zone is switched in time forward compared to another time zone. So from the point of the one which is before in time, it goes like this:
When its business hours for us, and little of us play, its still night time for them, so we outnumber them.
When its evening hours for us, and lots of us play, its business time for them, so we outnumber them.
When its time to sleep for us, and almost none of us play, its evening time for them, so they outnumber us.
Tthe side that goes "before" in time wins most of the time. That's only theory, of course.
But real problem is that current system promotes making global alliances of people of all time regions, and joining all in one server to control WvWvW 24/7. ArenaNet stated publicly that there will be no server region lock, the version you buy (US vs EU) limtis from where can you log into the game, not which servers you can play on. So this WILL be the way to go if you want your server to win in WvWvW. And this promotes people playing on servers with high ping for them, which isnt good, and means that a good server with overall nice and skilled community (like, unofficia UK server) will lose pvp to a server which is maybe less skilled and have less good community, but gathered people from all over the globe and thus wins during night and morning hours.
And those hoping that "PVE'rs will listen and help PVP if keep is under siege", sorry, this is invalid assumption. No they will not. This is MMO we're talking about. Why WoW instances were nerfed? Why AV was nerfed? Why MMOs nowaday are dumbed down, casualised etc? Because developers want to dip into carebear casual and so market. They want casuals who can only log in for like 1 hour straight to join their game. Same people will play GW2, and they dont care what your keep is facing now. They logged in to get those 3 skill challenges and they wont deviate from it to help you. So indeed, if those people are holding slots of someone who could really help PVP, they will be a problem. And raging will ensue, not in form of PVP fights, but in form of chat fights.
you know EU have diferente time zones and that people dont all play at same time right?
anyone use the tools available, thats is strategic, for sure this kind of alliance will gonna do great on WvW. if other want to just need to organized too, simple like that, need lot of work but nothing is easy, the best arent best just for luck