Guild Wars 2

TY for all the work Tyler and Team. What I’m reading sounds real good!!!

Sounds interesting. Glad to hear PPK is going to play a bigger role.

Looks very good. Exciting!
I’m all for the additional ‘controversial’ change too. I don’t think it hurts the gameplay outside prime-time.

Its interesting that the players have organized coverage times into 3 hour blocks but here it has been reduced to 2 hour blocks.

Was 3 hours deemed as too long for a skirmish?

Also, if the map structure stays the same between skirmishes and PPT is still a thing, then teams will inherit advantages and disadvantages from the previous skirmish.

I think dumping PPT needs to happen. Yaks are a good substitute for PPT in regards to passive scoring and are more easily contestable by roamers. The yak points can be scaled in points on successful deliveries to higher level objectives to encourage defense and assaults. It also makes the camps a critical component from a strategic point of view.

Racking up big PPT points for keeps and towers could still aggravate imbalances.

Just reading these ideas, they all look great to me. I am excited to see how they work in game

Seems pretty good. Will be good to see these changes put in place, at least as a beta at first since there’s no harm in trying it.

Any chance you could add a negative score for losing towers/keeps? Higher tiered positions would lose more points but capping them back would only provide the points of a standard tower/keep, giving more of a punishment for not defending things you own.

I’d like more details on this “skirmishing” idea. As a person who does not play Blob Wars, I roam with a small group and hope to still be effective.

PPT should not be the main source for points. There should also be points for successfully upgrading objects and defending the objects against attacks.

I’m very excited for this, and I also think that the ‘controversial’ change is worth doing. Great proposal, team!

Belenwyn.8674:

There should also be points for successfully upgrading objects and defending the objects against attacks.

They said that upgraded objectives count more for skirmish points, rewarding defending them more than simply flipping them.

I am looking forward to this! Looks like some interesting and good changes.

I’m actually impressed. I’m sure stuff will come up that needs tweaking but the solutions presented look great to me.

I even like scaling based on activity.

Josh XT.6053:

I’d like more details on this “skirmishing” idea. As a person who does not play Blob Wars, I roam with a small group and hope to still be effective.

Hell if they make kills worth 5 points a piece I could pretty much cap nothing and still bring in more points than I currently do.

A camp is worth 5 points, the 2 people I have to kill to cap a camp is 10, the bags that keep coming back to try and get the camp are worth even more.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

• This is the Action Level – Victory Point Multiplier system
  • This system would multiply the Victory Points awarded by Skirmishes based on map populations and time of day.
  • During prime time hours, the multiplier would always be at it’s maximum of 3.
  • During off hours, the multiplier might stay at 3 or drop to 2 or 1, depending on on activity level.
  • It’s important to include map populations as a factor, to make the system more fair for off hours players and its important to include time-of-day as a factor to prevent a winning team from trying to keep the score muliplier low by exiting WvW

Can you please give more details on the above. How do you determine primetime vs non prime time for different servers? Some servers are stacked in NA so that’s their ‘primetime’ while other servers have more people in SEA/OCX/EU so that’s their prime time. How will you figure out what is primetime for different servers?

Giving more points for taking upgraded objectives is a really neat idea. The overall flow of scoring seems to give more exciting fights. The Last Stand could be a major disappointment depending on how it’s implemented, but I see how thrilling that would be and how it would increase the value of last time fights!

Hope to see these changes soon, they look yummy.

looks good. even if it has problems it’s better than the current system. let the testing begin!

So basically by winning the blocks, it will add to the actual score?

The additional change means it will scale the score base on the population? How is that done? If the population is huge at one server while empty on the other, is it 3 or is it 1?

your solution for ‘nightcapping’ (I’m one of the guys who doesn’t see this as a issue) as a giant flaw that I can see just by looking at it. how will it decided active levels could we just have a bunch of players afk at spawn to keep the multiplier at x3, also just by suggesting this change you are alienating players that play during that time cause most people I know that play then don’t do it because “oh I’m going to be super hardcore and make sure our team wins” its that they are ocx players and that’s just when they get off work. night capping imo is a problem that anet shouldn’t be trying to fix because it will only chase people away

SkyShroud.2865:

So basically by winning the blocks, it will add to the actual score?

