Guild Wars 2

*Squashes forum bug

The 3-2-1 point system was good and gave us some of the closest matches, including one where all servers were tied with one tick to go.

1st Elona Reach 4 583
2nd Drakkar Lake 4 489
3rd Gunnar’s Hold 4 487

And a lot of fighting for the second place, some so close that the website got the final placement wrong.

1st Gunnar’s Hold 7 259
2nd Drakkar Lake 6 036
3rd Elona Reach 6 025

1st Gunnar’s Hold 5 560
2nd Elona Reach 5 338
3rd Drakkar Lake 5 290

Don’t artificially turn the two trailing servers against the leading one. The current matchups already show that the idea doesn’t work. The dominant servers win by an even bigger margin and the trailing servers might as well not show up at all. It doesn’t make any sense. Plus, you already got a similar system in place with the server links.

The 3-2-1 point system works and was a good step in the right direction. The next step should be trying to even out the server populations, because in the end that’s what contributes most to even matchups.

• Give players extra rewards if their server does well with fewer players (more points relative to player numbers).
• Make transfers from high population to low population servers cheaper.

Asator.3065:

The 3-2-1 point system was good and gave us some of the closest matches, including one where all servers were tied with one tick to go.

1st Elona Reach 4 583
2nd Drakkar Lake 4 489
3rd Gunnar’s Hold 4 487

And a lot of fighting for the second place, some so close that the website got the final placement wrong.

1st Gunnar’s Hold 7 259
2nd Drakkar Lake 6 036
3rd Elona Reach 6 025

1st Gunnar’s Hold 5 560
2nd Elona Reach 5 338
3rd Drakkar Lake 5 290

Don’t artificially turn the two trailing servers against the leading one. The current matchups already show that the idea doesn’t work. The dominant servers win by an even bigger margin and the trailing servers might as well not show up at all. It doesn’t make any sense. Plus, you already got a similar system in place with the server links.

The 3-2-1 point system works and was a good step in the right direction. The next step should be trying to even out the server populations, because in the end that’s what contributes most to even matchups.

• Give players extra rewards if their server does well with fewer players (more points relative to player numbers).
• Make transfers from high population to low population servers cheaper.

So because out of 4 years worth of matches you were able to find a few weeks with scores closer than the current match you are saying the system doesn’t work!?

Are you really going to ignore the countless other examples of completely lopsided matches?

What a terrible argument.

Someone said points were proven closer due to the new system.

Well gee of course they are there’s less point to go around.

Also just being closer you still won’t catch up faster that’s an illusion.

Asator.3065:

The 3-2-1 point system was good and gave us some of the closest matches, including one where all servers were tied with one tick to go.

Yeah… I notice you didnt bother to mention the actual score there, which is probably that 1 have twice as much as 2, which has twice as much as 3 so it wouldnt matter who wins or looses.

Your point would actually apply better on a 2-1-1 system assuming the last 2 servers always came last, ie equal points. Which they generally do, so such a tick would decide the second place, assuming they win the round.

Jeknar.6184:

aandiarie.7195:

What would be the point of trying to doing all that work ( and trying to also have fun, when there is a good chance you’d probably get in 2nd place which wouldn’t matter because 2ND and 3RD PLACE HAS THE SAME POINTS!!!!!

The point is to play for 1st place and not for 2nd.

Problem is, when 1st place is not attainable due to timezone coverage differences, there’s no point trying not to come last.

And if you’re trying to catch up to a leading server, there’s no tactical advantage in trying to push them to 3rd.

The nuances of the system are gone. It’s either win, or don’t.

In my opinion, that system could be interesting, providing the population balance is good. In this way, the “3rd” may not lose all hope to do a come back.

Yet, look at EU T1 matchup : on 39 skirmishes, the leading server won 35 of them. That server is able to cover all maps with trains and barely went below half possession. It’s been the same for weeks. With that new system, the 2 non-leading servers are actually shrugging and saying “ok, they’re first, and we’ll have the chocolate medal”. At least, when it was 3-2-1, it made sense to fight for 2nd place.

