How to fix 'Nightcap'

How to fix 'Nightcap'

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Posted by: Gideon Ravenor.5603

Gideon Ravenor.5603

1) Split the day into time periods, one for each major primetime: EU, NA, OCX, SEA
2) Have a separate server list for each time period, each list has its own ranking. Time periods do not affect one another in any way.
3) Servers are only online during their respective time period. So for example Blackgate is only online during NA prime, Piken Square is only online during EU prime etc…
4) Each player chooses 1 server for each time period. They will log into their respective server depending on which time of the day it is.

Example: I log in during EU prime I will play on Piken Square until EU prime ends, at this point Piken saves the map status, the score stops ticking and the server shuts down. At the same time NA starts so I get kicked from Piken and moved onto Blackgate which remains online until the end of NA prime. Now Blackgate shuts down and OCX starts moving me to my selected OCX server and so on. The next day at the beginning of EU prime Piken starts up again, loads the status from the end of last night and I play from where I left off.

Concequences:
1) It is always primetime whenever I log in to wvw, off peak no longer exists
2) Primetime is all that matters PPT counts and hundreds of people fight for every point
3) The game is no longer a war of coverage, it is a war of skill, tactics and strategy
4) I am more closely matched against a force of equal strength during the time I play

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Posted by: Zenith.6403

Zenith.6403

Odds of them completely revamping server structure as suggested just to prevent nightcapping problem: 0.00%

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Posted by: Daddar.5971

Daddar.5971

….and massive lag due to players logging into and playing on servers so far away. The lag would wreck the whole thing.

‘Elite’ in all 9 professions. I take mediocrity seriously!

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Posted by: Gideon Ravenor.5603

Gideon Ravenor.5603

On Blackgate we have hundreds of players logging in from Asia and Australia, I’m an EU player that plays often during those times and we rarely have any issues with lag above what players in the US have.

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Posted by: Ansau.7326

Ansau.7326

Not a good idea. Server loyalty and dedication is completely lost, servers would become the next EoTM, and people would then complain about a few servers having full map queues while the rest are deserted.

Ansau – Sylvari Mesmer – Exiled Warriors [wE] – Gandara

i7 5775c @ 4.1GHz – 12GB RAM @ 2400MHz – RX 480 @ 1390/2140MHz

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Posted by: Gideon Ravenor.5603

Gideon Ravenor.5603

I think you are wrong. The current system is killing server loyalty because nothing players do at primetime contributes anything to a servers points and ranking. If everything you and the majority of players do for a server is worth nothing loyalty evaporates quickly. This has happened on the servers I am on and around.

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Posted by: Ansau.7326

Ansau.7326

No. Server loyalty is dead (not in flagged servers) because:
- There’s much less people playing now than before, and for a server it is more difficult to have an enough big playerbase to deal with the 24/7 system we have.
- There’s a big chunk of players who only look for fights and bags, and they stacked in a single server that ends collapsing, as it happened with Seafarer.
- Auto-upgrade has killed one big part of the competition this mode has, making worthless the defense and killing the small scale side. At least they’ll fix the problem.

If you think WvW is all about primetime, sorry but this is not your game mode. Matches and ranking are won in off hours, which are 70-80% of the total amount of time played in the whole week. Not the 2-3 hours when everybody connects.

Ansau – Sylvari Mesmer – Exiled Warriors [wE] – Gandara

i7 5775c @ 4.1GHz – 12GB RAM @ 2400MHz – RX 480 @ 1390/2140MHz

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Posted by: rchu.8945

rchu.8945

lol, there are more serious problems with the current state of WvW than nightcapping, get real…

Sanctum of Rall
Pain Train Choo [Choo]
Mind Smack – Mesmer

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Posted by: Ben K.6238

Ben K.6238

And yet primetime, when apparently your contribution doesn’t count, is when it’s the most fun to play. Despite the minimal scoreboard impact, or because of it?

Let’s be honest, no-one’s cared about the scoreboard for years.

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Posted by: Grilbo.4517

Grilbo.4517

Read the suggestion again.

The suggestion states that “It is always prime time whenever I log in to wvw, off peak no longer exists”. Specific servers will only exist at separate times. Anyone that prefer prime time should be thrilled about this suggestion.
The “not so thrilled” should consist of people who like the PvE part of WvW which will be interrupted by people wanting to fight.

The current state of the game means that on the lower tier servers, the server who’s population logs off prime last will win.
Why?
Because they can cap and let auto upgrade leave T3 stuff for singles to take while waiting for next prime-time.
It’s not even “coverage wars”. It’s a chicken race.
Removing off-time would even patch over several of the issues that HoT brought.

