Guild Wars 2

Put the queue cap on a slider that lowers to be proportional to the population of the other servers in the match up.

During the “day”, when everyone is hitting up against a, say, 100 player queue for each server, everything is fine and operates as normal.
But then “2am” rolls around, and people start going to sleep. Two servers now have 90 players in a given zone whereas before they had 100; the “off peak” server is still hitting the queue.
Now it’s “3am”, and the two servers have 80 players each. This is where the system kicks in:
Lower the queue cap from 100 to 90 for this server match-up. The extra ten people still playing for C don’t get booted out—they get to stay. They’re supposed to be lost due to attrition. Some of those guys are “on peak” players and will be going to sleep.
The more players that Servers A and B lose, the more you lower the queue cap, to a predetermined MINIMUM. The “off peak” server still keeps a population advantage, but the system works to make this only a handful of players, not the 40+ man zergs that run around and take territory uncontested.

The beauty is that the system is self-regulating. It doesn’t impact servers that have 24/7 queues at all. Henge of Denravi and whoever they’re facing in their matchups are still going to have the maximum possible queue size at every hour.
And the “off peak” players who are now getting queues to WvW in their primetime, whereas before they weren’t? Well, now they know what it’s like to be “equal” to the “on peak” players who have large queues during their primetimes.
However, unlike those “on peak” players, the “off peak” have a big advantage. While EVERY server may have a full WvW queue in every borderland at, say, 8pm EST, you can be sure that at 7am EST (primetime for some Australians, for instance) that is not the case. If you happen to be hitting a queue now, due to the self-lowering queue caps.. you could transfer servers to one that doesn’t have the queue. You get the benefit of getting in instantly, AND potentially increasing the queue cap on the server you just left, letting another of your fellow Ozzies in. It spreads everyone around if they don’t like queues, and fosters actual competition at all hours of WvW—not a late-night zerg playing PvE in the WvW zones.

This also works with or without any new point tallying modifications. The goal of fiddling with queues is to PREVENT the imbalance that causes territory (and thus score) to shift solely because of population and being Outmanned.

My suggestion:

Set it up such that there are two alternating instances of the Wv3 maps for every server pair – 12 hour windows at the end of which the game state is saved and the game state for the previous window (i.e. the one saved twelve hours prior) is reloaded.

For instance: Based on peak / off-peak population stats it’s decided that the game states switch at 12am and 12pm Pacific time. At 12am on Day 2 the state of the keeps and orbs etc. are saved. Everyone is kicked out of Wv3 for 10-15 minutes as the server reloads the game state that was saved at 12pm on Day 1, everyone reenters and plays until noon Pacific on Day 2. At noon the state saves again, the maps are reloaded from the Day 2 midnight save and everyone continues play.

Wv3 is inherrently unbalanced, that’s fine – but a solution like this would be more likely to preserve the efforts of the server populations without trivializing those efforts, and allows both peak and off-peak populations to play the game as it was designed.

Devildoc.6721:

@lollie and Cloud, since quoting always seems to be broken.

I am not saying you’re second class citizens. I’m saying that the mindset you have from other MMO’s is counterproductive here.

On most other MMO’s, oceanic people all being on one server means you have people to play with, both PVE and PVP, as it’s faction vs faction, not server vs server.

But this server vs server setup makes that all fall apart. You don’t have people to fight against if the majority of you are concentrated on one server.

Is that not excruciatingly boring to just roll the map uncontested?

Wouldn’t it be better if there wasn’t just a handfull of oceanic guilds on every server, just enough to put 100 oceanic players on each map on every server every night. Then your server would have 24 hour a day presence. Not only would you have people to fight against, but your server wouldn’t lose everything while YOU were asleep because you tried to chase NA players OFF your server (which DOES happen.. SWTOR I got called a vulgar term for female reproductive organs and told to move off the server my guild got assigned to because Oceanic players were “claiming” my server for themselves)

This means all the severs would have 24/7 presence.

Wouldn’t this be better than having 1-2 servers have the entire oceanic presence and lacking in NA presence meaning you roll the map uncontested when you play and lose the map uncontested while you sleep?

Broken? lol, you can’t be serious if you’ve read all my posts you’d understand that I want this to change, but at this rate, Sea of Sorrows(The one I’m on) Has action 24/7, just because players sleep, doesn’t make the Oceanic population anywhere near the NA population. Please look where I’m coming from before you include me in anything. Give an Oceanic player a reason to move, Because at this point, we already have action whenever we choose.

I love how Anet dev’s and others are telling you nightcapping will not go anywhere nor be dimished point wise and you guys just keep fighting round and round.

Heres the facts, servers are rarely dead at night, as soon as you start attacking a point at night those indicators pop up on the map and if no one was there theres gonna be a zerg there soon to defend.

Some of you are very jaded.

Let me get this straight, when NA players from a primarily NA populated server get all thier points from an outnumbered NA force playing on a primarily oceanic populated server during the ‘day time’, it’s fair game.

