Guild Wars 2

I do not see night-capping as an issue, but the orb and outmanned buffs are.

The logic that WvW has currently is kind-of broken in this area; if one world severely outnumbers the other two, there is a high probability that this world will get the orbs. What’s worse is that after getting this orb(s), the superior-in-number world will be even stronger than before. The outmanned worlds need to try to get them back, however, they are outnumbered, and the buff that helps them, if they are severely outnumbered are not helping either. (Karma, experience, MF, will not affect directly how they perform)

I really appreciate Anet’s statement regarding Night Capping; they acknowledge that this game is meant to be played around the globe. So, the term ‘night capping’, is not that valid because it’s obviously day time on the other side of the world when it’s night time on US.

I hope Anet will fix tune the buffs, so at least, the outmanned world(s) will be able to return the blow. Things like getting camp-farmed due to outnumbered, and being able to do almost nothing due to superior orb buffs on the other side, are frustrating now.

Also, is it possible to give a cooldown for WvW after server reboot? I believe that some people will take longer time to update the client, due to Internet connection and whatnot. Since the battle should resume like before the reboot happened, at least there should be a cooldown for people to get in back to the game.

I honestly dont think the orb buffs are what causes such a huge gap in score. It may not be apt to call it nightcapping despite a lot of arguments for or against But i do think that if matches are pretty much written in stone after 48 hours that it is fair to call it a bad matchup. With only 8 possible matches going on at any given time dont expect to suddenlly be facing off against a completely different group of servers. The snowball effect happens when servers cap all 3 maps then keep them almost indefinately. Thus i still think a more static score system would keep things more fair without effecting anyone in a negative way. Oceanic players would still get points for taking maps with little resistance. NA players would be able to take back such points or raid supply camps to gain points while said keeps dont earn additional points unless attacked. And it woulnt take any major reprogramming.

Population levels over 24-hours should be one of the main things that determines match ups. Doing it on points alone isn’t working, and neither is using points to create some kind of crazily lopsided league table.

The way the match system works now, it’s going to be months before the 24-hour servers finally get into the same zone on the list and they’ll be working their way through the smaller servers on the way.

It’s getting hard to keep morale up on my server. For the past three days we’ve woken up to four blue maps, making all our hard fighting pointless and our WvW population smaller by the day, which makes it less likely that we’ll be able to compete in any meaningful way next week.

Anet, you guys should stop playing on the top tier servers and come see what it’s like on the smaller ones. And while you’re down here you can try keeping server morale up for a week.

Not that I expect you guys will be reading this thread anymore.

Okey, so. While I don’t have anything against nightcapping, it still creates problems when combined with other issues. I am sure everyone in Desolation has noticed that we got the outmanned buff half the day, and only like 5 minutes worth of queue during the peak hours. Just few weeks ago had hours worth of queues and I’m rather convinced that we haven’t lost all our population, people just don’t find WvW fun anymore.
Why? Well, no matter what we do, the map belongs to Arbostone in the morning. Makes capping stuff and wasting money on siege and upgrades rather pointless.

So few ideas to fix the problems:
1. Let Canadians have their own, mixed English/French server. I know some people claim that there are no Canadians on the French servers, but that would mean no French speaking Canadians play the game. (And what about that one, especially large Canadian guild in Arbostone?) Sure, every French in Arbostone is thinking that “Oh, I never see any Canadians here” but guess what, they aren’t playing that much when you are, and even if they were, they speak French so you can’t tell them apart from the rest of the pop.

2. Scale the fortification upgrade costs when the server is losing. Something like LoserScore/WinnerScore*fixedPrices. Could also lower the cost of siegeweapons, but not quite that much or the people will start stacking them when the scores are “just right”.

3. Make the outmanned buff affect the actual content of the WvW maps. Currently, its just encouraging to do PvE stuff in WvW, which is nice way to get people to stay in WvW, but its sure is not helping to try to get them to focus on the actual objectives.

4. Discourage people playing on servers that are not meant for their timezone (at least when an appropriate server is available.) Some people might have some “friends” they’ve met on the internet on totally opposite timezone, but either they don’t actively play with them anyways, or are very rare cases.
The discouraging could be done by:
-WvW health & damage -5-15% depending on how far off they are. (6-12 hours)
-WvW magicfind -X%
-WvW minimum Queue 1 minute

Or alternatively:
1. Stop matching international and nationality servers against each other. Would solve the problem for EU at least.

Edit buttons have vanished once again. sigh

5. Make the outmanned buff affect the actual WvW. Like give 15% health for outmanned team. (Usually this would just counter the fact that the other team gets 15% health increase from the orbs anyways.) So on top of that, could give some additional buff, like 5% more damage.

It’s my understanding that the only thing your server matters for is WvW. Can you not guest on any other server for DEs, dungeons and what not to play with your friends?

