Guild Wars 2

To most of us the answer is obvious, yes, capture activity creates the conflict that leads to fights. This doesn’t mean that some people aren’t there just for fights, but that fights are more likely if people are fighting over objectives.

I’ve attached a couple charts (correlation shown at the end of the title). The first shows that as capture activity increases on a server the amount of killing and dying by that server also increases. But some could just write this off as a consequence of increasing population. And since Anet doesn’t give hard numbers on population you could entertain that notion.

The second chart shows that the rate of killing and dying is increasing with the increase capture volume. This means the proportion of killing and death increases with the capture activity of the server. Again you could claim that there are more people involved in fights at higher population so more people die.

There a couple ways we could look at this.

1. People get into fights when trying to capture or defend an objective.
2. People accidentally capture objectives after getting into fights.

Option 2 is ridiculous, of course. Regardless of whether your goal is to capture for points or to capture to create fights, fights revolve around capturing objectives.

If Anet were to remove the incentive to capture objectives, there would be less conflict. While the current PPT system may need to be adjusted, ditching all capture related points is foolish.

In addition, limiting the scope of WvW to something like GvG would also reduce the level of activity as it would remove all the small skirmish fights and ad hoc blob collisions that frequently occur in the WvW arena.

There are always some notable exceptions to these trends. For instance, Far Shiverpeaks and Seafarer’s Rest both have far more fight activity than would be expected for their capture volume. And Sea of Sorrows looks like they don’t care for fights at all.

This is definitely one of the most important topics I would say. There seems to be a whole too much “PvE” in WvW going on. While in fact, the actual PvE is fairly limited. Sure some bosses scale up alot more and some objectives are PvE related, which really means that any team can react to said offensive movements and fight over said objectives.

In sPvP there’s numerous PvE elements that really aren’t considered to be “too much pve in pvp!” argument worthy for obvious reasons.

Obviously, you can also have different cap and hold mechanics, like for example challenge timers, instead of mobs, which would basically mean a group needs to hold an objective for a certain amount of time before capturing it, so you can create a window for conflict. Or maybe another method that would give a window in time for conflict to be happening.
If this is nescessary at all.

Another thing that i saw mentioned elsewhere, was that the current borderlands have too many objectives, which makes the whole objective to pull some players to a smaller fight fall apart. Especially as noone is defending these empty objectives anyway, other than said trash mobs.
Which can be related to some commanders being nothing more than zerg pullers and blob fighters. I really don’t see too many zergs, but i wonder how much use squads get in WvW, or if most commanders just stick to the whole blob tactic instead, because its just that easy.

An interesting idea could be that these objectives aren’t automatically held, but instead require constant channeling, or just standing on said point, in order for extra defenses or maybe even invulnerability to activate. Which could be way more action and reaction than currently. Or maybe its deemed equally terrible.

But maybe other people have some equally terrible or maybe more genius ideas.

FrizzFreston.5290:

This is definitely one of the most important topics I would say.

Not really, haha. But still, its interesting to see the charts.

Something I stated elsewhere recently is that pugs and guilds is like the body and the head. Neither can survive alone and if they become unbalanced you either get a too big head or grow fat and slow. The activity of pugs drive a server up the ranks, which create fights for guilds. Its when dominating guilds loose sight of this and go “oh but we dont PPT, we only fight!” while pulling the pugs into the same mindset that servers inevitably collapse, leading to guilds leaving. Well, until people transfer there and the cycle begin again.

TorquedSoul.8097:

If Anet were to remove the incentive to capture objectives, there would be less conflict. While the current PPT system may need to be adjusted, ditching all capture related points is foolish.

Are many people saying to get rid of capture points? As far I followed recent threads there has been proposals to remove passive tick, not entire “capture and hold objectives” system.

There is basically 2 ways to think about WvW, and many players follow stricktly one or other:

1 – go to WvW to find enemy players and fight them.
2 – go to WvW to increase points for your server and win the match

I wont be adding EotM karma trains as those are not really about WvW and should never be considered same gamemode.

Now for players who just go to WvW for large scale fights objectives hold no real value. Something flipped means there are enemies around it so you should go there and fight them. You could replace all objectives with enemy markers on the map and they would still find it interesting and fun.

However if you play for the points, then capturing and holding objectives IS the WvW. Much time and effort is spent to avoid fighting enemy, using wp to hop into other corner of map or change maps when enemy gets near. Wisely taking our undefended objectives and using off-hour capture teams allow less populated servers to win matches.

I am not sure if even Anet knows which type they want WvW to be. Or where the WvW should be heading, and therefor which changes should be implemented.

Dawdler.8521:

FrizzFreston.5290:

This is definitely one of the most important topics I would say.