But when the oceanic population get home from work (night time) and the roles are reversed, it becomes an issue?

Love from Aus
-Ludacrit

I WISH that the server with the best nightcrew was guaranteed a win. For all our success nightcapping, we still lose matches.

There’s more than 1-2 servers with oceanic presence. Hopefully, we’ll skill up enough to be able to compete in NA prime time, not just in the other hours.

In Cloud’s world, SoS took over the whole map because of superior tactics that just happened to kick in at 5AM PST

fox.8930:

I can not understand why the developers have come post an official message for this kind of QQ.

in the world of MMO MMO turns all 24/24H.

I do not see why we come to argue about the fact that on some servers players outnumber the night.

ALL PLAYERS HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLAYER INCLUDING DAY AND NIGHT.

you sleep at night? be.
vout which says your playmate does not work in the evening, playing at night and sleeps during the day?

it has not been declared in the living world, that night there was a curfew.

and then if you “rage” against the French servers.

you had to conquer the islands has in the past.

Martinique, Guadeloupe, quebec, etc..

stop complaining and riverside Shiverpeaks, you cheated.
Players fly hack you to steal and make bug orbres Lord of the fort.

So you seriously silent or changed the game

Either you dont care much about WvW or you’re in one of those servers that conquers everything at late nights otherwise you would be “QQ’ing” like everyone else…

Hix.8925:

In Cloud’s world, SoS took over the whole map because of superior tactics that just happened to kick in at 5AM PST

Oh? Now we’re getting personal? Where did I say that? Oh wait, I didn’t. <3 Get out of here xD!

Devildoc.6721:

Wouldn’t it be better if there wasn’t just a handfull of oceanic guilds on every server, just enough to put 100 oceanic players on each map on every server every night. Then your server would have 24 hour a day presence.

There already are, just some of those servers have such a weak NA presence that they get “nightcapped” by the NA crew during the Oceanic night, so aren’t rising up the ranks (are actually sinking).

Also it isn’t like Oceanics don’t want competition when we play. If I was a smart NA guild alliance I’d probably go seek out the existing high Oceanic pop servers like IoJ and SoS, and start there.

But you know, OR complain endlessly eh.

i still find it amusing how many of you think your server is “empty” when you leave. you do realise, we don’t run around at night knocking down empty buildings any more than you do during the day? if we did, we’d get so bored we’d leave.

we actually fight your server.

i fail to see why you think your points gained are more important than ours? we still fight for what we achieve. it’s just your night shift isn’t as good as another server’s. maybe your day shift isn’t, either. but if someone takes your keep during the night, surely that’s cool. because it gives you something to do during the day rather than stand around behind your keep twiddling your thumbs and doing nothing? (edit: or escorting yaks…)

it’s a cycle of fighting. and that’s what makes it both fluid and exciting.

i don’t understand the mentality of some of you who call yourself “gamers”. it’s like you don’t actually want to get your “game” on. you’d prefer to be at a point where you can just parade around in shinies and tell everyone who’ll listen that “one time, i, like, used to pvp. that’s how i got me this gearz.”

you should be working with your server as a whole. not as a thing which is only live when you’re online. make friends with some of your night shift. there are always periods where we overlap. i know i’m often on while US gamers are around. the whole point of having a server-wide 24/7 battleground is to show who’s the best over a long period of gameplay. not who’s the best over a few hours or so a day. not which one guild is best. but which server has got their game together enough that they work together to cover 24 hours.

so there’s some more night guilds on other servers. big deal. either contact some of the small guilds there and see if they’d be willing to move. or build up some wvwvw awareness on your own server. chances are there’s plenty of people playing nightly on your server, but maybe they’re not doing wvwvw.

or is that, like, too much work for you to do? is it easier to sit around demanding your time and effort be considered more valuable to the world than everyone else’s?

Going to put my two copper worth of experience with WvWvW. I’m on Dark Haven and I play CST time. This is with my limited experience with WvWvW so I may not be seeing the whole picture.

I started off mostly learning and playing much of my time through Eternal Battlegrounds. Early in the days, it used to be thriving quite well and the battles felt equally balanced, I believe. Even closed beta felt good as I only played Eternal Battlegrounds.

Presently, as of somewhere around September (maybe earlier), the Eternal Battlegrounds seems to be always one side of the coin. Every time I walk out of the spawn ground, it’s either right at the steps or not too far that there is a battle going on. If anything Guild TFO (think that’s the right name) may come in and turn a few tables but it doesn’t last for long since the other side immediately takes it all back it seems.

I am mostly playing Anvil Rock now. It’s nice to see commanders on the field such as Swan and the others. It is also nice to see that there is actually some effort being made by one or several groups.

Hopefully Anvil Rock doesn’t fizzle away as well but I can’t decide what others choose to do to enjoy their fun. Maybe one day I’ll have to migrate to another server as well. I don’t know…

I’ll see how it goes.

