Guild Wars 2

Thanks for this Anet. Some people selfishly don’t get it. I’m busy during the day, I can only play late night.

I shouldn’t have features of the game taken or way or be forced to play on an EU server because of it. Seriously guys, it’s a game. Chill about it.

Well so long as they’re looking into something to make it so that being more active at night isn’t as much of an impact, I’m all good.

Thank you ArenaNet for not listening to the self-entitled QQ’ers

Matt Witter.6982:

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.

So… if you’re willing to consider adjustments to scoring or to capping mechanics, but not willing to base those on time of day, I can only conclude that any adjustments would have to be based on relative map populations regardless of time (e.g. a reworking of the Outmanned buff). Is that a fair assessment?

It would suggest that that might be one of the options they’re currently considering.

Look I appreciate you guys taking in comsideration of all players around global time zones. However, the problem is that most of these players have flocked to few servers and left other servers empty.

A good solution would be to have a RELATIVE queue based on the population of all 3 servers in WvW. Such that, if one server has players on queue and that queue starts at 250 players and other servers can’t match up even 100 players. Then the queue should be decreased to 100 players and encourage other players to transfer out and create a POPULATION balance.

The problem isn’t that player’s are playing in other time zones, the problem is that players are OUT MANNING other servers during off peak hours. The out mann buff needs a severe update to balance out the effects of actually being out manned.

It all comes down to population balance, if you can balance out and actually control the amount of players in the WvW where everyone has relatively equal numbers just like primetime, then players will actually enjoy WvW.

Matt Witter.6982:

How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.

This is the problem, the north american prime time players feel their time is completely wasted because no matter what they do, the server with the more active night/morning crew can take everything and upgrade with no resistance whatsoever. This means that anyone who plays during these “off” hours time is more valuable.

You can spend hours during primetime making little headway, taking some towers and a keep, maybe getting pushed back and then losing it all again, but the amount of points night and morning crews can gain for their server is by far more valuable.

1) Scoring definitely needs to better reflect effort regardless of time of day. If one world has 500 people vs 20 people on the other side, scoring needs to be scaled to reflect this.

2) Besides scoring fixes, I’d argue a dynamic cap needs to be put in place. This will encourage better distribution of player from a time zone across all server. For this to happen effectively, Anet needs to allow guilds to more easily transfer from server to server without losing upgrades.

In the end, it is really up to you guys to adjust rules as necessary to create a more balanced situation. Lopsided matches and long queues does not equal fun and gets old fast.

Fun needs to be top priority in fixing wvw.

Well i am glad Anet is listing(unlike other MMO devs)
I do say that in the past weeks i have seen radical suggestions, like not being able to get in during the “server timezone off time” or being kicked from WvW when there are big population differences.

These aren’t “solutions” since they remove one problem and open many more problems.

I am fairly glad on this part:

Matt Witter.6982:

.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.

It leaves open balancing options for unbalanced populations without restraining other players to play based on something they can’t change.

I would like to see real suggestions from other players who believe balancing is required, changing the point income based on population differences seems fairly good, tough i believe if enough good, viable suggestions are giving we might come up with something that is indeed a win win solution.

Ex

“How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another”

Well if that’s truly how Anet feels…

Let me be clear, right now on your NA servers, the MAJORITY of your players play in NA hours, and their time is not valuable at all! AT ALL!!!!!!!!!

Open your eyes.
Peace, welcome to v2 of Warhammer and Ilum.

Matt I’m glad someone acknowledged this however I think you guys don’t see the main problem. The community doesn’t have a problem with the people on at night because it’s not convenient for them to play in the day or in peak hours etc. Players playing within their respective timezone would be somewhat evenly spaced out between servers in that particular timzone.

The issue is when you have large populations from another part of the world playing on servers on other timezones. These people are playing in their primetime, however the main population of the server they are playing on is in their dead time. The result is obviously the entire map being wiped to 1 color and the other servers wake up to a 50-100k deficit. Now those servers who lost everything have to attempt to re-take objects at a disadvantage since the strong “night” presence server has 3 orbs and their popluation in that timezone is now even on all fronts so its a struggle to just get out of the spawn sometimes.

It’s too late now but I wish you guys would have region locked WvW and opened some servers in other parts of the world. There’s just not enough overseas players to go around for all the servers to give it more competition.

