Guild Wars 2

Theorizing on how you could avoid PPT.

The problems with PPT (assuming you considering them a problem) revolve around things like coverage and lack of an “epic” feeling (like a good sport’s match where the lead goes back and forth) after a few days of a match.

Here would be my idea:

1. Relics. The battle would be over control of key items that would be placed in Hills, Bay, Garrison of each realm.
a. Promotes defense and offense.
b. Idea is you tick points still for player kills but the “building and territory” points are replaced by the “influence” of holding an enemy relic or an “epic” defense protecting your own. You can win without ever having a relic by the sheer slaughter of the enemy, but without slaughtering the enemy the only way to get pts is relic capture and holds.
c. You only tick these non-player kill pts on a map by holding a relic (in other words, if no team ever got an enemy relic then everyone would tick equally. They would only tick on their map).
d. Each server is divided into 3 time categories. Main 8 hours provides very weak NPC defense for the relic keeps. In short you could ninja a relic. Off Peak provides a mid level of support. Night would require a significant enemy force (e.g. wake up raid) to get the device back.
e. Where you hold the enemy relic matters in terms of the points you get.
Holding it hostage in the enemy’s realm (Hills, Garrison, Bay) is not worth much.
Holding it in your (Hills, Garrison, or Keep) is worth a good amount of pts.
Holding it in SMC is worth the most pts
f. You could get a lot of 2 v. 1 fights naturally as NEITHER enemy will want a powerful realm to have a relic (because it hurts both equally) especially being held at SMC.
g. Running a relic back to a better point location is tedious. The bearer is slowed down (almost moving at encumbered speed) and loses all abilities (must be protected). However, theoretically, while you couldn’t take a relic easily with a small group outside primetime, you certainly could move a relic to a better point giving location.
h. In order to “take a relic” someone with a commander tag has to issue a “relic challenge”. The keep then can’t be attacked for X minutes and a waypoint to that keep exists for the enemy to create a defense. The time depends on the day segment of the server. It might be 10 minutes in prime and a whole hour in night. The guards would one shot you if you attacked the keep during this cooldown. After which, there is a timebox depending on prime, off peak, or night for which you must secure the relic or lose a significant number of points for a failed attempt.
I. Being “outmanned” on a map while engaged in a relic defense or when capturing an enemy relic gives you an “EPIC” bonus of points (of course, only if successful in the take or the defense). This would be equal to a day of keeping and holding the relic.
J. On the other hand, there is no initial amount of points given for the taking (but NOT defending a relic) using overwhelming force (creating an outnumbered situation). Call it a thug penalty. However, you can easily make it up by holding that ill gotten treasure for a period of time.
k. In addition to normal guard and chest loot, each non-relic keep, camp, etc would provide a bonus that would help taking a relic or transporting it (for example owning all the camps on the map might allow for faster movement speed of the relic carrier).
l. You have a choice to take a relic without taking the rest of the map, but it would be much harder. You know that if your map turns the enemy color, your relics will be much easier to take and move.

Rough ideas but it really isn’t all that hard to implement.

LOVE IT. No really. LOVE IT. Makes too much sense and would require an immense overhaul which will probably never happen. But it does solve the issue of defense/offense. Solves coverage issues but not completely with 3 different time zones. And overall just seems like a FUN idea.

Although I agree there needs to be a change in the scoring system your method still means those with huge nightcaps will be able to hold all 9 relics for the whole night – even if they can’t kill a thing in prime time. It still seems the most off hours coverage comes out a winner and force the action to be centred round the middle of the 3 keeps where someones gonna build a ton of siege. I think we need less arrow cart wars, not more, people wanna be fighitng other people, not playing Treb Wars 2 in the middle of a keep all night.

Remeber all the Orb hacking? this will happen with Relics also.

Far simpler to make structures count for far, far less PPT and make kills count for a lot more to the overall score.

Roaming guilds could be fighting all night all over the map killing stuff without having to cap and still doing their bit “for the realm” for points.

Puggies could still be led round capturing structures for their lootz which keeps them happy but it has less effect on the score.

If there’s no enemy to kill due to vastly different coverage at night there’s far less points to be earned if the emphasis is taken off structures scoring so highly.

If any enemy blob ports about avoiding battles just karma training PvD they still won’t be earning points if they have nothing to kill so it won’t be the most effective way to play.

This should force people to actually fight to kill, focus on battles and improve their skill level and ensure prime time battles provide the most points for servers.

If you wake up in the morning there won’t be such a massive point difference if the enemy has 100 people and you have 5 on nightcrew because those 5 people might have taken down 10 before they died and therefore gained some points out of it even if they lost the structure.

A 50/50 split of points for PPT from structures and from kills would be a good start, just to see what the result might be. It could probably be tipped to 40/60, but any more and the structures might be spurned completely in favor of fights. Perhaps to some, including myself, that prospect is exciting, but others like the tactics of castle/tower defense and fights. ANET just needs to experiment for a month here, a month there, to see what fits best. The current system just isn’t satisfying enough people.

put a 1 hour RI on everything, when the map is full of RI people gotta go out and find stuff to kill/take/defend.

Simpler ideas:

1. You only get your PPT if your realm killed more players than it lost during that tick.
2. (Variant) You only get your PPT if your realm killed more players than it lost during the tick weighted for population differences.
3. Kill could mean piked or simply double downed.
4. (Variant) Same as above but instead of doing this by tick it would be a longer timeframe.
5. (Variant) Same as above but would take into consideration clusters of realm ranks as modifiers. Silver higher than Bronze etc. Some players worth more.

A simple meter would show how you are doing in the “killing enemy” metrics.

Second idea.

1. Increase loot substantially when outnumbered (double or triple).
2. Decrease all loot (NPC and player) when doing the outnumbering. This would include karma. In short, you will help win the fight but personally get less than a competitive battle.

Third Idea:
Each objective has a defined contribution to PPT but it is divided by the net difference in players taking objective over players defending. In short, you get far more points taking an objective solo or with a small group than a blob OR engaging in epic blob v blob battles! Calculate the right base PPT is the key.

The PPT is fine, the coverage is kittened up. What we need is even numbers. What we need is megaserver’s instances and AvAvA. The instances would guarantee even numbers on all sides, and the PPT system works fine with equal numbers.

Roleplaying in SMC.