The problem here is not what to do with servers. It’s how to even out the community. It would be purely idiotic to give oceanic or canadian players their own server in WvW and then have them fight… who?
WvW should work off its own server independent system is this going to be solved. Splitting oceanic and french canadian communities ONLY because WvW is unfair is not an option. I don’t WvW that much, because I don’t have a computer that can handle it. Still I’d love to be able to play with about a 20-30 people concurrently in my zone so that we can do events together for example.

That is why I the server independent structure is necessary. Look at PvP in The Secret World. It’s not the best, but there you have three factions fighting each other.

WvW should be fixed in the same way, independent of what server one plays on in PvE. There are several ways to go about this and a lot of resources are necessary to pull it through.

1. Way would be to consolidate server populations create a few servers with many guilds have a reasonable guild cap and have guilds on each server fight against each other in the WvW maps.

2. Would be to have alliances fight each other. This would require guilds to ally with guilds from all parts of the world and have these alliances fight each other much like WvW is today (3 alliances up against each other). Mind this would require an cap of players allowed in an Alliance to have fair numbers against each other.

3. To create shards independent of PvE servers. I see this as confusing and tedious. Since you would have to relate to two shards and not one. Your guild would then be split into several WvW shards. However, it is then possible to control populations on WvW shards and make sure they are spread equally.

As a temporary fix to the nightcapping we have now. It would have to be a fix listed earlier, when the point tick is down a statistic of player population from each WvW server would have to be calculated into a ratio. Points would be handed out based on ratio. It would also be necessary to have a UI element that would display the population percentages and point multiplier of each server.

At the same time as Peter said. Personal gain should be increased overall. Nightcapping should increase World gain and Personal Gain for underpopulated servers. At the same time gains from PvE objectives should be lowered overall and PvP objectives should be introduced/increased.

" Nightcapping should increase World gain and Personal Gain for underpopulated servers. At the same time gains from PvE objectives should be lowered overall and PvP objectives should be introduced/increased."

actually, nightcapping shouldn’t even be a term. it’s a ridiculous idea given this is a global game.

nysta.6713:

actually, nightcapping shouldn’t even be a term. it’s a ridiculous idea given this is a global game.

Agreed. The term “nightcapping” is used as an insult.

Ludacrit.6183:

Let me get this straight, when NA players from a primarily NA populated server get all thier points from an outnumbered NA force playing on a primarily oceanic populated server during the ‘day time’, it’s fair game.

But when the oceanic population get home from work (night time) and the roles are reversed, it becomes an issue?

No, when NA players from a primarily NA populated server fight other primarily NA populated servers that are all running full queues at NA primetime and the server with an OZ population happens to lose because they were outplayed/everyone teamed up on them/they’re in a bracket that’s too high for them, it’s fair game.

But when the NA servers by and large go to sleep and the one server with the most Australians sweeps over the entire map and takes keeps and towers without facing any resistance, it becomes an issue.

I’m in the TC/GoM/SoS matchup right now. We absolutely OBLITERATED SoS during the NA early afternoon and primetime not because we outpopulate your “Oceanic server” while you are asleep, but because your NA primetime team does not deserve to be in the bracket you are in, and neither do you. GoM and TC teamed up to punish and destroy you for nightcapping and we took back our territory with a terrible vengeance that ground you guys down to a meager 50 point tally at one time. This is how it’s going to be until SoS stops nightcapping. They’re going to get an inflated score for rolling over stuff uncontested, then they’re going to get ganged up on because they’re in the lead and lose way more than they have to due to the other servers momentum, then they’re going to get beat up nonstop and demoralized because this just isn’t a matchup befitting their skill level. And at the end of the week, you’re either going to finish first place and go up a level to a match where you’ll get destroyed during the day even harder because of this pop imbalance, or you’ll finish second and remain in a bracket you still shouldn’t be in.

gorgewall.4901:

No, when NA players from a primarily NA populated server fight other primarily NA populated servers that are all running full queues at NA primetime and the server with an OZ population happens to lose because they were outplayed/everyone teamed up on them/they’re in a bracket that’s too high for them, it’s fair game.

But when the NA servers by and large go to sleep and the one server with the most Australians sweeps over the entire map and takes keeps and towers without facing any resistance, it becomes an issue.

The above guy is saying it’s okay for the other server’s NA players to be weaker than his server’s NA players, but it’s not okay for his server’s Oceanic players to be weaker than the other server’s Oceanic players.

gorgewall.4901:

Ludacrit.6183:

Let me get this straight, when NA players from a primarily NA populated server get all thier points from an outnumbered NA force playing on a primarily oceanic populated server during the ‘day time’, it’s fair game.

But when the oceanic population get home from work (night time) and the roles are reversed, it becomes an issue?

But when the NA servers by and large go to sleep and the one server with the most Australians sweeps over the entire map and takes keeps and towers without facing any resistance, it becomes an issue.

The part I bolded I find amusing every person that complains about nighttime play always adds that in.

Its simply not true there is resistance.

lollie.5816:

The above guy is saying it’s okay for the other server’s NA players to be weaker than his server’s NA players, but it’s not okay for his server’s Oceanic players to be weaker than the other server’s Oceanic players.