The main problem I have with it is aside from the top few servers, the match for the week is determined in only 2 days. It becomes un-fun to log on to a map my server owns everything on and it’s also un-fun to log on to a map I own nothing of. People play games to have fun.

I still like my ‘sister-server’ idea… or a variation of it. The top NA servers sister server would be the bottom EU server. The top EU sisters server would be bottom NA server. And the second place would sister with the second to last etc. etc. You can travel freely to your sister server during that week. The idea would be to not only get YOUR server to the top, but your sister server as well. It might give incentive to go help the underpopulated servers.

The problem is NOT NIGHT CAPPING. The problem is that 80% of the oceanic guilds are all on one server. HoD. Without their oceanic coverage they wouldn’t dominate. There needs to be some way to spread the community out. My two cents

The only problem I see with EU players is that sPvP is laggy and Wv3 is fine. So merge the servers and make sPvP use regional servers to play. Problem solved…

Zeorn.4735:

Matt Witter.6982:

How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.

This is the problem, the north american prime time players feel their time is completely wasted because no matter what they do, the server with the more active night/morning crew can take everything and upgrade with no resistance whatsoever. This means that anyone who plays during these “off” hours time is more valuable.

You can spend hours during primetime making little headway, taking some towers and a keep, maybe getting pushed back and then losing it all again, but the amount of points night and morning crews can gain for their server is by far more valuable.

(Le Sigh)

Look at it this way, you get hours worth of heated battle time, rife with excitement, tactics, and push/pull battles where you must fight for every inch and dig deep in order to defend every inch you take.

The people capping at night get to fight doors, walls, and AI. They may pull out more points but who has more fun here?

You just need to stop worrying about it so much, give the game time to adjust and settle into it’s groove, let the free transfers expire, and then take another look at it.

If the scores didn’t exist, you’d be having much more fun than those playing in your off hours and you would tell them “It’s not our fault when you decide to play the game.”

Everyone needs to let the frustration go. Stop being demoralized by stuff happening when you are offline and jump back into the fray! There’s much glory (and Karma) to be had!

Quarion.2538:

The problem is NOT NIGHT CAPPING. The problem is that 80% of the oceanic guilds are all on one server. HoD. Without their oceanic coverage they wouldn’t dominate. There needs to be some way to spread the community out. My two cents

And how would you like to be “spread out” into servers where most people don’t play at the same time you do? The idea of forcing them somewhere else that is less fun for them just so that you can feel better about your accomplishments is absurd. You must be able to see that……

Anet.

Please consider my solution:
Why we all like to queue for battlegrounds and WvWvW in general ? What is the main goal why we want that ? Because we want to fight, pvp. Player versus Player.

So what i suggest is to simple give scores or scores-over-time (from 15mins to 15mins like it currently is) depending on how many actual FIGHTING happened. It is that simple. So for example:

If you took SM without any opposition – as in – if you PvE’d doors alone, you’ll still score points, but just not as many (intial points and points-over-time, karma and xp could stay the same, but in my opinion it should be relatively reduced as well), and you can upgrade it as you will so you’ll still gain points and help your server over all.

Because the MAIN problem that people are having, is not the fact to fight fully upgraded stuff. Is just the INSANE amount of points they gain during the night without any opposition, making it impossible to catch up, no matter how good you did against ACTUAL resistance.

So i’m not sure how easy it is to code this or anything, but the general idea is that, if there were pvp in not a complete unbalance odd → normal amount of points, or 100% amount of points. If you had medium/small resistance → 75%. If you had no resistance at all (something like 1 defender for each 10 attackers…) → 50%.

Any suggestions?

Quarion.2538:

The problem is NOT NIGHT CAPPING. The problem is that 80% of the oceanic guilds are all on one server. HoD. Without their oceanic coverage they wouldn’t dominate. There needs to be some way to spread the community out. My two cents

Lastnight at about 1am ish PST, we (Hod) had the outmanned buff on Henge borderlands.

I want to officially file a complaint for DAY CAPPERS and NA PRIMETIME PLAYERS

I play from Isle of Janthir.. we are an International Server. Our weakest link is an 11 hour dead zone from noon to 11PM EST

How bad is it? Until this week.. we have handed over a +85 Deficit EVERY RESET

yep. Every reset we’re staring down a +85 deficit. We keep winning, sure. We’re the best of the “Tier 2” servers. To move up to Denravi, you have to beat Isle of Janthir

but just a change in perspective.. to those of you complaining of night capping

try playing during NA primetime when your server is weakest, then come talk to me

who cares…just take it back..good lord…

Thank you, ArenaNet. I’m happy to see you’re sticking to your vision for the game.

