Guild Wars 2

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

(a) Coverage is not under the control of the individual player playing WvW at any specific time of the day.

Fact.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

It being “player-driven” is not the same as it being under “player control”.

Fact.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

The individual player has no control over the coverage disparity

As an individual: fact.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

and the negative impact it has on their play experience when they log into the game.

And I will play for them the smallest violin.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

(b) Competition is about pitting one’s skill against opponents in an environment in which every effort is made to eliminate all variables except skill.

sPvP is —-———> that way.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Using your logic, then it would be perfectly acceptable to have professional sports competitions

Oh, stop it.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Your arguments have been dismantled and found to rely on specious and self-serving reasoning.

Absolutely not. You’ve spent a lot of time saying nothing relevant toward WvW as it is or will ever be. You’ve stated some facts and then gotten lost on a tangent that has been well trodden, and is no more true now than it ever was.

I disagree without humility.

Coverage? This is WVW, why? The objective in WvW is PPT, to keep a good PPT rate you must have map control and able bodies to keep the objectives under your control. WvW sessions last for 1 week so the winner is the server that controls the most objectives the longest. People play in the “off hours” too so they need to be able to play. But you dont want this to affect your score? So my suggestion is go find guilds on other servers that want to help out that time frame for you.

Recruit thats simply my answer, all servers have done this to be able to assist their off hour time frame and this is the key to success. As a server populous its everyone’s responsibility to contribute to the PPT even doing some recruiting and training your off hour recruits adds up. It just takes a little effort on your part as a server, this issue which can be player fixed should not take up the dev’s hours to change because people refuse to try and make it work.

If the game really takes off in China, maybe they actually do something about this: the coverage/night capping issues are far worse in a situation where the game is limited to just China, with the overwhelming majority of players in the same time zone.

WrckAHoe.9827:

Coverage? This is WVW, why? The objective in WvW is PPT, to keep a good PPT rate you must have map control and able bodies to keep the objectives under your control. WvW sessions last for 1 week so the winner is the server that controls the most objectives the longest. People play in the “off hours” too so they need to be able to play.

Unfortunately not even this is true as we have 3-sided matches:
Assume the following coverage:
T 00-08 08-18 18-24
S1 2 5 10
S2 2 5 10
S3 6 3 5

Resulting in the following score distribution:
S1: 8h 5% | 16h 45%
S2: 8h 5% | 16h 45%
S3: 8h 90% | 16h 10%

1h = 4 ticks 8h = 32 ticks , 16h = 64 ticks

S1: 32*0.05*695+ 64*0.45*695= 1112 + 20016 = 21128
S2: 32*0.05*695+ 64*0.45*695= 1112 + 20016 = 21128
S3: 32*0.9*695 + 64*0.1*695 = 20016 + 4448 = 24464

S1 and S2 have more people in the match than S3, they fight more, and harder for their points and they even have clearly more coverage (16h) than S3 (8h), but S3 has a period where it has alone most coverage, while S1 and S2 share their coverage. That’s why S3 wins.
Artificial example? No, reality! SoS and Baruch Bay score’s worked very often exactly like that, when they won a match.

There is a second problem with current coverage: Matches are decided when fewest people are playing, not when most people are playing. Which means the majority is irrelevant, a minority rules. Bad game design for the majority of player.

Ew, gross. Imaginary numbers.

Has no basis in reality, whatsoever.

Edit: More specifically, it’s a tautology.

Virtute.8251:

Ew, gross. Imaginary numbers.

Has no basis in reality, whatsoever.

Edit: More specifically, it’s a tautology.

And was is this? No argument, not even a tautology, only some flames?

And here is the reality for SoS:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage/3466962
and here is the reality for BB:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/matchups/SFR-Kodash-Baruch/2254763

Dayra.7405:

Virtute.8251:

Ew, gross. Imaginary numbers.

Has no basis in reality, whatsoever.

Edit: More specifically, it’s a tautology.

And was is this? No argument, not even a tautology, only some flames?

A succinct statement on why the “points” will not be argued.

wvw isn’t meant to be a fair fight.

KOPPER.1458:

wvw isn’t meant to be a fair fight.

Yes I know, it’s meant to be a meaningless amusement (i.e. gold-sink) for casuals

Translated citation from ANet’s german community manager:
https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Verschwendung-von-Vorr-ten-oder-andere-Spielweise/205593
“Both PvP and PvE content are merged in the WvW to a combination. … WvW is not meant to be pure PvP, and even less it is meant as a competition-relevant eSport. …. each effort that is put into WvW should lose not sight to the goal: Guild Wars 2 and it’s WvW is a game mode designed for people to have fun.”

Quality doesn’t matter, amount of people doesn’t matter, not even longer coverage does matter.

The only question is: why does this need a league with price?
A lottery over all that finished the meta-achievement would do the same. (beside earning gems for transfers)

That German community manager is quite level headed. You should take their suggestions without the sarcasm and cynicism you applied.

Virtute.8251:

Ew, gross. Imaginary numbers.

I believe it’s more politically correct to call them ‘Complex’.

GoodWithGravy.8019:

Virtute.8251:

Ew, gross. Imaginary numbers.

I believe it’s more politically correct to call them ‘Complex’.

My deepest apologies and sympathies. Put away the calculator, and no one’s brain will be hurt.

Seigfried.5938:

Anet should close a number of the borderlands depending on the size of the WvW population during off hours.

Sure, that way we can guarantee to lose more population, brilliant idea.

All this horrible idea does to tell late night guild they are not welcome to come to your server.

Some of these ideas are just horrible. Why do you guys feel you need to make rules that punishes anyone not on your schedule or your mind set.

“Do you need map completion while you are on tonight” Nope, sorry pal, we closed 3/4 of WvW to make the complainers happy who are off sleeping, because they are so selfish they demand the game changes for their own personal convenience, the rest of you be danged,

Yeah, as an NA player, I never go to WvW for raid with the Dragonbrand Taiwanese guilds. Nope, not ever.