Did you read the rest of the post? I said that SoS does not belong in this bracket, or matchup, against TC because they are not decent competition during NA primetime, which is when every server in this matchup is hitting the queue in every borderland. They’re only ranked as high as they are because their point tallies have been inflated match after match by the nightcapping of their significant Oceanic population.

It’s not even that our Oceanic players are “worse” than SoS’s. It’s that they are not as numerous. If SoS, TC, and GoM were maxed out for queues at 4am and 8am EST and SoS wiped the floor with everyone, yeah, that’d evidence that SoS’s late night crew or their Oceanic crew or whatever is just “better” than the other servers’. But those queues weren’t full at this time last night, and they likely won’t be an hour from now. GoM’s isn’t, currently, so it’s really just TC vs. SoS. And soon? It’ll be SoS vs. a handful of players from the other realms, which basically means it’s SoS vs. PvE content, steamrolling nearly-empty keeps and tower, “winning” experience and karma without the risk of being pushed back, losing other territory, or having to put up extended sieges.

And at 2pm, GoM and TC will completely thrash SoS for their nightcapping because SoS will have overextended beyond what it can hold, and they will lose more territory than they realistically should due to momentum, an inability to defend on every conceivable front, and generally not belonging in this bracket.

This is what nightcapping gets everyone: an unfun experience. It’s not fun for me spending money on upgrades and siege knowing it won’t last more than four hours after I go to sleep. It’s not fun for me waking up to see one server controls 90% of WvW and has T3 everything. It’s not fun for me steamrolling a bunch of people who can’t fight back on equal footing despite their defensive advantage and the numbers to do so. It’s not fun for SoS’s NA team to be constantly on the defensive and losing territory for the entirety of their play. And I can’t imagine it’s fun for the SoS “night”/Oceanic team to walk over nearly-empty towers.
What I do think that SoS team enjoys, however, is the practically free experience and karma, and all the WvW buffs it brings them.

Personnally if I log in and no one is on the other servers I just log back out…. because for alot of us we enjoy pvp…. if no one is playing generally like minded people also dont bother PvD isn’t fun. But its rarely like that anyways theres ALWAYS some kind of force on at night.

gorgewall.4901:

It’s not even that our Oceanic players are “worse” than SoS’s. It’s that they are not as numerous.

And their NA presence is less numerous than your server’s NA players.

So what’s your point. Their server shouldn’t be allowed to have mainly Oceanic people? The Oceanics should be forced to transfer to make it “fair” for your NA people so they can sleep soundly? Don’t you see that your NA people are nightcapping their Oceanics while they sleep? Is SoS here complaining about that? No, because they handle both the “nightcapping” on their own server, AND all the needless complaining/whining/blinkered and self-centred craptalking that people like you come here into the forums to produce.

The problem is players ARE being punished for not being able to sustain an “off-time” population. We work out butts off during the day, and overnight all of our hard word is undone, and the enemy has sat at least three quarters of the map, with a 10k point lead.

You need to balance the team sizes in some way. It will increase queues in timezones where certain worlds have unfair advantages, but the people affected by the queue can just transfer worlds. It gives all worlds a fair chance to defend and attack each other at all times and slowly balances the worlds (because of emigration from larger worlds) and lessens the queue.

Namu.5712:

Its simply not true there is resistance.

Yeah, the Keep and Tower Lords are as strong at night as they are during the day. Whoo.
If you try to take a TC tower in our Borderlands during the NA primetime, you’re going to have to deal with 15+ men on a wall and another 20-25 swooping in from behind you for a pincer within 5-10 minutes.
If you try it during the Australian primetime, you’re going to see ~5 on the wall, and 5 desperately trying to get inside. Sure, maybe that counts as resistance, but considering the attacking force is going to have the same number whether it be NA or AU primetime, the resistance is much less for the Aussies. This is why people start complaining about night capping. The Oceanic pop servers aren’t winning at this point in some matchups (like this one) because they’re better, but because they are more numerous.

But that’s just this matchup. It doesn’t do the pro-night capping argument any good to say, “Well, on MY server, it isn’t a problem! There’s people to fight 24/7! There’s always queues. We face the same resistance!” Fantastic, then your server doesn’t have a night capping problem. I’m sure Henge of Denravi, Stormbluff Isle, and Jade Quarry only have to worry about the disparity in power of the day/night teams, which is legitimate—not a disparity in population. But that doesn’t hold for every server in every match up, and as you go down the ranking list, night capping becomes increasingly more of an issue. I don’t know much about ET, IoJ, and CD, but they might not have this problem. Dragonbrand vs. Blackgate vs. Fort Aspenwood? I’d put money on Dragonbrand sweeping up right now, because I know they’re loaded with Australians.

Your not being punished, its a game with a score board lol. How is that being punished? Play and have fun with the pvp, stop being so obessed with a score.

And forcing people to either wait in que or transfer away from friends/guilds is not a solution.