CharliePrince.2071:

I want to officially file a complaint for DAY CAPPERS and NA PRIMETIME PLAYERS

I play from Isle of Janthir.. we are an International Server. Our weakest link is an 11 hour dead zone from noon to 11PM EST

How bad is it? Until this week.. we have handed over a +85 Deficit EVERY RESET

yep. Every reset we’re staring down a +85 deficit. We keep winning, sure. We’re the best of the “Tier 2” servers. To move up to Denravi, you have to beat Isle of Janthir

but just a change in perspective.. to those of you complaining of night capping

try playing during NA primetime when your server is weakest, then come talk to me

Sorry your server has NA players but they just simply get outplayed by the top servers. I’ve been playing IoJ all week on FA and even in NA primetime IoJ controls most of the map. Never once saw a shortage of IoJ players and it’s deffinately not dead.

I love Anet’s stand on QQ’ers. It’s good to know that you stand your ground about these matters instead of giving in like those other MMo companies.

Can we please stop the back-and-forth bickering about “night capping”? What’s next, all of us with 9-5 weekday jobs band together and start complaining about those of you who can play while we’re at work?

It’s pretty much the same thing, and about as useful. This particular horse has been beaten into a thin red jelly; there’s no reason to keep beating it. It’s long since dead.

The devs have spoken: they’re aware of the concerns, they’re considering possible modifications to scoring.

No RefunD.4630:

CharliePrince.2071:

I want to officially file a complaint for DAY CAPPERS and NA PRIMETIME PLAYERS

I play from Isle of Janthir.. we are an International Server. Our weakest link is an 11 hour dead zone from noon to 11PM EST

How bad is it? Until this week.. we have handed over a +85 Deficit EVERY RESET

yep. Every reset we’re staring down a +85 deficit. We keep winning, sure. We’re the best of the “Tier 2” servers. To move up to Denravi, you have to beat Isle of Janthir

but just a change in perspective.. to those of you complaining of night capping

try playing during NA primetime when your server is weakest, then come talk to me

Sorry your server has NA players but they just simply get outplayed by the top servers. I’ve been playing IoJ all week on FA and even in NA primetime IoJ controls most of the map. Never once saw a shortage of IoJ players and it’s deffinately not dead.

we got an influx this week, like I say in my posts

it isn’t until this week where we actuall had a lead after reset

:) hell, i was so happy I went to the Janthir Alliance forums and posted it so proudly to our foreign contingent

“look! look!!! something besides a deficit”

lol

Good to know that we can expect WvW to die a pitiful death within a couple of months due to ANet’s stubborn refusal to tweak a broken game mode.

Matt Witter.6982:

How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.

That’s the worst problem right now. The contribution of players playing at prime time is currently worthless. OTOH, the contribution of players playing with the minimum amount of opposition (at whatever time that might happen) is THE ONLY factor determining the matchup results as things stand right now.

This is because whenever you go against an enemy at full strength (166 on all maps) even an extremely strong showing will never reduce them to having zero control points on the map, so even if you play much better than the opponents, at peak time you might be able to grab a 50-100 points advantage (total, on all 4 maps) per tick versus the second server (350-250 or something like that) and even that advantage needs to be maintained with extremely frequent hard fights; on the other hand, whenever the enemy maps are empty, all you need is 30 or so people per map and you will nearly instantly cause a 500+ point swing and easily keep it for several hours.

The end result of all this is that the major battles fought at prime time by 2000 players end up being completely irrelevant to the end score, while the trivially easy capping of players assaulting empty enemy control points is the factor contributing 70%+ of the total score of the winning server. This is completely opposite to your stated goal of “no player’s time is more valuable than another”.