Should just shut the servers off when I log out. It’s only fair. I mean… Taiwanese people love China. It’s true!

For all the bluster I keep hearing in WvW about wanting good fights, good challenges, and to face players instead of PvE content in WvW, plenty of people seem quite happy with imbalanced fights, no challenge, and a day spent doing PvDoor.

PVDoor fits perfectly with casual gaming… just like candy crush.

akanibbles.6237:

PVDoor fits perfectly with casual gaming… just like candy crush.

But the league does not.

And given that most matches are imbalanced: No (visible) scoring would be better for casuals than the current scoring. These imbalanced scores turn-off many people.

But better balanced matches and a better scoring funtion that makes people’s impact more equal – independently when they play – would be even more stimulating to participate in WvW. The “PPT doesn’t matter” attitude was followed by a WvW-interest drop.

Break up the stupid 24/7 cycle. Follow EotM by making matches 4-6 hours long, call them frames. Your “Coverage” will then be who is playing in your frame.

Match servers based on scores during each of these frames. If you have a strong NA you get matched against other strong NAs, but your weak SEA goes up against other weak SEAs. So, you’ll have a winner for the NA frame, the SEA frame etc.

Break the 24 hours up however you like. Maybe leave a few hours unused (i.e. 4 5-hour matches) and move frames around a bit for people who would fall between static match times.

This way you get much less PvD or steam rolling (if you have 4 strong NAs you’d still get an unbalanced match). No more buying guilds to fill your tier’s off-hour slots to PvD to #1. No more blaming your underpopulated timezones for “losing the lead” and “not pulling their weight”.

I really like Mattargul’s take on this, even though I don’t think the 24/7 way is stupid.

It took me a few seconds to imagine how his idea can be dropped in on the current system without any other changes. It’s just a database query on the current score results..

Virtute.8251:

I really like Mattargul’s take on this, even though I don’t think the 24/7 way is stupid.

It took me a few seconds to imagine how his idea can be dropped in on the current system without any other changes. It’s just a database query on the current score results..

Well, the coverage that’s the issue only comes in the 24hr cycle where the same servers are locked together even though that overall Tier 1 server may only have SEA coverage equivalent to T3, when you reorder all servers based on their scoring during the SEA time frame.

Once you break up the 24hr cycle you can then rearrange servers based on where they would compete in the different “time frames”. So, server A may be overall in T1, but when you look at each time frame, they are actually T1 NA, T4 OCX, T3 SEA, T2 EU, or however you want to split the day. Once you distribute servers based on the ranking for each time frame, now server A’s OCX won’t get steam rolled , because the other T1 servers B and C have huge OCX population. Now server A’s OCX would play against servers that have similar populations, making it more fun for everyone, including the OCX on servers B and C, as they would now face a new third server that has a strong OCX, instead of grinding server A’s low-pop OCX in the dirt.

I agree, figuring the tiers out should be as simple as doing some database work. They have EOTM running for only a few hours, so they have thought about something similar. If you invest some more man-hours you could even keep the 7 day cycle, just sum the scores from each frame over the whole week.

But the 24hr locking together of servers needs to go to break the reign of coverage>everything.

@Mattargul: Yes! Thats why I like the proposal of time-sliced matches with different leagues per slice. Then Glicko does a better job, as it can the servers per slice, and no longer via their mean performance averaged over the slices.

Mattargul.9235:

you could even keep the 7 day cycle, just sum the scores from each frame over the whole week.

This is how I interpret the proposal.

There are ultimately 3 ways to implement it. I prefer the third one:

1. Increase match reset frequency, demarked by the “framing” of regional primetime spikes (there are essentially three spikes and three regions, so three frames of 8 hours each)
2. Consider each frame to to be a separate score, and simply calculate three different ranks, meaning we have split the one leaderboard into three, and that is all we’ve done.
3. Do #2 on week one, execute a match reset server-side between each frame, locking in the match assignments on the 7-day cycle. Points accumulate across the week, for each frame. On week two, and beyond, do this again but observe the differing ranks for each frame and assign a potentially different matching for each frame.

I read #3 as a summary of Mattargul’s proposal. As I understand it, ANet can implement this with their existing technology, with only configuration changes server-side. Their most significant work gameplay wise (which seems trivial as described) is to insert yesterday’s final score into a frame’s beginning score at the opening of each daily frame match.

The actual most significant work they’d have to do is to modify their third-party data API service to reflect this change. They’d have to, because it’s relied upon as part of the game service. It’s an incomplete delivery without that and other minor details we aren’t discussing here.

It introduces some quality-of-life issues, as well. An example is the fact that each 8 hour frame doesn’t get 8 hours of gameplay. They get about 7.5 hours, due to the time it takes for a WvW server cluster to end and then start a match.

Virtute’s #3 is the most advanced stage. It seems it’s all in use in ANet’s technology today, but would need to be rewired a bit.

I thought about preserving the score and as well as the state of the maps for each frame during a week long match. I don’t know how their data structures look like behind the curtain, so this may be very hard to implement.

Doing a total reset between the week long match of the same frame has pros and cons. Each time that frame’s time rolls around it’s a new start (though scores would still be added up for all 7 days), so you get that “reset night” feeling. But if you lag behind in your match there might be a temptation to throw in the towel and call it a night early, start fresh again tomorrow. As scores would still be added up for all seven days, this “throwing in the towel” would badly hurt your overall score for the week.

Also, eight hours is IMO too long for a person to see through from end to end. Being there start to finish for a match frame would give you the satisfaction and seeing it finished. It would also remove the pain of logging off wondering whether all your hard work gets undone, which is a common complaint of night-capping victims.

Though eight is probably still doable and it does have the advantage that a lot of people would be able to play in one match, instead of playing 2 hours at the end of a match and 2 at the start of the next one. And as Virtute mentions, there is always some time lost when matches roll over. It usually is pretty quick these days, but with the more complicated system proposed it might take quite a bit longer.