Regarding lag: I am an EU-based player who played on NA 1st and switched to EU. No change in lag.

Regarding server pride: What’s left of it would probably improve since this would actually bring back competition.

Regarding scoreboards: Yes. People care. I care. I want to fight and I want to see the results of what I’m doing show in the scoreboards.

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Posted by: Lotharo.9758

Lotharo.9758

When a group of 10 people can make a difference during the night upto a point that they can change an entire matchup from being on 3rd place in ticks during prime time, into being first place by the next morning, then something is definitely wrong. They can even do it in a couple of hours.
Its not hard to imagine that its easy to capture everything from your enemy if they dont have enough defenders cause most of the population is asleep. Especially on lower populated servers that is an issue.

Yes its alot of fun during prime time cause then you have people to fight, however some care more about the score and nightcap wich makes the " prime time fun time" feel abit useless over time.

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Posted by: Lotharo.9758

Lotharo.9758

I do like the suggestioned change. I know a NA guild wich has alot of EU players in it and they notice no lag at all.

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Posted by: Ben K.6238

Ben K.6238

Calling it “always prime-time” doesn’t change the fact that there aren’t that many people in off-hours. This system would improve off-hours blowouts, but won’t change the population. If you want to do that you’ll need to reduce the number of servers in off-hours.

(edited by Ben K.6238)

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Posted by: DeWolfe.2174

DeWolfe.2174

Players contribute equally, without question. If the player wasn’t there, during any time, the opposition would have an advantage.

There is no such thing as night capping.
There are poorly organized Worlds.
There are too many Worlds.

[AwM] of Jade Quarry.

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Posted by: Alloy.2839

Alloy.2839

So we divide the world into 4 zones of 6 hours each. When we log on we go to the appropriate server from out 4 server list. When the 6 hour window expires we auto transfer to the next server on our list (because if people could stay on a server there would be problems). This much is defined to some degree.

However the following issues are puzzling to me and I will just throw out some thoughts since I am having trouble defining all the possiblities. On the new server the state of the structures, camps, events, etc would be where they were 18 hours ago (since the servers didn’t run) and most probably not be the same as the server we just left? Or maybe the servers just reset? Our map location on the new server might need to be the same as the end of the last interval or we could end up in an enemy keep for example. Maybe we just map in to spawn, but on which map? This has the potential of an episode of “The Twilight Zone”. One minute I am defending my EBG keep, the next I am in a borderland trying to find the door to the Air keep. If I miss a day or 2, what happens when the server switches? What if we were in a battle in the lords room and the server switches? Will we continue where we left off, or will the server with the closest WP just take it before the other side gets there? If the server state resets during off time this starts to resemble EOTM, just with 6 hour matches. What if all the members of my guild don’t have the same server list? What about server tier? One minute I am in tier 1 and the next I am in tier 6? What about TS servers (which tend to be server specific), if the TS population doesn’t move together you have enemies in your TS server. I am not being critical, I am just wondering how the details of this system would work.

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Posted by: smhtjoa.7159

smhtjoa.7159

Finally, a system that DOES NOT reward players for hitting empty, undefended keeps and towers. \o/

At the moment, a handful of people can take entire maps in a couple of hours with little to no resistance – simply because the defenders in that time zone are asleep. Then, those objectives tick for them over an 8-10 hour period, massively influencing the scoreboard and basically negating anything I might have achieved in the few hours I was able to play the game.

That’s a nightcap. It’s demotivating, demoralising and downright broken.

The actions of a very, very few amount of people now dictate an entire matchup. Why should anyone be rewarded for hitting doors of empty towers and keeps? It doesn’t require skill, it doesn’t require strategy or any measure of brain power, yet it has a MASSIVE influence on the scoreboard, and ultimately your server ranking. The fights that people want are scarce to non-existent because the same people hitting doors at night are nowhere to be found, likely catching up on their beauty sleep during prime time.

So, as a WvW player, in a game mode supposedly based around competitive team gameplay, I currently get no fights, plus all my efforts are undone and negated the moment I log off to go to sleep. Someone here said WvW has more important issues than this?? Pull the other one.

Players should have to fight for every point they get, not beat it out of an inanimate door in an empty time zone. Then it actually means something.

About organisation: you can be as organised as you like, but if the majority of the players on your server lead normal lives, with day-time jobs who mostly play at prime time, there’s nothing and no-one to organise. Unless you’re willing to ‘organise’ people to wake up in the early hours of the morning and hit doors of empty towers/keeps themselves to ‘morning cap’ the ‘night cap’.

