Guild Wars 2

To start off: Yes, people in different time zones or with unusual shifts should be able to play when they want to and still make a difference, anyone suggesting to shut down the servers for X time/make night capping irrelevant should be hit with a cactus and sent to North Korea.

But a commercial in prime-time TV doesn’t cost the same as a commercial during the night. Also keep in mind that we’re talking about European/American prime-times (thus the division between continents). Someone who plays during prime-time should be treated differently (and not ignored) then someone who plays during other times. 1 AM isn’t equal to 21 PM, that’s life. Hey blame the sun and the fact that we need to regain energy.

For me, while people have EVERY right to play and contribute when they want to, they should not expect that contribution to be as meaningful as the contribution of those who fought at prime-time, organized themselves, done PvP against a lot of enemies and sometimes even died. I’m not saying that the “night” contribution (to leave things simple) should be irrelevant compared to the “day” contribution, only that what requires 2 hours to achieve during prime-time should take like 4 hours while most people are sleeping/working.

The effort made by a group of people made during prime-time to conquer something cannot be equal to the effort made by a group of people who wake up early to PvG (Player vs Gate).

There isn’t a simple solution, here’s what I propose:

The easiest solution would be to make the points acquired during the day worth more than those acquired during the night. Maybe dividing the day into two portions of 12 hours each: one from 0:00 to 12:59 in the morning and another from 13:00 to 23:59 (CEST is the most embracing timezone for Europe I think, no idea about NA).

From what I understand, there’s a formula where more karma/xp is given the more a person participates in an event, so another solution would be to apply a similar formula to WvW, so that a realm gains points based on the amount of fighters from the other realms, something like this:

RP – Points won every 15 minutes by the red world
C – Supply Camps
T – Towers
K – Keeps
G – number of green realm players
B – number of blue realm players

RP = (C x 5 + T x 4 + K x 3) x G/100 x B/100

(Borderlands formula, in Eternal Battlegrounds it’d be different)

Warning: I’m kitten at math, this is just an example xD

There are of course other issues that need to be solved:

- Orbs: the bonus given is just too big, and once a server collects all three orbs then WvW starts being like a snowball (aka steamrolling), with the team in possession of the orbs having an easier fight. In some (many?) cases, the orbs are lost during the night, so they are each day’s objective. Either decrease those bonuses or, probably better, replace them with the outmanned buff. Players would seek the orbs in order to have more magic find and karma (the xp buff would also help new players/alts leveling through PvP, something somewhat useful)

Also, having the orb buff in NPC’s would help against nightcapping (Warning: also affects the change mentioned earlier, so be careful with balancing. Also, the NPC’s should only be a little stronger, not completely stopping a night raid)

Another option is to make NPC’s stronger/more numerous (if I remember correctly the tier 3 structural upgrades are more effective and costly than the personnel upgrades: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Structure_upgrade). However imho that would be just a patch instead of a more lasting solution.

Note: read “night” as “morning” or “any other unusual time”.

If you support these ideas just post in this topic so there’s a better chance ArenaNet reads it^^

Warhammer Online had really strong NPC’s to stop small groups from keep capping. Not much moved around. I could support a little stronger, but not too much.

Point scaling would just skew the results and you’ll end up matched against tougher servers than you should be.

Here’s the thing. The points don’t matter. All they are for is to help determine which worlds you should be matched against. What does matter is potential points, i.e. how you are doing now, not how you were doing in the past.

There’s a big hint in the interface. Look at the top of your screen in WvW. That bar with 3 colors on it? That’s the potential point distribution, not the overall score. That number? Again potential points. Hover over it? Yup, more potential points.

Now, hit B. Sure, there’s the overall score, but what’s that beneath it? A massive pie chart of what? You guessed it, potential points.

The score is irrelevant. What do you get when the match resets after you’ve got the highest score? Nothing. Well, you might get a tougher fight for the next match, but that’s it. Sure you got some bonuses, maybe +10% gold and the like for a few days, but the 3rd place server still got +6%.

All of this has been discussed in detail. If you want a solution that deals with nightcapping, there’s better ones. Sliding population caps based on the number of players fielded by the two lower pop servers, sliding point value based on how much a side is outnumbering the others, etc.

Furthermore, I’m not even sure why you created this topic. There’s a sticky at the top for nightcapping discussion, and the first post specifically says:

This is not saying that we are against any adjustment to scoring, or against developing another mechanic to improve the capping system. This is simply saying that we will not be changing WvW based on some players’ idea of off time hours.

(Emphasis added.)

The “switch orbs with outmanned” was all over the first page of topics two weeks ago and still shows up about once a day now. There’s nothing wrong with orbs, they’re not overpowered. If you’d like to be up to date on this topic, it has been discussed at length before … Also here and here and here and…

I got a small relative discount on the cost of my digital copy of the game because the American dollar tanked so hard before I bought it the exchange rate was beneficial to me.

So while I feel some pity towards you for living where you do (in such an economically crippled country) I still paid full price for the game – your night is my day, and frankly you can go kitten.

How about no?

Everyone paid the same price for the game. So why should my contribution to WvW or ability to participate be diminished in any way simply because I work in an industry that doesn’t allow me to play at primetime?

Anyone asking for nightcapping to be removed or changed in any way is being incredibly selfish.