Mattargul.9235:

Virtute’s #3 is the most advanced stage. It seems it’s all in use in ANet’s technology today, but would need to be rewired a bit.

I thought about preserving the score and as well as the state of the maps for each frame during a week long match. I don’t know how their data structures look like behind the curtain, so this may be very hard to implement.

I can’t speak for the exact technology, but I recognize their terminology and can tell you this: devs use the word “shard” in reference to WvW home servers, and if their using it literally it means they are using a document-oriented database engine, not a relational one. It also means that world/home server separation is server clustering, and that they scale each “world” by adding or subtracting cluster members as needed.

That’s part of why I’ve argued for deletion of the smallest world servers. They’re technologically and socially redundant today.

Mattargul.9235:

Also, eight hours is IMO too long for a person to see through from end to end. Being there start to finish for a match frame would give you the satisfaction and seeing it finished. It would also remove the pain of logging off wondering whether all your hard work gets undone, which is a common complaint of night-capping victims.

I choose 3 intervals of 8 hours because we have 3 logical regions: Americas, Europe, Asia. Oceania falls inside the Asian timeframe, because it is longitudinally in the same region of the globe.

I disagree with the bulk of the night-cap complaint, because I disagree fundamentally with the mindset from which it speaks. We aren’t entitled in any way to what that mindset expects. I think this proposal is interesting and would be amusing to play within. I don’t argue for it on terms of temporal fairness.

It’s more reasonable to give the wider 8 hour range, allowing a broader range of participants to contribute to that frame’s progress. The narrower 6 hour or 4 hour ranges increase down-time (an additional 30 minutes for each frame added), and each frame also spawns a separate leaderboard and set of glicko2 calculations. This also complicates the argument of naming a dominant server on the whole.

Virtute.8251:

That’s part of why I’ve argued for deletion of the smallest world servers. They’re technologically and socially redundant today.

That can still happen. It’s a separate issue, but neither precludes the other.

I choose 3 intervals of 8 hours because we have 3 logical regions: Americas, Europe, Asia. Oceania falls inside the Asian timeframe, because it is longitudinally in the same region of the globe.

Makes sense. I’m not married to the 4-6 hour periods, though I wouldn’t want it longer than 8 or it would start to defeat the purpose of the exercise.

I disagree with the bulk of the night-cap complaint, (…) I don’t argue for it on terms of temporal fairness.

Well, this is – for me – about fairness is so far as it balances the competing populations, at least better than it’s working now. This seems like a goal everyone can agree on. That’s what all the shouting about “destacking” or “put your big-boy recruiting pants on” is about, balancing populations. If your timezone fights 2 servers that have roughly (based on the score your population scores during that timezone) the same amount of people.

The variable PPT argument has been bandied about a lot. Some reasonable solutions have emerged, so if ANet wants to go that way there is food for thought there. However, ANet has said they don’t want to change the PPT numbers because they don’t want to (paraphrased) have one player’s time be more valuable in points than another player’s time…, totally ignoring that this is exactly what’s happening with the current 24/7 system. Anyway, back to the topic…

It’s more reasonable to give the wider 8 hour range, allowing a broader range of participants to contribute to that frame’s progress. The narrower 6 hour or 4 hour ranges increase down-time (an additional 30 minutes for each frame added),

True about the down time, there’d be more of it, and more churn for players, switching from one map to a new one. Smaller time frames have the obvious benefit of greater granularity to match appropriate servers, improving the play experience once you get going.

and each frame also spawns a separate leaderboard and set of glicko2 calculations.

Additional calculations are just that – additional calculations. If ANet can figure it out for 8 hour time frames I’m sure they can do it for 4 or 6 hour frames.

This also complicates the argument of naming a dominant server on the whole.

“Dominant server” would now morph into “Dominant server at time frame X”, which is something most players have already understood, though the current scoring makes this anecdotal.

Wholly chao! This nonsense thread is still going?

Solution: Transfer to BG and all your worries will end and you no longer need to grieve PvF.

Less QQ more PewPew.

Mattargul.9235:

Virtute.8251:

That’s part of why I’ve argued for deletion of the smallest world servers. They’re technologically and socially redundant today.

That can still happen. It’s a separate issue, but neither precludes the other.

They don’t, but I think that this is an acceptable alternative, largely because it’s easier to accomplish without hard changes to the system.

Variable PPT is a silly idea.

6 hour frames is the sweet spot. 8 is too long and irregular: Asia/Oceania is too big to contain in an 8 hour frame. 6 hour frames retains the UTC 0 reset scheduling.

This week’s Kaineng-Ferguson-Darkhaven match is one of the biggest timeframe swinging matches, but it’s also one of the most balanced for 24-hour matches. That complicates justifying the change with a numbers argument.

At a glance of a few of this week’s matches, it seems to me that server performance is more normal across timeframes than many seem to believe, and at the very least it is unlikely that a timeframed leaderboard is going to be significantly different from the 24-hour one. It will be different, but the difference is less than the hype says.

That doesn’t mean that framing and splitting the matches will not lead to significantly improved balance of matches. It means that the improvement is relative to the fact that we just have too many servers on the board, creating too much distance between relative team populations.

So easy to fix this on off hours the point is 50% lower than normal.

Night capers still get points for there server and get all there WxP champloot for there pve/karma train,but are not the only winning factor.

Virtute.8251:

(…)
This week’s Kaineng-Ferguson-Darkhaven match is one of the biggest timeframe swinging matches, but it’s also one of the most balanced for 24-hour matches.
(…)

That might be, but that is not the norm, that the high and low population times just line up such that they all cancel each other out.

And worst of all, this match is likely very little fun, because the huge swings in PPT leads indicates everyone is just PvD’ing to get their points.

The ulterior motive of balancing the population based on time zone/frames/ X hour blocks is to have fun again, because you are facing about equal populations, which will incidentally result in about equal PPT scoring.