For the friends you’ve already made, once guesting is implemented, this will be fine. But there’s much to be said for ‘bumping into people’ and ‘making friends’. The servers that don’t have a ‘strong Oceanic presence’ may have as few as 2 people in the same map area as me. If I wanted a solo trek through an empty-looking wilderness punctuated by towns, I’d play Oblivion. I don’t want that, so I play on the same server as major OC guilds; it means that I get to play an MMO, instead of a solo game with 200ms latency.

Not sure why it’s ok to let night crews walk all over maps with little resistance or queues that the prime time crews constantly have to face. I agree that everyone deserves to play whenever they want to play, so throw out the close wvw down for 12 hrs type of ideas. But at the same time you’re still affecting the enjoyment of players of undermanned servers, they are left at an unfair disadvantage until their servers eventually matches up with other servers with similar night time attendance, but how many weeks or months until that’s figured out? especially with free transfers still around.

They need to at least look at letting guilds set up some additional base defenses, stronger guild buffs with shorter durations, or more/stronger guards you can station at guild bases that last for 6 hours, or improve the undermanned buffs.

Or how about WvW combine?
Problem with nightcapping usually is that there is one side running all over the other side that is not able to produce any sort of numbers during the night, making it rather boring for both side. (Winning side doesn’t get any new events as they already hold everything, losing side doesn’t want to be outmanned all the time.)
I guess this is happening for both EU and American servers, so:
Combine EU and American servers for WvW so that the WvW population doesn’t need to start considering swapping over to american servers from EU or vice versa.
Having small queue is better than having no queue. The combinations do not need to be permanent, they could change every 10 or so rounds to create some variation.

I don’t really think anyone finds WvW more fun when there are 100 people from your team on the map and 5 people from the other team. Sure it maybe be fun for 15 minutes, but the novelty wears off really fast.

No outmanned buff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! simple give points after how many players play, is it 5% full then give 17.5% of the points servers have, is it 40% full give 70% off the points servers have and so on, then it dont give that much having 50players running when no one is online, 50players is what 3%.

Honestly I’d have to second Shadow’s post.

Don’t make the players stronger to inadequately compensate for their server being at off-peak hours. Don’t throttle queues and limit / punish players for where they live or when they have time to play. Anet won’t do this, it is stated in the OP.

Make the incentives greater. Aside from short-to-none queues. The server can easily tell if the #1 server in a matchup has 50 more players in a Borderlands than either of their opponents. Say every point tally a census is taken. For every player less than the largest of the 3 sides has that has engaged the enemy in combat (aka spies and leeches won’t be counted), you gain bonuses to XP, Magic Find, Badge drop rate, Event rewards, etc. This incentive-driven system would reward participation during off-peak times with the result of there being either, A) no off-peak times as everyone wants the most bang for their buck, or rewards the night crews trying to hold objectives and otherwise spending resources being slaughtered and outnumbered 1:3 or 1:4 or worse, so they aren’t penalized for trying.

Fred Fargone.3127:

1. Let Canadians have their own, mixed English/French server. I know some people claim that there are no Canadians on the French servers, but that would mean no French speaking Canadians play the game. (And what about that one, especially large Canadian guild in Arbostone?) Sure, every French in Arbostone is thinking that “Oh, I never see any Canadians here” but guess what, they aren’t playing that much when you are, and even if they were, they speak French so you can’t tell them apart from the rest of the pop.

French canadians also speaks english and usually prefers to play on NA servers. They are closer to US than they are of FR.. on cultural level or play time.. And it makes perfect sense : who would rather play on an oversea server, with no opposition, higher latency and no fun?

Also, on competitive servers like Vizunah Square or Aborstone, the wvw community is very structured, many well know guilds, that even organize night shifts. So yeah, they would have noticed if a foreign community was playing with them…

Fred Fargone.3127:

Or how about WvW combine?
Combine EU and American servers for WvW

Impossible: How a server on only one timezone (which is the case of FR, DE, ES regional servers) would be able to compete with a server with ~9h difference, and spread over 5 timezones?
And even if in a ideal world we would all speak English, community would tend to regroup on certain servers (like Russian on Far Shiverpeaks for example)

Timezones issue cannot be solved, but ANet can act on the consequences of this : inequal population.
-> In order to have “fair” matchups, the one thing ANet need to act on is population :
- by finding a way to balance population
- or balance in-game difficulty according to population
- or adjust scoring according to population
And the last two option can also be combined…

I realy hope the anet post about “encouraged people to come in rvr with more reward” is a joke …. or i don’t understand…,
In some serv you have more than 4h queue, and all the answer of anet is "encoraged people to come in rvr … " ? wtf.. Up the ppl limite in open or delete it, don’t care if i play with lag, it’s better that afk 3h for playing in rvr :/

This is going to be controversial, but I think repair costs should be removed from WvW, just to encourage the smaller servers to get out there on the field without feeling all they’re in for is a massive repair bill from repeat dying (which is inevitable). Attempts to regain ground despite overwhelming odds should not be punished by repair costs (Anet if you’re wanting to make it more fun and rewarding for players to at least try – remove repair costs from WvW).