The additional change means it will scale the score base on the population? How is that done? If the population is huge at one server while empty on the other, is it 3 or is it 1?

+1 can you please give scenario examples of how this works? Let’s say I am outmanned in NA primetime on 3/4 borderlands how will that affect PPT scoring. Will the PPT from each borderland calculated differently somehow depending on if you have opponents on that map or not?

Luvpie.8350:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

• This is the Action Level – Victory Point Multiplier system
  • This system would multiply the Victory Points awarded by Skirmishes based on map populations and time of day.
  • During prime time hours, the multiplier would always be at it’s maximum of 3.
  • During off hours, the multiplier might stay at 3 or drop to 2 or 1, depending on on activity level.
  • It’s important to include map populations as a factor, to make the system more fair for off hours players and its important to include time-of-day as a factor to prevent a winning team from trying to keep the score muliplier low by exiting WvW

Can you please give more details on the above. How do you determine primetime vs non prime time for different servers? Some servers are stacked in NA so that’s their ‘primetime’ while other servers have more people in SEA/OCX/EU so that’s their prime time. How will you figure out what is primetime for different servers?

Probably based on the servers location. NA servers prime time will be during NA prime…… which makes sense.

redwing.9580:

your solution for ‘nightcapping’ (I’m one of the guys who doesn’t see this as a issue) as a giant flaw that I can see just by looking at it. how will it decided active levels could we just have a bunch of players afk at spawn to keep the multiplier at x3, also just by suggesting this change you are alienating players that play during that time cause most people I know that play then don’t do it because “oh I’m going to be super hardcore and make sure our team wins” its that they are ocx players and that’s just when they get off work. night capping imo is a problem that anet shouldn’t be trying to fix because it will only chase people away

yes. I think better approach is having 3 hr windows. Having 3 hrs of NA prime time, 3 hrs of EU primetime, 3 hrs of SEA, and 3 hrs of OCX. that gives 12/24 hrs. The transition hours is when ‘stacked’ servers have more people and their scores spike and things are usually reset. These other 12 hours is when things should be counted for less for servers with higher population.

Sounds good, I am waiting for something like that for 3 years

Concerning the controversial additional change:

I would weight it such that night (8-10h) – day (10-12h) – evening (Prime! 4-6h) have the same weight, even if they consist of unequal number of skirmishes. (or alternatively make the skirmishes differently long, like the tickon last day)

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Prime Time would be universal per datacenter. For example, all worlds in NA would have the same 6 hour period (of highest activity) as their Prime Time hours. All EU woulds would have a different 6 hour range for their Prime Time.

Will you be opening servers or looking at NA population across all servers to balance it then? Because alot of NA population moved around before your ‘matching’ to game the system. There are some NA-matched servers that can’t queue more then 1-2 maps while others that can queue all 4 maps.

I <3 ArenaNet good changes!

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Prime Time would be universal per datacenter. For example, all worlds in NA would have the same 6 hour period (of highest activity) as their Prime Time hours. All EU woulds would have a different 6 hour range for their Prime Time.

This will basicly reduce the incentive to play WvW as much as possible outside of the 6 hrs ‘primetime’. I think anet is really messing up here. Instead a more reasonable approach is to reduce the PPT from ‘transition’ hours between different prime-times.

Having 3 hrs of NA prime time, 3 hrs of EU primetime, 3 hrs of SEA, and 3 hrs of OCX. that gives 12/24 hrs. The transition hours is when ‘stacked’ servers have more people and their scores spike and things are usually reset. These other 12 hours is when things should be counted for less for servers with higher population.

Sounds promising. Can’t wait to give it a try.

Luvpie.8350:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Prime Time would be universal per datacenter. For example, all worlds in NA would have the same 6 hour period (of highest activity) as their Prime Time hours. All EU woulds would have a different 6 hour range for their Prime Time.

Will you be opening servers or looking at NA population across all servers to balance it then? Because alot of NA population moved around before your ‘matching’ to game the system. There are some NA-matched servers that can’t queue more then 1-2 maps while others that can queue all 4 maps.

We didn’t move to gain the system. We moved to prepare for whatever the system was which we didn’t know prior to moving.