I have to admit, this entire idea is absurd. This is ridiculous QQing here.
“Whoa is me !!!! My server lost a keep after I went to bed, I mad bro…..I go on forums and demand they rebuild the entire WvW experience to suit my needs. Whoa is me !!!! Heck with the rest of you on the other 55 servers. I deserve for them to redesign the entire game around my personal wants…….Whoa is me !!!! I don’t care that it will have a negative impact on the other servers and degrade their experience……Whoa is me !!!!

No matter what you do, servers with more coverage will still win.

And this silly idea of less score on off-peak times… How people can be so selfish??

Ansau.7326:

No matter what you do, servers with more coverage will still win.

And this silly idea of less score on off-peak times… How people can be so selfish??

Any reasonable person is not advocating for a change such as this.

However, it’s silly to think that the system we’re currently stuck with is the best way to go about it. If they changed the way PPT functions, such as earning points for a capture rather than over time for holding said objective, it could potentially go a long way in reducing the dominance of PvDoor coverage wars.

I also think that we don’t play the best system, and I’m also more on the change of also earning points over time for holding objectives, and even with upgrading them. Or change the frequency of PPT.

But all these suggestions of time frames, off peak times and such would only hurt WvW, making it purely brainless zombie blobby, and coverage would still be the most reliable way to win, as EoTM is.

People need to understand that this is a global, worldwide or whatever you wanna call it game. Your daytime is somewhere else night, same with off peaks and primetimes. And the most important thing, your time is not more important than others…

Ansau.7326:

But all these suggestions of time frames, off peak times and such would only hurt WvW,

I would not hurt WvW on all server, but it would definitely hurt Baruch bay’s score

Dayra.7405:

Ansau.7326:

But all these suggestions of time frames, off peak times and such would only hurt WvW,

I would not hurt WvW on all server, but it would definitely hurt Baruch bay’s score

It would affect all servers, have’t you seen that BB also has off peak times? Nowadays, other servers can take back part of the ppt lost during nights when our maps are empty. And even more, we have to recover all the lost ppt during weekends. You clearly don’t know nothing about BB ppt problems…

So, in the end, it’s a silly idea that would do nothing more than making WvW more crap than it is, and people more upset…

If it would lead to an equal cut over all, no one would have a reason to complain.

And for all that love difficult fights it is a big gain, that off-time PVD would finally no longer dominate fights.

I am in favor of making the fight people happier, over keeping the off-time PvDler decisive.

Ansau.7326:

And this silly idea of less score on off-peak times… How people can be so selfish??

For the purposes of this thread we all agree on this and have moved past it.

Ansau.7326:

(…)But all these suggestions of time frames, off peak times and such would only hurt WvW, making it purely brainless zombie blobby, and coverage would still be the most reliable way to win, as EoTM is.

EotM uses the shorter “frames”, but it doesn’t actually care about the matching. It just throws the colors together, so this is not what is being suggested here.

My suggestions is to actually look at how many people are playing on a server at a particular time (which is approximated by the score during that time) and match up based on that. That way, your 50 OCX time players will be matched against a server that also just fields 50 OCX players, while your 500 NA players will be matched against a server that also has 500 players, which in all likelihood will be a different server than your OCX fought.

I admit, my assumption is that we all want to have fun in WvW and that fun can be best achieved by fighting about equal numbers.

People need to understand that this is a global, worldwide or whatever you wanna call it game. Your daytime is somewhere else night, same with off peaks and primetimes. And the most important thing, your time is not more important than others…

My problem is not that we are playing 24 hours per day. It’s we are are playing 24 hours/day against the same server which was picked based on a score that was averaged over the whole 24 hours for seven days. (I’ll leave out the seven days from now on, because that’s incidental and can be easily handled.).

This averaging glosses over times where the competing servers field different amounts of players, which I assume is not fun for either side for very long. Running over 10 people with your 50 gets old after the third time, and the 10 probably won’t even show up that often. As an aside, note also that the time these 10 put in is actually valued much less because they have next to no impact vs the opposing “zerg”.

To allow everyone to face about even odds without forcing players to relocate, we break up the 24 hours a into smaller segments (“frames” or whatever) and score and match up each of these separately. You are still competing for your server, but your opponent during time X might be different from time Y during the same day.

This is conceptually not any different from what we are doing now, scoring servers and matching them up based on that score, just on a shorter time scale. 4, 6 or 8 hours vs 24 hours.

You may still end up with some uneven matches based on player fluctuations in one time frame, but much less so than if you treat all time zones together as one block.

Mattargul.9235:

EotM uses the shorter “frames”, but it doesn’t actually care about the matching. It just throws the colors together, so this is not what is being suggested here.

I wasn’t referring to EoTM about format, but how it’s played.

Mattargul.9235:

My suggestions is to actually look at how many people are playing on a server at a particular time (which is approximated by the score during that time) and match up based on that. That way, your 50 OCX time players will be matched against a server that also just fields 50 OCX players, while your 500 NA players will be matched against a server that also has 500 players, which in all likelihood will be a different server than your OCX fought.

It’s impossible to be playing with equal numbers. To do so you need to change WvW core. Even if you put frames of 1 hour, there’ll be servers that will win others cause they have more people.

Mattargul.9235:

I admit, my assumption is that we all want to have fun in WvW and that fun can be best achieved by fighting about equal numbers.

You should remember that WvW and equal, balanced have a hard time to be friends. There’s nearly no possibilities to have a fair fight when there’s a high max player cap per map.

Mattargul.9235:

My problem is not that we are playing 24 hours per day. It’s we are are playing 24 hours/day against the same server which was picked based on a score that was averaged over the whole 24 hours for seven days. (I’ll leave out the seven days from now on, because that’s incidental and can be easily handled.).

This is a 24/7 competition, it’s like a war. It allows servers to do strategies to potentate their strengths and minimize their weakness. Lowering the amount of time facing the same server would destroy this.
You may not find it, but I thing this is the beauty of WvW. Servers that decide to put alarm clock to do massive rushes, people finding ways to do something to cover the most weakness times, some alliances like JQ and TC against BG would not be possible… It feels like you’re playing a massive war and you’re just a soldier of an enormous army. It makes me always being looking at Mos or other WvW API’s because I can’t be playing it 24h.