Btw, pictures will probably make off server hour capping a bit more enlightening. Most of our server, that is 3 people, were defending this tower with me at night. This is what it looks like

http://imageshack.us/a/img31/4522/gw082l.jpg

We did actually stall them for 5 minutes with a door-aimed cata, a guy on a arrow cart, and someone running supplies to the gate. In fact, there were so many enemies, I believe they finally dropped the gate just from pounding on it with no siege.

This is roughly how every borderland was like.

Personally, I have the opposite opinion of many in this post: I think people playing at off-peak hours should gain more points, not fewer. This will incent more players to stop playing at the exact same time. This reduce queues and makes the game more interesting / competitive at all hours, instead of just a few each day.

But it’s rlly easy to deal with Night Cappin and here is 2 solutions:

1)Mutch more Hardcore one:

• Poiints are distributed evry 30 minutes all 24/7

2) Little bit easier

example from 00:00 GMT +1 or +0 to 8 AM GMT +0 +1
point are given evry 30 -45 minutes , rest of the day evry 15 minutes.

and you have problem solved with Night Cappin.

It gonna solve : problem with population of all servers , limitation of all servers , balancing etc.

It was well known problem from BETA tests where ANet could not handle . They just did not how to balance servers during the betas. All ppl where concered about problem with Zones and No Region Lock.

ANet said thre will be no problem ( read we will not deal with problem , we cant).

and now evrybody see the problem.

arabeth.2361:

Personally, I have the opposite opinion of many in this post: I think people playing at off-peak hours should gain more points, not fewer. This will incent more players to stop playing at the exact same time. This reduce queues and makes the game more interesting / competitive at all hours, instead of just a few each day.

I don’t think I live in the same world than you. There is a reason I play at evenings. It has mostly to do with the necessity to earn a living which tends to have a very string timer going on.

stof.9341:

arabeth.2361:

Personally, I have the opposite opinion of many in this post: I think people playing at off-peak hours should gain more points, not fewer. This will incent more players to stop playing at the exact same time. This reduce queues and makes the game more interesting / competitive at all hours, instead of just a few each day.

I don’t think I live in the same world than you. There is a reason I play at evenings. It has mostly to do with the necessity to earn a living which tends to have a very string timer going on.

Most of the people telling us to play at different hours or to stay up all night are kids who don’t have to sleep so we wake up for work and then work all day to afford shelter and food.

They’re totally ignorant to real life and don’t understand logic. The point is, ignore them you’re just arguing with a child.

I’m done replying in this thread because Anet has made it clear they don’t care about the majority opinion and will continue to protect the very small minority from the “evil” majority.

Dinks.2478:

stof.9341:

arabeth.2361:

Personally, I have the opposite opinion of many in this post: I think people playing at off-peak hours should gain more points, not fewer. This will incent more players to stop playing at the exact same time. This reduce queues and makes the game more interesting / competitive at all hours, instead of just a few each day.

I don’t think I live in the same world than you. There is a reason I play at evenings. It has mostly to do with the necessity to earn a living which tends to have a very string timer going on.

Most of the people telling us to play at different hours or to stay up all night are kids who don’t have to sleep so we wake up for work and then work all day to afford shelter and food.

They’re totally ignorant to real life and don’t understand logic. The point is, ignore them you’re just arguing with a child.

I’m done replying in this thread because Anet has made it clear they don’t care about the majority opinion and will continue to protect the very small minority from the “evil” majority.

You cant claim to be the majority opinion.

Nor is everyone here disagreeing with you is a kid, thats arrogant and equally ignorant. The game is what it is, if your an adult this shouldn’t be hard to grasp.

I think one of the possible solution of "night capping " problem is to deny access from EU servers to American and vice versa.
Main part of night cappers – people from another time zone, for example Canadian people play for EU French servers. Of course, there is the way of using VPN, but the major part of night zerg wouldnt use that…

P.S. Sorry, if somebody has written the same idea earlier – it’s only my opinion.

so they really put this subject to bed eh?

821 posts and counting means there is no problem …. right?

Namu.5712:

Dinks.2478:

stof.9341:

arabeth.2361:

Personally, I have the opposite opinion of many in this post: I think people playing at off-peak hours should gain more points, not fewer. This will incent more players to stop playing at the exact same time. This reduce queues and makes the game more interesting / competitive at all hours, instead of just a few each day.

I don’t think I live in the same world than you. There is a reason I play at evenings. It has mostly to do with the necessity to earn a living which tends to have a very string timer going on.

Most of the people telling us to play at different hours or to stay up all night are kids who don’t have to sleep so we wake up for work and then work all day to afford shelter and food.