One possible solution is to link scoring to the amount of enemies present in a map and the ratio of enemies/allies on that map. I will repeat a simple proposal I made on the other huge thread:

A) Base scoring if you are playing in a map with 0-50 enemies AND you have at least a 1.5:1 numerical advantage is 1/3 of normal points. The “number of enemies” is computed as the average of the enemies of both servers (i.e. if one enemy server has 20 players on the map and the other 0, you’re facing 10 enemies for the purposes of the formula).
B) For every enemy beyond 50 you gain 0.574% on the scoring (this is 66.666% / 116, thus at 166 enemies you gain 100% scoring). E.g.: if you face 100 enemies and you’re at least 150 (to trigger the 1.5:1 ratio) you will gain (33.33% + 0.574%*50) = 62.03% of the normal points.
C) If your ratio falls below 1.5:1 you restart gaining points at 100% normal points (since you don’t have a significant numerical advantage anymore).

This is just an example, numbers can be different, also you can use several thresholds instead of just one both for the “minimum numbers of enemies”, “minimum percent”, and for “minimum numerical advantage ratio”. The main factors which should be preserved IMO are:

1) whenever someone is capping a map with little to no opposition (relative to his own current faction strength) the amount of points/tick should be decreased
2) there has to be a minimum threshold of points which the most numerous faction is gaining in any case, otherwise a server could stop the enemy servers from gaining any more points simply by leaving the maps

As long as these two conditions are met, any revision of the scoring system which makes the (comparatively) small differences you can gain at peak times relevant again to the final score will meet the goal of making all players equal. Also, note that this system is not based on any specific time of day but only on the relative strengths of enemy populations at any given time.

Thanks for the great communication, Anet.
“Our answer is that WvW was developed as a never ending continuous battle.”
“How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.”
“This is simply saying that we will not be changing WvW based on some players’ idea of off time hours.” (IDEA being the key word)

Thank you for making us Aussies feel loved and not just an afterthought

I don’t think there should be much change to WvW due to this except maybe a little more benefit/ relaxed requirements of the overpowered bonus.

The best change I can see is to the server selection each week. This is pointless atm with free server transfers, but if servers that normally field 12-14 hours of play time don’t go against 24 hour ones, that would help. The scoring differences will probably level this out in time too, but it couldn’t hurt to help it a little. Servers that run 24 hours will eventually all be near the top.

Now if your goal is to be at the top of the server ranking at the same time only fielding a part time defense, you’re not gonna get a change.

Well presented response. And as others have stated, and I’m sure many others feel, thanks for taking this kind of firm stand. I’m sure you will make some minor tweaks, but the current game is fair. Just because 2000 people fought for every inch of land they capped during that time frame does not mean the 200 people at 5am PST capping everything on all maps are less important. They should have to ability to compete at whatever level that is. If the level presented to them is a non-existent enemy force, the server matching will eventually balance itself out. At some point, most servers will end up being pitted against servers with similar prime-time rotations.

Even then, 5 people with no enemy opposition can cap everything in any map. So the real focus is maintaining a 24/7 presence if you want to be a top server. If you want to compete – you have to, as a server, find more players, recruit more players, or stay up late and play.

All the work you put into getting all the points during prime time US to wake up to a huge loss? This game is about fun, not work. Get over it, you had fun, you won.

The only problem with the point ratio idea (which I generally like) is that a winning server can use it to just log out and screw the losing server trying to gain back points.

First of all – brilliant, and bravo.

You guys are on point. I am impressed with the way you’ve handled these forums and discussions, and the quick trigger finger on infractions. (keeps us honest and on topic)

My question is, what direction are you approaching W3 from? This will determine what I suggest and support here.

For expediency, I will go with my assumptions.

Each server should have a healthy, and enjoyable W3 experience – while allowing the most competitive and aggressive servers freedom to express themselves in brutal massive persistent combat.
This system to have rankings and periodic reshuffling based on those rankings to dynamically support a fluctuating server environment.

Each server should be somewhat balanced between WvW (bonuses always rock), PvE, and sPvP. The game is designed around sideways integration.

My suggestions:

Change the Orb system to have orbs affect the score much more, and the stats of the strongest team much less.
– this becomes a comeback mechanic, a way for a dominated team to get back in the game
– this may cause Borderlands maps to become less popular, until later in the match

Scale points per tick based on “total enemies on the field”, irrespective of your team’s numbers.
– this rewards any server who can take ground away from a more massive ally
– this slows down the snowball effect
– this may provide some incentive to not voluntarily balance server populations

Just balance the ques out so one team can’t have 100 people while the other one has 20. A scoring system based on population is just going to get exploited and abused. I can just see people shouting in team chat “omg we are losing in this map to that zerg!! Everyone leave now so they get less points.” Unbalanced teams is boring for everyone and ruins the whole fun of the game imo. More balance might also stop all the roving nomads that switch servers every time a new wvw match starts.

