Let's Talk Feelings

[KeyOrion.9506]

> @"c space cowboy.2764" said:

> The only feeling of the WvW player base is that of abandonment.

>

>

> No server fixes.

> No content.

> No balance.

> No communication.

>

>

> Most players have given up on any hope that anything meaningful will come.

>

> Soon™....

>

> Been hearing it for years.

>

> 24+ guilds have quit the game. Watch the latest WvW dev stream. All they do is ktrain for hour and half and dont come across any enemies other then random roamers.

>

>

> Abandonment.

 

Actually the whole "No communication" has always been severe, between Anet and the WvW community. In fact there has been little to absolute no communications on the part of Anet. We got a missive what? Every 4 to 5 months, in relation to a post being closed or locked, or moved....and that's all that's done. There is NO conversation between Anet and the WvW community in general. Yah, I can see the abandonment issues we have.

[Pawlegance.7012]

Let my try to put everything you said together and clarify a couple of my thoughts along the way. I'll reiterate on your points not to steal them, but to give them more weight.

 

**Accessibility**

Unlike PvE, access to WvW is heavly limited by numerous pay-walls. Generally you basically have to pay for 1 expansion to get everything. In WvW you also have to pay for each server hop without getting much more content. One might even argue that this content is 7 years old and maybe not worth it.

Suggested solution: Each player receives a transfer token for free. This allows you to hop onto another server once every week. Effectively once you used this token, it goes on cooldown for 1 week. Remove server transfer fees completely.

 

**Advertise the Mode**

It is difficult to get new flesh into WvW. This gets even more difficult, because new people got no mount, no elite specs etc. They might feel overwhelmed.

Suggested solution: Characters who enter WvW for the first time can borrow mounts similar to pve. They will lose their mount when dismounted and need to run back to an npc to get them, but this closes the gap between vets and newcomers nontheless.

 

In addition, every account gets access to a wvw template char slot. In this slot, players may choose from a set of various pre-designed level 80 characters. Think of the preset pvp characters in GW1. Alternatively they may create a character of any profession and swap around elite specs during its lifetime. In both cases, these chars may only enter wvw.

 

**Population Balance**

There are two non-mutually exclusive ways to fix this - at least from my prespective.

**Cap Population by reducing active maps (general ideas):**

As previously mentioned: Reduce the number of active maps from 4 to 1. Effectively this reduces the number of players needed per server to be competitive in wvw. Select 1 map each day, while still fighting the same opposition for one week.

Now, either select a fixed rotation for all maps for players to fight on.

 

Or implement a system similar to Alliance Battles in GW1.

Each week, EB is selected initially, then after one day, the ranking is determined and the map switches to the loser's home map.

After this day, rankings are calculated again and they may switch to the home map of another loser or if score is close, go back to EB.

 

The above solution is aimed at aligning environment to the (declining) number of active players. It also should balance server population because each server may only deploy that many players to WvW. Whenever wvw population recovers, ANet may choose to unlock all 4 maps for matchups again. Now to the second solution, which is aimed at balancing server population and improving the score system.

I call it pupulation budget.

 

**Population Budget**

In essence each day (if using the above pop cap) or each week (if number of active maps stay the same) for each server a population budget is calulcated. Now this is used to evaluate the result of each battle according to the following rules:

A player kill adds 1 to the died player's server, and 1 to the killing server.

This number is then balanced against the odds of winning that particular fight which heavly depends on each server's numbers participating in that fight. We basicially reward a small group for killing opponents from big groups more than the other way around. This method of calculation is only active above a certain group size (e.g 5 or 10). Basically every good group contributes to population budget and every bad group reduces population budget. Population budget and objective score are then weighted and added.

 

Thus each server's population budget has a direct effect on placement making it possible for a server of good fighters climb above servers which just have numbers (so to speak). This change in score is supposed to reward good players, coordinated servers and balance worlds of different population sizes against each other because higher pop servers are estimated to win, and lower pop to lose battles. In any way it is supposed to prefer smaller groups over big zergs in battles. ANet could also reward players for doing well, but this a story for another post.

 

 

 

What do you think?