They’re totally ignorant to real life and don’t understand logic. The point is, ignore them you’re just arguing with a child.

I’m done replying in this thread because Anet has made it clear they don’t care about the majority opinion and will continue to protect the very small minority from the “evil” majority.

You cant claim to be the majority opinion.

Nor is everyone here disagreeing with you is a kid, thats arrogant and equally ignorant. The game is what it is, if your an adult this shouldn’t be hard to grasp.

he never said everyone dissagreeing with him was a kid , he said everyone who proposes as a solution “just stay up all night” (or words to that efect) probably is a kid. simply because if you have a job or wife/kids etc then staying up all night to “win” at a video game is a one way ticket to not having a job/wife/kids any more.

I think one of the possible solution of "night capping " problem is to deny access from EU servers to American and vice versa.
Main part of night cappers – people from another time zone, for example Canadian people play for EU French servers. Of course, there is the way of using VPN, but the major part of night zerg wouldnt use that…

I hope Anet make this, in this way, you can see this change absolutely nothing …
Ppl really need to stop with the Canadian excuse every time they lose a match up :/

Yes we have guild playing 1 to 6/7am, but they are all in metropolitan France.

Wothan.4673:

I think one of the possible solution of "night capping " problem is to deny access from EU servers to American and vice versa.
Main part of night cappers – people from another time zone, for example Canadian people play for EU French servers. Of course, there is the way of using VPN, but the major part of night zerg wouldnt use that…

I hope Anet make this, in this way, you can see this change absolutely nothing …
Ppl really need to stop with the Canadian excuse every time they lose a match up :/

Yes we have guild playing 1 to 6/7am, but they are all in metropolitan France.

This doesn’t fix the problem. North American night cappers are Oceanic players. They don’t have their own servers, the NA servers are their servers. They’re just in a vastly different time zone.

<—- Im a graveyard worker. My weekends im awake during the night. I still want to be able to hop in and enjoy myself in WvW. Nuff said.

Ahem…..Incoming Wall of Text

Aim

-To come up with a system to balance and reinforce enjoyment of WvWvW
-Do it so that everyone’s efforts are Equal and Contributing at any time without any form of punishment/disadvantage

Analysis

-Current problem creating issue of night capping arises from the PPT system, or the potential for it to “Run Away” with itself if a server can get a +600 PPT for a certain particular amount of time if no resistance is met. If said situation occurs over a 8 hour period, 19200 points is awarded, If it repeats over consecutive days demoralization occurs as other servers in match up fall away in point score and unofficially declare the “Match Over”

Proposed solution

Combination of the old system with emphasis on 12 hour periods where the scoring system remains equal regardless of opposition met, population of other servers, Timezones.

Except you now Get Victory points

Victory Points are to be awarded after every 12 hours [(Set) Yes I’m stealing a idea from Tennis here, bear with me its 0040 in the morning for me and for lack of a better word] Who ever has the highest score with the current system wins the set with the points system being

Winner = 3 Point
2nd Place = 2 Point
Last Place = 1 Point

PPT accumulated scores reset back to 0 and the next set begins.

At the end of the 2 Weeks the Victory Points are added up with the winner being the one with the most points

Now

Server A has Good Daytime / Ok Night time
Server B has Good Daytime / Good Night time
Server C has Ok Daytime / Good Night time

So looking at this setup its fair to say

Servers A B will do well during the day, C might struggle
Server B and C will do Well during the Night, A Might Struggle

Match Plays out over 12 Sets (6 Days) with the following

Set 1 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 2 A 1 B 3 C 2
Set 3 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 4 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 5 A 2 B 3 C 1
Set 6 A 1 B 3 C 2
Set 7 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 8 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 9 A 2 B 3 C 1
Set 10 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 11 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 12 A 1 B 2 C 3

Server A 22
Server B 28
Server C 22

So in this outcome as Team B has the Balanced Day/Night Ration compared to the other 2 servers after 12 Sets it would be declared the Winner right

But this is half the change

Look at it again

Set 1 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 2 A 2 B 3 C 2
Set 3 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 4 A 1 B 2 C 4
Set 5 A 2 B 3 C 1
Set 6 A 1 B 3 C 3
Set 7 A 4 B 2 C 2
Set 8 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 9 A 3 B 3 C 1
Set 10 A 2 B 2 C 5
Set 11 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 12 A 1 B 2 C 3

Server A 26
Server B 28
Server C 27

What the hell happened in this match up

Stone Mist Castle

Currently worth 35 + on its own

will now be worth 100 Points (Debatable)

Now your thinking Moose WTF Man??

here’s where it gets interesting

The emphasis is now on SM to attack it because its worth so many points, come on its a Awesome castle deserving to be God Like

At a Price

Notice how in some of the Match the loosing servers gained extra points? This is a result of a new Condition