Not really, haha. But still, its interesting to see the charts.

Maybe I was a bit offtopic, but it definitely important to think about rather than just say “too much PvE”. Or rather, it’s important to ask: what would you or other players like in WvW mechanics.

I wasnt talking what made fights specifically, but rather the foundation of where and how these take place and how ArenaNet can influence where players focus on. What is deemed fun and whats not.

It is one of the things that has gotten the most criticism regarding the DBL. That WvW has too much PvE is also one of the most made complaints. All the while all objectives can be contested, and really aren’t PvE at all, but maybe perceived as such because there’s no one that actually fights you for it. At least that’s what I was thinking about.

But okay then, maybe I’m wrong and it’s not important?

Yes. We see this on the small scale where features like tower radar and veteran scouts highlight enemies on the mini-map. That feature alone has brought more fights together than any other in recent memory. The entire PvE portion of WvW should be driving that sort of engagement.

im not sure if this is was inspired from my post or not, but if it is then wow lol. gg.

Stand The Wall.6987:

im not sure if this is was inspired from my post or not, but if it is then wow lol. gg.

I don’t know what you are talking about so probably not. I posted this to show the importance of capture activity in WvW. No doubt that some may have an opposing view.

just minimize the capture points like one or two on earch map,
that would be 2(capturepoint)x4(maps) = 8 (chances to have fight or PPT activity)

so that we will not make some charts like this

TorquedSoul.8097:

here let me refresh your short memory.
i would still like to hear your reponse in that thread.

Stand The Wall.6987:

TorquedSoul.8097:

here let me refresh your short memory.
i would still like to hear your reponse in that thread.

Ok. Refresh. Is there suppose to be a link there? I will happily respond to whatever you are going on about. But you need to provide a link.

Or should I respond to my own post?

TorquedSoul.8097:

I’ve attached a couple charts (correlation shown at the end of the title). The first shows that as capture activity increases on a server the amount of killing and dying by that server also increases. But some could just write this off as a consequence of increasing population. And since Anet doesn’t give hard numbers on population you could entertain that notion.

The second chart shows that the rate of killing and dying is increasing with the increase capture volume. This means the proportion of killing and death increases with the capture activity of the server. Again you could claim that there are more people involved in fights at higher population so more people die.

…

There are always some notable exceptions to these trends. For instance, Far Shiverpeaks and Seafarer’s Rest both have far more fight activity than would be expected for their capture volume. And Sea of Sorrows looks like they don’t care for fights at all.

So basically you are making a singular and simple conclusion even though your own data has some exceptions which you are unable to explain with your theory. Worse, you completely write off one idea even though it is a perfect explanation for those exceptions AND the loss/gain of population explains why capture and fights activity increases/decreases over time. Remember in a previous post you mentioned that capture activity in a tier is “calibrated” by the third server? That’s population effect.

People drive both capture and fight activity. It is people choice of what they want to spend their time doing in-game.

Was a Fight Activity?

- 1. was against NPC’s: guards, lords only, very few or no players involved > no
- 2. one side sit on siege killing besiegers > no, but getting closer
- 3. one side had a gate to retreat, barely came out, instead used siege > no
- 4. one side had a gate to retreat, but sallied forth multiple times, using siege cover > yes, but mostly not a fun fight
- 5. one side had a gate to retreat, but sallied forth multiple times, no siege involved > yes
- 6. both sides met in open field, or chokes, or inside objectives and fought each other > yes

Notes:
A. Fights always involve players on both side and not taking empty objectives
B. Since siege is way over the top deadly against players, it’s simply impossible to call it a fight “that crawling and fast dying” under siege – even if a group can sustain a while, that’s not what generations of WvW players desired or called “fights”. Siege in a RvR game should be a tool against objectives or other siege only, or in the worst case have a very insignificant damage against players.
C. The quality of the fights is also very important, just having bad “fights” it’s not very satisfying. That requires skilled players, coordination, eventually comparable numbers, and so on.

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

I’ve attached a couple charts (correlation shown at the end of the title). The first shows that as capture activity increases on a server the amount of killing and dying by that server also increases. But some could just write this off as a consequence of increasing population. And since Anet doesn’t give hard numbers on population you could entertain that notion.

The second chart shows that the rate of killing and dying is increasing with the increase capture volume. This means the proportion of killing and death increases with the capture activity of the server. Again you could claim that there are more people involved in fights at higher population so more people die.

…

There are always some notable exceptions to these trends. For instance, Far Shiverpeaks and Seafarer’s Rest both have far more fight activity than would be expected for their capture volume. And Sea of Sorrows looks like they don’t care for fights at all.

