Guild Wars 2

“Night capping” is Crap!
The term night capping has people overreact to it because frankly it’s offensive.
It suggests that in a worldwide 24 hour game mode, that someone who plays outside of your own hours should be valued less or scored differently just because of the time they play.
For ANET to actually call it night capping had me vote for the other option immediately, as I had echo’s of MO’s comment return to mind –
“if you’re into WvW, typically, you’re really into PvE”
Please ANET don’t lose touch with your INTERNATIONAL community like you once did with with your WvW community, and please call it for what it is…

Allow me to spell it out for all of you who still don’t understand.
If you’re playing WvW and there are 5 of you vs 20, that’s what you call a population imbalance, just because it happens to be in your night time doesn’t make it a night time thing.
WAIT! – ANET? You have already mentioned that balancing population is an issue? Then why additionally are you using an offensive term of “night capping” for the exact same issue, and treating it as a separate issue? It suggests exactly what we are all thinking, that you value your international community less.
SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?… It is not a thing.
Signed your entire international community.

Servers seeking out, and usualy paying, guilds from other time zones to cap maps in the dead of, NA/EU, night, is nightcapping. If servers stop doing that, it will cease to be an issue. That’s the problem right there. Server stacking/winner joiners, that’s a huge problem too. You can’t solve either without changing fundimental flaws in the human psyche. Relax and enjoy the game.

OP. Agreed. I do not think players should be punished for what time they work and have time to play regardless of where they live. It is not just " Non US " players affected by this as some players work nights, and play during the day or do not get off work until 12 to 3 am and would like to wind down from work like everyone else. Everyone bought the game just the same and deserve the same ability to have their efforts matter just as much as the next guys.

Players are just enjoying the game when they have time to play and deserve to have players to play with and against no matter what time they log in. They have been doing it backwards, they need to have the maps adjust to the population, not the population adjust the maps.

People taking offense to the term “night-capping” is kind of silly. Really, the regions are 14-17 hours apart for NA and 8-11 hours apart for EU. For all intents and purposes, coming from anyone in or anything based on NA or EU (which NA servers are), this is night-capping, because that’s just how clocks work if the person talking speaks from referring to their time as daytime. It’s literally getting offended by people’s different time zones and using their own as reference to night/day.

And by your example above, tell me why those 20 people with effectively no competition should have as significant of an impact on scoring as they do based solely on population coverage as compared to the primetime hours which have 100 people fighting on both sides and another 50 more queued waiting for two and a half hours just to play, where sometimes, progress doesn’t even get made.

Mind you, these servers are also advertised for their corresponding time zones/global locations. I get that there are no oceanic servers, and frankly, I support the notion that players abroad without servers for their region/timezone should have a place to call home.

That said, it’d be like if a huge group of NA stacked hypothetical oceanic servers to dominate WvW in off hours. Now no matter how hard you try or how successful you are during your nation’s primetime, your efforts are invalidated entirely because of factors beyond your control and stacking done by other people. This has literally happened in the other regions and has led to destruction of many server communities. Put simply, it is a problem from a community point of view.

People are overreacting to this. Yes, the percentage of points to the total score by off-hours groups will decrease, however that doesn’t mean that off-hours guilds and players will have less importance to the overall matchup or reason to play. Holding an enemy keep overnight and sieging structures to make them paper will lead to big point gains later on. In essence, the huge points may not happen during off-hours, but a good presence in these off-hours will still enable for huge point gains later on for your server if they also have the numbers to back their OCX coverage. In essence, good coverage in one time zone won’t carry a server.

This encourages servers to have good presence in off-hours to disadvantage the enemy and also at server primetime to maintain those leads from off-hours for points, or try to regain the lost turf when able to not be hit by the point-bat.

jazdarc.1367:

SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?… It is not a thing.

Alright then. Let’s call it this instead:

Imbalanced PPT from exponential score growth during periods of times when WvW has so low population its willfully being abused by players to gain an advantage by fighting without any opposition for a matchup winning effect.

There you go.

And guess what? It still need to be balanced.

I await a retort.

Dawdler.8521:

jazdarc.1367:

SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?… It is not a thing.

