Guild Wars 2

Idea:
Replace the current points system with a new system, lets call it ‘Pride’ for now, that will improve WvW match quality and competitiveness. Instead of earning points over time based on what is held, servers could earn ‘Pride’ based on their actions done in the maps and provide server incentives to play content outside of WvW. It will no longer be about how big your zerg is, but how well you FIGHT with it!

Details:

• Pride is a numeric value that would primarily increase, but could decrease. The server with the most Pride wins (sounds cheesy, better name?)!
• You earn Pride when successfully defending or attacking a Keep, Tower, or Supply Camp.
• The amount earned is increased based on the fight (time, numbers, resources used). The harder it is to capture a point, the more Pride your server would earn.
• Pride is earned while actively defending a point of interest, but a portion is lost if the point is lost within the fighting period.
• The proportion of the map held does not increase Pride at all, but does provide the current WvW server bonuses (currently based on points accumulation). Your amount of bonuses can change at any time.

Examples:
Prime time:

• Defense takes on an important role, since defending actually earns Pride, a large amount if successful.
• Servers are rewarded greatly for winning large battles, over coming the defense and hurting their Pride along with it.
• Still great to ninja points (little defense given), you can then hold them and earn Pride through defense.

Off hours for some (or high vs low pop):

• Steam rolling through maps earns Pride, but minimal amounts if there is no fighting happening. [High Pop]
• Still earn Pride through defending what few points of interest you have (not insignificant). [Low Pop]
• If you control a large portion of the map, you gain bonuses for outside of WvW (crafting, DE, dungeons, etc.), giving people an incentive to play outside of WvW should they choose. [High Pop]

Off hours for all:

• With increasing Pride for large battles, it provides an incentive to concentrate people together (map wouldn’t feel as empty).
• Earn small amounts of Pride for completing PvE and JP events.

To the Community:

• Please give me your comments and suggestions.
• Lets have an interesting conversation about this idea.
• By no means do I think this idea is perfect.
• Put a smile on!

Community Feedback (will be edited):
Pros:

• Prevents night capping abuse.

Cons:

• Could be abused?
• Still a scoring system.
• No need for a change.

Changes:

• More points from defending than attacking?

To ArenaNet: The community would love to hear from you about all of our thoughts produced in this forum (WvW) so far!

Credit: Inspired by the numerous posts in this forum and from my guild, PTX.

This is a WIP. Thanks everyone!

Sounds like a better way then it is now, you addressed the biggest complaint I have, which is night players winning games by playing 4 hours a night.

This will probably end up getting buried in the suggestions forum sadly.

My question is how does the system prevent ‘fixing’ such as trading for pride through deliberately prolonging an attack? Would I be right in assuming pride is not obtained for attacking unless it was a success? Or is it; Defence gets more pride for success/Attack gets less for failure and vice versa?

I prefer just eliminating match resets (once the server groupings have stabilized) so the battles are perpetual.

Then eliminate any sort of points system altogether. The focus becomes orb control (like relics were in DAoC).

This would of course require orb control bonuses to be reworked a bit to make them more attractive.

I like it. Or they could just eliminate any kind of point system so there isnt the feeling of omg were down by x amount of points, lets just give up. Instead it would be omg x server has all our stuff! Lets go get it back and regain dominance. However there could be an internal point system that Anet uses to match servers up and the end of the period, we just dont have to see it. So there would still be “top” WvW servers, but no one ever really wins or loses, just a constant fight for control of territory. And of course the all-powerful orbs of power.

purplestone.8364:

I like it. Or they could just eliminate any kind of point system so there isnt the feeling of omg were down by x amount of points, lets just give up. Instead it would be omg x server has all our stuff! Lets go get it back and regain dominance. However there could be an internal point system that Anet uses to match servers up and the end of the period, we just dont have to see it. So there would still be “top” WvW servers, but no one ever really wins or loses, just a constant fight for control of territory.

My idea of eliminating any sort of points system was for exactly this reason.

Once the server groupings stabilize, there’s no need for the matchmaking system anymore, so the resets can be eliminated, too.

Even it it wasn’t used for scoring purposes, I’m always a fan of more statistics.

I would settle for a website that shows server stats. guildwars2.com/wvw/ehmrybay or something takes you to a website that shows:

• Enemy players killed in WvW
• Total WvW player deaths
• Total successful defense events
• Total things taken
• Total things lost
• Longest surviving structure
• Structure with the most kills in its vicinity
• Whatever else we can think of

You just can’t have too many neat stats to look at. Everyone should be able to go there and see something they contributed to. “Hey, 86 trebuchet kills today. A least 35 of those were from my trebuchet!”

i find nothing wrong with the current system therefore i feel no need fo a “fix”

you lose you lose end of story nobody is sugar coating anything for you in this game and if they do and anet starts pandering to the crybabies, im out

gingertree.5062:

This will probably end up getting buried in the suggestions forum sadly.

