Guild Wars 2

Honestly, nothing… at least for the outnumbered buff itself.

There’s a bunch of posts/drama going around in reddit, discord, and in-game that has to do with the outnumbered buff: namely, the pips it gives and how it is currently encouraging players to do some shady stuff like map hopping at the last moment, tricking others into moving, etc.

Yes, the incentive to go to these outnumbered maps are very high. A 5 pip tick is practically double the amount for most players right now, perhaps even more.

The goal of the outnumbered buff is, quite simply, getting players to go to these maps rather than ignore them so people will help somewhat.

The issue right now, at it’s core, seems to be that its not doing it’s job very well: it does bring people into those maps but they are mostly AFKing, waiting for the tick. They bring the participation in from other maps.

However, on the flipside, making the outnumbered buff not appealing enough to map hop and AFK pip shower is the same as making the outnumbered buff not appealing enough to even look for, period.

The buff should stay as is (thus, do nothing about the outnumbered), but knowing the real core issue the solution is pretty clear:

1) Changing maps or leaving WvW resets your participation.

This shouldn’t be an issue for most people who actually play WvW: you know how fast you can get T6 participation? Pretty quickly, even in small groups, and even quicker in larger zergs.

What this does is grant minor annoyance to those who need to map change, log out, or change characters while making map hopping practically impossible while still keeping the outnumbered buff very appealing.

As a result of this change, in order to make use of the outnumbered buff you basically need to stay somewhat loyal to a map. That is, you need to spend time actually doing things: the map becoming outnumbered should give you an incentive to stay rather than switch maps.

2) Another issue we are having is AFK: not for the outnumbered buff but AFKers in general.

Lowering the AFK timer is, IMO, not a very good solution: some people just need a quick break and it seems like the AFK timer is about 5 minutes. Even still, people have ways of just bypassing the timer by not actually being AFK but rather simply sitting it out for the ticks / WvW reward tracks.

I think the best solution in this case is to give both players what they want: a way to AFK it out and get what you are “owed”, while getting the AFKers out of the maps that could really use the people.

A few days ago, Obsidian Sanctum used to allow this to happen but ArenaNet has since “fixed” it. I think they should change it back and let people know that if you want to use up your ticks for the day just go there, maybe even throw in an extra pip (just 1). In regards to the first suggestion, make switching to Obsidian Sanctum immune to the participation reset, but leaving it will still reset it. Go AFK there where no one gets hurt by it. It’s only really worth it if you are seriously going to AFK all of your participation out as “map hopping” to it and out will set your participation back to 0.

On the topic of WvW suggestions: a leaderboard for most kills, most sentry kills, most yak slapping, etc, would be pretty cool to show, updated every 5 minutes in the WvW tab. No rewards for it (would encourage some abuse) but would be really fun to have.

TL;DR: reset participation on map change/leave except when ONLY entering obsidian sanctum to push all the AFKers to AFK there.

I agree most of your idea.

But i have some input, currently we do keep out participation when logoff until the drain timer is done. I believe the key issue is if i log off now i will wasted my participation, therefore “I NEED TO AFK UNTIL TIME UP”.

I suggest let our participation still tick even we logoff or disconnected. The reward will be given the next time we login. For example somebody got DC in the lord room in smc, took 5+ mins to log back in, he was double punished by not having capture reward, reward track tick and the pips tick. THIS can fix the dc issues as well as AFK issue in one go.

The problem as it occurs to me is that this new system does not incentivize winning but rather just participating. As long as people can get their rewards by doing nothing why would they do something? I recognize there’s no perfect solution to this problem but I guess the question is: what problem do we want to have? People AFKing for participation or the winning servers getting their pips and the losing servers struggling to get anything? I think I’d prefer the latter because it would at least incentivize winning.

I don’t think you want to reset participation.

Just grey out pip gain for a couple of minutes after map swapping.

Reset participation will have another negative effect. e.g. Players call for help on a particular map but others won’t want to respond because they lose their participation.

Exciton.8942:

I don’t think you want to reset participation.

Just grey out pip gain for a couple of minutes after map swapping.

Reset participation will have another negative effect. e.g. Players call for help on a particular map but others won’t want to respond because they lose their participation.

Achieving T3 participation is very easy but it requires you to actually do something.