Could we stop this NA vs Oceanic vs EU bs, i think everyone got that the game is global by now (well almost everyone).
Let’s start discussing some good addition to the game instead.

So, region lock: limited access to the game is not a solution imo.

the more pve stuff
Buffing npc to the defender number: bad, people would immediatly rely on this to have low pc defense. doesn’t take into account a 2v1 situation
buffing npc to general population ratio: hard to balance, anyway buffing npc to the point that they can hold a zerg is not fun.

score fix:
Slower tic: doesn’t change anything
Score by pk: encourage low tactics and zerg vs zerg
change function of the time: possibly the worst solution people came up with, i’m not even going to state why
Change in population ratio: impossible to balance given that people come and go, doesn’t take into account a 2v1

Now to the good stuff imo:
Added limited high defense option to defender: good, can benefit to everyone, can come in various ways (thanks to Sharpclaw, no quote)
Better reward while defending/losing: good, benefits to everyone. (by Mr JP)
“Safe” acces to a tower/supply from borderlands: good, benefits to everyone (Mr JP)

Come on guys, i know you can do it

lollie.5816:

And their NA presence is less numerous than your server’s NA players.

SoS and GoM do not have lower NA presence than we do. SoS matches us player for player minute by minute just counting the NA people; it’s the Oceanics that throw it off. GoM matches us during primetime when it matters, but begins to falter around now, like it is doing. Currently GoM doesn’t have a queue in three of four zones. SoS is hitting queue caps right now same as TC is.

gorgewall.4901:

it’s the Oceanics that throw it off..

Then their server has a weak NA team and a strong Oceanic team. Nothing more to be said.

lollie.5816:

gorgewall.4901:

it’s the Oceanics that throw it off..

Then their server has a weak NA team and a strong Oceanic team. Nothing more to be said.

Should’ve had separate servers. Why should we all suffer crappy matches because ANET made such a mistake? Don’t worry though. This game will be ruined if you all get your way and this isn’t fixed.

Reference SWTOR for self-righteous idealistic dev team telling the customers that their concerns are invalid.

Unless this game is to be labled as a job in itself there has to be game mechanics in place that makes claiming of keeps more complex and the scoring system has to change. Both these things has to take a 24 hour population into account that wont be constant over said 24 hours.

Only game that nailed that well is EVE online.

TC and GoM have strong NA teams and non-existant Oceanic teams. That’s the point. You keep dancing around it by implying that your Oceanic teams are better rather than simply more numerous, or this fantasy that your server is not full queued at NA primetime.

I believe too that “night-capping” is a very bad choice of words, as GMT time of “night” depends where you’re living.

And I want to add that limiting players, or even closing WvW at certain times are really really destructive ideas, which shall never taken into consideration. I’m pretty happy ANet has draw their line on that already, so that we can focus on more constructive ideas.

The real problem is ninja-capping or easy-sleep-capping. Problem is 10-40 guys can easily capture whole map less than 1 hours (we did it 2 hours before I wrote this post), while their enemies sleep. They destroy all the investments on all the upgrades in such a small time. In addition to that stacking at least 4-5 hours of full score, negating all the efforts of majority of player base of both servers, decreasing the value of playing at “more crowded” times.

Currently this “alarm-clocking” or “abusing sleep times” is too easy tactic/organization with “too much” benefits. It’s not balanced. Such balance issues will eventually force all competitive player base to use that tactic/organization and alienate the player base which can’t. It will turn to a competition between only on a minority of player base which can cover 7/24, which will reduce WvW participation and investments.

Clearly I (and my guild) do not invest on upgrades as much as we did 2 weeks ago. As we know either we’ll loose all the map when we sleep or we’ll win all the map if we make a late night/early morning operation. There is no point on investing on expensive upgrades right now.

Same goes for the time we spend on WvW. Around Tuesday it gets pretty certain what result will be and we stop organizing competitive operations.

Some might claim “If it’s that easy, do it yourself also”. We’re already doing it. However it’s just like making one profession too powerful, and then when everyone start to play that profession, expecting the game to be competitive and fun. Balance and variety makes a game fun. “ninja-sleep-capping” doesn’t leave much room to variety right now.

Just check the top tier matches of EU and NA last 3 weeks. Check the scores and tell me if there is a real competition. Compare that results with “queue graphics” to see how powerful “ninja-sleep-capping” is.

These are the real problems. Of course Canadians or Oceanics, or night shift workers have the right to play whenever they want to, however WvW game mechanics should be adjusted taking these in to account.

Night capping is one thing, but at least give the servers with low off-hour forces a fighting chance?

And by that i mean make the out-manned buff not completely useless. Seriously, if i want to make money or farm items, my playing a severely outmanned WvWvW game for the buff is about the last thing i’d do. It needs to 1.) trigger on more sensitive number differences, 2.) scale with how much you are outnumbered, and most importantly 3.) give BONUSES TO ACTUAL COMBAT, ie stats, damage, survival, hp, whatever.

