Guild Wars 2

With all the suggestions going on about how to improve WvW scoring, I was thinking that this simple fix would be the most straightforward way of addressing multiple problems.

At each tick, make the total PPT earned from both objectives and kills proportional to the server population that the objective/player killed belongs to.

For example: Say towers are worth 1 PPT. Server A takes or owns one of server B’s towers. But, Server A has 2 times the population of Server B during this tick interval. So Server A only earns 0.5 PPT that tick.
Say if the out-manned Server B managed to take a Server A tower, while having only half its population during the tick interval. Server B will then earn 2 PPT for that tick.

Owning your own towers are worth the standard base amount of PPT and player kills vary proportionally in a similar manner.

So why would this be helpful?
Nightcapping: Servers out-manning during night intervals just earn less PPT for any opposing server objectives they take due to low enemy server population. They still can have fun k-training, but it just won’t affect the score as much. Brave defenders likewise will get bonus PPT for kills or tower caps against the nightcappers.

Stacked servers: Overpopulated servers won’t earn as much points wiping out opposing server borderlands. Likewise, additional PPT is earned by the opposing servers on attacking the high population server, so double teaming is more likely (which is a plus or a minus, depending on your point of view). Usually the 2nd place team tries to wipe out the 3rd place team in these situations for more PPT, but with this proportional PPT adjustment, the 2nd place team really does not get many points for stomping the 3rd place team so it may encourage attacking the stacked server again.

Zergbusting and Fighting: Low population servers gain bonus points for killing high population servers and give away fewer points on dying, so this may encourage more valiant zerg busting or desperate defenses.

Imploding, Hibernating, Bandwagonning, population in stability: Population is calculated per tick, so these really don’t matter. Your server implodes, big deal, you start earning more points.

So this simple change should help balance the scoring accordingly, without affecting how people enjoy the game. You can k-train, zerg bust, roam, zerg the same as normal without feeling one playstyle outweighs another. Fine tuning to the proportional scoring is of course required. A server with twice the population of another should not score half as much since every situation will not be an automatic 2 on 1. Scoring somewhere around 1.5 for half the population and 2 for a third of the population may be more accurate. And proportional monetary/wvw rewards for defeating higher population servers during the tick interval may be helpful as well.

How would you define a population? Numbers of accounts on a server? Number of people logged in the server? Number of people in WvW? Number of people on the map? Number of people in the event?
Just this definition already would be a mess, because none of those measurements are enough to say how much “WvW worthy” a server is.

Also, one of GW2 guidelines is that playing with more people is not a problem but a blessing, and this is reflected in a huge number of mechanics, like node resources, dynamic party system, shared loot and such.

Creating a system where less people is better goes against it and would be extremely toxic. Depending on how you define how you measure a servers population, you would have people yelling at each other to log out, to get out of the map, get out of the fight, get out of the capture zone and such so they can score more. And this would be followed by a increase of elitism, where only the top players would feel worthy of being the ones to play so they can score more with less. The pve casuals, newbies and such would be even more excluded because they would only dilute the score.

I do think that comeback score mechanics or mechanics that reduce the sizes of the zergs would be amazing and very healthy for the game overall, but glueing it to such an arbitrary number as pure population is not only very complicated and delicated, but would end up being super toxic, killing even more of what is left of population and new blood into WvW.

They already mentioned something like this could be implemented, but their version would be bonus points during more active periods, which is determined by how many are on from all sides, and also the catchup mechanics.

Your idea is to give bonus points to outnumbered sides, and cut the points from the side that has the most on. Instead of going 0.5x should just leave it at 1x, and give a straight bonus to the outnumbered side 2x or 3×.

I already mentioned this some time ago in another post about outmanned and bloodlust buff, to add 2x bonus to 2nd place and 3x bonus to 3rd place while under these affects, to help keep the matches closer and fix some of the bad coverage scoring.