Maybe they’re better and maybe there’re more of them, but for that kind of situation, 2-1-1 is plain stupid.

This is a chart I made that, at the current writing, compares war score to skirmish score utilizing the 211 system. I think enough time has gone by to start to get an idea of what things are like.

As you can see, there is a huge difference between war score and skirmish score. Now, even though BG, my server, has basically not been trying this week, the war score is much closer than what I expected, however, the skirmish score shows a much greater difference. The same thing is true in every tier. While I have no idea what the strategies have been for other servers, it shows a clearly disturbing picture, particularly with T2 and T3: their 2nd place war score is much closer to first, but their skirmish score is much further away. What’s worse, is that as the week goes on, the difference in war score will tighten, but I suspect that the skirmish score will continue to increase it’s difference.

While this is very telling about the current situation, it would be unfair to compare this current weeks war score with a 321 system as people’s, and server’s behavior, tactics, and strategies would be different under a 321 system, so we would have no idea how many skirmish wins/losses would occurr. This is all we can do with the current data.

This is truely unsettling and needs to change asap. This is essentially like golem rush week and the sooner it ends, the better.

Ben K.6238:

The nuances of the system are gone. It’s either win, or don’t.

And what’s exactly the problem in that?

This new scoring change has upset 95% of the wvwer’s out there. Please change it back
To have 2nd and 3rd place get the same war score per skirmish is awful.
If you are trying to kill wvw faster this will do it.
Please I beg of you change the score thing back.
I’ve done many thousands of hours of wvw and maybe 1% of the population would like this change, but the majority don’t like it and it has made some people already stop playing the game for now.
Please change it back to allow 2nd and 3rd place to get the proper points.

Spurnshadow.3678:

While this is very telling about the current situation, it would be unfair to compare this current weeks war score with a 321 system as people’s, and server’s behavior, tactics, and strategies would be different under a 321 system, so we would have no idea how many skirmish wins/losses would occurr. This is all we can do with the current data.

A direct comparison will always be more meaningful than data in a vacuum.

And as far as I can tell behavior in WvW is pretty stable throughout all the changes at least in terms of activity. You seem to suggest that activity will drop as a result of this change because second place is going to lose value. That isn’t likely to happen. Until Anet makes a significant change to the WvW system, there will be no significant change to players’ engagement.

If I had to guess, winning is no longer the driving factor for most people playing the game. The driving factor is habit. People play because it is their default behavior to play. They play because they feel like the belong or they want to belong. They play because the buttons are familiar to them, because the button pressing rhythm presents them with a familiar and soothing pattern.

I’ve been following the activity data for a while now. And I honestly believe that Anet reduced the population slightly with the grand experiment of asking the players what they want. But after that slight loss, activity has stabilized.

If playing a game where the mechanics are in flux and moving in an undefined direction with no stated goal is not enough to get the players to consider other options … nothing will. Certainly not a shift in skirmish score from 321 to 211.

Players are enthralled by habit.

not really, 95% play for fun not score #.

How about a middle ground, say, 4-3-2, or 5-4-3?

Personally, I think people play the same. They just like ninjaing and sieging stuff nonetheless. And for those that don’t PPT, it doesn’t matter.

ArchonWing.9480:

How about a middle ground, say, 4-3-2, or 5-4-3?

That make no difference to 3-2-1 as it still is “1st get 1 point more than 2nd which get 1 point more than 3rd”.

95%? you like pulling stats out of nowhere?

Ruru.1302:

95%? you like pulling stats out of nowhere?

she has access to special insider information, dontcha know

that or asked 2 friends and saw 2 people complaining in mapchat and got confirmation bias

Nobody I know on JQ is upset with the change. So, please don’t include us in your 95% . See what I did there? Including whole groups of people without actually asking them? But seriously, the change is fine. I don’t get the whinging about it.

I’d wager a good 75% of wvw players either don’t know or care about the change.

Where did you got your statistics from? Most people i know and almost my entire guild stopped playing due to class imbalance and other stuff plaguing wvw for a year now, not a stupid points system.

Jenkar, this is 2nd grade math. there’s a huge difference between 321 and 543. You’re just being argumentative.

