Guild Wars 2

I just want to throw this idea out here. In these week long matches the final standings for some tiers can be determined halfway through the match. One server will have pulled away from the other 2, leaving only a battle for 2nd place with the 2 weaker servers working with the lead server and not each other (1 & 2 v 3 or 1 & 3 v 2, in order to get easier points). This only exacerbates the situation that a 3-team battle is supposed to fix, allowing the lead team to further its lead mostly unopposed.

So as a suggestion: Adjust the scoring so that if your server is trailing the lead server by at least X amount of points, upon capturing a site owned by the lead team your server gains immediate points (perhaps the site’s value or less, so 5 points for a camp).

As an example, if X was 20000 and the scores for 3 servers were:
A: 180,000
B: 140,000
C: 90,000

Servers B and C would have an incentive to team up, at least a little, by focusing on Server A in order to catch back up to a reasonable amount in the score. When Server B reaches within 20000 points of A it no longer receives the bonus points, but B (and C) would be in a better position to compete for first.

The idea is that in this situation the 2 weaker server(s) will be somewhat incentivized to attack the stronger server, which is the intention of the 3 server setup. At the least, it offers a counter-incentive to attacking only each other for 2nd place. This could also help out those servers who have a weaker presence during certain time periods from being completely blown out. This suggestion wouldn’t punish the leading server; only give the weaker server(s) the ability to stay competitive throughout the week. Nor does it force the 2 weaker servers to work together, so if they only want to focus on each other they can still do that.

The reason I chose a high “X” value is so that servers can’t completely sit out for half the week and make it all up in a few days; there’s still a strong incentive to show up throughout the entire week. However, that number isn’t scientifically calculated so it is open to change since 20000 probably isn’t the optimal number.

I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t completely fix match imbalances by itself, but it would make them more competitive (at least score-wise) and interesting.

As a side note, it appears some sort of “get points upon capture” system is already in place since the score increases even when the score timer hasn’t hit 0, so this may just boil down to tweaking the numbers for a certain situation.

Bad idea. Any suggestion that gives a trailing server the opportunity to more easily catch up does indeed penalize the leading server. How can you claim otherwise?

Yeah, a fairer option would be to divide points by the number of allies on the map at that given point in time.

This would balance population gains across server.

It’d be more fair if instead of a scoring system we had a round robin system, where we’d have the maximum number of matchup combinations once and then award whoever won the most a mint.

To make matches more exciting, they really should find a way to incentivize attacking the lead server. They always intended it to happen, but thought it would come naturally. The reality is that players will attempt to maximize score rather than play for first when the lead server is too far ahead. This causes the second and third servers to fight as they are easier opponents and the battle for second takes priority over the battle for first.

Perhaps “not punish” isn’t the right word choice, but what I’m trying to get at is a way to make the matches more competitive without forcing a limit on the leading server. Some of the other suggestions I’ve seen focus on taking points away from the leading team if they have a larger population. To me, I see that as punishing people for participating and also doesn’t take into account the quality of the players. It would lead to situations where folks are discouraging others from showing up because they don’t perceive them as pulling their weight and bringing the team down, thus creating a bad atmosphere all around. So what I’m trying to suggest is a way to avoid capping/punishing the lead team in that sense and simply incentivize the format to be played as it was intended; with the weaker teams working together when their individual forces aren’t enough.

If the matches lasted less than a week or were perhaps in a different format with more teams, I don’t think the score would be as much a problem. However in the current setup, as the week progresses, it becomes a rapidly progressing downward spiral for the 2 weaker teams and thus making the match less competitive. Ideally, the weaker team(s) would work together to counteract this imbalance since that is the purpose of having 3 teams instead of 2, but evidence shows that this is often not the case.