Alright then. Let’s call it this instead:

Imbalanced PPT from exponential score growth during periods of times when WvW has so low population its willfully being abused by players to gain an advantage by fighting without any opposition for a matchup winning effect.

There you go.

And guess what? It still need to be balanced.

I await a retort.

So what about the NA servers who have no NA prime time coverage at all, but queue multiple maps during OCX and SEA? To those players, the night capping takes place during NA prime, when they are sleeping or at work. Whether or not you realize it, some servers are out manned during NA prime on NA servers, not the other way around. Should the NA prime players have their scoring devalued since they are playing while those servers are sleeping?

Unlike what many seem to think, US east coast is not all that exists. People getting home from work at 8 pm in California ( 11 pm east coast) should be able to come in, eat dinner and sit down and play (9-10 pm California is 12- 1 am east coast) like everyone Else EVEN though that is when the East Coast thinks that is time for Bed. Then you have players who come in from work at 12- 3 am , take a shower eat dinner and sit down and enjoy their game like everyone else. People have a difficult time understanding that the world of " NA" exists outside what they think is everyone’s bed time. Hawaii is STILL considered NA as well, even though their 8pm is East coast 2am. NA is a pretty large spread of time zones to consider. Many of those players like to play together so they have a community to play with like everyone else. Not a case of " “stacking” but rather that is where they have friends, family and guilds to play with, just like everyone else. Some players get off work at noon or 2pm , but their noon or 2pm is someone else’s 6 – 8 am .. ALL in NA players alone.

lil devils x.6071:

Dawdler.8521:

jazdarc.1367:

SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?… It is not a thing.

Alright then. Let’s call it this instead:

Imbalanced PPT from exponential score growth during periods of times when WvW has so low population its willfully being abused by players to gain an advantage by fighting without any opposition for a matchup winning effect.

There you go.

And guess what? It still need to be balanced.

I await a retort.

So what about the NA servers who have no NA prime time coverage at all, but queue multiple maps during OCX and SEA? To those players, the night capping takes place during NA prime, when they are sleeping or at work. Whether or not you realize it, some servers are out manned during NA prime on NA servers, not the other way around. Should the NA prime players have their scoring devalued since they are playing while those servers are sleeping?

Unlike what many seem to think, US east coast is not all that exists. People getting home from work at 8 pm in California ( 11 pm east coast) should be able to come in, eat dinner and sit down and play (9-10 pm California is 12- 1 am east coast) like everyone Else EVEN though that is when the East Coast thinks that is time for Bed. Then you have players who come in from work at 12- 3 am , take a shower eat dinner and sit down and enjoy their game like everyone else. People have a difficult time understanding that the world of " NA" exists outside what they think is everyone’s bed time. Hawaii is STILL considered NA as well, even though their 8pm is East coast 2am. NA is a pretty large spread of time zones to consider. Many of those players like to play together so they have a community to play with like everyone else. Not a case of " “stacking” but rather that is where they have friends, family and guilds to play with, just like everyone else. Some players get off work at noon or 2pm , but their noon or 2pm is someone else’s 6 – 8 am .. ALL in NA players alone.

A change in the basic scoring ruleset to reduce the impact of runaway PPT would be an equal opportunity killer. NA is irrelevant. OCX is irrelevant. SEA is irrelevant. Your AM and PM times is irrelevant. Timezones are irrelevant. Hawaii is cool, but still irrelevant. Nothing matter except the now in the game.

So the answer to your question “what about it?” is “it’s completely irrelevant”.

Dawdler.8521:

lil devils x.6071:

Dawdler.8521:

jazdarc.1367:

SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?… It is not a thing.

Alright then. Let’s call it this instead:

Imbalanced PPT from exponential score growth during periods of times when WvW has so low population its willfully being abused by players to gain an advantage by fighting without any opposition for a matchup winning effect.

There you go.

And guess what? It still need to be balanced.

I await a retort.

So what about the NA servers who have no NA prime time coverage at all, but queue multiple maps during OCX and SEA? To those players, the night capping takes place during NA prime, when they are sleeping or at work. Whether or not you realize it, some servers are out manned during NA prime on NA servers, not the other way around. Should the NA prime players have their scoring devalued since they are playing while those servers are sleeping?