I would love to see a chart on server transfers over a one week period. I’m actually dreading getting a match that’s unbalanced in our favor because I’m betting that the que times will go up.

Dordane.5412:

Just balance the ques out so one team can’t have 100 people while the other one has 20. A scoring system based on population is just going to get exploited and abused. I can just see people shouting in team chat “omg we are losing in this map to that zerg!! Everyone leave now so they get less points.” Unbalanced teams is boring for everyone and ruins the whole fun of the game imo. More balance might also stop all the roving nomads that switch servers every time a new wvw match starts.

I would love to see a chart on server transfers over a one week period. I’m actually dreading getting a match that’s unbalanced in our favor because I’m betting that the que times will go up.

Your system would fail in the same way. You answered yourself here.

Dordane,

Less points doesn’t mean less than your losing opponent. It means you are accruing points at a slightly slower rate.

If you have zero opponents on either opposing team, maybe you get 30% of the PPT or something, I don’t know what number is good. As soon as they all log in and fill it up, you’ll be getting 100%. And, you will still have had hours of higher PPT than them, you will still have had hours to beef up defenses.

Just a thought. It has flaws, I admit.

One obvious solution is to limit the rewards night capping can give you not per individual objective but as a whole.

To explain:

If peak time ends with the 3 servers at +250, +150 and +50, and then the +50 server steamrolls the whole map in 30 minutes in off peak time because the others arn’t online, they shouldn’t immediately be able to get the full bonuses from doing that. Capping one keep would still give you immediate rewards, but if you steamroll the whole map in 30 minutes the scoring system is only going to start giving you credit for all the captures after several hours. It would essentially by a dynamic cap that only lets you shift say +50 points per hour no matter how much stuff you cap during off hours. If you then hold that stuff long enough you start getting points for it.

It would essentially be a cap on the amount of points you can shift at offpeak hours. Meaning if you are facing another server in a balance nightcapping situation where not much is changing hands you are going to contribute just as much as during peak hours when there are similar situations.

The problem with nightcapping isn’t nightcapping, it’s that unopposed nightcapping rewards the server vastly more than any other activity. I agree all players should be able to contribute but right now the unopposed night cappers are contributing way more and that’s no more fair than the not being able to contribute at all.

The point scaling may even be unnecessary (because I think in any case it would be sloppy) if there is another way to get back into the game.

Scrapping the point system entirely and just turning specific objectives into specific bonuses (or bonus accumulation) would be great, but then a second or sub system would have to be designed to figure “rank”.

This official statement is just another nail in the coffin. Good thing my buddies and I have already said our goodbyes to WvW.

Please tell me you have a team working on a new large scale PvP battle type with a duration of 1 to 4 hours.

Someone had a great idea in another thread that didn’t get much attention.

Objectives farther from your spawn point would not be qualified for full upgrades. The tower/keep next to an opponents spawn would only be able to build tier 1 upgrades, for example.

Shonie.5297:

“How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another”

Well if that’s truly how Anet feels…

Let me be clear, right now on your NA servers, the MAJORITY of your players play in NA hours, and their time is not valuable at all! AT ALL!!!!!!!!!

Open your eyes.
Peace, welcome to v2 of Warhammer and Ilum.

I second this, you’re punishing NA players for playing on an NA server…it’s unfortunate but it’s your decision. You will lose the player base that takes WvW seriously, and once you lose them the casual players will follow once they realize how boring the game is without organized gamers leading.

I have a loongish post coming with some detailed feedback that can make the game a lot better. But Ill post the jist of it here:

There are some severe problems with the scorekeeping in WvW right now. There is no account for difficulty. For example, if a server is fielding 3x the population of another server, do you think its a fair metric that that server gets ALL the points ALL the time. What that does is create a lame duck scenario where the winner gets to play kingmaker. (Why is a lame duck/kingmaker scenario bad, see sirlin’s blog on olympic badmitten).

Lots of people are discouraged when they see the score so out of wack and so uncatchable.