So basically you are making a singular and simple conclusion even though your own data has some exceptions which you are unable to explain with your theory. Worse, you completely write off one idea even though it is a perfect explanation for those exceptions AND the loss/gain of population explains why capture and fights activity increases/decreases over time. Remember in a previous post you mentioned that capture activity in a tier is “calibrated” by the third server? That’s population effect.

People drive both capture and fight activity. It is people choice of what they want to spend their time doing in-game.

Yes I saw your comment about my “exceptions.” Exceptions don’t define the trend. And no model is ever perfect so exceptions are expected and never considered to invalidate an overall trend. They are interesting look at to see why they break the trend but they never invalidate analysis. Statistics account for outliers just for this reason. Suggesting that such exceptions do break models would invalidate pretty much all of scientific reasoning. All systems have noise which is the result of entities in the system not completely conforming the model. Models are imperfect but are useful in understand general behaviors, as I do in this case.

You can cling to the exceptions if you want but it doesn’t change the fact that trend supports my position.

As far as my ability to explain why a 6% (3 out of 50) of servers might break the trend in a significant way, it is not to hard. Clearly for whatever reason some have more fights than expected and the that one lone server has far fewer. Why they choose to that is their business. But it doesn’t invalidate the trend.

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

As for your last comment about people driving and fight and capture activity, well yeah. Sure. there is no game without actors. But the factors that drive people’s behavior in a game are the mechanics of the game. The game creates situations for conflict. In this case, capture activity.

And yes, people can choose what to do in game. They choose from a menu of options the game developers give them. In this case the vast majority of servers (of people), 94% choose to follow the trend that suggest that capture activity creates conflict.

every quoted name in bold is a link.

Stand The Wall.6987:

every quoted name in bold is a link.

You linked my post. Link yours since it is something that YOU said that you wanted addressed. Or just come right out and say it here. I’m not afraid of a debate. That should be obvious by now.

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the outliers. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the exceptions. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Do you know what a trend is? You seemed to be a bit confused.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the exceptions. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Do you know what a trend is? You seemed to be a bit confused.

Like the trend of higher populated and better coveraged servers having both higher fight and capture activity?

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the exceptions. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Do you know what a trend is? You seemed to be a bit confused.

Like the trend of higher populated and better coveraged servers having both higher fight and capture activity?

How does that invalidate the relationship that I present?

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the exceptions. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Do you know what a trend is? You seemed to be a bit confused.

Like the trend of higher populated and better coveraged servers having both higher fight and capture activity?

How does that invalidate the relationship that I present?

/sigh

I keep talking about conclusions for trends and you keep talking about trends themselves. Tell us again how SoS could increase their fight activity if only they were to increase their capture activity.

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the exceptions. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Do you know what a trend is? You seemed to be a bit confused.

Like the trend of higher populated and better coveraged servers having both higher fight and capture activity?

How does that invalidate the relationship that I present?

/sigh

I keep talking about conclusions for trends and you keep talking about trends themselves. Tell us again how SoS could increase their fight activity if only they were to increase their capture activity.

And you keep going on about outliers as if they invalidate a trend.

You seem to be confused about whether the relationship between fighting and capture activity is independent of population.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Chaba.5410:

TorquedSoul.8097:

In my experience, those that reject data and assert that the truth is unknowable usually have arguments for which they little or no data to support. If you wish to counter my argument, use something other than your gut.

I don’t need my gut to see that your analysis is inconsistent with your own data. You identified a trend. That isn’t in question. Your conclusion for that trend though is not supported by your data. Any good theory requires explanation for the exceptions. Your conclusion basically presumes that if a server were to increase their capture activity, they would increase their fight activity. YOUR DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THAT. You cited SoS as an example of a server with high capture activity relative to fight activity. You also listed servers with high fight activity compared to lower capture activity. If “capture activity drives fight activity”, those cases would not exist.

Do you know what a trend is? You seemed to be a bit confused.

Like the trend of higher populated and better coveraged servers having both higher fight and capture activity?

How does that invalidate the relationship that I present?

/sigh

I keep talking about conclusions for trends and you keep talking about trends themselves. Tell us again how SoS could increase their fight activity if only they were to increase their capture activity.

And you keep going on about outliers as if they invalidate a trend.

I do not. That’s the source of your confusion. The outliers invalidate your conclusion. The outliers should be telling you the answer to your topic question is no. All you’ve shown is a relationship between capture activity and fight activity, not a cause and effect, which is what your question is about. If capture activity drove fight activity, SoS should be much higher in fight activity for the amount of captures they do. Stop ignoring your data.