It really would be no different than lets say in hockey when one side as “too many men on the ice”, they take a penalty and the other side has a better chance to score for 2mins, or basketball, you foul someone they get free throws which gives them points with the clock stopped.

I don’t think we will ever get close to balance for population or coverage for most servers, but you can still give out bonus points for certain situations, players would still need to actively take and kill in order to earn those bonus points.

Imperdiago: Population would be a straight forward calculation of how many players are logged into WvW from that server (across all maps) in that 5 minute interval. No need for any fancy mechanics for multiple accounts, time of day, active time periods, proportion of sea players, overstacked servers where all the players are hibernating, etc… If you (Server A) are currently playing and outnumbering Server B 2:1, you simply will not be scoring as much points against Server B whom you are clobbering. But if Server C is 1:1 to you in terms of players currently on, you score equal points against it if you choose to focus your attentions there. Preferably the amount of AFK’ers won’t be that huge to make a difference, but it could be a problem.
I don’t think this scoring change will actually stop zerging or overstacking because those that like zergs will still have fun zerging and crushing peons, they just won’t get as much points doing so to underrepresented servers. You will still need numbers to take objectives and win zerg battles. Therefore, I can’t see elite groups yelling at people to get out of a zerg. I suppose some elite group may yell that there are too many scouts on the map and to join the zerg instead, but I doubt it.

Xenesis: 1:1 scaling of points to population would actually make it too difficult for the most populous server, because as I said, a server with twice the population as another still rarely sends twice as many people in battle. In the end, we want the scoring to still favor the server that should win (due to active playing population) while still being competitive in score.
I completely agree that I don’t think we will get any balance of population and coverage in the servers, but this method of bonus points will encourage fighting against higher populated or covered servers so that everyone still has fun, regardless of how lopsided a tier battle may be.
I think your idea active bonus points for 3rd place etc.. is an option that can be added on top of this automatic balancing as something that will make comebacks more exciting, because I can see how catching up from a point deficit can be difficult (for both populated and underpopulated servers) with this population per tick balancing.

I see your point and that there’s some good points on it. But something else came to my mind: creating equality in scores against servers that are not equal in populations are actually worse for the game. Playing unfair matches are not fun, and if you make the scores closer, you will perpetuate unfair matches because it will be harder for servers to go up and down. Making unfair matches staying longer. So weaker servers scoring more might sound good but will do more harm than good.

That’s why I would like more new systems where you could balance the actual gameplay itself (ie: less zerging so smaller groups could face better fights) than just the scoring itself. It would be just makeup. The score would not represent fairly what is happening in game, and would make the tier systems fail because they use the scoring systems as their measurement.

If I’m not mistaken, you mean scaling right? If so, yes. PvE does the same, scaling the mobs according to the number of players playing the event. I think this could help.

Come to think about it, I think the correct term is handicapping. Just like in golf, the weak players get a nice handicap so they can still compete and have fun in a tournament. Not exactly the same here but I wonder if tiers can be rejigged to reflect the lowest “handicap” at the top of the list. But on the otherhand, that may favour too much elitism.

I see how equalizing the scores would make moving up and down tiers hard. I was kind of thinking in the grand scheme of things the zerg favoring high population servers would congregate in T1 and the the guerrilla style servers that like fighting greater odds would congregate in T4, with T2-3 being a mix of both. And then you can disregard gliko altogether and have any server fight any server (with some linking balance). Likely wishful thinking though.

To the OP you’re marginalising the players in non prime time hours and therefore run the risk of them leaving the game. The new scoring system has brought more equality to the system, and thats enough. Population disparities are not a scoring issue and need to be addressed differently.

I don’t support any suggestions that give the illusion that population is balanced. Don’t cheat yourself.

SkyShroud.2865:

I don’t support any suggestions that give the illusion that population is balanced. Don’t cheat yourself.

Considering population will never be balanced without very restrictive unfun changes, I’d rather a scaling system come into play.