Mattargul.9235:

This averaging glosses over times where the competing servers field different amounts of players, which I assume is not fun for either side for very long. Running over 10 people with your 50 gets old after the third time, and the 10 probably won’t even show up that often. As an aside, note also that the time these 10 put in is actually valued much less because they have next to no impact vs the opposing “zerg”.

To allow everyone to face about even odds without forcing players to relocate, we break up the 24 hours a into smaller segments (“frames” or whatever) and score and match up each of these separately. You are still competing for your server, but your opponent during time X might be different from time Y during the same day.

This is conceptually not any different from what we are doing now, scoring servers and matching them up based on that score, just on a shorter time scale. 4, 6 or 8 hours vs 24 hours.

You may still end up with some uneven matches based on player fluctuations in one time frame, but much less so than if you treat all time zones together as one block.

What you don’t see is you cannot control matchups based on coverage, cause is a thing you can’t control when thousands of people are involved.
Even in frames of 4 hours, there’s room for a server to have massive coverage and no coverage in the same frame.

Lowering more? Then you lose the essence of WvW and it becomes a massive sPvP, where only cares PvD (yes, all you want to fix) and roaming would be extinguished.

Also, as frames become shorter, more time is wasted recreating the matchups. If nowadays we need 15-20 minutes to reorganize them, how much we would need if they are stacked with the same frames? And how do you calculate the coverage, week per week, day per day, frame per frame?
The more you want to frame, the bigger is the room to have unbalanced matchups, because players don’t play it as a job, so they may play one day an another not. Some EU servers are flagged, and events like football, holidays or such have a huge impact on server ppt. And in NA, it seems there’s a lot of population fluctuation between servers.

In the latest CDI the concept of splitting up a match into time frames or slices was proposed (by the devs, no less)…and quickly shot down. This because it would still fail to address coverage issues. The server with the better coverage would still largely dominate; they would just do so in each slice.

The modified proposal put forth of pitting servers against different servers in each time frame based on relative coverage won’t fly either. In the same CDI, it was made crystal clear to the devs that server pride still exists and they completely backed off from their food-for-thought suggestion of mergers or an EotM-style match up for WvW.

This is pertinent to the modified proposal as the server pride issue isn’t just about one’s server remaining cohesive and fighting together as a single community. It’s also about fighting against the same opponent throughout the week’s match. Players of this mindset don’t want to face server X in the morning, server Y in the afternoon, and server Z overnight; they want to face server X the whole week (but with some modifications made where coverage alone does not guarantee a win).

The devs quickly stopped pursuing all such suggestions of time slices and changes to the servers and match up structure. In the face of that, the options for addressing coverage disparities grows slim. So we’re left with the current situation which those on the losing end of the coverage wars find intolerable but where none of the following are acceptable alternatives:

• Devaluing the points contribution of any single player or a server as a whole.

• Breaking up, merging, or otherwise changing the current server structure.

• Dividing the matches into time frames or slices.

Think about what the real problem is. As disheartening as it may be to see the majority of the map flipped to an opposing server’s color due to coverage disparity, that’s not the issue. The issue is this situation passively awards points to the server with the greater coverage and has no counter-play options available to the outnumbered server. Even if the outnumbered server makes an effort, ten players trying to ninja a tower or keep are just going to get steamrolled by the opposition’s 50 player zerg.

When players log in and are faced with the situation just described, they’re powerless to change it due to the game’s current scoring system. Their actions are rendered meaningless. Under such circumstances many will choose not to play WvW or will play by pursuing individual achievements such as killing sentries.

These actions do not represent playing to the objectives of the WvW game mode and, in that context, are pointless (e.g. it doesn’t matter how many sentries they kill, it won’t significantly impact the score or counter the coverage disparity). Devaluing a player’s actions to the point of irrelevancy is not fun and runs counter to what a game should aspire to be.

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In light of all the above, that is why I suggested changing how PPT is rewarded; through capturing actively defended objectives and earning increasing PPT the more upgrades are completed at a fortification. This greatly reduces the advantage inherent in earning points passively and grants the outnumbered server a counter-play option.

Those 10 players will likely never manage to ninja a tower or keep. However, with the revised scoring system, if they play smart and split up into several smaller teams, they can flip camps and kill Dolyaks in an effort to prevent supply from ever reaching their enemy’s fortifications. With no supply, no upgrades will be completed at those structures, denying the opponent PPT. The outnumbered players can now make an impact on the score; their actions have value.

It will take effort on the outnumbered players’ part, but that’s as it should be; players should have to work to achieve a goal in the game rather than being passively rewarded. The same holds true for the server with the coverage advantage. They won’t earn points unless they upgrade (not entirely true; they can also earn points from capturing actively defended fortifications). To upgrade, they will need supply. If that supply is being cut-off by the outnumbered server, they will have to take action to counter the counter by guarding their camps and yaks and/or hunting down the outnumbered players.

In other words, by changing the method by which PPT is earned, players actions on both sides have value and contribute in a measurable way to the success of their server (as measured by PPT earned or the denial of same to an opponent). Furthermore, the outnumbered players now have an option for countering the server with greater coverage, where before none existed. Lastly, players from opposing servers are brought into greater conflict with one another as they battle over the earning potential of fortifications.

This last point carries advantages even when servers are evenly matched. If a server places any value at all on PPT (and most do, despite the oft recited, “We could care less about PPT.”), they will have to devote some portion of their forces to guarding their territory at least until one upgrade is completed at a fortification. The opposing servers, aware of this, will want to prevent the first from completing that upgrade. They will attempt to disrupt supply lines or capture the fortification before the upgrade is completed.