TorquedSoul.8097:

You linked my post. Link yours since it is something that YOU said that you wanted addressed. Or just come right out and say it here. I’m not afraid of a debate. That should be obvious by now.

i linked your post because thats where all of this started.
it will take 10 seconds or less to scroll down and see what i said in response.
seems to me you can spare the time.

where do those graphs come from? are they accurate? do they take into account population, server behavior, nightcapping/backcapping? i see two graphs comparing similar data but no comparison to the opposite. while said data doesnt exist in this game it does in others.

TorquedSoul I think the only way to answer your question is if you can seperate
“where” and “when” each activity is happening. In my current matchup fight activity is
mainly on EB in prime time but capture activity is mainly later off-prime time and on the borders. There is no correlation between each other.

I think there is one giant thing you are overlooking with your approach to this topic. You are trying to use math and structure to explain things that are not controlled by those ideals. WvW is a crazy thing that does not make sense at all. I cant make a graph that explains why some commanders turn and fight while others turn and run. You cant mathematically show me why there are fights in certain areas of the map on some nights but not on others. All of these things are a complicated balance of people making split second decisions. No amount of analysis and number crunching can actually really explain how this giant mess we all love works.

I totally understand your desire to break it down into something you can quantify and explain. But that’s the best part of being human, there are always going to be surprises.

OK. Let me wrap this thread up.

First, let me say that the only outstanding issue that was bugging me (regardless of the myriad of variables you are all tossing about) is the relationship that population has on capture rates and fighting activity. Unfortunately, I am not able to effectively normalize for population because map population is not provided in the API, at least not the last time I looked. The only solution that I could use was checking the cap/fight relationship by population category. Maybe this is insufficient but at the moment it is the extent of my ability to normalize to the population. There is a suspicion that Anet calculates its server population by activity which could make this a circular argument, but I’m going to do it anyway.

So here are the Capture to Fight correlation for different population levels.
Very High: 0.65 (5 servers)
High: 0.62 (14 servers)
Medium: 0.91 (32 servers)

I assume that all activity globally is basically a function of population. By checking the correlation of Cap to Fight activity within the popuation categories I try to remove the population as a factor. This means that regardless of population category that Capture activity and Fight Activity are still related. That is, within a population category as the capture activity increases the fight activity increases (or vice versa.) The question in the thread title was “Does capture activity drive fight activity?” Or is fighting a function of capture activity?

So what is being contested is whether this trend proves my assertion. It does not prove my assertion. However it is supporting data for that model. Just so you know, statistics doesn’t prove anything on a mathematical level, all it can do is support theories. The arguments I am getting suggest that the data is insufficient. Possibly.

Given that I have (to the best of my ability) normalized to population, there are a few cases that could describe what is occurring. These cases would be varying degrees of three basic behaviors: Capture w/o fighting, Capture w/ fighting, and Fighting w/o capturing. The motivations for the actors engaging in any of these three activities is irrelevant.

Case 1: People are fighting while engaging in capturing/defending exclusively. This would assume that everyone was conforming to the model and that no killing would occur outside of capturing. Not likely to be the case as variation in the data and outliers would easily debunk this.

Case 2: Fighting and capture activity are independent of each other. People who fight, fight. People how cap, cap. Both groups just happen to do so in a correlated fashion. Since I have removed population from the equation there must be some other factor that leads to these two activities being related. Its up to someone else to find this one.

Case 3: The hybrid case, and my position. The majority of fights occur during capture activity. However there are players who focus on fights w/o engaging in caps and player engaging in capture activity while avoiding fights. However, the overall trend is that capture activity and fights are occurring together. With population removed as a factor this case is strongly supported by the correlation.

My personal experience leads me to believe that fighting generally happens when someone looks to attack an objective and someone comes to defend it.

Are there cases where blobs go looking for each other, yes. But generally groups are running about capturing things and defending things and fights break out.

Why does this happen? Because objectives are tied to the score via PPT. Does this mean if we removed objectives from the scoring that fights wouldn’t happen? Of course not. But they would not happen the way they happen now. The environment would shift from an open world strategic environment to a tactical gladiatorial environment as Anet shifts the score weight from objectives to kills.

@Chaba: Sorry, you do keep bringing up the outliers as evidence that the trend does not support my conclusion. I mean, you even did it in your last post where you said you don’t do it. You are free to believe whatever you want to believe. But you are correct, that my trend doesn’t definitively and deductively prove my assertion that capture activity drives fights. Nor was it intended to. It was provided as supporting evidence to the claim.

@Stand the Wall: The data that I use is collected from the API. I collect the data at 5 minute intervals throughout the week. At the end of the week I collate the data and run reports. You are free to dismiss my data as inaccurate. Most people suffer from confirmation bias and reject or ignore information that doesn’t fit their current view. As far as whether the data take into account server behavior or backcapping, I don’t see how that is relevant to the discussion. I am looking at global qualities. Suggesting that I must consider the motivation of each server or each individual actor defeats the purpose of looking at trend. There is a correlation between capture activity and fight activity. If you don’t agree with my explanation, you can concoct your own. Maybe you believe the relationship exists because you ate salad last week. You can believe whatever you want.