Seriously, whoever green-lit the current version of out-manned buff is borderline kitten

lollie.5816:

Then their server has a weak NA team and a strong Oceanic team. Nothing more to be said.

People keep saying they’ve got a “strong Oceanic team”. No, “strong” does not enter into it. They have “A” Oceanic team. They’re the only ones in this matchup that has a huge late night presence. They get to win at night by default. That’s the problem! It’s not about who’s better or worse at night, it’s about who is actually there at night.

SoS has a weak NA team that doesn’t belong in this bracket. They’re only here because the fact that they actually have Oceanic players shoring them up with points they barely had to work for has falsely inflated their ranking stats.

gorgewall.4901:

it’s about who is actually there at night.

Are you saying zero people on your server logs on at Oceanic time?

Also, it’s fine for a server to win based on their Oceanic presence, as the Oceanic people are simply playing the game.

If you have zero people on at night and your mad about pvp you should probably move to a more active server, just my 2 cents.

But I dont buy that your servers wvwvw is 100% dead at night.

I believe a lot of posters are severely misinformed.

This is not about x server vs y server.
This is not about x continent vs y continent.
This is not about “time zones”.
This is not about “night capping”.

The above are oversimplifications and generalizations of the core problem.

This is about:

1) adjusting scoring to better reflect effort, coordination, strategy, and skills.

2) aiding and minimizing population imbalances (more balanced sides = funner battles)

There are many suggestions. I hope Anet takes careful note of all suggestions and works through it carefully. Any change would be time zone and region blind.

Distaste.4801:

The big deal is WvW is competition and people want a CHANCE to win. People realize not everyone can win but when it is a complete blow out after 1 day, there is no chance at winning. Not unless a big off peak guild rolls on their server to save them.

The other major issue is guild claiming. Guilds want to hold on to a keep, upgrade it, and keep it. Currently you cannot do that because as soon as you go to bed it’s gone. What’s the point of sinking gold after gold into a garrison only to find everything on every map has been taken overnight?

The solution is no longer separating regions. The game is live and the damage is done. This is something that ArenaNet should have considered before the release of the game. They say they always planned for it to be 24/7 so how did they not figure out that having certain regions rolling on other regions servers would give a huge advantage? Even if they did realize it would happen they still implemented a scoring system that favors doing that.

The only thing that will mitigate this issue now is a complete scoring overhaul. A new system that grants far more points for taking hard to take objectives than taking completely undefended ones.

Even if there is a scoring overhaul, there will still be “night capping” and even though the extra points gained may not be as large as they are now, it’s still extra points to tack onto a lead. It honestly won’t solve the problem.

As you say, everyone wants to WIN, but not every does. A possible solution is to not have the match-ups as they are now. For example, as always the match-ups for US servers are HoD against SBI, ET, or JQ. They have to deal with HoD’s night capping which is discouraging towards winning causing servers to just give up after day one. The server match-up should instead of being based off accumulated points, be based off of player activity and time-zones. HoD has players during day and night whilst the other 3 servers do not. HoD should be put up against servers with similar observed play times.

As the idea sounds somewhat decent, the flaw with that is how MANY players there are. HoD is possibly the most populated US server, and even if they go up against a server with same coverage, the populations are most likely not going to be equal. HoD could have ~400 going up against ~300 and ~250 which causes problems and complications. So if the idea is suggested, I would say scrap it.

Maybe just randomly assign server match-ups? Obviously servers will get annihilated, but at least the other servers who face the night capping problem may not have to deal with it. This way will give everyone a chance to win; it’s not the greatest solution, but in my opinion I think it’s the most fair for now.

Choob thats not true not once did SBI have an outmanned buff until they just stopped trying.

Right now its 239am and the battle is fierce between the servers.

Stop assuming no one is playing at night, theres always people playing.

Namu.5712:

Choob thats not true not once did SBI have an outmanned buff until they just stopped trying.

Right now its 239am and the battle is fierce between the servers.

Stop assuming no one is playing at night, theres always people playing.

Did I say no one was playing at night? No.
The issue is that servers have more night time players than other servers creating the night capping issue.
Obviously there’s always people playing. It’s about the coverage.
SBI during the week does not have as much nighttime coverage as HoD. I’m not sure what you’re getting at unless you’re telling me that the night capping issue doesn’t exist, seeing as the battle is “fierce” at 2:39am. Let me know if it’s the same during a weekday when people have work, school, etc.

Latency.3907:

I believe a lot of posters are severely misinformed.

This is not about x server vs y server.
This is not about x continent vs y continent.
This is not about “time zones”.
This is not about “night capping”.

The above are oversimplifications and generalizations of the core problem.

This is about:

1) adjusting scoring to better reflect effort, coordination, strategy, and skills.

2) aiding and minimizing population imbalances (more balanced sides = funner battles)

There are many suggestions. I hope Anet takes careful note of all suggestions and works through it carefully. Any change would be time zone and region blind.