I, for one, applaud this suggestion – and any other that makes an effort to fix a game mode where something is very clearly very wrong.

(edited by smhtjoa.7159)

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Posted by: X T D.6458

X T D.6458

I think the only way to deal with nightcapping is to change the scoring system completely. And well lets be honest its needs an overhaul anyways. With PPK being turned on that should bring scores more closer. Changing it to diminish the contributions of players from another timezone is not a positive step, as someone who is on a server with many sea/ocx players I would never want them to feel as though they are being marginalized because they play their hearts out for our server.

I say what needs to be said, get used to it.
Honesty is not insulting, stupidity is.
>Class Balance is a Joke<

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Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

I think the only way to deal with nightcapping is to change the scoring system completely.

No need at all.

Just scale all PPT based on total population on a 30m or 1h update basis. Its simple and fair. It doesnt take into account any timezones, if its in prime time or middle of the night, if its a T1 or T9 server or how the server balance is. Only the idea that population of WvW at this point in time is currently low so all PPT is worth 33% (or whatever value step you want to set compared to medium and high).

Since server PPT gains remain the same relative to each other, it doesnt diminish the efforts of someone during low poulation times compared to someone during high poulation times. In fact, its now equal and fair as opposed to the current score that value nightcapping and holding keeps against no one waaaaaaay to high compared to primetime clusterkittens.

(edited by Dawdler.8521)

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Posted by: xXBAKESXx.6731

xXBAKESXx.6731

Hey Garb (Cas here)

Probs the best idea that’s popped up in a long time tbh, would cure the logging on and having no one to fight (which is what wvw is all about) along with having competitive points as well, also providing good opportunities to GvG in OS with lots of different server guilds over the weeks .

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Posted by: Gideon Ravenor.5603

Gideon Ravenor.5603

ty Cas

Alloy, some interesting points about the details which I omitted to keep the post short.

> There would have to be some indication as to which timezone was currently active and which server you would therefore be logging into
> Players would need to receive a warning that a server was reaching the end of the period and closing ‘Piken is closing in 10 mins you will be redirected to Blackgate’ (as an example)
> You would always have to redirect players to spawn, saving their previous location is too complex and confusing. So when you start on Piken the next day you start at spawn.
> Transfers would still work in the same way as before but I would manage each time zone separately. So if a guild member was on the same EU server as me but on a different NA server he would simply change his NA server with a transfer, the EU server would be unaffected

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Posted by: Teevell.1684

Teevell.1684

I think the only way to deal with nightcapping is to change the scoring system completely.

No need at all.

Just scale all PPT based on total population on a 30m or 1h update basis. Its simple and fair. It doesnt take into account any timezones, if its in prime time or middle of the night, if its a T1 or T9 server or how the server balance is. Only the idea that population of WvW at this point in time is currently low so all PPT is worth 33% (or whatever value step you want to set compared to medium and high).

Since server PPT gains remain the same relative to each other, it doesnt diminish the efforts of someone during low poulation times compared to someone during high poulation times. In fact, its now equal and fair as opposed to the current score that value nightcapping and holding keeps against no one waaaaaaay to high compared to primetime clusterkittens.

This would probably be the best and easier fix for the problem. If you’re capping stuff, but no one from the other teams are currently on the map to stop you, the keeps shouldn’t be ticking for the full amount. Points should be relative to populations. At the very least Anet should try it before we get this “big wvw” change, to see if it helps at all. Like, wvw is broke, so let’s use it to test new ideas for this revamp, so maybe when they bring out this wvw change, it’ll actually be good.

Tarnished Coast

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Posted by: OneEightHundred.5689

OneEightHundred.5689

The simplest “fix” would be to cap PPT at 350 or something so blowout hours don’t contribute as much to score difference.

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Posted by: Yuffi.2430

Yuffi.2430

Logistically the original post is a really awkward idea. To work, you’d have to try to get your guild(s) and other friends to select the same time-servers you select – that would be complex to say the least. You’d end up with the same situation anyway, just on fewer servers total. Then you have the whole – stop, save the score and who owns what, then virtual-shutdown (real servers don’t turn off) then start a new instance and everyone loads in at once… ouch.
I understand the point of the idea but it would be way harder to implement than megaserver, and that’s an awful idea too (EotM everyone?).

Every server has the same global player base to recruit from. Any time based population imbalance is caused by player choice. This happens. Anasau had it right in his post – most of WvW play time is NOT what gets labelled as Prime Time. So why should this count for less? Is it because there are fewer people on or because it seems unfair that those who do play for what is actually most of the game time have an impact that is directly related to the duration of this time?