Interesting change.
I like the fact that upgraded structures give more PPT ! Finally ! Same for the reward.
The victory point system seem good, we have to see that in action in beta test.
Same for multiplier at off peak time. And I play more at off peak during day.
But it’s really annoying to see that score is close for every team during day / prime.. And the night one of the team can make 10k+ point over the other…
Good to see the PPK more involved in the score, but WvW is about protecting your territory, PPT should stay a good part for the score.

A good thing should be to have a good wiki page with all accurate information to how the score is calculated… Sentry take / kill… Doly delivery / kill…

But with the T3 structures giving more PPT, ennemy will try to not allow you to upgrade your structures, then maybe the reinforced wall / gate should be at T1, and canon / oil at T2 ? Because it’s very long to have the T2 and paper gate / wall are really easy to destroy.
Another issue with that is the 2 north tower on ABL. There is only 1 doly for those tower, and the path is very long. Don’t know if this is intended… But finaly this give a malus to the home team…

Other point, as supply camp will be more important (with doly delivery) maybe supply camp should be easier to upgrade (less doly needed / level). It’s crazy the difficulty we have to upgrade camp when we compare that with before HoT upgrade system.

Another point about supply camp on ABL :
– Before HoT the doly with the shortest path will not respawn immediatly after they successfully deliver supply at keep / tower.
– Now with HoT doly respawn immediatly after the delivery was successful.

This mean that south west camp will deliver way much more doly to bay that north west camp. This give a big advantage for the attacking team because it’s easier for them to hold that camp… North west camp have a very long path to bay.

Other point, supply camp guild upgrade should be very very less expansive !
Like double supply for the doly. Before it was what ? 25 silver ? 50 maybe I don’t remember and it was the first upgrade started on each camp. Now the guild upgrade slot for the same upgrade is 3+ gold…. Seriously ? And you have to claim your camp for 30min…
The new upgrade system is far more expensive that before… I don’t know if this is “working as intented”.
Upgrade like Iron Guard or Chill fog should have “supply camp” version who are really less expensive to help to hold those camp.

Hope someone will listen to my concern

Good changes, especially the nerf to nightcapping which IMO needs that Action Level system to finish it off. But when I read about “Action Level – Victory Point Multiplier” being based on map population does that mean the entire population, of all 3 servers on a map, or the population of our home server or even the population of the enemy servers?

I think it should be based on the amount of resistance that you face while capturing the objective, making population of the enemy the best way to balance this Action Level system, I think.

Also Tyler for president.

redwing.9580:

your solution for ‘nightcapping’ (I’m one of the guys who doesn’t see this as a issue) as a giant flaw that I can see just by looking at it. how will it decided active levels could we just have a bunch of players afk at spawn to keep the multiplier at x3, also just by suggesting this change you are alienating players that play during that time cause most people I know that play then don’t do it because “oh I’m going to be super hardcore and make sure our team wins” its that they are ocx players and that’s just when they get off work. night capping imo is a problem that anet shouldn’t be trying to fix because it will only chase people away

I work nights so my normal play hours are outside of prime. I don’t feel alienated at all.
As much as people like to make the argument “this is a 24 hour war” (which is extremely annoying to those of us that have actually been to war), this is just a game. The score shouldn’t be so heavily influenced by the smallest group of players.
If fixing this keeps the game more competitive throughout the week, and keeps people playing more, then I have no problem with my contribution to the score being smaller than prime times.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m very excited for this, and I also think that the ‘controversial’ change is worth doing. Great proposal, team!

Belenwyn.8674:

There should also be points for successfully upgrading objects and defending the objects against attacks.

They said that upgraded objectives count more for skirmish points, rewarding defending them more than simply flipping them.

I do not mean ticks . I mean direct points. For example 250 points for T2 and 500 points for T3 in regard to a keep. Ticks should be 2/3/5 (T1/2/3). Defending should grant 10 to 100 points in dependency of the degree of effort you put in like pushing enemies out of the lord room or out of the inner yard.

Alot of guilds moved around prior to matching servers patch. And if NA primetime is worth more then non NA then it will encourage NA guilds to move to stacked servers so that NA is queued for 6 out of 12 new server combinations on 4 maps and we will end up with empty servers again for the non-stacked servers.

Please add, that the Points rewarded for capturing an Upgraded objective is worth far more Mores then capturing a non-upgraded Objective.

