Guild Wars 2

Deadcell.9052:

Just make it where you need “x” amount of players defending an objective to earn PPT, no defenders you get no PPT for the objectives you have captured, you still get to keep the objective just do not earn PPT for it if undefended. So if your gonna zerg around in massive blobs you are free to do so, but if you do not leave a portion of your zerg ball behind to defend each and every objective you take you won’t be able to compete in the point game. Also allows those zergballs to be used in a more strategic manner.

Quick, simple, ez fix!

Disclaimer: The above is not my suggestion. I take no credit for it. It is a suggestion made by Deadcell.9052 in another forum post. However, I felt it had merit as its own suggestion and – not wanting to see it lost/buried – post it here as a stand alone suggestion.

I think this is an excellent solution to the problem of zerg balls and the current lack of emphasis on defense. I’d like to see it taken even further with the following additions:

1) Each objective will require X number of defenders to remain inside the walls of towers or keeps or within the spehere-of-influence perimeter of supply camps to earn the maximum points per tick. For example, using hypothetical numbers, Stonemist Castle may require 10 defenders, a keep 7, a tower 4, and a supply camp 1 or 2.

2) The game will check the number of defenders present at an objective every minute. Having more defenders present than the X requirement does not grant any bonus or advantage relative to the calculations below.

3) To receive the maximum points per tick credit for the objective every 15 minutes, the owning team must have maintained a defensive force equal to or greater than the X requirement for that objective every minute for the full 15 minutes. For example, if a keep requires 7 defenders to receive maximum credit, then there must have been at least 7 defenders inside the walls of the keep every minute for 15 minutes.

4) If the owning server has fewer defenders than the X requirement or the number of defenders fluctuates at numbers below X, then the points awarded for the objective will be less than the maximum. Going back to the example of the keep:

Full credit is awarded if the owning team maintains a defense force of 7 players every minute for 15 minutes. Let’s call this the “defense score”; 7 × 15 = 105 defense score required for maximum point credit from a keep. Now, let’s assume the number of defenders fluctuates during that 15 minutes:

Minute 1 = 7 defenders
Minute 2 = 7 defenders
Minute 3 = 7 defenders
Minute 4 = 7 defenders
Minute 5 = 5 defenders
Minute 6 = 4 defenders
Minute 7 = 4 defenders
Minute 8 = 3 defenders
Minute 9 = 1 defender
Minute 10 = 0 defenders
Minute 11 = 0 defenders
Minute 12 = 2 defenders
Minute 13 = 5 defenders
Minute 14 = 7 defenders
Minute 15 = 7 defenders

Defense score in this scenario: 66

Defense score divided by maximum possible defense score and expressed as a percentage (rounded): 66 / 105 = 63%

Maximum possible points for a keep (25) multiplied by the defense score modifier (rounded): 25 × 63% = 16

The server which owns this keep will only earn 16 points when the PPT timer reaches zero; not 25 points.

5) The X requirement is blind as to which specific players are defending the objective. For example, in the scenario above, those 7 defenders in the first 4 minutes could all be different players. It doesn’t matter who they are, just so long as there are bodies inside the keep. This permits players to rotate guard duty instead of having to stay at an objective the full 15 minutes.

This system rewards defense. It does not penalize zerging; it penalizes zerging to the exclusion of all else. This is appropriate for the long-term health of WvWvW by preventing it from devolving into a meta relying on a single tactic.

(continued)

Now to cover some of the possible critiques of the suggestion:

1) It encourages players to go AFK rather than play the game.

No, it does not. If you want to go AFK inside a keep or tower, that’s your choice. This suggestion, in and of itself, does not encourage going AFK. Players who are defense-oriented are already remaining active inside of keeps and towers. This suggestion would simply reward those efforts by tying a server’s score to their active defense (or lack thereof) of the objectives they capture.

2) It puts too great an emphasis on defense.

No, it does not. The game currently puts NO emphasis on defense, rewarding offensive zerging to the exclusion of all else. This suggestion simply restores the balance, making defense of equal importance as offense (assuming the server cares about their world score and maintaining their WvWvW rank, of course).

3) Keeping track of who is defending what would be become a nightmare.

No, it would not. Well organized servers already perform this kind of coordination on a daily basis through a combination of /team chat and voice comms. I agree it would be convenient, though, to add this data to the UI.

For example, when opening up the WvWvW map, it could display a number next to each objective to indicate how many defenders are currently inside as well as the objective’s current defense score modifier. Commanders and other de facto leaders on a server would then have the information they need to better distribute their forces, maximizing the points they obtain from the objectives under the server’s control.

4) Keeping track of the score in the WvWvW UI will become a nightmare.

Without any changes to that UI, yes, this is a valid critique. However, some simple changes could rectify the situation. Next to each servers’ potential PPT for that 15 minute period you add a new number in parentheses. The non-parentheses number would represent a server’s current potential PPT while the number in parentheses is the maximum potential PPT they could be earning if all objectives were fully defended.

For example, if a server is not fully defending all of their captured objectives, the PPT interface might display the following set of numbers:

200 (225)

The 225 represents the number of points the server would earn if they had full defensive coverage. The 200 represents the actual number of points they will earn when the timer reaches zero (assuming no change in the number and type of objectives held by the server and no change in the number of defenders present inside those objectives) due to less than optimal defensive coverage.

This change to the display would have the added benefit of informing players about their opponents’ behavior. If a commander checks the score screen and observes an enemy’s PPT to read as “80 (300)”, this indicates an opponent who is zerging hard while leaving very few defenders behind. Conversely, an enemy PPT of “200 (200)” indicates an enemy who is actively defending their objectives to the maximum.

If it is felt that servers should not have this kind of intel on their opponents in the absence of an active scout network, then simply change it so a server only sees their own current PPT and potential PPT. For example, the red server may see a display like this:

red server 200 (225)
green server 300
blue server 170

(continued)

5) It will reward servers with greater 24-hour coverage.

Yes, this is a valid critique. If a server has periods in which they have few to no players available to defend their objectives, they will earn no points from those objectives.

However, this is not a symptom of this suggestion; it is a symptom of WvWvW as a whole. Servers with greater numbers and broader coverage tend to win no matter what scoring mechanism exists. True, in the current system servers still earn points for their objectives over “night” whereas with this suggestion they would earn none (assuming a scenario where there are no players available to defend those objectives). The problem this presents would be relatively minor, though, since those objectives are going to fall anyway within an hour or two to their opponents “night capping” crews.

There may be a period of volatility as servers’ rankings rebalance around this new scoring mechanic. Then we’d see servers paired against servers of relatively equal coverage and there’d be no greater score disparities than what we witness now under the current scoring system.

A possible fix is an objective will earn a minimum amount of PPT even in the absence of defenders. This rewards a server for the act of having successfully captured the objective. For example, a supply camp will never earn less than 1 PPT, a tower 2 PPT, a keep 5 PPT, and Stonemist Castle 7 PPT even if there were zero defenders in the previous 15 minutes. To earn the maximum amount of PPT, though, the server will still have to maintain a defensive force at the objective per the scoring system outlined above.