PPT should not be the only score system – I agree with this. Points per stomp should count too. I’m happy with PPK instead of PPS if it awards one set of server points on the defeat of a player, but not if it gives points for everyone who tapped the downed player.

Scaling PPT to population is not a good idea. There are fewer players at non prime times so rather than encouraging more people into WvW let’s tell them they are less important and give them less reason to play…. If you think that players will come to believe they should log in more to make a difference then you need to look at the number of players who don’t WvW on Saturday anymore “because there’s no point, the match is already decided”.

Then there’s the problem of scaling. If you scale according to individual map population you simply reward the servers that blob up to outnumber and raize a whole map. Or are you proposing this on a total population of all maps and all servers within the match up… so when we’re outnumbered that’s fine but when the stampeding hoard logs off those of us left shouldn’t have full credit for retaking stuff.

I’m with Dewolfe on this one. Players contribute equally all of the time. If a player isn’t there for my server, whatever the time is, then the opponents would have, and should have, an advantage. I may not like this, but that’s life.

Ultimately, the hardcore WvW players will play until they quit GW2. What we need for WvW population is to attract more of the casual players, pugs and PvE and PvP players. They need a reason to play WvW whatever time they are on. At present they don’t want to for whatever reasons, so we can’t encourage them and train them and invite them to our guilds. To me addressing this is far more important than complaining that you play while I’m asleep.

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Posted by: sephiroth.4217

sephiroth.4217

I don’t like “prime time” because of lag and zergs.

I like the quiet times, with no lag and small roaming group fights.

No thanks.

I mostly play for the new Free-For-All arena in PvP lobby.
….. And Elementalist.

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Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

Scaling PPT to population is not a good idea. There are fewer players at non prime times so rather than encouraging more people into WvW let’s tell them they are less important and give them less reason to play….

Less important? Night cappers? LOL!!!

Low population capping is currently overvalued to the max – autoupgrades made it worse than ever. Nightcappers have gotten the better deal for 3 years in terms of how important they are to PPT and how easy they can cap things defended by no one. Its high poulation peeps that we are telling are less important every day.

Scaling PPT by population no matter the time of day would finally make it fair.

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Posted by: Offair.2563

Offair.2563

I don’t like “prime time” because of lag and zergs.

I like the quiet times, with no lag and small roaming group fights.

No thanks.

Same counts for me. If one thing is boring as hell it is blob vs blob fights. So no thanks to this suggestion.

Big Babou, Ranger for life.
Madness Rises [Rise] – Banners Hold.
Don’t argue with idiots, they pull you down their level and own you with experience.

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Posted by: Dayra.7405

Dayra.7405

This the the problem of WvW, it took a while, but I strongly believe that the scoring function that say – the fewer play, the more important is it for the match-outcome – is the underlying reason of the current WvW misery as it demotivate people in the long run.

But do not always discuss from scratch have a look at
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage

Ceterum censeo SFR esse delendam!

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Posted by: Yuffi.2430

Yuffi.2430

Dawdler – you really don’t get it do you. There is no such thing as “night capping”. Players cap stuff when they are playing. Period. I accept that scoring based entirely on PPT can make your own efforts seem worth less.

Whilst I agree that it seems wrong for a small number of players to take an undefended objective, it’s the same result when a big blob to steam-rollers a smaller defending force. So the issue is that at times stuff doesn’t get flipped back soon enough…

So your real complaint is that no-one from your server is on to take it back.
The fact that people insist this must be a game wide problem and demand that it needs fixing is laughable.

Who said WvW had to be fair? Try talking to Eradon Terrace about fair (they’ve been stomped at the bottom of NA T8 for a very long time). Let’s face it, life isn’t fair either but we live with that fact.

One of the ideas Dayra linked to was based on objectives returning to neutral if not refreshed. This would be fairer, and tbh I’ve suggested something similar in the past myself ( link here. ) This would at least require player interaction to maintain possession of an objective although a sensible refresh time period would be needed. It’s not been popular as an idea so far, but it would help avoid unattended tick scoring.

I don’t know what the solution is for encouraging more players (at any times). However I suspect that WvW needs an image upgrade so it noticeably offers more rewards and more fun to new and casual players – both of these issues are outside the scope of this thread.

At the end of the day (pun intended) there is no such thing as “night capping”, there are only players on line playing when they can.

If you want to fix time imbalance you need to recruit more players into WvW – ideas for this are welcome. A return-to-neutral timer might also help.