Torqued, sure there a many people who just play for fights and habit. I know I’m a habitual player. But there are also lots who play for both fights and PPT and others who just PPT. I’ve seen a sharp decline of pugs on EB. I’ve seen a decline of people trying to win. Winning is what drives this game mode, not fights. As fewer people log in, there will be fewer to fight for the fight people. The pure fight people will just start GvGing at OS or a guild hall and not bother running around WvW for an hour looking for a fight.

Also, @Torqued. Yes, it would be unfair to take this weeks data and apply a 321 skirmish scoring system. The best thing to do would go back in history and do the same comparison with that weeks scores to this weeks scores.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Also, @Torqued. Yes, it would be unfair to take this weeks data and apply a 321 skirmish scoring system. The best thing to do would go back in history and do the same comparison with that weeks scores to this weeks scores.

We have had months of 321, so lets have Months of 211 and then we can see a comparison. Nothing wrong with trying things out, give it time and we will see what happens.

@Mini

Well, I’m not gonna do that. That’s Anet’s job. I just did the one chart to show how drastically is the difference.

I like 211, but in many matches the disparity in manpower between first and second seems so great that second and third will never win a skirmish except, perhaps, in a nightcap.

This is a direct result of server stacking and can only be resolved by a solution which addresses it.

• I fear that many good scoring ideas will go by the wayside because they won’t work while server stacking/population/coverage (call it what you will) exists, no scoring system can overcome it.

Jeknar.6184:

Ben K.6238:

The nuances of the system are gone. It’s either win, or don’t.

And what’s exactly the problem in that?

You can’t mitigate losses, or extend leads, by playing for place. You can’t actually achieve anything unless you have the coverage to take enough territory to win most of the skirmishes. Standing your ground until you get the opportunity to make it count is meaningless – it’s karma train or go home.

The problem is it’s a brainless system that takes all the intrigue of the three-server matches and throws it out the window.

I am kind of tired of seeing this, so I really need to say something:

Jenkar, this is 2nd grade math. there’s a huge difference between 321 and 543. You’re just being argumentative.

There is no difference between scoring of a 5-4-3 system and a 3-2-1 system. Sure, the overall scores would end up larger or smaller, but the difference in scores is the exact same.

I will even break it down with a simple example so no one has to:
Let server A, B, and C tick scores of 3, 2, and 1 for 2 ticks, respectively. The scores after 2 ticks are:
A: 6
B: 4
C: 2
Now, let server D, E, and F tick scores of 5, 4, and 3 for 2 ticks, respectively. The scores after 2 ticks are:
D: 10
E: 8
F: 6
After 2 ticks,
server A is 4 points ahead of server C after 2 ticks, and
server D is 4 points ahead of server F after 2 ticks.

I will not do all the work into showing this is the same for all ticks and all cases, as I kind of forgot how to do so in an easy manner. But rest assured, the difference between scores in a 5-4-3 system and a 3-2-1 system is the same.

But, Kaatora,

The mentality, strategies, and tactics will change if those different scoring systems were in place. As the ratio between 1 and 2 is 100% and the ratio between 4 and 5 is 25%. That’s a huge difference and affects how people play.

The other major factor with these scoring differences is how it effects glicko. I’ve already outlined this previously, but the current trends are the strong T1 server will continue to gain glicko and never be caught. Also, if there is little randomization between tiers, the 2nd and 3rd place servers in all tiers will normalize and have less and less chances of getting a random roll down. This might be false if the winning server’s glicko in all tiers is already high enough to get the random roll. I haven’t studied this trend closely enough. There’s too many factors to figure that out right now.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Jenkar, this is 2nd grade math. there’s a huge difference between 321 and 543. You’re just being argumentative.

Spurnshadow.3678:

But, Kaatora,

The mentality, strategies, and tactics will change if those different scoring systems were in place. As the ratio between 1 and 2 is 100% and the ratio between 4 and 5 is 25%. That’s a huge difference and affects how people play.

It doesn’t change the fact that you still cannot gain more than 2 points over an adversary in a single Skirmish… You can even use 100-99-98 if you want, you’ll have the exact same results as 3-2-1.

