Before I get into this: I’m aware that WvWvW is a “24-hour game,” and that it’s expected that most servers have at least some presence on their WvW zones at all hours of the day. Imbalances are in WvW by design. It’s possible to be outnumbered and stomped on by a larger group of players, and that’s OK.
What is not OK is having game mechanics that allow servers with unbalanced peak times (lots of Oceanic/AUS players in addition to US players, for example) to have a sizable advantage over servers with more traditional peak times.
Changing the scoring interval does very little to solve this issue, because every team is still bound by the same scoring interval. The point gaps created after a night capping server takes the whole WvW map off peak hours are still proportionally the same as they were when the interval was 5 minutes. This is because each team still gets points tallied at the same interval, making it just as difficult for a disadvantaged team to come back from a significant gap.
In order to mitigate the effectiveness of “night capping” by servers with unbalanced peak times, I would like to suggest the following changes to scoring:
- Change the scoring interval to several hours, such as every 3 or 6 hours.
- Reward a team with points upon successfully capturing a stronghold (keep/tower/camp/etc).
- Reward a team with points upon successfully defending a stronghold (keep/tower/camp/etc).
Here’s what these three changes accomplish:
- Rewards teams for maintaining map control (on a longer interval).
- Places emphasis on capturing and then defending what you have captured.
- Prevents servers with unbalanced peak times from gaining a significant advantage from sitting on every point in all of the zones for several hours straight during their opponent’s off hours, essentially being “rewarded” for nothing.
As it is right now, the same problem still exists, albeit with lower overall scores for everyone involved.