The solution? Award bonus points to servers that take and hold objectives against larger numbers of enemies. If I am outnumbered 10:1 overall (all maps are taken into account) I get 10x the amount of points the site is worth immediately when i capture it. Basically, if your server outnumbers the enemy by so much that you can afford to guard all your camps with 20 people when the enemy server only has 10 people total, that server should get major points when it takes objectives. You do not get any additional points for holding objectives, the idea is to get the server involved in making headway into wvw.

This is an anti-snowball mechanic that will help normalize scores in off peak hours, or in matchups where a server is just hopelessly outnumbered at all hours. The number is something I threw out there on a whim, and I’m sure that you guys can come up with better metrics so the system cant just be abused to rapidly gain score but a mechanic that is dynamic like this would help correct scoring issues.

The other method is to make holding objectives for the team that vastly outnumbers the enemy worth less points per tick, by keeping track of a ‘difficulty’ rating. Take your server, multiply its population by 2, compare it to the total enemy population, that is your baseline. If its an even fight the baseline will be 1. The baseline cannot exceed 1 so simply logging out your guild before a point tick wont net any results, and the count is for total number of unique people logged into your map within that 15 min span, to avoid any log out exploits to gain more score. If you outnumber the enemy your points are going to be worth less by that , to a minimum of 10. This is another anti-snowball mechanic designed to prevent a server from outscoring both opponents by almost a factor of 10 (see BP vs Kaineng vs Devona’s Rest). Again, this is to avoid a lame-duck or kingmaker scenario.).

Third, eliminate stat advantage for holding orbs. Make them worth points, and give +exp +karma +MF awards to the team that holds them.

Fourth, fix the outmanned buff
currently it doesnt reapply if you get downed and revived. You lose the buff till you leave and reenter the zone.
make it give meaningful boosts that increase the players effectiveness in a fight, the prevoius orb bonus should be transferred to outmanned.

Basically, the major concern right now is the huge snowballing effect on the score that ‘night capping’ or ‘morning capping on weekdays’ causes. It creates an unwinnable situation for servers, where they become lame ducks. Once a server becomes a lame duck, nothing they do will have any effect on the outcome, and the players of that server are now worthless. So they lose morale and quit playing wvw till friday, making the situation worse.

Sky.9347:

The point scaling may even be unnecessary (because I think in any case it would be sloppy) if there is another way to get back into the game.

Scrapping the point system entirely and just turning specific objectives into specific bonuses (or bonus accumulation) would be great, but then a second or sub system would have to be designed to figure “rank”.

If they follow your idea (which I find a nice alternative), they wouldn’t even need a second system. Keep the current one, except all scores are hidden from players and used only for matchmaking purposes.

so just have my say,

I am NOT against night capping or people playing at night, but im feeling its abit bad that US people are allowed here and some of the other time zones aslong as they have their own servers to play on.

Ofcourse i understand some of this aswell and if things were diffrent and more of the people in another game i play played this then it would be very possible that i would be playing on US servers.

So in the end, yea it kinda sucks when people on the other side of the world can easily ruin a whole day of upgrading and defending just because that’s their prime time, but at the same time.. its a tough subject to find a right and wrong.

I have been playing WvWvW between 1am-4am my time, fighting the french horde

Draygo.9473:

I have a loongish post coming with some detailed feedback that can make the game a lot better. But Ill post the jist of it here:

There are some severe problems with the scorekeeping in WvW right now. There is no account for difficulty. For example, if a server is fielding 3x the population of another server, do you think its a fair metric that that server gets ALL the points ALL the time. What that does is create a lame duck scenario where the winner gets to play kingmaker. (Why is a lame duck/kingmaker scenario bad, see sirlin’s blog on olympic badmitten).

Lots of people are discouraged when they see the score so out of wack and so uncatchable.

The solution? Award bonus points to servers that take and hold objectives against larger numbers of enemies. If I am outnumbered 10:1 overall (all maps are taken into account) I get 10x the amount of points the site is worth immediately when i capture it. Basically, if your server outnumbers the enemy by so much that you can afford to guard all your camps with 20 people when the enemy server only has 10 people total, that server should get major points when it takes objectives. You do not get any additional points for holding objectives, the idea is to get the server involved in making headway into wvw.

This is an anti-snowball mechanic that will help normalize scores in off peak hours, or in matchups where a server is just hopelessly outnumbered at all hours. The number is something I threw out there on a whim, and I’m sure that you guys can come up with better metrics so the system cant just be abused to rapidly gain score but a mechanic that is dynamic like this would help correct scoring issues.