Some abusing those weaknesses of system and don’t want to take attention to that. Instead they constantly try to turn discussion to points as if we’re suggesting they should not play the game when they want to.

I started to believe they are doing it consciously as they believe on such a system their server might loose rankings.

Unfortunately some of players getting confused about that imbalance are feeding those trolls.

Namu.5712:

Choob thats not true not once did SBI have an outmanned buff until they just stopped trying.

Right now its 239am and the battle is fierce between the servers.

Stop assuming no one is playing at night, theres always people playing.

This is entirely false. SBI has had many outmanned buffs over the past few weeks and beyond.

My old post was deleted by an admin with a note saying I should post in this thread instead, so here’s a copy/paste:

When I play on friday night, battlegrounds seem good, we’re not doing bad if we have able commandeering people (note how I avoided to say ‘commanders’ as in, gem/pve-paid meaningless titles, gj Arenanet).
However, when I resume playing on saturday morning/noon, ALL OF THE MAP IS CAPPED BY FRENCH REALMS? Like, all of the map I just joined, except one single station which was still our colour!
This is absolutely discouraging, why did I even play on friday night at all? What the heck is going on here, making this possible? It is definitely not a one-time thing where some guild on their server decided to be special, this seems to occur on all french servers, all the time (I can tell because Desolation has had those as opponents a lot lately and I’ve been playing a lot wvw). Please do something, because I don’t really see why I should go to wvwvw anymore (except for mindlessly zerging down opponent players maybe, I’m talking about the strategic aspect here though).

Edit: Like this http://flic.kr/p/dfkMz5

choob.4269:

Namu.5712:

Choob thats not true not once did SBI have an outmanned buff until they just stopped trying.

Right now its 239am and the battle is fierce between the servers.

Stop assuming no one is playing at night, theres always people playing.

Did I say no one was playing at night? No.
The issue is that servers have more night time players than other servers creating the night capping issue.
Obviously there’s always people playing. It’s about the coverage.
SBI during the week does not have as much nighttime coverage as HoD. I’m not sure what you’re getting at unless you’re telling me that the night capping issue doesn’t exist, seeing as the battle is “fierce” at 2:39am. Let me know if it’s the same during a weekday when people have work, school, etc.

Work and school is a valid point but many of our night players also work at 8am 9am the next day but we still stay up to secure victory. Its a matter of dedication to being on top vs meh im casual I only play between 6pm and 9pm then I go to bed.

What Anet is saying is both efforts are equal whether its at night or during primetime. And they dont view changing points depending on time of play to be fair nor lessening your que ability, based on a server lack of activity.

And it is the same during the weekdays…. HoD has no ques during the weekdays early morning, we are not capped out 24/7 another assumption people make about that server.

If they want a decent fix make the buff you get when your outnumbered actually do something that defends from losing positions. That would be the best fix imo. Because if you change point income, you make off peak players efforts less meaningful even if they fought tooth and nail for what they have. People are automatically assuming no one is on. If you limit ques based on activity that also hurts off peak players its not fair either. Anything that interferes with night time such as point gains/queing rules is not a good fix and will just swing this arguement the other way and create another problem.

If your server is outnumbered at night and get the buff the buff should increase position defenses making caps harder and increases player attack and defense power (within reason) 5 people shouldn’t be able to wipe like 50 people but you get the idea.

One suggestion:

Either limit the ability to build siege equipment by the high population side or greatly increase the ability to build siege equipment by the outmanned side. Say the Outmanned buff reduces the supply cost to build siege equipment by 50%.

lollie.5816:

Are you saying zero people on your server logs on at Oceanic time?

No, we’ve got people in the zones at night. EB stays capped well into the night and only ever drops to being moderately populated, and our own Borderlands will field a respectable but not capped number of players until they’re ground down to a Garrison, but it’s all at the cost of players from the other two Borderlands jumping ship to more populous zones because they can’t compete with the numbers of the off-peak server.

People keep making this weird strawman argument where the only situation nightcapping or population imbalance could possibly be “a thing” is if one or more servers just have absolutely no people playing WvW at a given time. It’s not about having zero people to move around, it’s about having far fewer than your opponents. If Servers A and B have 20 people each in Server A’s borderland, and Server C has 60.. A and B are going to lose territory. That’s all there is to it. Even if A and B completely ganged up on C in that zone and worked side-by-side miraculously, C has the overwhelming advantage. It’s not because C is playing better, it’s because C simply has more people to throw around by quirk of the time zone. And you get into a negative cycle where people start losing solely due to numbers, and they leave because it’s not fun.

Read that last part again: it’s not fun. That’s why we’re playing WvW, or any game, in theory—to have fun. But getting destroyed because you have a simple numerical disadvantage through no conceivable fault of your own is not fun. Games and sports don’t put people at a handicap like that unless it’s to make things more difficult, a penalty for breaking some rule, or there is some statistical benefit that is supposed to make up for the numerical deficit—none of which applies in GW2.