The Points for capturing an upgraded Objective should be relative to the amount of time it takes to upgrade said objective.

So if a Paper tower is worth 5 points on capture.. a fully upgraded tower should be worth 100 points on capture. and a level 2 tower should be worth like 30 points on capture. etc etc.

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating ‘nerf’ to night capping… You do realize any slight towards ocx/sea/eu players will make some people play less? That is exactly what gw2 needs right now.. less players /s

Luvpie.8350:

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating ‘nerf’ to night capping… You do realize any slight towards ocx/sea/eu players will make some people play less? That is exactly what gw2 needs right now.. less players /s

^ This. Don’t make prime time worth more.

Also please don’t do this “Last Stand” idea. The “Last Stand” makes one day matter too much in the match, every day should be worth the same.

And what about the night capper server ?
Actually I’m on Piken and we face Desolation.
Every night they take 10k+ point advance… During the day / prime the PPT is fine, sometime we are first, sometime the other server, other time is deso…
But all the night Deso take 10k+ point.
We know after 2 days that it’s just impossible to win that MU, they will crush us, just because they have a big zerg at night… This just give me 1 idea… Stop playing for the full week and wait the next MU, because it’s just so boring to wake up and see that the other server have take is 10k+ point again…

I think that skirmishes are a great idea, not so sure about the multiplier system, though… I am afraid that people will game it.

Josh XT.6053:

Luvpie.8350:

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating ‘nerf’ to night capping… You do realize any slight towards ocx/sea/eu players will make some people play less? That is exactly what gw2 needs right now.. less players /s

^ This. Don’t make prime time worth more.

Also please don’t do this “Last Stand” idea. The “Last Stand” makes one day matter too much in the match, every day should be worth the same.

every other scoring idea is great. upgraded stuff worth more, ppk getting buff, scoring changes on 5 min tick instead of 15 etc. but they really need to re-evaluate and get lots of feedback from everyone and not just forum warriors before reducing ppt from non-prime time.

Josh XT.6053:

Luvpie.8350:

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating ‘nerf’ to night capping… You do realize any slight towards ocx/sea/eu players will make some people play less? That is exactly what gw2 needs right now.. less players /s

^ This. Don’t make prime time worth more.

Also please don’t do this “Last Stand” idea. The “Last Stand” makes one day matter too much in the match, every day should be worth the same.

It’s worth trying out before outright dismissing the idea. Fridays are completely dead until reset, this could be interesting.

Josh XT.6053:

Luvpie.8350:

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating ‘nerf’ to night capping… You do realize any slight towards ocx/sea/eu players will make some people play less? That is exactly what gw2 needs right now.. less players /s

^ This. Don’t make prime time worth more.

Also please don’t do this “Last Stand” idea. The “Last Stand” makes one day matter too much in the match, every day should be worth the same.

I actually like the last stand idea. Whenever I go WvW on the last day, people will be like is ok, is the last day. But you know, I really want to win, I really want to beat people up, I really want to hold it (ego speaking), is more about now than the score. However, people really only cares about the score instead of like playing the game.

I like that changes are rolling into WvW, but adjusting the PPT in this way isn’t going to make matches more fun. The PPT system both old and new encourages unbalanced play, PPT grinding and has little effect on a servers actual “fun”. PPT also doesn’t yield any substantial reward. To get those rewards players are encouraged to actively avoid conflict and flip empty objectives.

Score a server equally on its captures, kills, defenses, escorts, etc and tie those contributions to direct player rewards. IMO you already have the beginning of this system in the game in the form of reward tracks.

Straegen.2938:

I like that changes are rolling into WvW, but adjusting the PPT in this way isn’t going to make matches more fun. The PPT system both old and new encourages unbalanced play, PPT grinding and has little effect on a servers actual “fun”.

Create a scoring system that directly rewards players for contributing to general WvW play. Score a server on its captures, kills, defenses, escorts, etc. IMO you already have the beginning of this system in the game in the form of reward tracks.

+1 .. if you make prime time worth more.

1. People will try to only play during that prime time if they can and won’t try to play outside of the hours.
2. People will move to servers that have larger primetime population so they ‘win’ leading to stacking and lower pop in lower tier servers.
3. lower off hours population will lead to less people playing because pvdoor isn’t fun and leading to faster death of gw2.