“When 1st Ranked server holds SM and looses it to either 2nd or 3rd place server, these servers gain a bonus Victory Point as a “Humiliation” factor to the best server loosing to a lower ranked server"

“If first place re-captures Stone mist, off one of the other 2 servers, it is awarded no bonus, other than being able to have another chance at solidifying their lead”

“However a new Bonus Points is up for grabs it the other servers can take it”

“In case of two Drawing servers for first , the bonus point system is NOT awarded”

- In Summary

This scoring system in regards to the one week or 2 week matches that ANET will end up deciding on, emphasizes that each set is as important as the first ones, right down to the last one, with the Stone Mist Wild card, able to allow lower ranked servers the chance to claw back, should the leading server allow the to,

Ensuring

Everyone’s Efforts, regardless of timezone, location, “Primetime” matters to the final outcome

Just who is the Best server?

/Discuss

I’ve ignore all this conversation because I’m sure that it’s full of some crazy things. But the baseline is that for all the server ranking, ANet has the metrics on server queue times. This is something that should be taken into consideration in match ups. You can’t assure properly managed match ups in a fullest persistent combat world. That’s a given.

But I’ll talk about my current matchup GoM, TC, and SoS. TC and SoS are pretty well matched, fundamentally, in terms of strength and such. And even GoM isn’t in a bracket that’s awful for them (even though, through an act which turned ire towards them, meant that any true competition from them was not going to happen).

But SoS is largely Oceanic. TC is most NA. And while both servers have made efforts to up their individual “night” presences, there’s something of a cycle. I say something because this trend was bucked, slightly, in the last few days. And I mean very slightly. TC conquers during NA primetimes. SoS makes their greater pushes at theirs. Which is a shame because it’s actually a fairly even match up but I don’t know if it’s really that much fun for either server to play such a strange type of tug of war.

Matching up queue times as much as you can relative skill would make things much, much more appealing across the board.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvWvW-Balancing-Idea-from-a-Oceanic-point-of-View/first#post344216

Link to thread for more discussion to free up this thread

Give the players options that would encourage server load balancing.

Good: moving from a high pop/queue server to a low one
Bad: low to high

Currently the system encourages the Bad way.

Players moving from a low pop (losing) to a high pop get the benefit of easy exp/karma/gold and reduced death.

All we want is to play the game against a modestly even battlefield – this is when the game is by far the most fun. Extremely lopsided gameplay does not have lasting appeal for either side.

Encourage PvP and not PvD.

@guildwarsfan

The system would use the de system to account for players. Therefore ANY player that takes offensive action against either the keep or players defending it get counted. This means that the afkers will not count, but the randoms killing moas aoeing will as they will hit the castle (dont think ive EVER seen some people fighting the mobs and not attacking the castle when they have a zerg attacking, but w/e).

As for the formula, the +5 defender advantage is there on purpose. It is there for 3 reasons, 1 is to back scale the point gain to account for the inheret advantage having a fortification. Another is to give a base point score should a team leave a tower undefended (as not to cause a logic error in calculations, could just use a logic process to say if players = 0 then so do points, but this brings about point 3). And the other is that it is there to discourage an attacking from sitting there not capping the undefended fort to allow it to build points as the defender is still scoring points in the process (might even outscore the attacker if they are not quick enough).

And yes it would be awesome if we had the option to leave upgrades in tact or sack the keep. It would also be awesome if raiders could have more effect on the game play by allowing the “razing” of supply camps as I suggested. Will make taking and defending supply camps a much bigger deal if you could effectively take em out of commission for a long period should the zergs choose not to defend them, and also giving small teams a larger impact on the overall game.

my suggestion is an automatic auto balancing system control the number of players in one instance of WvW. this is to fix situation where there are 10 vs 100.
there needs to be a minimum team size where the auto balancing system is not active so it will not stop players from playing WvW when other servers are not active, but also enough players to over come the npc resistance. i.e the auto balance will not be active with less than 50 player (for example server1: 20 server2: 32 server3: 49)
however over the minimum player limit the game automatically auto balances the server team size within that instance to keep them balanced. i’m not saying kick player if there are too many, but no more players can join from the server with too many people until the teams are back to being equal (or close to equal).
for example:
s1: 230
s2: 232
s3: 287 = block until more equal
probably poorly explained but I think it could work.

Redundancy.7325:

Kyus.3812:

this breeds defending by not defending.

also if you don’t show up to fight you should lose. this kind of queing locks people out of content due to other peoples choices you simply can’t do this.

People are already getting locked out of content due to other people’s choices. What do you think the weekend queue times look like on HoD, for instance?

entering the map and having nobody to fight is the same thing as sitting in a queue

there is no content

something slow players do not understand yet

Daish.6139:

Redundancy.7325:

Kyus.3812:

this breeds defending by not defending.

also if you don’t show up to fight you should lose. this kind of queing locks people out of content due to other peoples choices you simply can’t do this.