Unlike what many seem to think, US east coast is not all that exists. People getting home from work at 8 pm in California ( 11 pm east coast) should be able to come in, eat dinner and sit down and play (9-10 pm California is 12- 1 am east coast) like everyone Else EVEN though that is when the East Coast thinks that is time for Bed. Then you have players who come in from work at 12- 3 am , take a shower eat dinner and sit down and enjoy their game like everyone else. People have a difficult time understanding that the world of " NA" exists outside what they think is everyone’s bed time. Hawaii is STILL considered NA as well, even though their 8pm is East coast 2am. NA is a pretty large spread of time zones to consider. Many of those players like to play together so they have a community to play with like everyone else. Not a case of " “stacking” but rather that is where they have friends, family and guilds to play with, just like everyone else. Some players get off work at noon or 2pm , but their noon or 2pm is someone else’s 6 – 8 am .. ALL in NA players alone.

A change in the basic scoring ruleset to reduce the impact of runaway PPT would be an equal opportunity killer. NA is irrelevant. OCX is irrelevant. SEA is irrelevant. Your AM and PM times is irrelevant. Timezones are irrelevant. Hawaii is cool, but still irrelevant. Nothing matter except the now in the game.

So the answer to your question “what about it?” is “it’s completely irrelevant”.

I dont agree with handicaps when there are options to solve the problem while treating all players equally. They are going about it wrong. They need to do away with passive scoring and instead base the scoring on fighting OVER the objectives rather than the objectives themselves. This would not reward PVD but instead reward PPK, but only for either attacking or defending objectives. deterring PVD all together and encouraging fights over the objectives instead.

Night capping IS a thing and a real problem on the NA (North America) servers..

Servers get people in the OCX and SEA time zone who just bring the servers PPT way up while the NORTH AMERICANS (Remember, North American server) are asleep. Even the people who play in EU time zone are generally playing the PPT game while most of the NORTH AMERICANS are at work. lol..

Go take a look at when certain servers points spike PPT at their highest, its at a time when the other servers people are asleep or at work, not during NA prime. Its pretty rare for any server in NA prime to get very high PPT because there are close to even populations at that time across most servers.

So yes, its a very real problem for anyone who cares about PPT. I am not a person who cares about it, but it would certainly help make our match making system a lot more balanced for them to reduce point gain when population is at its lowest.

After seeing the leaked proposal, I have to say I think a majority of players would straight out quit WvW if those changes were implemented

I hope it is faked, because the people that wrote that have no understanding of the gamemode they are considering changing.

I have been on two t1 servers, one t2, and one t3 server. There were enormous international communities on each one. People around the world organizing together to play the game was always one of my favorite aspects of GW2.

But apparently there are many people that think only NA should be allowed to play WvW. If those fools got what they wanted, what would they go after next? “Only EST scoring, it is unfair that after I go to bed PST still plays.”

I find it especially frustrating that with WvW numbers so low that we have paired servers, we are considering eliminating a huge chunk of the WvW community. We cannot afford to make such egregious mistakes.

“Signed your entire international community”
Yeah… Well… No!

Okay,
Call it what you want “Night capping” is a real thing and is an issue. I will now explain why the argument “all time zones should be treated equally” is wrong.

THERE ARE 3 SERVERS IN A MATCHUP.
That is the #1 reason why nightcapping is a real issue.

Let’s take a highly exaggerated matchup for clarity on the issue.

Server 1, 2 are equally populated with 500 players each, they are equally skilled and get matched up against server 3.
Server 3 has only 20 players, who are completly brain dead but know how to break down a gate. They play in a completely different time zone.

S1 & 2 have 100% of their population online for 12 hours of the day.
S3 has their 20 people online for the other 12 hours of the day.
(again, highly exaggerated)

For the first 12 hours, S1/2 are neck and neck with 50% of the score each.
S3 have 0 points.

Then S1/2 shake hands, go to bed and get some well deserved sleep after all the bloodshed and ppt done.

They wake up the next day ready for more action and find that S3, with their 20 brain dead players have capped the entire maps and sit with twice as many points than either S1 or S2.