Greying out pip gain will not work and actually causes the issue you describe since they are now guaranteed to not get anything whereas a reset can be restored. A map hopper who intends to help will most surely get their reward (unless they swap as the tick goes off) but someone who intends to AFK or “beat the timer” will not.

Another way greying out pips can be beaten is by AFKing until the timer is out, since 5 minutes is not an issue and you keep your participation, if at least a little. This basically solves no problems.

Another issue that someone mentioned above is that the game doesn’t reward winning but just participation. Honestly, most of the game is like that anyway. You tag things and zerg them down: that’s 90% of PvE and WvW right there. There’s not much you can do about that because the game was like that in the beginning.

Map specific Pips? So Pips and participation in different counters..tier 6 participation in ebg for 5 pips still ticks in other bls if you just afk. If you move to outnumbered bl tier 0 participation no outnumbered pips until mapnspecific participation level is reached the you earn outnumbered pips. Any conflicts by using current map participation/pip reward is highest not cumulative.

The big thing that comes to my mind is changing it to still be rewarding without encouraging people to game it like they are now.

A simple solution is to reduce the pips from 5 to 3, and add 2 pips to each of the score placement. The absolute number of pips is the same, but you’re not “penalized” for playing a popular map.

Having it at 5 doubles the number of pips for almost all players.

Must have been on an outnumbered map for 2 1/2 minutes to gain outnumbered buff bonus….

Liston.9708:

Must have been on an outnumbered map for 2 1/2 minutes to gain outnumbered buff bonus….

Doesn’t stop the AFK.

Instead of the 3,2,1 tick for 1st 2nd and 3rd places,, I would suggest a 5.4.3 pip tick and then the outnumbered buff to be reduced from 5 to 2 pips per tick. While this wont “cure” the issue I think it would balance it out much more – I believe the 1st place server shouldnt be outscored just because the weakest server has a o/n buff (Now the winning server gets 3 and the o/n weakest server can get 6).
As far as the afk to use up the accrued time, this has happened before the pips with the wvw track system. the only way to cure this is to allow the built up timer to continue to give the rewards anywhere in the game. ie if you have done with wvw and go to pve, the timer will continue and give you rewards until run its course.
As an aside what I noticed when map hopping to help with a garri defence, if you move when the timer is close to zero, you can lose your tick for that period completely as the game somehow senses you arent on the map you just left yet havent loaded onto the new map. Just a very annoying bug with pips being so hard to get for newer accounts.

If swapping maps completely resets participation it would only kill the incentive to swap to another map to help out a keep that’s under siege.. This is legit border-hopping and should not be discouraged at all.

My suggestion would still be the same; to avoid the “last minute” hoppers, award 1 bonus pip for every minute you had the Outnumbered debuff on the map you’re currently on when the tick happens. Also; remove the requirement that it has to be present the very second the tick happens. I’ve spent hours playing on Outnumbered maps and gotten the extra pips maybe as rarely as every 3-4 ticks since someone borderhops at the last seconds.. You put in the work on a map where you’re Outnumbered a majority of the time, but get nothing for it.

What about change outnumbered pip extra reward to below:

Reward Couraeous buff (+1 to +5) to players that complete objectives during and only when the outnumbered icon is up. The extra pip gained will be rewarded on the next tick.

If a player actually help out his world when the outnumbered icon is up, and have gained this Courageous buff but outnumbered is gone before the tick. He will still be rewarded with extra pips until Courageous buff is over. To remain Courageous buff, you need to remain active in outnumbered map.

Then no need to remove particpation on map swap, but this can stop outnumber map hopper, while also reward players that actually actively fight in outnumbered map.

The outnumbered buff feels indeed in a bad place to me too. Theoretically, it’s good, but it tends to undesirable behaviours.

I’m not for the reset participation on map switch. Even if reaching T3 is easy, it’d put a strong weight on the tracked rewards which may still be a thing for some people. Moreover, it’d make an incentive not to switch maps at help calls.

My suggestions on that matter are:

• Either get the outnumbered pips granted only if the player stays on the outnumbered map for more than, say, 75% of skirmish time. It of course requires the map to be outnumbered at least 75% of the time… It wouldn’t prevent AFK, but it’d prevent hopping.
• Or get “bonus” pips for each X WXP or Y Participation gained while the outnumbered buff was up, and those bonus pips are added at next tick. I’d rather count both, because some things reward WXP and not participation, or participation and not WXP.