@Aezyr: As I explained above to StW, I was looking at global qualities. The relationship exists globally. When and where are irrelevant. I understand that there is much blob fighting on EBG, I also understand that during that blob fighting things are being captured. Whenever you have larger groups fighting over objectives more people will get killed. So the proportion of killing to capture will go up (and we see this in the upper tiers in general) as the size of the group fighting over the objective increases. And as a result the correlation does weaken as you can see with the higher population servers having a weaker correlation.

@AbeLincoln: What’s crazy is that for all that inexplicable behavior and madness, there is a visible trend and relationship. There will always be exceptions, but if you believe that people somehow defy analysis you are probably being more manipulated than I am right now. If you don’t believe that systems can impact behavior go research sociology and economics. The structure of systems can and does impact the behaviors of people in aggregate within them. I understand that it is compelling to believe that somehow you are totally free and transcend all forms of control, but you don’t … and neither do I.

I am confident that all that I posted here will be viewed as insufficient by those that reject my position. And that is fine. If I learned one thing from debating politics is that once a person is entrenched in there position, the debate is no longer about persuading them, they are just a vehicle to present the information to others. Feel free to claim yourself victorious after I abandon the thread.

I don’t believe that my data is always perfect. I do make mistakes and if anyone would like me to provide the raw data I collect so they can confirm my results, I will do so. I am always happy to share with other data nerds so PM me if you want the raw API data. I will even provide the data sorted by tier to make it easier on you. But after that, you are on your own. I would like to see what others can squeeze out of the API.

There’s always this conflict between PPT players and “fights” players, each calling the other names. But both are needed.

There’s a symbiosis, you need both types of players to have an active WvW. Without the “fights” players, WvW devolves into karma trains jumping to the most empty BL and without the PPT players calling out enemy positions, fights can’t be found.

Lord Kuru.3685:

There’s always this conflict between PPT players and “fights” players, each calling the other names. But both are needed.

There’s a symbiosis, you need both types of players to have an active WvW. Without the “fights” players, WvW devolves into karma trains jumping to the most empty BL and without the PPT players calling out enemy positions, fights can’t be found.

thats why im telling on this thread that minimizing the number capture objectives fights can be found

and this?
here are the Capture to Fight correlation for different population levels.
Very High: 0.65 (5 servers)
High: 0.62 (14 servers)
Medium: 0.91 (32 servers)

for every 65 captures theres a 100 fights correlation?
lol

TorquedSoul.8097:

my trend doesn’t definitively and deductively prove my assertion that capture activity drives fights. Nor was it intended to. It was provided as supporting evidence to the claim.

What?

If you are just trying to give out information, why try to make assertions about it? I like to see good logic and clear and concise communication so I can say “Oh that’s so right”. I see a lot of shortcuts instead.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Most people suffer from confirmation bias and reject or ignore information that doesn’t fit their current view.

As far as whether the data take into account server behavior or backcapping, I don’t see how that is relevant to the discussion.

which is exactly what youre doing by providing 2 very limited charts that do not take into account other factors. never have i said that capturing objectives is not essential to wvw.

well either you will choose to figure it out for yourself or not, im not going to take the time to explain it to you. im exhausted.

TorquedSoul, it’s fun and useful to think about. Would be more useful that ArenaNet were willing and permitted to discuss their own processes and conclusions for such analyses. I think it would be enlightening, and could reveal what I suspect: That you’ve just illustrated a thinking processes that, when applied as above to WvW, can produce the current dissonance between ArenaNet and players, and between players who are trying to have fun in a system that is often working against them while it’s also keeping them interested enough to continue trying.

No amount of privileged access to metrics data will improve the analysis when the observer is willing to rigorously construct the model—

TorquedSoul.8097:

These cases would be varying degrees of three basic behaviors: Capture w/o fighting, Capture w/ fighting, and Fighting w/o capturing.

—only to immediately shoot the exercise in the head:

TorquedSoul.8097:

The motivations for the actors engaging in any of these three activities is irrelevant.

That simply isn’t true. Motivating factors are everything to understanding the correlation between capture objectives and fights. Of course we wouldn’t look at motivation while sorting events into those categories. The sort would occur merely by the facts of the events. After the sort, player motivations are the only thing that will give meaning or reason to the data.

The thread OP question itself assumes two motivating factors: 1 ) “I want to capture”, and 2 ) “I want to fight”. In asking us to think with you about which of these drives the other, you have asked us to think about whether or not one motivates the other to occur. “Drive” and “cause” are synonymous with “motivate”.

