Guild Wars 2

So I have an idea which I think potentially helps to curb the advantage some servers have by having a large off peak hour population while still allowing them to contribute in a fair way.

Right now each location has a set amount of points that are added to the servers total of potential points that are scored every 15 minutes. The issue here is that when a server night caps all locations it gains a huge potential point score, and over the course of hours this creates a very large actual score difference. My suggestion to combat this very real issue is to allow the points value of locations to scale based on the amount of enemy players in the map.

An example. For the sake of round numbers lets say the server cap on any given map is 50 players. That means at peak time you would have battles of 50 vs 50 vs 50. In this example the servers are fighting over a tower we will give a points value of +20 potential points.

With the current system if Server A takes over this tower during peak time and holds it for 1 hour their score will increase by 80 points (+20 points every 15 minutes for 1 hour). If during off peak hours Server A has 50 players while the other 2 servers only have 25 players each then holding this tower for an hour still yields 80 points even though there were half the amount of potential enemies to fight to gain that location.

With this new system, if Server A holds that tower during peak time when all 3 servers are at max players they still gain 80 points. However now if they hold that tower during no peak hours when Server B and Server C both have 25 players, holding that tower would only yield 40 points for Server A. This is representative of the fact that Server A was able to take the location facing half the possible opposition.

What this system will do is keep matches closer so that when the most players for those servers are online their contributions will also matter. I have read a lot of responses from Arena Net stating that they dont want to make the contributions of players diminished just because they live in a time zone, however this is occurring regardless. Right now if I play a server, say Henge of Denravi which has at no fault to them, a massive non peak population, they gain so many points during that time that my play during peak hour has no chance of every effecting the end outcome of the game. That makes peak time players contributions diminished.

Please feel free to give your thoughts on this idea. I think those of us who WvW can agree that Night Capping is a major issue. Something needs to be done about it or the WvW community will diminish quickly. Rather than complain about this issue I propose we come together to think of solutions the retain WvWs competitive nature while making it fair for all players in all locations.

I see that I am not exactly clear on my full suggestion. I think the point value of any location on a WvW map should be based on the amount of enemy players currently on the map. This makes sense because it is easier to take locations when there is no opposition, thus you should not be rewarded the same as a team taking a location that is heavily fortified requiring much more effort to take. In addition it takes more effort to keep a location against more enemies. This point scale should update frequently to ensure the worth of a location is up to date with the current map populations. When free server transfers are stopped this system would accurately score based on effort rather than your time zone.

I’d be down with anything, but the fact of the matter is we’re still in balancing cycles. I often find my server to be great at communication and often win against zergs much larger than ours, but at one point we just get overwhelmed because of how many enemies there are, as even spamming 1 deals damage.

I’d just like to see the final balance be more about number of players rather than if you won or not.

Raven Paradox.1860:

I’d be down with anything, but the fact of the matter is we’re still in balancing cycles. I often find my server to be great at communication and often win against zergs much larger than ours, but at one point we just get overwhelmed because of how many enemies there are, as even spamming 1 deals damage.

I’d just like to see the final balance be more about number of players rather than if you won or not.

For the most part the upper tiers are pretty set. The issue is in Tier 1 Henge is able to night cap to victory and the same goes for Tier 2 (where I am at BTW, ET is winning because we can night cap better than the other Tier 2 servers). Regardless of not if the servers are balanced or not point scaling balances scores based on skill and population rather than purely population.