I guess you’re the one who cannot see the “second grade math” in here.

95% of all stats are made up.

aandiarie.7195:

This new scoring change has upset 95% of the wvwer’s out there. Please change it back
To have 2nd and 3rd place get the same war score per skirmish is awful.
If you are trying to kill wvw faster this will do it.
Please I beg of you change the score thing back.
I’ve done many thousands of hours of wvw and maybe 1% of the population would like this change, but the majority don’t like it and it has made some people already stop playing the game for now.
Please change it back to allow 2nd and 3rd place to get the proper points.

On my server (or rather current link), the vast majority of people I talked to in TS were indifferent to it, rest were divided about equally. And I had a chance to do several raids with different guilds since it went live. So no, you got your numbers very wrong.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of complaints about the T3 structures giving extra points, in these forums (just scroll down and back a page or few), on reddit, guildchat, TS and mapchat while in WvW, because it promotes nightcapping and overall inactive gameplay instead of active participation. Also have already seen days where matches were very stale as all defenders per each respective side would hop from one T3 objective to another, making it too difficult to fight, while simply k-training the T1 objectives over and over. People have indeed simply logged off out of boredome caused by it, myself included.

So your complaint seems to be misplaced about wrong part of the scoring changes.

There will always be someone who will complain about a change made… Maybe they should just leave the game mode the same for 4 years so people can be happy about it.

No, wait…

67% of the players that started wvw on day one have left the game, and 100% of them don’t care about this change, well ok maybe that might be closer to 83%, and 17% of them still read the forums. But 100% of those 17% probably don’t care about the change either. Also I am 100% in the 5% not upset by this change, but I am 90% sure that 100% of that 95% upset is not really 100% as claimed, and the only way to prove this is with a poll that 75% have to vote they are indeed 100% the 95% that are upset.

Lastly I 100% know for sure, for sure, that Fort Aspenwood loves to play for second, ever since the TC/FA/SoS days.

95%? lol no1 cares about it tbh.

LOL nobody cares about the scoring change.

ArchonWing.9480:

How about a middle ground, say, 4-3-2, or 5-4-3?

Personally, I think people play the same. They just like ninjaing and sieging stuff nonetheless. And for those that don’t PPT, it doesn’t matter.

This is not a middle ground. This is the same as going back to 3-2-1.
A middle ground would be something like 4-2-1 or 5-3-2

Nuzt.7894:

95% of all stats are made up.

Obviously a classic case of low-balling.

Sigh, so many of you are totally lost on the concept of the ratio between points and how that affects peoples behavior.

It’s a matter of perspective.
OP is on fa which for a long time now has gotten by in second place. Never winning, never trying to. But doing juuussst enough to maintain position.

Which is now a losing strategy, so I’m sure 95% of her server hates it.

What scoring change? nah really i don’t care…

Scoring is irrelevant since population is massively stacked on some servers.

Play for the fights, nothing else. There are no server identities, just guilds.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Sigh, so many of you are totally lost on the concept of the ratio between points and how that affects peoples behavior.

If only we could grasp your brilliance.

Maybe the problem is that you are projecting your behavioral response to the change on everyone else and assuming an outcome based on that.

aandiarie.7195:

This new scoring change has upset 95% of the wvwer’s out there. Please change it back
To have 2nd and 3rd place get the same war score per skirmish is awful.
If you are trying to kill wvw faster this will do it.
Please I beg of you change the score thing back.
I’ve done many thousands of hours of wvw and maybe 1% of the population would like this change, but the majority don’t like it and it has made some people already stop playing the game for now.
Please change it back to allow 2nd and 3rd place to get the proper points.

But you not given a reason for why its bad or unfair.

Jski.6180:

aandiarie.7195:

This new scoring change has upset 95% of the wvwer’s out there. Please change it back
To have 2nd and 3rd place get the same war score per skirmish is awful.
If you are trying to kill wvw faster this will do it.
Please I beg of you change the score thing back.
I’ve done many thousands of hours of wvw and maybe 1% of the population would like this change, but the majority don’t like it and it has made some people already stop playing the game for now.
Please change it back to allow 2nd and 3rd place to get the proper points.