This will lead to more battles for territory as opposed to the smash-and-grab tactic employed by the karma trains. Players will be brought into close conflict rather than avoiding one another in an effort to complete the most efficient circling of the map. Servers would then play more closely to the objectives of WvW rather than using it as just one more farming run.

A counter-argument to the above is players avoid upgrading because it’s a gold sink with little to no reward. If PPT is going to be tied – at least in part – to the upgrading of fortifications, then this will have to be addressed. Upgrade gold costs will have to be reduced, the currency used to purchase them changed, or the cost eliminated altogether (given there already exists a cost in time and effort, this is not an unwarranted suggestion). If purchasing upgrades with coins is to remain in the game (I understand the need for gold sinks), then additional incentives beyond earning PPT will need to be added; WXP and guild influence are a couple options that come to mind.

BTW, I looked back some 30 pages of WvW forum threads, but didn’t find your CDI. I guess this was a long time ago? So, I have to go with what’s here…

“Think about what the real problem is.” I did mention what I think the real problem is. 10 people getting zerged down by 50. The PPT stuff is all incidental to that, a consequence of that imbalance. Once you have run over the opposing force you attack whatever structure they hold, because that’s the only thing to do, well, that and killing the vet ice wurm.

You think the PPT imbalance is the problem and fiddling with how points are awarded will fix things. I don’t think the 10 guys will have more fun chasing after yaks and preventing the other server from ticking at 450 instead of only 400, than they would have if they would be fighting another server that can only field 10 guys.

Server pride? Lots of people frequently hop servers, so I’m not sure how immutable this is. It’s also note the first time the devs have done something the vocal people on the forum have disagreed with.

Just slicing up the 24 hour period alone would be as good as rematching servers every 24 hours, i.e. not at all. You have to do both.

Yes, if you have only one super server that has queues 200 deep for 24 hour the whole week long, then they would probably still have a coverage advantage. But looking beyond BG, a lot of servers have fairly distinct “prime times” and “off hours”. Outside the weekend, few people will play more than 1 or two slices anyway, so they would be facing the same 1, possibly 2 servers anyway.

Matching servers based on their strong times instead of locking them together for 24 hours equalizes population, which IMO will lead to better (=more fun) matches.

Only awarding PPT after structures have been upgraded wouldn’t make it much more likely for smaller groups being able to stop the run away points from “night-capping”. I have seen yak escorts for 30+ players, and this wasn’t TC’s yak parade either. Getting a few yaks through if you really, really want to isn’t that hard. This possibility of stopping PPT through some suicide runs at yaks doesn’t strike me too much as “counter play”.

Moreover, even in the current play (ok, I haven’t been in WvW in like 6months, but this was at least true back then) you wouldn’t aggressively push out until your home keep has been upgraded to at least better walls and doors, so this is already in place and obviously not shaking things up.

Karma trains do not care about territory or PPT. They care about the immediate reward you get for capturing an objective. Not sure why you think your suggestion would affect them?

Mattargul.9235:

BTW, I looked back some 30 pages of WvW forum threads, but didn’t find your CDI. I guess this was a long time ago? So, I have to go with what’s here…

It’s the most recent of Devon’s WvW ones to date.

Devon’s proposal, based on the thread at the time, was shortening the whole match, not dividing longer matches in the way we’ve discussed here.

It did get shot down, and Devon’s summary recognition of that reasoned the rejection as being for the players’ enjoyment of the longer week-long struggle. The timeframing we’ve proposed does that, solving complaints that lead to the shorter match suggestion and rejection.

Virtute.8251:

Mattargul.9235:

BTW, I looked back some 30 pages of WvW forum threads, but didn’t find your CDI. I guess this was a long time ago? So, I have to go with what’s here…

It’s the most recent of Devon’s WvW ones to date.

Ok, found it via the stickied CDI thread.

Devon’s proposal, based on the thread at the time, was shortening the whole match, not dividing longer matches in the way we’ve discussed here.

It did get shot down, and Devon’s summary recognition of that reasoned the rejection as being for the players’ enjoyment of the longer week-long struggle. The timeframing we’ve proposed does that, solving complaints that lead to the shorter match suggestion and rejection.

Yea, just shortening the match wouldn’t do squat, so I guess I would have argued against that, too.

But lemme see if I can find that in there…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/

[edit]Ok, so this was 5 months ago, cough cough. I looked over his responses. There was only one mention of breaking up the 24 hour cycle, but it only affected scoring. Lots of talk about spies and transfers to the winningest server, aka bandwagoning, apparently.

Devon didn’t mention anything like we have been discussing here, so I guess color me “hopeful”?

Mattargul.9235:

Ok, so this was 5 months ago, cough cough. I looked over his responses. There was only one mention of breaking up the 24 hour cycle, but it only affected scoring. Lots of talk about spies and transfers to the winningest server, aka bandwagoning, apparently.

Devon didn’t mention anything like we have been discussing here, so I guess color me “hopeful”?

It was the EoTM CDI, regarding applying its technology to other WvW maps: March 14th. Yes, color you hopeful for this idea. Devon wants to do something about this.

DevonCarver.5370:

5) There was a very wide ranging discussion about match times. I think we came to the consensus that there isn’t a consensus, see what I did there?, about if shorter matches would be good. I think there is some room to experiment, but it does seem like people feel there is value to the length that WvW currently runs.

That’s why I’m helping to flesh out and prove it. It’s working, plausible, and interesting. It’s directly in line with the type of changes they’ve been willing to attempt thus far. It compromises well between the opposing views of that CDI.

Mattargul.9235:

BTW, I looked back some 30 pages of WvW forum threads, but didn’t find your CDI. I guess this was a long time ago? So, I have to go with what’s here…

It was the Collaborative Development: Edge of the Mists thread. It started off discussing which features of EotM would we like to see implemented in WvW. From that launching point, the discussion ranges far and wide on topics related to WvW but which had little to do with EotM.