People are already getting locked out of content due to other people’s choices. What do you think the weekend queue times look like on HoD, for instance?

entering the map and having nobody to fight is the same thing as sitting in a queue

there is no content

something slow players do not understand yet

True but since they are ‘winning’ they think they are the ‘best’. I have seen servers go from being full to ghost towns so despite people saying this is not an issue.. it really is. A lot of us joined for wvw not pve content, there is many games with pve. Structured likewise does not satisfy as it is just an arena. However, hoping players will ‘balance’ the problem is a big mistake. When has such a thing ever worked out? I can name many examples where it was tried and failed terribad.

please Anet, don’t change WvW because of “nightcapping”. To me, it is working as intended, in that it is supposed to be continuous 24/7. Just because some people sleep, doesn’t mean everyone sleeps, and it adds to the intrigue of it.

There is no intrigue when matches are all but set in stone after 48 hours, how much of a lead do people want to win by? with the exception of the top servers with hours long que time matches have become incredibly boring for all sides. Its like watching paint dry, nothing changes for several hours.

Another possible solution is to seriously buff the outmanned buff so it encourages people to stick around longer. I suppose the increased MF/XP/Karma is supposed to be some sort of mild incentive, but you have to actually kill someone or something for the buff to mean anything. And if you’re outmanned, chances are you’re going to be killing way less than 33% fewer people than you normally would. At the moment, the outmanned buff tells you something between “you’re kittened” and “you should not be here”.

I suppose it’s nice enough that anet lets us know that we’re probably doomed, but I think it’s very likely that this is contributing to a further sense of hopelessness and futility that erodes further participation. This is especially evident when logging onto a map where your server has no presence and only a couple people milling around the starting zone. At this point, there is absolutely no incentive to stick around and wait for others because the chances of you actually accomplishing anything before the enemy masses notice you’re there and starts stomping you into the ground are little to none.

So why not make the buff more fun? Why not make it into something that gives you more of a reason to stick around and fight the good fight? Why not make it into a buff that actually helps you overcome those odds somewhat?

I’m thinking a stacking buff, that gets progressively higher the more you’re outmanned. Maybe at the lowest levels, where the buff first starts to kick in, it’s only a mild buff. Maybe a 5 or 10% boost to stats or something. But if you’re a lone soldier, facing an opposition of 100 men, it would turn you into the WvW equivalent of a raid boss. Something balanced to go toe to toe with 25 people and come out on top. Call it wrath of zhaitan or something.

Seriously, think about it. Instead of logging onto an empty map, seeing the “good luck with that” buff and saying to myself “why bother?” my initial reaction to seeing a 25 stack outmanned buff would be “HELL YES, IMMA GO WRECK STUFF!”. And who cares if they do. They’re still probably going to lose to the force of 100+. And it’s not like a solo player that’s only really balanced to handle 25 should hold many (any?) objectives against such overwhelming odds if the horde is even mildly competent. And the buff gets toned down a bit as soon as somebody else joins, and a little bit more as another and another join.

But at least this might encourage people to show up when they’d otherwise be hopelessly outgunned. And as more and more people trickle in, maybe you’d eventually end up with a worthwhile fighting force. At least it would be fun, and isn’t that sort of the point?

I dunno, something to think about.

Eihder.8961:

There is no intrigue when matches are all but set in stone after 48 hours, how much of a lead do people want to win by? with the exception of the top servers with hours long que time matches have become incredibly boring for all sides. Its like watching paint dry, nothing changes for several hours.

Currently, there’s only one top NA server that can maintain good enough 24/7 numbers. They can be suppressed over the weekend, but come the normal work week, nobody can touch their coverage an they gain so many uncontested points there’s no way anybody can currently compete with them. This means the match is pretty much already decided before it’s begun. Maybe this will improve if some of the other top tier servers get enough people to match their 24/7 coverage (JQ seems to be doing a better job of it during the daytime at least, but I’m not sure they can completely close the gap just yet). But until that point it plays out like follows:

HoD wins by default. The other servers can try to team up to push HoD off the map when they do have good numbers, but even if they could, I don’t even think that’s enough to overcome their 24/7 advantage just yet. It also relies upon 2 & 3 not backstabbing eachother, which can be difficult to prevent.

Because HoD wins, they can choose to attack one side or the other and pretty much decide who gets 2nd place. The 3rd place gets kicked down into 2nd tier.

The next 3 servers “seem” to be evenly matched, but it’s hard to tell without removing HoD from the equation. But they all seem to have better 24/7 coverage than the next group of servers. So whoever got knocked down into tier 2, proceeds to stomp all over the other two servers, and gets to play kingmaker for that matchup. They win, move back up to tier 1, where HoD decides everyone’s fate for the next week.

And this process has sort of repeated itself for a few weeks now.