This again is a highly exaggerated example of what the current system allows for, but this is sort of what goes on currently. A server who is out matched and out classed in every way by 2 other servers can still have a runaway score by just recruiting a few people to cap everything whilst the other servers sleep.

In the example I gave, you have 1000 people who’s contribution to the matchup score was completely decimated by 20 skill less PvE players. In reality it would be more than 20 and they would be pretty good at what they do, but they STILL can undo the work of many many more people by simply “playing out of hours”

Their contribution should not be ignored OBVIOUSLY, but they should not be able to swing a matchup so severely.

And I’m saying this as a T1 player who relies on our night crew to keep us afloat whilst we ignore PPT at prime so I can fight!

NA players don’t “contribute”. Night-capping has enabled them the luxury of not having to. Everyone knows night-capping can be abused to the point where the NA timezone doesn’t need to concern themselves with whatever the rest of the server is doing or wants. This creates a huge disconnect where players in other timezones may feel like their needs are being ignored by NA.

By that token, many NA players don’t “contribute” exactly because night-cappers on other servers wipe away any attempts of NA players to “contribute”. It renders the whole system pointless.

jazdarc.1367:

If you’re playing WvW and there are 5 of you vs 20, that’s what you call a population imbalance, just because it happens to be in your night time doesn’t make it a night time thing.
WAIT! – ANET? You have already mentioned that balancing population is an issue? Then why additionally are you using an offensive term of “night capping” for the exact same issue, and treating it as a separate issue? It suggests exactly what we are all thinking, that you value your international community less.
SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?

We can call it “off-time capping”, if you like.

But with one thing you are right. It has nothing to do with daytime or nighttime but with population imbalances between servers during some time periods.

As soon as A-Net can resolve and counterbalance the results of population imbalances, “night capping” and “off-time capping” and “primetime blob capping” wouldn’t be a thing.

I think the entire discussion about nightcapping is nonesense as long as we dont know how the change shall be conducted.

I think the amount of points rewarded should be determined by how much resistance there is. Basically count how many players are online in WvW in one server vs the other server.

Whatever percentage one server is out numbering the other by is the deducted off the amount of points they would be receiving that tick.

So if server A has 10% more people in WvW than server B within the 15 minute point tick, they receive 10% less points that tick. So if they were at 400PPT but outnumbered the others by 10%, they get 360 points that tick instead.

Same goes for the reverse way, if they’re out numbered by 10%, they get 10% more points than they have that tick.

That seems like that would be a BALANCED way of scoring.

Josh XT.6053:

I think the amount of points rewarded should be determined by how much resistance there is. Basically count how many players are online in WvW in one server vs the other server.

Whatever percentage one server is out numbering the other by is the deducted off the amount of points they would be receiving that tick.

So if server A has 10% more people in WvW than server B within the 15 minute point tick, they receive 10% less points that tick. So if they were at 400PPT but outnumbered the others by 10%, they get 360 points that tick instead.

Same goes for the reverse way, if they’re out numbered by 10%, they get 10% more points than they have that tick.

That seems like that would be a BALANCED way of scoring.

Simple, elegant, and while it may not be 100% perfect, it would a good step in the right direction that would an all encompassing solution. It doesn’t focus on any specific timezone, and it accounts for population imbalance during peak hours as well. I would add one thing though, to try to prevent people from gaming the system, and that would be to have it calculate the average over the previous hour to determine the numbers used to get the percentages. Then people can’t log out en masse just before the tick to try to manipulate the score.

I was thinking logging the activity of any events that anyone participated in, add that person to a list of people who participated in events during that 15 minute point tick and then check that list vs the other servers lists in a count of people. That way if they participated in even a sentry cap, they were counted as someone in WvW during that 15 minute window.

Josh XT.6053:

I think the amount of points rewarded should be determined by how much resistance there is. Basically count how many players are online in WvW in one server vs the other server.

Whatever percentage one server is out numbering the other by is the deducted off the amount of points they would be receiving that tick.

So if server A has 10% more people in WvW than server B within the 15 minute point tick, they receive 10% less points that tick. So if they were at 400PPT but outnumbered the others by 10%, they get 360 points that tick instead.