Mattargul.9235:

“Think about what the real problem is.” I did mention what I think the real problem is. 10 people getting zerged down by 50. The PPT stuff is all incidental to that, a consequence of that imbalance. Once you have run over the opposing force you attack whatever structure they hold, because that’s the only thing to do, well, that and killing the vet ice wurm.

You think the PPT imbalance is the problem and fiddling with how points are awarded will fix things. I don’t think the 10 guys will have more fun chasing after yaks and preventing the other server from ticking at 450 instead of only 400, than they would have if they would be fighting another server that can only field 10 guys.

I do agree with your assessment above; up to a point. It would most certainly be more fun, in my own estimation, to fight against somewhat more even odds (though I do love a good underdog comeback at the last second; in both an individual fight and a week-long WvW match).

In light of the resistance on the part of others to matches based on time slices or changing which servers are faced throughout the day, any such rebalancing schemes are unlikely to gain much traction. So, without throwing my support in with one or the other, I’m simply looking for a workable solution which – though it may not balance the match directly – balances how points are earned in the face of imbalance.

Though less than ideal, it does permit players to still make a difference during those times when they’re outnumbered rather than their efforts being completely invalidated. It’s the difference between, “They own everything and we’re outnumbered. This sucks. What’s the point of playing since we can’t score anything. Let’s go do a dungeon or sumthin’.” and “They own everything and we’re outnumbered. This sucks. But at least we can deny them points until our day crew logs on. Maybe we can still catch up in points if we really try.”

Mattargul.9235:

Server pride? Lots of people frequently hop servers, so I’m not sure how immutable this is. It’s also note the first time the devs have done something the vocal people on the forum have disagreed with.

Server pride was in evidence enough that it led to this closing remark by the dev:

“2) Perhaps the largest of those things is the fact that the lack of world identity is a negative for a lot of folks.”

This is in reference to the lack of world identity in EotM and how players were resistant to losing that identity in WvW should a similar system be implemented there.

Yes, some people frequently hop servers; but some don’t.

Mattargul.9235:

Just slicing up the 24 hour period alone would be as good as rematching servers every 24 hours, i.e. not at all. You have to do both.

Yes, if you have only one super server that has queues 200 deep for 24 hour the whole week long, then they would probably still have a coverage advantage. But looking beyond BG, a lot of servers have fairly distinct “prime times” and “off hours”. Outside the weekend, few people will play more than 1 or two slices anyway, so they would be facing the same 1, possibly 2 servers anyway.

Yes, this would likely be true.

(continued)

(continued)

Mattargul.9235:

Matching servers based on their strong times instead of locking them together for 24 hours equalizes population, which IMO will lead to better (=more fun) matches.

However, returning back to the server pride thing, it goes beyond simply, “Who am I facing in my time slice.” It’s about the server as a whole prevailing against the same two servers for the entire week; even if an individual player isn’t playing the whole time. It’s in the back of their head at work or at school, “I wonder how my team is doing against server X and server Y?” and sneaking a peak on MOS Millenium (sic) or elsewhere to check their server’s performance against the same opponents. It’s the carryover outside of the actual time spent playing.

It’s also about learning the same two opponents’ strategies and tactics throughout the week and across times. This allows a server to formulate responses and counters which can be carried on as one commander logs off and hands the reins to a commander just logging in. It’s the continuity of purpose and action for the entire week that brings a server community together in a common cause.

Split it up, instead, and it becomes EotM with server names substituting for team colors; something to which those who subscribe to server pride are very much opposed.

Mattargul.9235:

Only awarding PPT after structures have been upgraded wouldn’t make it much more likely for smaller groups being able to stop the run away points from “night-capping”. I have seen yak escorts for 30+ players, and this wasn’t TC’s yak parade either. Getting a few yaks through if you really, really want to isn’t that hard. This possibility of stopping PPT through some suicide runs at yaks doesn’t strike me too much as “counter play”.

Moreover, even in the current play (ok, I haven’t been in WvW in like 6months, but this was at least true back then) you wouldn’t aggressively push out until your home keep has been upgraded to at least better walls and doors, so this is already in place and obviously not shaking things up.

Fair enough. However, if there’s too much resistance to normalizing populations due to factors already discussed, the alternatives become fewer in number. With the suggestion I’ve made there exists at least some form of counter-play option where none currently exists.

Admittedly not an ideal option; I’d prefer to do what you hope to achieve with your suggestion and log in to see a fairly evenly matched battlefield (numerically speaking). I concede, though, that’s not likely to happen for all the reasons covered both in this thread and elsewhere; there will probably always be coverage disparities in WvW. With that as a given, I’m simply looking for ways to prevent coverage from being the sole deciding factor when it comes to PPT by diminishing and countering the passive awarding of points in the absence of action and/or investment.

Mattargul.9235:

Karma trains do not care about territory or PPT. They care about the immediate reward you get for capturing an objective. Not sure why you think your suggestion would affect them?

The PPT changes I’m recommending won’t stop karma trains. What will stop them is contained in my original suggestion (taken as a whole, but spread throughout several other threads): the elimination of rewards that can be converted directly or indirectly to gold when capturing empty, undefended fortifications. The only rewards possible would be personal experience, WXP, and account bound items like Empyreal Fragments.

With regards to the coverage disparity side of my suggestion, though it doesn’t stop karma trains, it does stop a server from amassing a runaway score from the actions of players who aren’t even there to play WvW. If the k-train captures empty towers and keeps, but then abandons them without upgrading, that action will not earn their server any points.

The server which previously had a numbers/coverage advantage due to their karma trains will no longer gain PPT from that source. The score then becomes a more accurate reflection of the conflicts between players who are there to play to the objectives of WvW .

With the advent of EotM, there’s now a play space for those who prefer k-training (“play your way” and all that). Now that they’ve been given that space, perhaps its time to give equal space to those who want to play a deeper game of strategy and tactics in WvW. Eliminate the incentive to k-train in WvW and it will resolve itself.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

(though I do love a good underdog comeback at the last second; in both an individual fight and a week-long WvW match).