Population issues are the result of three years of player choices. There are players who chose not to be in highly populated servers, and those who preferred the more populated servers. They are both valid points of view and neither should be more important than the other.

What we need are ideas that positively seek to encourage players to defend in the quieter times rather than requesting Anet penalise those who play at a time we don’t.

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Posted by: Dayra.7405

Dayra.7405

Dawdler – you really don’t get it do you. There is no such thing as “night capping”. Players cap stuff when they are playing. Period. .

It is NOT that easy. The problem is the objective points per player that make the off-time player orders of magnitudes as impotant for the match-outcome than the prime-time player. In prime-time (once) 1200 people fight(ed) for 695 points, in off-time less than 50 people fight for 695 points.

Fair would be if whenever you play you have exactly 1 point you fight for and this was Dawdlers proposal.

I hope this will be solved by mega-server, so in the night there is one map for whole EU, whereas in prime when many want to play there are many maps.

Ceterum censeo SFR esse delendam!

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Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

So your real complaint is that no-one from your server is on to take it back.
The fact that people insist this must be a game wide problem and demand that it needs fixing is laughable.

Hahaha what? No. That’s not my complaint. You clearly dont understand me either.

The fact that noone can recap is not an issue. If no one is playing, then no one is playing. That’s neither the fault of Anet or the players, especially not in the EU where we have a common nighttime.

The complaint is that once a keep is taken and few if any is online, its ticking as high as if all maps are queued. I think that is a completely kitten backwards way of scoring. When the possibility of a keep being recapped is higher (ie during high population times), it should be worth more. When the possibility is next to zero (ie during low population times), the keeps should be worth less. Its a matter of threat. I want to flatten the wild point curves based on population, because the very reason they are wild is because score avalanche during low population times, when there is no activity.

Also please look at this graph and tell me with a straight face that there is no such thing as night capping. I’ll give you a hint – the first half of each day block is 00:00 to 12:00.

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Posted by: Yuffi.2430

Yuffi.2430

I’m not trying to get at Dawdler or anyone else – he’s not the only person complaining about “night capping”. However I’ll say it again, because it’s true: the real complaint that people are making is that no-one from their own server is on to take stuff back. It’s that simple. So called “night capping” isn’t the problem, the problem is the lack of players on your own server to prevent the score building up. What I object to is the idea that somehow this needs Anet to “fix” the game for you.

I agree that a mega-server system would increase the per-map-population and smooth out time based population imbalance. Unfortunately it will also remove the traditional servers concept from WvW – something that many players do not want to see happen. Servers provide the sense of community that inspires players to play for objectives and for points. The whole “night capping” complaint is about servers (my server loses match ups because yours has more people on when we’re not playing).

EotM has always been mega-server and just look at it. It is hit and miss whether you get on a good map. K-training is rampant. No-one has Red/Blue/Green loyalty… they don’t care which side wins as long as they can still get points/rank/loot. I’m really not convinced that this is the way forwards for the WvW game mode.

I can see the point of objectives decaying to neutral without player interaction. I can see the point of boosting rewards to attract more players. I can see the point of making servers WvW only, renaming them (so there is a fresh start) and having fewer servers so the WvW population is more concentrated. But ultimately the situation we have now has been created by player choices – whether selecting an initial server to be with friends, moving server in search of what they want at the time, or staying put in a quieter server.

It is the variety of players in WvW that make population issues for any time zone so complex. We’re better off looking for positive solutions for all players rather than trying to penalise people because they play when we don’t.

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Posted by: Yuffi.2430

Yuffi.2430

Just missed your last post. If you’ll stop talking about “night capping” which implies you are complaining about players taking stuff when you’re asleep then we can agree that the current scoring system is not ideal. Hopefully points per kill/stomp will help fix things since it strongly favours times with a lot of players on.

I still believe that there is no such thing as “night capping”. I’ve seen the charts and can re-do them with any time you want across the bottom. I stand by the point that the problem is people not being around to retake stuff – this is what lets the score build up to levels that you object to. I also note that this is NOT the case for every server… so I’m still not sure why it is considered a game wide problem.. but, meh, I’m not going to upset over it. You clearly feel strongly about it and you’re entitled to your opinion.

We’d be better moving on to look at ways we can encourage more players into WvW at all times rather then arguing about a problem that exists for some servers and not others.

Anyway, let’s chill, and play, and I hope you all have a good holiday.

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Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

Just missed your last post. If you’ll stop talking about “night capping” which implies you are complaining about players taking stuff when you’re asleep then we can agree that the current scoring system is not ideal.