The other method is to make holding objectives for the team that vastly outnumbers the enemy worth less points per tick, by keeping track of a ‘difficulty’ rating. Take your server, multiply its population by 2, compare it to the total enemy population, that is your baseline. If its an even fight the baseline will be 1. The baseline cannot exceed 1 so simply logging out your guild before a point tick wont net any results, and the count is for total number of unique people logged into your map within that 15 min span, to avoid any log out exploits to gain more score. If you outnumber the enemy your points are going to be worth less by that , to a minimum of 10. This is another anti-snowball mechanic designed to prevent a server from outscoring both opponents by almost a factor of 10 (see BP vs Kaineng vs Devona’s Rest). Again, this is to avoid a lame-duck or kingmaker scenario.).

Third, eliminate stat advantage for holding orbs. Make them worth points, and give +exp +karma +MF awards to the team that holds them.

Fourth, fix the outmanned buff
currently it doesnt reapply if you get downed and revived. You lose the buff till you leave and reenter the zone.
make it give meaningful boosts that increase the players effectiveness in a fight, the prevoius orb bonus should be transferred to outmanned.

Basically, the major concern right now is the huge snowballing effect on the score that ‘night capping’ or ‘morning capping on weekdays’ causes. It creates an unwinnable situation for servers, where they become lame ducks. Once a server becomes a lame duck, nothing they do will have any effect on the outcome, and the players of that server are now worthless. So they lose morale and quit playing wvw till friday, making the situation worse.

I like your idea to award bonus points when capturing objectives. That’s a good one.

One thing though… any sort of point scaling will not motivate players to even out the W3 populations among servers.

If that is a goal (which I think Mike Ferguson believes it is), then we need not a point scaling system, but a complete rework of the bonuses and individual/guild rewards for playing W3.

Not a penalty, but an incentive.

Jiiub.7135:

so just have my say,

I am NOT against night capping or people playing at night, but im feeling its abit bad that US people are allowed here and some of the other time zones aslong as they have their own servers to play on.

Ofcourse i understand some of this aswell and if things were diffrent and more of the people in another game i play played this then it would be very possible that i would be playing on US servers.

So in the end, yea it kinda sucks when people on the other side of the world can easily ruin a whole day of upgrading and defending just because that’s their prime time, but at the same time.. its a tough subject to find a right and wrong.

I have been playing WvWvW between 1am-4am my time, fighting the french horde

I think you mean Canadian, but I agree with what you’re saying

Matt Witter.6982:

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.

So, this is an argument for a change, not against any changes, right?

Night capping means that a world has more players online than the other worlds and can create a big push on all borderlands up to the point of domination. In prime time, matches are actually balanced and the points difference is relatively small (and is largely accounted for in efficiency/tactical play). In night time, differences in population can be huge and win you the whole map without the need for actual tactic play.
As such, playing on night time means you contribute to a much larger difference. In other words, your time online is inherently more valuable to a world if you play during the night than during prime time.

If you disagree, please come with solid arguments and possibly data as to why these statements are incorrect and it doesn’t matter when you play. I’m really curious to the exact reasoning behind it, and I am sure many other players think the same way. I personally hate it when designers make statements without any arguments to support those statements.

Matt Witter.6982:

How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished

First, than you for the answer.

The problem is just that. Why a person who does not play in prime time should be able to do a lot more points to his server, than I can playing during prime time?
In truth, what can I do is totally irrelevant to the victory or defeat, but instead those few people who play early in the morning decide everything.

Right now it’s my time to be less valuable than that of night cappers.

The vast majority of players are either demoralized during their off-peak because their server has been nightcapped or, if they are on a stronger server, they have no one to fight because their server nightcapped and demoralized the opponents.

Unopposed nightcapping does not have to be stopped, it just should not be the most important factor in winning a match. This is a legitimate complaint by the playerbase and it is something Arenanet can address without breaking the game or “punishing” the people who play during off-peak hours.

Arenanet ignores these complaints at their peril.

I still feel like the best solution is to get rid of the scoring all together. Make the current realm bonuses relative to the current amount of castle / keeps / towers / camps possessed. Then to “catch up”, all you have to do is go grab some keeps and towers – then you have more bonuses…simple. The orbs will help the people who have them defend better the objectives they worked hard to take. Eventually, if you cut off supplies – any objective will ultimately fall.