Same goes for the reverse way, if they’re out numbered by 10%, they get 10% more points than they have that tick.

That seems like that would be a BALANCED way of scoring.

so how is an oceanic server suppose to win?

Elterzzz.4378:

Josh XT.6053:

I think the amount of points rewarded should be determined by how much resistance there is. Basically count how many players are online in WvW in one server vs the other server.

Whatever percentage one server is out numbering the other by is the deducted off the amount of points they would be receiving that tick.

So if server A has 10% more people in WvW than server B within the 15 minute point tick, they receive 10% less points that tick. So if they were at 400PPT but outnumbered the others by 10%, they get 360 points that tick instead.

Same goes for the reverse way, if they’re out numbered by 10%, they get 10% more points than they have that tick.

That seems like that would be a BALANCED way of scoring.

so how is an oceanic server suppose to win?

My idea would effect ALL time zones, meaning if you had 10 people running NA prime and your enemies had 100, the enemies would gain 90% less points from hitting your stuff and you would gain 90% more hitting them. It would effect everyone the same.

Dawdler.8521:

jazdarc.1367:

SO -Can we all PLEASE drop the term night capping….?… It is not a thing.

Alright then. Let’s call it this instead:

Imbalanced PPT from exponential score growth during periods of times when WvW has so low population its willfully being abused by players to gain an advantage by fighting without any opposition for a matchup winning effect.

There you go.

And guess what? It still need to be balanced.

I await a retort.

We call it “Population Balancing”….. Consider yourself retorted.

Wow- did none of you “night capper believers” comprehend my post? I see some of you got it! HURRAH

Night capping is not a separate issue, in fact it’s the exact same thing….. For you all to still call it a separate issue to Population Balancing is why people are getting so offended….

Signed your entire international community outside of NA, and those in NA who play in non prime time hours….

I’m having a hard time understanding how rolling over, farming and or spawn camping people in NA or EU when a side has a numerical advantage is highly skilled while doing the same thing in OCX or SEA is skillless. If there is going to be a reduction based on the amount of competition you face, it should be 24/7.

I think my scoring proposal would make it a lot more balanced for all time zones. Out numbering people in any time zone is unfair and because nothing is done about the scoring problem, the numbers are out of balance.

If they changed the scoring system the way I proposed, there would be NO REASON to out number people for PPT anymore, there for if people just PvDoor when there are no enemies around, there are no gains. That will promote fights because those players will go to servers where they’ll have enemies around so that they can boost the score.

Sure it isn’t fair for people to spawn camp people in NA prime, but its equally not fair for people to PvDoor to raise their points when their enemies sleep. Balancing the scoring will cause the populations to balance because score won’t advance if there are no enemies around to fight or taking other objectives.

This isn’t difficult. If you guys read the leaked patch notes, you’ll notice that the scoring change being talked about is 24/7, so an OCX server would not be at a disadvantage. Those notes are basically ideas generated from the old CDI from a long time ago and much care was given to at-the-moment scoring balance, not favoring one timezone over another. I feel like too many comments on this forum about night-capping since the poll was put up is from people who have either not been paying attention or were not around to participate in the CDI or simply forgot.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/first

Chaba.5410:

This isn’t difficult. If you guys read the leaked patch notes, you’ll notice that the scoring change being talked about is 24/7, so an OCX server would not be at a disadvantage. Those notes are basically ideas generated from the old CDI from a long time ago and much care was given to at-the-moment scoring balance, not favoring one timezone over another. I feel like too many comments on this forum about night-capping since the poll was put up is from people who have either not been paying attention or were not around to participate in the CDI or simply forgot.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/first

The leak I saw had a permanent prime time set on them, unless I misunderstood them. They were also a combination of flawed ideas (score servers based on 1st,2nd,3rd, multiply by current players). The flawed ideas do not support each other, but actively make their flaws worse – in the leak I saw having no players was drastically preferable to having a full map of unorganized players.

The worst part of the leak was the triple points day. Really not sure why anybody thinks 6 days of strong WvW play should be overshadowed by one day of chaos.