But you not given a reason for why its bad or unfair.

Because FA is about to roll into wood league with CD!

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

2,1,1 is better than 3,2,1.

This makes everyone compete for first place instead of settling for second.

ANet can’t control Population In-Balance…so they’re trying to use it as a part of their solution to create “Fair” Match-Ups.

Classic King of the Hill fight cycle.

ANet made the right decision to try & put the focus on competing for 1st place…encouraging the 2 weaker “Servers” to combine efforts on fighting a “King” server that typically is over-stacked in population…imho

However, it appears the Fixed 3 Way Fights & Locked Tiers have greater weight as the 800-Pound Gorilla effect & current WvW mentality...overrides these scoring changes…imo

Players have grudge matches & old habits that are hard to change. Rivalries are good when it’s put to use in the right setting…which the current WvW game mode is lacking.

Players also might have shifted focus away from doing PPT…to just enjoying fights since World Linking & Glicko Manipulation was introduced & scores became meaningless...so this might also be contributing to the lost effect of using 2-1-1 point scoring.

Yours truly,
Diku

Note – Recent game mechanic changes can easily have deep changes to the culture of the core player base that have ripple effects…some of which…can not be un-done, or will have lasting effects moving forward.

For a Better Long Term Solution to WvW – Try a Google Search for – wvg world vs globes

I dunno whats wrong on your side of the planet but my homeserver nightcrew is pretty wrecked because most of the time we tried to defend the second place.

There is no point in playing MUs against BB anymore, they nightcap with 60 we with 16 so why should we bother playing?

So yeah, the scoring change is not really helping against the nightcapping advantage that some servers have.

Jeknar.6184:

Ben K.6238:

The nuances of the system are gone. It’s either win, or don’t.

And what’s exactly the problem in that?

Play against linked hype servers with an unlinked server and you see the problem.

There doesn’t seem to be a point in playing if at the hr you’d be playing you can’t get #1 with the amount of people you have.

I am used to doing a lot of hrs but with holidays, wintersday, pvp stuff for ascended stuff, etc going on there is not much of a point to go wvw if my efforts will be meaningless and the 2nd and 3rd place get the same points.

I’ve done thousands of hrs of wvw and if you truly think about this latest scoring change it only helps t1.

Thea Cherry.6327:

Jeknar.6184:

Ben K.6238:

The nuances of the system are gone. It’s either win, or don’t.

And what’s exactly the problem in that?

Play against linked hype servers with an unlinked server and you see the problem.

Honestly, the only problem I see is that there is no value in being a kittenter that only fight for second. Since I’m not unto that, it does not affect me.

Jeknar.6184:

Thea Cherry.6327:

Jeknar.6184:

Ben K.6238:

The nuances of the system are gone. It’s either win, or don’t.

And what’s exactly the problem in that?

Play against linked hype servers with an unlinked server and you see the problem.

Honestly, the only problem I see is that there is no value in being a kittenter that only fight for second. Since I’m not unto that, it does not affect me.

Well i guess you never have played a 20 vs 60, because you are either a WTJler or you just don’t play in missmatched MUs.

So either way: you have no idea whats going on in some of the MUs but you still sit here and critizies other players. Good for you.

For your information, I’ve been playing in losing servers since forever… And nothing kitten me off more than seeing that the other server rather just secure second place instead of trying for first. Now with 2-1-1, they either play for first or they lose just like the other server.

This new scoring change where 2nd and 3rd place get the same points, well it’s not cool. If Anet wanted to kill wvw faster thing ought to do the trick.
Shame on anet for doing this , Shame on them. I’ve done thousands of hrs of wvw and this makes me not want to wvw. What’s the point if you would be good enough to get 2nd place but get same points as 3rd place. The fun is ruined, RUINED I SAY!!!! WHY DID THEY DO THIS WHY!!?!?!??!?! Yeah it helped T1 but that is it. Maybe anet should only do this to t1. If they don’t change it back a lot of my friends will quit the game.