Yes, this can be fun, but it usually comes with a cost, like pulling overtime. That is not really a long term strategy though.

(..)I’m simply looking for a workable solution which – though it may not balance the match directly – balances how points are earned in the face of imbalance.

Fair enough, I get that. I’m just not sure that it would make the matches “fun” as I understand it.

(…)
This is in reference to the lack of world identity in EotM and how players were resistant to losing that identity in WvW should a similar system be implemented there.
(…)

I have the impression this was more focused on EotM design of putting people from all servers together based on their color. I can see the loss of server identity there and why it’s not that well received. We’re trying for something that sufficiently different, though.

Also, how much good does your server pride do for you in those 10 v 50 fights, compared to having 10 v 10 or 10 v 12 fights even if these guys come from a different server than what your servier fought 5 hours ago?

However, returning back to the server pride thing, it goes beyond simply, “Who am I facing in my time slice.” (…)

Hmm, ok. I see your point, though maybe I’m less convinced how much weight it would have versus the hoped for benefits.

(…)Admittedly not an ideal option; I’d prefer to do what you hope to achieve with your suggestion and log in to see a fairly evenly matched battlefield (numerically speaking). I concede, though, that’s not likely to happen for all the reasons covered both in this thread and elsewhere; there will probably always be coverage disparities in WvW. With that as a given, I’m simply looking for ways to prevent coverage from being the sole deciding factor when it comes to PPT by diminishing and countering the passive awarding of points in the absence of action and/or investment.(…)

Well, any change that addresses the issue should be welcome right now.

Changing the PPT game to make it seem less hopeless might work to motivate more people to play.

I hope that there is the will to push for a – IMHO – better solution to actually make fighting more fun for all tiers on a consistent basis. Even with the possible downsides, it seems vastly better than what we have now. (cut short gotta run)

So many people telling to “go recruit or transfer”, not seeing the problem. To me it seems like ArenaNet always saw World versus World as some kind of PvE/PvP mixture, placing living world events in there once in a while to make it more ‘interesting’ for the lovers of PvE, but I think WvW could be such an amazing competitive gamemode if ArenaNet actually cared. Maybe WvW turned out differently than they hoped and they don’t feel like spending time on it anymore, but if so, please tell so the people who are eager to help improve this gamemode can stop caring as well. I think the core of the problem really is the coverage as the topic title suggests. Even though it’s pretty tough to find a solution for a problem like this, I believe it’s not impossible. There’s so many people here giving suggestions and trying to help you guys any way they can, but it feels like talking to a reinforced wall…

Thuron.5648:

So many people telling to “go recruit or transfer”, not seeing the problem. To me it seems like ArenaNet always saw World versus World as some kind of PvE/PvP mixture, placing living world events in there once in a while to make it more ‘interesting’ for the lovers of PvE, but I think WvW could be such an amazing competitive gamemode if ArenaNet actually cared. Maybe WvW turned out differently than they hoped and they don’t feel like spending time on it anymore, but if so, please tell so the people who are eager to help improve this gamemode can stop caring as well. I think the core of the problem really is the coverage as the topic title suggests. Even though it’s pretty tough to find a solution for a problem like this, I believe it’s not impossible. There’s so many people here giving suggestions and trying to help you guys any way they can, but it feels like talking to a reinforced wall…

And, sadly, I think coverage will continue to be a problem until ArenaNet can find a method to monetize WvW that doesn’t rely on server transfer fees.

I would hazard a guess that – taken as a whole – WvW players spend less on the trading post for cosmetic and quality-of-life items than their PvE compatriots. So some bean counter crunched numbers, ran database queries, put together some spread sheets, and sold the idea of transfer fees as a way of making money from WvW to someone with executive level decision making power.

Until that changes, servers will continue to remain stacked and coverage will remain grossly imbalanced. Any suggestion that fails to take this into account – no matter how reasonable or logical it may appear on paper – won’t be implemented.

Now someone will come out of the woodwork to try and shoot down the above by arguing that higher transfer fee costs are a disincentive to transferring to a high population server. My response to that is two-fold. First, it depends; they can be a disincentive if the cost outweighs the benefit. Currently they do not.

Secondly, this is by design; the transfer costs are carefully calculated to not exceed the perceived benefit of transferring to a high population server. There’s this mistaken belief that ArenaNet is using transfer fees as a way of changing player behavior; using high costs to dissuade players from transferring to high population servers. Instead, ArenaNet is simply hitching their monetizing wagon to the player exodus to higher population servers, charging the maximum transfer fee they believe they can reasonably get away with. Transfer fees aren’t there to change player behavior; transfer fees are there to profit from player behavior.

Sure, they make concessions by allowing low cost or even free transfers to lower population servers. They know full well, though, that few will avail themselves of that opportunity. Most will still flock to the high population servers. They will do this because ArenaNet set WvW up such that this brings greater perceived benefit (better odds of earning digital shinies); all the while profiting from transfer fees.

So, yes, ArenaNet did put in place incentives to manipulate player behavior; but the manipulation was making high population servers more attractive to the majority of WvW players. The transfer fees, by contrast, are just the means by which they profit from that manipulation.

This isn’t to paint ArenaNet as an evil corporation who cares for nothing but profit. I’m sure there are developers genuinely invested in seeing WvW’s potential fully realized who rankle under what the scoring system, server stacking, coverage disparities, rewards, and transfer fees have done to their beloved game mode. Unfortunately, they’re not the ones calling the shots; yet they still have to tow the company line if they want to continue earning a paycheck.

Even so, make no mistake: WvW is what it is today through very carefully calculated decisions on ArenaNet’s part. From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense; the old, “they need to make money” defense. However, there are ways to make money in the short-term which – over the long-term – don’t work out so well. So it’s up to ArenaNet (or their parent company NCSoft) to decide just how long they expect to profit from WvW. If only over the short-term, then they’re going about it the right way. If, on the other hand, they desire long-term profits, then the current WvW monetization system is short-sighted and not sustainable.

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