It is tacit that conflicting desires (“I want to capture” vs. “I don’t want you to capture”) will motivate a fight. It is equally apparent that “I want to fight you” conflicts with “I don’t want to fight you”, and escaping the fight by hiding in a building can motivate a capture.

You won’t know which of those desires caused any given event unless you observe the involved players, rather than the data API. Nor will the API explain the current state of WvW: that after 3 years the players have distilled their gameplay to a collection of styles that typically omit the majority of what a fresh player like yourself sees on the face of the game’s design.

Look. We all know that what you’re really getting at is a broader argument in favor of a long-term strategy style of PPT competition, and something, something, “playing as intended”. We get it, and the root of most argument you’re going to get is that we’ve already played that through and found that it is shallow and uncompelling now for a variety of reasons.

WvW has siege and capture in play, and therefore it happens, causes fights, and is caused by fights. It is in itself a form of fight. Cool story, right?

Have you ever thought about why the matches are one week long? They were longer. Ever wondered why there are “matches” at all? I can give you a hint: It’s the same reason that sPvP matches are time limited. We grow into disrespecting the RvR mechanics of WvW because it is similar to sPvP in the wrong ways, omits key rules of sPvP that help make matches competitive, and significant parts of the design work directly against other equally significant pieces of the whole experience.

It has nothing to do with misunderstanding something that you’re somehow able to shine light on. That goes the other way, in this case. You’re on land we’ve already traveled.

Thanks for the very eloquent response Virtute. While I do have the urge to respond to all of your points, most of the issues you brought up have been brought up before in this thread. And on most I think we can agree to disagree as no further progress will be made on either side of the argument.

There are, however, a couple points that I would like to address although they may not be directly related to the topic at hand but do impact the interpretation of the arguments.

You start by saying this:

Virtute.8251:

I think it would be enlightening, and could reveal what I suspect: That you’ve just illustrated a thinking processes that, when applied as above to WvW, can produce the current dissonance between ArenaNet and players, and between players who are trying to have fun in a system that is often working against them while it’s also keeping them interested enough to continue trying.

It is common for those that are dissatisfied with the game to assert their position and opinion as the normal or global position. Essentially that you are the voice of the people who Anet has abused by taking their money and then ignoring their request to fix the game.

This perceived dissonance between Anet and the players is not a global phenomenon. Clearly there are those that are not happy and they tend to be the most vocal because those that are satisfied with the game actually spend their time playing it. This in itself creates the illusion of a landslide of negative opinion on the forums. I am a player also, and while I can’t say that there is nothing about the game I would change, all in all I like the game the game that Anet has made. And I am for the most part happy with the current state of WvW and its designed mix of PvP and PvE as well as the scoring that primarily centered around capture activity and not Kill/Fight activity. I would guess by the recent design choices by Anet that this type of design is supported by a more silent (less vocal on the forums) majority of the games players.

I understand that there are different views and opinions and that none is necessarily wrong or false. They are opinions and preferences after all and all are subjective. The closest we can get to objectivity is data. I admit that the interpretation of data can be a very subjective exercise, but the data itself is the only form of objectivity available. As we approach each individual motivation the interpretation gets more subjective, by definition. Objectivity is by necessity tied to data. Rejecting data as you do here is essentially rejecting objective reality. And while my and as you assert Anets, interpretation of this data can be somewhat subjective, it is a subjectivity supported by objective data.

On the other hand, those that reject the data as meaningless tend to possess opinions that are not supported by that data. These same people present their opinions as the global position and as clear common sense. What they often do not do is provide any tangible supporting evidence to such claims. Instead they frequently appeal to their own authority as a speaker of the people. Which leads to the outright rejection of the viability of other arguments which is at best egocentric and at worse narcissistic.

You close your comments by addressing WvW in the way that you and those that share your opinion want to experience it, through the filter of sPvP.

Virtute.8251:

It’s the same reason that sPvP matches are time limited. We grow into disrespecting the RvR mechanics of WvW because it is similar to sPvP in the wrong ways, omits key rules of sPvP that help make matches competitive, and significant parts of the design work directly against other equally significant pieces of the whole experience.

It has nothing to do with misunderstanding something that you’re somehow able to shine light on. That goes the other way, in this case. You’re on land we’ve already traveled.

I think that Anet has been quite clear in describing WvW as a mixture of PvE and PvP. The end result of this is that the normalize structure of sPvP will be lost. You argue that Anet needs to fix WvW by turning it into something it was never intended to be. The implication you make is that since the design doesn’t meet your criteria for well designed PvP that WvW is somehow broken. You project on to WvW something that it wasn’t designed to be and when you can’t get those pieces to line up, you say it is wrong.