Hence why I have always referred to the solution as low population scaling, not nightcap scaling. Low population scaling can happen any time. At 8 in the morning, at 16 in afternoon, hell in the middle of prime time. Doesnt change the fact that nightcapping is a thing that’s at the very extreme of PPT scoring system issues (and yes, servers have dedicated nightcrews for the express purpose of exploiting this. They arent there to just “play”).

I very much doubt that PPK will cover this issue. In relation to the idea though, reverse PPK scaling would be pretty neat (ie when there is low population, PPK give more points as opposed to during high population).

(edited by Dawdler.8521)

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Posted by: Sinbold.8723

Sinbold.8723

Logged in just so I could plus one Yuffi.2430’s posts. I wish I could give each a +1,000. We’re of a similar mind on this topic, and you hit the nail on the head with your bolded sentence about no one from their server being on to re-cap objectives. It’s a recruiting problem for their server- nothing more. Gideon Ravenor.5603 may work 9am-6pm and play WvW from 8pm to 10 pm. But what about players that work from 8pm-5am and play WvW from 7am to 9am? Sorry, but the world of GW2 doesn’t revolve around you. All this “Please shut down the game while I’m asleep so my server can win,” is garbage. It’s a freaking GAME fer crissakes, and it runs 24/7/365.

How about this: “Dear Anet: Please stop the Mordrem from taking the Pact camps in Auric Basin during non-prime time play. Its not fair that I put so much time into defending these camps only to lose them when I go to bed.”

Oh, and here’s one I dug up from 1942: “Dear Geneva Convention: Please stop the RAF from bombing us at night. We’re tired and trying to rest so we can fight during the day, and all this non-prime time bombing is demotivating, demoralising and downright broken. Sincerely, The Luftwaffe.”

This sentence sums it up nicely: “Then, those objectives tick for them over an 8-10 hour period, massively influencing the scoreboard and basically negating anything I might have achieved in the few hours I was able to play the game.” Yes, because it’s all about what you contributed, and not anyone else contributed(sarcasm).

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Posted by: Sinbold.8723

Sinbold.8723

I’ll give you a hint – the first half of each day block is 00:00 to 12:00.

In whose time zone? Yours? So the “problem” is you-centric?

Regarding your graph, Mark Twain said it best: There are lies, kitten ed lies, and statistics.

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Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

How about this: “Dear Anet: Please stop the Mordrem from taking the Pact camps in Auric Basin during non-prime time play. Its not fair that I put so much time into defending these camps only to lose them when I go to bed.”

And that’s exactly what Anet do. They shut down instances. If you want a perfect comparison, shutting down all borders during the low population times would be perfectly acceptable as well. Different way, same result.

Oh, and here’s one I dug up from 1942: “Dear Geneva Convention: Please stop the RAF from bombing us at night. We’re tired and trying to rest so we can fight during the day, and all this non-prime time bombing is demotivating, demoralising and downright broken. Sincerely, The Luftwaffe.”

What a silly comparison, because fortunetly for us WW2 wasnt based on PPT. If it was they would have won on holding France.

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Posted by: Dayra.7405

Dayra.7405

I’ll give you a hint – the first half of each day block is 00:00 to 12:00.

In whose time zone? Yours? So the “problem” is you-centric?

I don’t know how often I’ve heared this short-sighted unfounded argument. It’s simply wrong as there is no relation to time and time-zone. Neither is the world-population evenly distributd over all time-zones, nor (or not at all) the wvw-populations of EU and NA.

The only thing that matters is: How many people play at a specific time.
And yes, in EU you have a strong correlation between time of day in CET and number of players. 19:00-23:00 is prime-time, everyting else off-time. And this is not the case because I play at that time (I played 6:00-9:00 AM, before it got to empty at that time to fight something else than doors), but because it is the only time of the day where you have a queue on at least one map.

Ceterum censeo SFR esse delendam!

(edited by Dayra.7405)

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Posted by: Woof.8246

Woof.8246

Put an option in the Guild Halls Panels , so WvWvW guild leader can choose from a long list , 3-6x Tower-Keeps that their guild has claimed and still holding , and ’’boodytrap’’ them .
Walls-Doors are not repaired when they enemy claims it and they produce less PPT points for any team (including yours – that boobytraped it) for the next 8 hours.

When it ends and the next 6-12 hours (based on how many you ’’trapped’’) , creates some ’’backfires ’ or Skirts that hate boomboom noise dig up a a goldmine that doubles the speed of Dolyaks for the enemy , or something …. i dont know

Captain Kuro

(edited by Woof.8246)

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Posted by: MoonT.6845

MoonT.6845

You are never going to “fix” off peak capping, just make the scoring representative of the number of people on each server to avoid huge discrepancies of holding towers and keeps unopposed for many hours. Capturing and holding a keep against equal numbers is an achievement. Capturing against a couple of guards and a door, then holding all night against nobody is not an achievement and the scoring system should reflect this with fewer points.