On the AFK topic, I can understand players who are at max participation and waiting for it to drop before leaving. For that situation, I suggest a “bail out” option that’d calculate the rewards tracks and pips gains made if the player was to stay AFK till participation drops to 0. It’s not a very hard calculus. Then the gains would be awarded, the player gets back to LA, and can’t get back in WvW for, say, the next 30 minutes. Or if we allow a player to come back, participation is frozen to 0 for the next 30 minutes.

For people just doing small stuff to keep participation high, and then go back AFK-ing at spawn, I’d add an “as long as you’re as spawn, your participation counts as 0” thing. It’d force them out, and therefore make them vulnerable. Higher risk may imply they participate more. Otherwise, have a faster decay at spawn. It can be associated with the invulnerable boon there.

My suggestion would be to double pips based on skirmish placement and redude pips for Outnumbered from 5 to 2.

I’d also like a bonus of +3 pips for staying on the same map for 3 consecutive ticks or more, effectively rebalancing the outnumbered pips since people have to stay on the map for the 3 pips ‘map loyalty’ reward, even if that map loses it’s outnumbered status.

Anything that increases pips for skirmish victory and reduces pips for Outnumbered will only create more server stacking. While I agree the pip system can use some tweaking, any changes should serve to incentivize balanced matchups, not stacking to a high-population server for easy wins or a low-population server for Outnumbered pip-farming.

Earn no PIPs while in safe-zone (spawn, that boon that makes you invulnerable).

They can AFK, but they have to AFK outside of spawn, where slippery evulz kitten roamers will have a gankfest. Or they can play I’m ok with either. This also stops most map switching for gaming outnumbered, as they would have to time it to run out of spawn. At least they would have to do something.

Also, I do really hate that I feel like I have to stand afk at spawn for a few minutes waiting for participation to wear off. Would very much love an option/feature/QoL to let the game just calculate it for me, and give it to me when I log out.

The idea about losing all your participation on switching maps is a terrible one. It will only further deincentivize players to hop maps to defend important points. Already, whenever the Commander map hops, about 1/4 of his squad doesn’t follow. If participation is reset upon map switch, I guarantee that will rise to at least 1/2. The end result is that it will only further polarize the player base between “true WvW players” and “filthy reward hunters”.

I do think that the Outnumbered buff needs to be toned down (perhaps to 2 pips), but at the same time, pip progression needs to be increased across the board. My full proposal (which I detailed in my post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Skirmish-Pips-Distribution-Feedback-Thread/) includes granting pips for participation directly, along with rewarding pips for direct participation (that is, capturing/defending/anything that grants war score directly to your server).

The problem with AFKers will largely dissipate if these players are able to complete their goals (namely, completion of the Diamond tier chest) within a reasonable amount of time so they don’t have to idle in maps taking up precious space. Simple bandaid solutions like preventing people from gaining pips while in the spawn zones won’t work; they’ll simply move out to quiet spots where nobody goes, like the Alpine BL JP. You need to tackle the root cause of the problem.

joneirikb.7506:

Earn no PIPs while in safe-zone (spawn, that boon that makes you invulnerable).

They can AFK, but they have to AFK outside of spawn, where slippery evulz kitten roamers will have a gankfest. Or they can play I’m ok with either. This also stops most map switching for gaming outnumbered, as they would have to time it to run out of spawn. At least they would have to do something.

Also, I do really hate that I feel like I have to stand afk at spawn for a few minutes waiting for participation to wear off. Would very much love an option/feature/QoL to let the game just calculate it for me, and give it to me when I log out.

This I agree the most with – at least put AFKers in danger if you wanna keep giving them pips. Also increadIbly simple to code – porting from another map has cooldown on pip gain (that covers those wanting to abuse outnumbered) and being invoulnerable will block pip gain after 2.5m (that cover spawn afkers but still allow people to teleport to spawn and run out). Those saying “but I need to poop for 10 minutes, waaaaawaaaaa”, sucks to be you. You can live without one tick or go in the chair.

I think they should shave 2 pips from Outnumbered and put them into the Server Loyalty bonus, and most definitely not match placement.

Should not be rewarded for stacking your server.