Maybe HoD will lose some of their 24/7 coverage due to boredom. Maybe some of the 2-4 servers can pick up some quality players to fill in wherever they have holes in their 24/7 lineup. Maybe some of the lower servers can fill in their lineup and move up to challenge HoD. Maybe ANet will put in place some completely awesome WvW incentives, and more off peak players will flock to WvW everything won’t be so predetermined.

But until something happens, it’s 1st place staying 1st and picking the 2nd place team (if they so choose). 3rd place dropping to 4th. 4th place jumping back to 3rd, and picking who gets to be 5th. Not a whole lot of intrigue right now. Sure, there are some really epic fights when there’s a lot of concurrent server participation. But since the outcomes seem so predetermined for the moment, it sort of dulls the impact a bit. At least, as far as I can tell so far.

Maybe TA is having problems on HOD.

Some guilds might be leaving very soon.

pedrst.3127:

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.

From reading the complaints that isn’t the only problem they have with it. Not only in other threads on the topic, but right here, clearly some don’t like having everything captured, not just the points.

The problem with everything being captured and the points is, that by the time a regular server gets back on, they need to first manage to kill all of the people hanging out, outside their spawn, then they need to spend the next few hours, just retaking their part of the map. By the time they do scrape the map back together their playtime is over and then the night cappers come on and do it in small groups against uncontested towers and keeps and hold it all night again.

Konrad Curze.5130:

Sky.9347:

The root of this problem is thus:
WvWvW is and should be a 24/7 game mode; servers are not designed for 24/7 player loads.

wholeheartly agree with the philosophy

Sky.9347:

I think the best possible solution to this problem is threefold:
1) Eliminate NA and EU designations. (language designations would be fine)
2) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)
3) Continue focusing developer attention on bugs/exploits/hacks.

disagree
that wouldnt solve much, if anything. I think that is impossible to achieve balance just by letting the playerbase self control itself, it will never work. human nature, specially on the internet, equals egoism.

24/7 balanced servers is an utopia. it will never happen. lets come into terms with that.

my solution is simple.
abandon the idea of 24/7

1) IP Ban/ Lock NA and EU regions
2) create new Asian/SEA region
3) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)

anyone that doesnt take advantage of that free transfers to go to a region that fits him will see that chars locked.

These two while seeming similar are light years apart. One is about opening things up and the other about closing things off. The latter is counter to what Anet has been trying to do. That is create a game where it doesn’t matter where you live.

I read 96% of this thread and sadly it is 50% mudslinging back and forth instead of working on a solution.

Instead of working on adjusting the score I would suggest starting the servers from scratch again. Now while on paper the current system seem like a good idea. In practise it simply doesn’t work out that well. Various things on why have been posted in this thread. As I write this the French server I’m up against has over 60% captured. Now towards prime time this evens out, but it’s a lot harder to recapture them as they’ve had the time to upgrade all of them during the night. So not only did they get them easily. It is also harder for them to lose them.

The only real solution would be to even out the global population over the servers. Americans are not going to play on European servers or vice versa for the most part. So simply put, you need to not make that distinction from the start. Remove the reference to location and people will spread out more.

A few things would need to change though.
1. Better communication and switching of datacenters between US and EU.
2. Get Guesting working as it needs to be working for this fix.
3. Setup server names for the PVE side and WvW side. Yes they need to be split up
4. Keep US and EU designations for the PVE part. People like to have others around them during their primetime.
5. Throw all WvW server names into one big bag and mix them up. Divide them over the US and EU datacenters again, but always list them in one big list together. Sure people will find out which is located where, but now people won’t be hampered by bad ping for PVE if they play across the ocean for WvW.

Will this truly solve night capping, no. Some will still have this problem, but it will be a lot less problematic than it is now. The servers will have a more global presence and as such will be more competative through out the day.

Conner.4702:

Konrad Curze.5130:

Sky.9347:

The root of this problem is thus:
WvWvW is and should be a 24/7 game mode; servers are not designed for 24/7 player loads.

wholeheartly agree with the philosophy

Sky.9347:

I think the best possible solution to this problem is threefold:
1) Eliminate NA and EU designations. (language designations would be fine)
2) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)
3) Continue focusing developer attention on bugs/exploits/hacks.

disagree
that wouldnt solve much, if anything. I think that is impossible to achieve balance just by letting the playerbase self control itself, it will never work. human nature, specially on the internet, equals egoism.

24/7 balanced servers is an utopia. it will never happen. lets come into terms with that.

my solution is simple.
abandon the idea of 24/7

1) IP Ban/ Lock NA and EU regions
2) create new Asian/SEA region
3) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)

anyone that doesnt take advantage of that free transfers to go to a region that fits him will see that chars locked.