We are playing a server in our current match-up that runs from fights unless it is assured it has the numbers to win and is rarely seen during the peak game play hours. Yet they put out a big off peak crew and are dominating the other 2 servers based on nothing but the this off peak scoring. End result a score discrepancy that cannot be addressed and most of our players deciding to take the rest of the week off. Finding a solution to this is the “fix” for night capping.

(edited by MoonT.6845)

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Posted by: Mitz.5741

Mitz.5741

No need to fix nightcapping, just fix the auto-upgrades so i dont have to log in to whole border fully upgraded ! (although…this might be a t9 problem only :P)

Ty for killing bronze league, now i cant play

(edited by Mitz.5741)

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Posted by: testpig.5018

testpig.5018

Night Capping is not a problem.

Your primetime is someone elses night time.

My Primetime is not your primetime. I should not be punished because YOU are not playing when I AM playing.

Night Capping is not the problem.

A non-effective outmanned Buff is the problem.
Improve Outmanned, and you can help the lower pop players.
-50% damage reduction to all friendly walls/gates/npcs when outmanned.
-50% damage increase to all friendly siege.

Those 2 simple addons to the outman buff help the lower population players at ANYTIME they are outmanned.

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Posted by: Dayra.7405

Dayra.7405

Your primetime is someone elses night time.

Maybe, but he has problems playing GW2 while he is swimming in the Pacific.

But if he can connect we want him playing, we just do not want his factor 20 importance for deciding match-outcome.

Ceterum censeo SFR esse delendam!

(edited by Dayra.7405)

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Posted by: Jana.6831

Jana.6831

There is no such thing as “night capping”.

There is – we’ve got 3 time zones in EU – people need to sleep and work as well. Those who recruited NA guilds to do their night capping or who karma train before they have to work (yes that is happening) have servers with high PPT at night and they often win because of that.
Look at the scores on millenium – Desolation is a night capping server – they wouldn’t be on top if it weren’t for that.
That being said: I don’t really oppose night capping as it can be a fun time if the nightcappers are ~15 ish – but I hope that the PPK will partly take care of that and reward the servers who aren’t karma training when no one else is around a bit better.

There is such thing as night capping

ETA: And there are servers who take advantage of that. It’s not really the time “people play” as they’re being paid (in gold) to play in off times (no joke).

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Posted by: ugrakarma.9416

ugrakarma.9416

Servers doens’t have a “owner” who decides when its nightprimer. If anyone want “own” their server, play 24hrs with your zerg. Or do pvp matches, so when the someone win the matche the instance is closed.

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Posted by: Phantom.8130

Phantom.8130

There are NA servers, and the majority of the players on them are from NA. There are EU servers, and the majority of the players on them are from EU. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. The bulk of the players on these servers play during their servers respective primetimes. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. Tier 1 is the only tier with round the clock coverage, and it’s not even as complete as it used to be. There are still still times during OCX and SEA primetimes that even tier 1 servers get out numbered. Which affects the scores in not so insignificant ways. The affects it has on the scores becomes even greater the lower your tier is down to the middle tiers. Outcomes are solely decided by a larger group going against a skeleton crew during OCX and SEA. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. To then claim that your contributions shouldn’t count for less, when they’re currently the sole deciding factor, and nothing anyone else does matters, is outright self entitled hypocritical, disingenuous insanity. Stop it. Look at the reality of the situation. Beyond what affects you, beyond what affects your timezone. Look at common trend in every single matchup over the past 3 years, as a whole. It’s blatantly obvious to see, and to deny it is akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum because they want 2 pieces of cake when everyone else only gets none.

This situation has been a massive problem with WvW since launch. To say otherwise is flat out lying. The mountain of evidence speaks for itself. You can’t live in denial, while pointing accusing fingers at everyone who points it out. Have you no honor? Have you no integrity? Have to no dignity? It’s time to put on your big boy and big girl pants and do the right thing, instead of throwing giant indignant hissy fits every time this gets pointed out. Grow up, and stop acting like spoiled, selfish children.

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Posted by: Beetamus.6403

Beetamus.6403

There is no such thing as “night capping”.