The game already does one thing to ensure fair matchups: it changes who plays against who from week to week based on their performance in the previous match, so that servers that did poorly fall down and fight presumably weaker opponents, and stronger servers move up and so on. However, the very integrity of this system is weakened when a server can move up not because it did well in general, but because it did obscenely well in a slim time frame, especially when, for the duration of said time frame, they outnumber their opponents 2:1, or even 3:1 in some cases.

I see this repeated argument (not necessarily here, but in /t and /y in various places) that a server is “strong” because it has a big Oceanic presence, or that’s “their strength”, as though it is in any fair way equivalent to another server’s “strength” of “being coordinated at 6pm”. Having more players is not a strength, it’s having more players. There’s a cap on the number of people who can be in a zone per server to begin with to keep things fair, because everyone with half a brain realizes that things are most fair when you have a 10v10 or a 20v20 or a 50v50, not a 25v50. If population was really supposed to be a dominant factor in determining who wins (not that it isn’t the case currently, but I’m saying here that if it were actually intended as a design goal) you would see a queue system that is designed so that Server C can field 128 because B has 102 and A has 70, and those slots that were reserved for A are “wasted” due to A just not having that many people interested in WvW, so their slots may as well be given to whoever can grab them first.

Populations should be encouraged to equalize. It’s the fastest route out of this mess and something that any MMO strives to do to begin with. Keeps loads manageable, keeps areas out of overpopulation, and helps avoid someone walking into a zone and being the only man there.

Tying into this, there’s one actually fair point from “the other side” I’ve seen brought up with regard to this, and it’s that splitting the Oceanic players up evenly across all NA servers means they can’t find anyone to do PvE content with. Putting aside the notion that (humorously, the opposition attempts to use to its benefit when it comes to WvW zone population) a zone is realistically almost never completely devoid of players, Anet has already put in a system designed to ease overpopulation that could, with some tweaking, be used to alleviate underpopulation: Overflow.

Imagine, a shared Overflow buffer for every zone that you could click a button to willingly port yourself to, rather than only ever seeing Overflow when you’re in an overpop zone. Suddenly, the three lonely Australians in Cursed Shore on each of the 24 NA servers press a button, and there are now 72 of them all together, plus whoever else wanted in on the party. Benefits to everyone, not just Australians, but.. say, the whole of Kaineng, and even my server which is not exactly jumping in Orr at 4am, even if it is a weekend.

Adjust the outmanned buff to mean something.

Problem solved.

Anything else really does intrude on a specific play groups time.

Namu.5712:

Work and school is a valid point but many of our night players also work at 8am 9am the next day but we still stay up to secure victory. Its a matter of dedication to being on top vs meh im casual I only play between 6pm and 9pm then I go to bed.

What Anet is saying is both efforts are equal whether its at night or during primetime. And they dont view changing points depending on time of play to be fair nor lessening your que ability, based on a server lack of activity.

And it is the same during the weekdays…. HoD has no ques during the weekdays early morning, we are not capped out 24/7 another assumption people make about that server.

If they want a decent fix make the buff you get when your outnumbered actually do something that defends from losing positions. That would be the best fix imo. Because if you change point income, you make off peak players efforts less meaningful even if they fought tooth and nail for what they have. People are automatically assuming no one is on. If you limit ques based on activity that also hurts off peak players its not fair either. Anything that interferes with night time such as point gains/queing rules is not a good fix and will just swing this arguement the other way and create another problem.

If your server is outnumbered at night and get the buff the buff should increase position defenses making caps harder and increases player attack and defense power (within reason) 5 people shouldn’t be able to wipe like 50 people but you get the idea.

As the idea sounds great and all, how can you fine tune a buff so well that it’s considered a buff, but not to be too overpowering? Adding a number ‘x’ to each stat can cause two things to happen:

One, people will complain that they get buffs and we don’t. In a small group vs. small group situation, it is most likely the buffed group will win leading to grief on the forums.

Two, people will complain that the buff isn’t enough to make a difference and that the problem still persists, again leading to grief on the forums.

There will always be complainers….. you can never make everyone happy.

They could have the buff calculated based on the number they are outnumbered by. But it comes to a point where you have to look at your server and what you want.

If your server has weak or no night players that pvp…. you might want to move servers.
To a server that is more focused on pvp rather then not.

With regard to suggestions in the vein of: “make Outmanned provide some statistical benefit to combat capability so that players with fewer numbers are mechanically stronger,” like Orbs on crack or something..

..haven’t we seen how that works in WoW, with the buffs in Wintergrasp and the like? Did anyone enjoy unkillable Druids who could maul ten people to death just because the Druid doesn’t have any backup?

In case you didn’t notice, this ain’t WoW. There’s no way to perma-sustain yourself due to the lack of continual healing. Yes the point is you should be strong enough to fight 1v2 reliably if your outnumbered 2 to 1 basically. Hell, with the amount of cc/conditions and kiting you can do in this game, even being statistcally stronger wouldn’t be that big of an advantage if your severely outnumbered.

The opposite would be the current crap we deal with now.