My question is how does the system prevent ‘fixing’ such as trading for pride through deliberately prolonging an attack? Would I be right in assuming pride is not obtained for attacking unless it was a success? Or is it; Defence gets more pride for success/Attack gets less for failure and vice versa?

Hmmm, let me try to answer that, good question btw!

My idea would be that the defense gets pride the longer they spend, the more attackers there are, more supply they use, and the more siege they destroy; but would lose x% of it if they fail to defend (maybe even lose 0.25x% if an outer gate falls. On the other side, attackers would not get pride unless they capture the point. Thinking about it more though, it would be interesting to give small amounts of pride to attackers for destroying siege, maybe guards, and definitely a wall or outer gate. Just some thoughts…

vrgadin.1943:

i find nothing wrong with the current system therefore i feel no need fo a “fix”

you lose you lose end of story nobody is sugar coating anything for you in this game and if they do and anet starts pandering to the crybabies, im out

This idea, at least to me, is not meant to make everyone feel like a ‘winner’, but is to address issues of server timing or population imbalances; something I think a majority of players would argue is a problem. Thanks for the feedback!

so with this pride system. as long as my server is ahead,

we can tell our guild which makes up a huge part of the WvW that if the enemy attacks something, to not defend it at all because we want them to get very little reward for getting it..

and then we should take the opportunity to attack one of their defended structures and gain more pride overall because they tried to defend and we took it.. and they got next to nothing for taking ours, which we will roll back into and take back with a fight, just to earn more?

sounds like an easily manipulated system honestly

Swapping WvW objectives and immediately taking it back with a couple defenders (alts or guildies logged on) to maximize the time it takes/reward pride points would eventually be discovered and abused.

Basically, this is what the nighttime/off hour players would do since WvW doesn’t have a level limit.

It would actually probably make the off-hour players influence the overall outcome of the Pride scoring system far more than it does for the current countdown clock system.

TL;DR Too easy to manipulate.

You both bring up a couple of excellent points, thanks!

I think for this system to work, the idea would be: you attack a place to own it, but defend it to gain Pride. Meaning that slightly more of the points would need to come defending, rather than attacking. Now that doesn’t solve all the issues, but I think it helps to show what changes could be made.

:)

I at least want some system which shows your cumulative gains for the day, outside of your total aggregate score.

I think allowing servers to lose points for not holding their territory adds an awesome dynamic to world-PvP. That said, I don’t think it works in 24-hour matches because whomever goes to bed the earliest loses ALL of their points by the time they wake up.

Why have points at all? All that does is lead to a win/lose mentality and make the (eventually) two week match-ups nothing more than extended “games”.

^^ that, exactly.

I vote for no continuous point build up at all too. even pride. How about something as simple as whomever hold SMC at the end of the battle time wins?

I honestly don’t think the points make too much of a difference. What I am reading the most in map chat is that when one server owns everything because of superior numbers, the few Mercs (guildless/small guilds) feel that all is lost and apathy sets in. The scoreboard widening the gap exacerbates the apathy but I dont think it is the primary cause. Having no chance to combat superior numbers is IMO the main cause, this is amplified by the winning servers camping the spawn points and setting up siege.
Again, I dont feel the apathy that many others get when this happens. I stick around for a few good fights, then go afk in Lions Arch for dinner, come back and farm Orichalcum in PvE and go to bed.

One solution I would love to see is Siege cannons/mortars set up at our spawn exits so we can clear the zergs that try to camp the spawn. If a server tries to treb into the
spawn, then the NPC spawns an Artillery Barrage on the offending treb.

Another solution could be to have undefended towers scale their NpC defence to the
size of the attackers zerg in a similar fashion to DEs. This would give the larger offpeak server more challenge rather than having a tower basically open its doors to them.
In this case, I saw an interesting suggestion from someone a few days ago that suggested that guards fall back to their remaining towers when the mal becomes totally dominated, If a server owns all but one keep on the map, that keep would have say 50% of the total map NPCs holding out in the final keep to muster a last stand situation. Making the final keep take more challenging to the attackers and take some of the Apathy away from the defenders that are being crushed.

Points is not what causes servers to give up. The other servers having nearly 100% of the entire map is what causes servers to give up. Most servers give up before the point differential is insurmountable, they are stopping once they have been beat back and hold almost nothing anymore. Pride instead of points would not change this at all, while adding the downside of silly things like not defending, or not attacking to deny the other side potential pride once you are ahead.

There really is nothing to be done to prevent servers from giving up. If they control nothing, people just arent going to try anymore until reset. The only thing that MIGHT help this is some sort of buff for the losing side that makes them stronger the less points they are holding on the maps. But that has flaws too and would seem quite unfair if it ever created a turn around that can pretty much solely be attributed to the losers being buffed ><.