Your last statement, that I am on “land we’ve already traveled” is also flawed in that it rejects a new player’s opportunity to experience the thing that you experienced. And that you said in another thread was fun for a while. What you are claiming here is that because you have already had your fun with this game mode and have exhausted your utility for it, that Anet should change the game mode for you and others that share your view, the view shared by the “old guard” of WvW and new hardcore PvP players. The belief that somehow forcing this conversion of the game mode is good for everyone is again egocentric and bordering on narcissism.

I think that Anet has the data to make sound decisions. I don’t think that the data collected is creating a dissonance. Anet wants to maintain a diverse and integrated community. I think WvW was their attempt at fusing the PvE and the PvP communities together. It has its warts, but overall they have managed to enable the creation of a robust community. They understand that everyone has different play styles and preferences and tries to accommodate them all.

However, I doubt that Anet will accommodate those that reject the value (or even insult) of the game play preferences of others. Such personalities tend to be more destructive to the larger community. There are many that spend time criticizing the WvW PvE/PPT players, but I doubt that those people are winning points with Anet. More likely the aggressive and vocal minority is likely to be marginalized for the benefit of the larger community.

The most unhappy (dissatisfied) players are the least vocal ones. They’ve left the game, said why as they were leaving, and repeat themselves when and if they do come back to reconfirm.

If they were silent, then you would be equally out of line for speaking on their behalf as I would be. They aren’t silent, and they don’t agree amongst themselves any more than you and I do. There is the dissonance.

Whatever WvW is or was, it’s shelf life is passed. The shame is in it passing so soon, with so few gameplay innovations along the way. It wasn’t six months into the thing that an apparent majority were already looking forward to its possibilities rather than it’s deliveries. I know that because there were 500 on my roster, and our server had thousands rostered and logging in multiple times per week, easily pulling more than 100 into a TeamSpeak server at peak hours, on a WvW server that was then floating between tiers 5 and 7. At it’s lowest points, it looked exactly like Fort Aspenwood does now, but far more toxic. The vitriol came from the dissonance.

It’s a fundamental disagreement about how RvR should play in the long game of months and years. ArenaNet disagrees with players while players disagree amongst themselves, and the majority of player to player disagreements probably revolve around them agreeing that ArenaNet is wrong about something.

Norbe.7630:

thats why im telling on this thread that minimizing the number capture objectives fights can be found

Thats not the answer.

The correct answer is proper map objective layout so that fights between objectives can be found, which also flow naturally into the objectives. EB has this layout. Alpine had this layout. Desert do not. Desert make up 3 out of 4 maps. WvW fail.

Right now, Capture DOES NOT involve fighting. If you look at the high PPT servers, they basically do what happens in EotM. avoid and cap where the defenders are not or cap during a time where no one is on. This is happening in T2 with TC and DB, although DB will fight, TC will not unless they have siege or superior numbers (which they always do).

Until GLICKO is removed or fixed so that is doesn’t favor PPT, this above will be the META for WvW.

Dawdler.8521:

The correct answer is proper map objective layout so that fights between objectives can be found, which also flow naturally into the objectives. EB has this layout. Alpine had this layout. Desert do not. Desert make up 3 out of 4 maps. WvW fail.

so you basically one of the protesters of bring back old BL type
the threads title was capture activity to fight activity
i was only saying in order to increase fight activity the capture points should be minimized
i can plot you a graph showing how inversely proportional the capture and fights are if you can understand it
you think the old BL can increase the fight activity with the current population on mid to low tiers?
epic fail

Norbe.7630:

i was only saying in order to increase fight activity the capture points should be minimized

How does that work? If capture activity drives fight activity, we should be adding more capture points so that there are more opportunities for people to capture, not taking them away. /sarcasm

To be honest my first post was mostly off topic because the numbers aren’t all that important. And in this case they really don’t say all that much.

Looking at the data, shouldn’t kills and deaths be at least halved in numbers? IE 1 kill means 1 death at the same time. So kills and deaths would be 2, while the “fight” would really only be 1. That’s not to mention those cases where a mob of people of lets say 5 people kill 1 person, making kills and deaths basically 6, while the “fight” is still 1. etc etc.

Making the rough assumption that capture volume generally is higher when there is more people on the maps, that means automatically that there’s more kills and deaths on higher populated servers. Especially when capture volume doesn’t take into account how many players are actually capturing anything. 1 capture volume could be 1 person, which happens sometimes, and more likely when a zerg captures something with at least 15 people.

This makes capture volume automatically always lower than the amount of kills and deaths.