I really like that all of these new changes have thoughtfully looked at the many-faceted ways to play WvW, and merges the new while maintaining the integrity of the old. That takes a lot of skill. It’s appreciated. Thank you.

Luvpie.8350:

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating ‘nerf’ to night capping… You do realize any slight towards ocx/sea/eu players will make some people play less? That is exactly what gw2 needs right now.. less players /s

Que the “offended OCX/SEA” forum poster trying to keep their advantage over NA players on NA servers.

Luvpie.8350:

Straegen.2938:

I like that changes are rolling into WvW, but adjusting the PPT in this way isn’t going to make matches more fun. The PPT system both old and new encourages unbalanced play, PPT grinding and has little effect on a servers actual “fun”.

Create a scoring system that directly rewards players for contributing to general WvW play. Score a server on its captures, kills, defenses, escorts, etc. IMO you already have the beginning of this system in the game in the form of reward tracks.

+1 .. if you make prime time worth more.

1. People will try to only play during that prime time if they can and won’t try to play outside of the hours.
2. People will move to servers that have larger primetime population so they ‘win’ leading to stacking and lower pop in lower tier servers.
3. lower off hours population will lead to less people playing because pvdoor isn’t fun and leading to faster death of gw2.

In that case, they need to make a server pop system that will dynamically decide the population cap of the server instead of a hard cap to prevent stacking. For example, if a selected server and the literally lowest server population gap is too big, you close off that server.

You should also look into finding a way to have the 3-server-matchup system auto-balance itself.
In all these years, the 2 lesser servers never team up vs the winning one.

It’s always like this:
Winner attacks server 2, server 3 is too bad to do anything vs winner, so just picks the easy target, server 2.

There should be a way to encourage the 2 losing servers to actually fight the winner.
Something like increased rewards / points for taking objectives from the winner. Double the score from the next tick on capturing something from the winner, etc.
I don’t know how, just find a way to stop the ’let’s bully the biggest loser for easy points’

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m very excited for this, and I also think that the ‘controversial’ change is worth doing. Great proposal, team!

Belenwyn.8674:

There should also be points for successfully upgrading objects and defending the objects against attacks.

They said that upgraded objectives count more for skirmish points, rewarding defending them more than simply flipping them.

I agree with Rising Dusk here about dropping in the “controversial” change along with.

How does the multipliers affect servers in which ‘prime time’ for that server hosts the least amount of players during such time?

Specifically, we already know not all servers are stacked equal, so what may be considered a ‘busy’ time vs . ‘prime time’ does not feel equal in that regard.

From my personal perspective, this does seem to alienate anyone wanting to play WvW during non-prime hours and forces them to either a) play in the middle of the night during their time completely changing their life schedule for a game because they live in Europe or from elsewhere, or b) Forces them off to migrate to another server so they can be the most effective during the times that they desire to play at.

Also, what I didn’t see explained, if the score multiplier for skirmishes is determined by such busy times, what if the opposing force doesn’t have any players that wish to engage in that time? More specifically, how does that affect scoring on highly populated servers against servers with low turnouts during said prime times?

Just a curious cat here trying to find the scraps

This is very concerning to me. While on the surface these changes look great, in practice I think this will likely make a bigger mess of wvw than it currently is.

First thing is stop punishing players for playing off prime time. I use the term punishing because this is how players will see it. I know you don’t want nightcapping to rule the matches but players who don’t play in prime time will see this as having their effort only count for a third of what a player in primetime can do. If you want to fix nightcapping fix being outnumbered. If the nightcapping matches where still balanced then there would be no trouble.

Secondly PLEASE stop double patching things… When you fixing such a volitile systems as scores, economy, matchups, etc. Fixing one problem with two patches will often throw the issue onto the other side of the spectrum.(for the most recent expample see resonating slivers that went from expensive to worthless.) There’s no way to know for certian how a community’s play-style will change due to a patch. Making drastic changes is litteray trying to hit a bullseye on a dartboard blindfolded.

What we really need to fix scoring is a ballanced play experience. Make the outnumbered buff reduce damage to ally walls, gate. Have the white swords/orange swords on the objectives visible across maps. There are many ways to balance the game without doing dangerous changes to the score.