These two while seeming similar are light years apart. One is about opening things up and the other about closing things off. The latter is counter to what Anet has been trying to do. That is create a game where it doesn’t matter where you live.

and good on them for doing so, too.

i fight as hard as any of you on your own timezone. i don’t see why my “efforts” should be considered less than “yours”. we’re all even, despite the zone shifts. and it’s kind of amusing that only one “shift” is actually complaining. everyone else in the world is okay.

nysta.6713:

Conner.4702:

Konrad Curze.5130:

Sky.9347:

The root of this problem is thus:
WvWvW is and should be a 24/7 game mode; servers are not designed for 24/7 player loads.

wholeheartly agree with the philosophy

Sky.9347:

I think the best possible solution to this problem is threefold:
1) Eliminate NA and EU designations. (language designations would be fine)
2) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)
3) Continue focusing developer attention on bugs/exploits/hacks.

disagree
that wouldnt solve much, if anything. I think that is impossible to achieve balance just by letting the playerbase self control itself, it will never work. human nature, specially on the internet, equals egoism.

24/7 balanced servers is an utopia. it will never happen. lets come into terms with that.

my solution is simple.
abandon the idea of 24/7

1) IP Ban/ Lock NA and EU regions
2) create new Asian/SEA region
3) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)

anyone that doesnt take advantage of that free transfers to go to a region that fits him will see that chars locked.

These two while seeming similar are light years apart. One is about opening things up and the other about closing things off. The latter is counter to what Anet has been trying to do. That is create a game where it doesn’t matter where you live.

and good on them for doing so, too.

i fight as hard as any of you on your own timezone. i don’t see why my “efforts” should be considered less than “yours”. we’re all even, despite the zone shifts. and it’s kind of amusing that only one “shift” is actually complaining. everyone else in the world is okay.

I agree, I never wanted to make night capping not beneficial, I just want Anet to admit we need to work on a way to make it a nice fun, clean, fair game all across the board, or at least try to work with the community to balance out servers.

I don’t expect big night guilds will spread out.

Heh, well as damage control there is a quite easy temporary solution, that by deduction we know Anet must be capable of. I think they’ve gathered enough info to know how much it sucks by now, so having fun should be a priority. So…

12 hour WvW resets, half tower upgrade costs across the board.

Is it still going to be pointless playing WvWvW this next week then after tonights reset ?
No point in playing and wasting time if the night capping continues.

Have they actually done anything to stop or even out the problems with night capping without any resistance at all ? Or is this gonna be another lost week.

Their plan is more of a hopeful long run sort of plan. They are counting on the player base to spread itself out evenly and have the stronger servers with a night game to end up at the top by themselves. I feel like it will be a painful WvW killing few months before that happens.

nysta.6713:

Conner.4702:

Konrad Curze.5130:

Sky.9347:

The root of this problem is thus:
WvWvW is and should be a 24/7 game mode; servers are not designed for 24/7 player loads.

wholeheartly agree with the philosophy

Sky.9347:

I think the best possible solution to this problem is threefold:
1) Eliminate NA and EU designations. (language designations would be fine)
2) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)
3) Continue focusing developer attention on bugs/exploits/hacks.

disagree
that wouldnt solve much, if anything. I think that is impossible to achieve balance just by letting the playerbase self control itself, it will never work. human nature, specially on the internet, equals egoism.

24/7 balanced servers is an utopia. it will never happen. lets come into terms with that.

my solution is simple.
abandon the idea of 24/7

1) IP Ban/ Lock NA and EU regions
2) create new Asian/SEA region
3) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)

anyone that doesnt take advantage of that free transfers to go to a region that fits him will see that chars locked.

These two while seeming similar are light years apart. One is about opening things up and the other about closing things off. The latter is counter to what Anet has been trying to do. That is create a game where it doesn’t matter where you live.

and good on them for doing so, too.

i fight as hard as any of you on your own timezone. i don’t see why my “efforts” should be considered less than “yours”. we’re all even, despite the zone shifts. and it’s kind of amusing that only one “shift” is actually complaining. everyone else in the world is okay.

Because the problem is this
Server A has 100 NA players who play from let’s say 12-8 pm
Server B has 100 NA players who play from 12-8 pm
Server A has 20 players who play from 9pm-11 am
Server B has 100 oceanic/EU players who play from 9pm-11am
The problem is that YOUR efforts are now being defended by an equal number of players in the day-time as the other server has which makes it almost impossible to deal with because thanks to your superior night numbers, guess what, you took every fort+keep+orb and everything is fortified and already defended with tons of siege weapons.

Everyone’s’ contribution in WvWvW is currently NOT equal as a result. That’s what is so hilarious about A-net’s response “well you all be good community members and make sure to spread your population out evenly ok? We’re gonna be over here making sure people are buying gems. Oh, P.S. we’re gonna leave server transfers free and open so you know, if you’re getting crushed feel free to transfer to a winning server.” absolutely NO ONE is going to say to their guild “hey guys I know we’re winning and currently enjoying tons of bonuses to our server and we’re 150k points ahead of the enemy team but let’s go ahead and transfer to that other server.”