There is – we’ve got 3 time zones in EU – people need to sleep and work as well. Those who recruited NA guilds to do their night capping or who karma train before they have to work (yes that is happening) have servers with high PPT at night and they often win because of that.
Look at the scores on millenium – Desolation is a night capping server – they wouldn’t be on top if it weren’t for that.
That being said: I don’t really oppose night capping as it can be a fun time if the nightcappers are ~15 ish – but I hope that the PPK will partly take care of that and reward the servers who aren’t karma training when no one else is around a bit better.

There is such thing as night capping

ETA: And there are servers who take advantage of that. It’s not really the time “people play” as they’re being paid (in gold) to play in off times (no joke).

You are right, there is such a thing as night capping. As a Australian player in a NA server, all those NA primetime players are nightcapping all my hard work during my primetime. I wish to complain too… :P

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Posted by: Jana.6831

Jana.6831

You are right, there is such a thing as night capping. As a Australian player in a NA server, all those NA primetime players are nightcapping all my hard work during my primetime. I wish to complain too… :P

Try to get my point, ok? =)

ETA: In the end nightcapping works like this: “Okay, when don’t other servers have coverage? Okay, from 2-7 A.M.. Lets go to the forums and try to get a guild from NA or wherever who are willing to play on our server during that time. We’ll pay them the transfer and also x gold per week. Or; could we bring people from our server to change their daily rhythm so we have coverage during that time?” Although the latter often isn’t planned.
If you look at millenium or better coverage wars you’ll find the night capping servers on EU pretty quickly.

ETA²: Your work doesn’t mean much if all you do is capping empty buildings – I guess you won’t call that “hard work”, do you?
If it were, EotM players would be devastated.

(edited by Jana.6831)

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Posted by: Mishi.7058

Mishi.7058

Sorry but by your Split time zone server idea, I would have to play on 3 servers during my playtime. (Weekdays.) And 4 servers on weekends. (pending “when” I play on my weekends.)

Not to mention you are only considering “Prime time” players not those who play between the “prime times”. (Which between Prime times, generally hits about a 1-3hr span.)

Also NA has 2 prime times, EST and PST…So would NA have 2 servers 1 for Eastern and 1 for Western?

Commander Silvannas
“Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack.” Sun Tzu

(edited by Mishi.7058)

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Posted by: KayCee.4653

KayCee.4653

I just thought about what the original poster said, it would mess people up like me as Mishi mentioned since I play not on prime times for my server region. I play WvW on times that are generally where most are likely either sleeping or the bad players aren’t on. I mean, generally the ones that night cap that I’ve fought are better at PvP in WvW than some of the blob crowd are in the same small group situations. It makes it fun.

However, if you want a better solution to fix night cap, only two I can come up with is A) do away with servers and do some sort of megaserver non-sense or make it so that WvW is one or two maps only, so that way people are forced to be in one or the other map. This would still mean the lower tier servers (T8 especially) would need to get more people to come to that server tier than they currently have.

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Posted by: volpenvieh.3201

volpenvieh.3201

I honestly don’t think that “night capping” needs to be fixed. There’s a lot of servers that complain about the issue while they actually have at least a handful of players who are awake during the night and would love to play some WvW during off hours. All you need is to find someone who is willing to tag up some nights in a row, spread the word and soon you’ll find that 5 organized people can already make a huge difference.
You know, Riverside used to be one of those servers that complained a lot about night capping (even thought they had a massive morning shift themselves but that’s a different story). Then a commander spread the word that he would tag up during the night and soon we had a small group of people who would defend their home map almost every night. When that commander realized that he couldn’t really make it past 2 am, he passed on the legacy to me. I was completely new at commanding, I still suck at commanding fights, but I can read a live map and flip stuff for the tick so soon the nightshift became quite successful and with 10-15 people we could even kind of prove ourselves against the BB zerg (keep the “damage” to a minimum) and we had some good times trolling the Elona Nightwatch. At some point we even reached 25 people at 4am. The only problem is that you really need either one person who is very passionate about WvW or several people who can organize that there will always be somebody there so that people don’t immediately leave WvW again. I myself couldn’t really bear the pressure anymore after a couple of months because I was going through some personal stuff at that time but I had managed to give some people the feeling that nights are worth playing and passed on my legacy to someone else.
And no, night capping is not only about k-training empty maps. Most of the times it’s rather about reading the signs where the enemy is, try to sneak some points before the big bad blob comes to wipe you and make it as hard as possible for them to capture your precious objectives (yes, with the autoupgrades and perma waypoints nobody really cares about defending stuff anymore, blabla – just think about the satisfaction of 10 people denying the evil blob to capture a keep). It’s a constant race for ppt and a battle between blob or strategy. For me that’s more exciting than mindless zerging :x