It’s way more interesting to discuss what kind of capture mechanics you want to see, than to apply very flawed data to it. Capture objectives ideally SHOULD make people fight over objectives. The cause that there is a fight group and ppt group of people alone is very worrying. It could mean the capture system doesn’t drive fights as often as possible, and instead in order to see a fight people come up with their own ways of playing the game.

Personally, I’m not for all this “balanced” WvW kind of style that they try to put in with invulnerable objectives. I rather see walls being blown apart, staying part until properly fixed, and objectives being something that needs to be constantly defended instead of instantly repairing and a 5 minute invulnerability timer. It basically screams “Move on to the next objective!” Basically ending any possible fight then and there. It’s way more valuable for any PPTer to capture as many objectives right before the counter. Avoiding as much conflict as possible for easy points.

That is a big reason why I don’t like WvW as much. It’s gaming the system to win. And otherwise you need to “chase” fights. It’s a PvP game mode. Wtf is up with trying to find fights. The game mode should steer fights automatically in and off itself.

Boom enter a map, move to a objective, and find a or start a fight. That’s how simple it should be. (Well to some extent that happens in higher tiers anyway, but you do first spend time breaking doors basically ringing the bell for a fight. Still kind of strange imo)

Chaba.5410:

Norbe.7630:

i was only saying in order to increase fight activity the capture points should be minimized

How does that work? If capture activity drives fight activity, we should be adding more capture points so that there are more opportunities for people to capture, not taking them away. /sarcasm

Norbe.7630:

i can plot you a graph showing how inversely proportional the capture and fights are if you can understand it

hope you understand what the graph means
in gw2 the maps are maze
in ro the capture point is the maze

https://youtu.be/H00xIsDzMeQ?t=2

some say server merge
others say server alliances
what i say is Worlds against every other World for a few objectives

Recently a bug was discovered that misreported kills and deaths in the global section of the WvW API. The API was wrongly adding Obsidian Sanctum numbers to the global kills. Details here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/WvW-Global-kills-sum-of-map-kills/

Since some in this thread have challenged the accuracy of the data (maybe they were seeing different numbers reported elsewhere) I think I should rerun the numbers on the same data set to see if I get a similar result.

What I will do is rerun my kills and deaths on the same data set using the sum of the map array values rather than the global values. This will eliminate any problems coming from obsidian sanctum in this case.

I reran the numbers and it appears that the kills that week in obsidian sanctum were pretty low. The difference amounted to about a 0.2% difference in kills. Because of this my correlations didn’t change much. They actually got slightly better.

I’m not going to bother to update the charts as the differences are minute.

First chart
CR to Kills + Deaths new: 0.907312349 old: 0.90719207
Second chart
CR to (Kills+Deaths)/CR new: 0.754898566 old: 0.75425295

Dawdler.8521:

FrizzFreston.5290:

This is definitely one of the most important topics I would say.

Not really, haha. But still, its interesting to see the charts.

Something I stated elsewhere recently is that pugs and guilds is like the body and the head. Neither can survive alone and if they become unbalanced you either get a too big head or grow fat and slow. The activity of pugs drive a server up the ranks, which create fights for guilds. Its when dominating guilds loose sight of this and go “oh but we dont PPT, we only fight!” while pulling the pugs into the same mindset that servers inevitably collapse, leading to guilds leaving. Well, until people transfer there and the cycle begin again.

This. ^

You really need both.

The data produce no conclusions. All we see is a correlation, which could admit a hundred different explanations. Anything drawn exclusively from the presented information is necessarily speculative.

I don’t see the point of any of this other than attacking an argument that no one reasonable has made.

Chaba, why? Do not feed. You have better things to do with your time.

Few will dispute that the Fights-PPT relationship was symbiotic. PPT guilds needed Fight guilds to protect them from zergs. Fight guilds needed PPT guilds to keep them in active tiers. The truth is that Fighting was part of the points game and PPTing was creating fights. And, frankly, most guilds did at least a little of both. It was when ArenaNet began trying to drive the Fight guilds out of WvW that the real in-community resentment began and the gamemode started to suffer and fall apart.

Ocosh.5843:

Anything drawn exclusively from the presented information is necessarily speculative.

Ocosh.5843:

Few will dispute that the Fights-PPT relationship was symbiotic. PPT guilds needed Fight guilds to protect them from zergs. Fight guilds needed PPT guilds to keep them in active tiers … And, frankly, most guilds did at least a little of both

Of course conclusions are speculative. The question is whether the speculation is supported by the data. In this case mine and yours is. I’m glad we can agree.

And what exactly was Chaba feeding?

Is there a way that you can provide data from the past? I want to get an idea of the scope of WvW’s decline—both in actual population and the magnitude of the fights.