Guild Wars 2

The coverage issue is a major problem in this game. they need to scale the PPT in some fashion to take into consideration that a keep hasn’t been claimed for awhile because no one is playing. I’m on a backwater low pop server, but we do amazing against pretty much every server we’re paired against. Our problem is consistently the 4-noon timeframe where everyone’s asleep and we lose every single point on the map.

Just make it so things give the same PPT they do now for the first hour after it’s been captured. The second hour it gives half. the third it gives 10%. The 4th and onward it gives 1%. Just something to slow things down some.

Earlier this week I went to bed and we were 3k ahead. Yesterday when I get home from work we’re 15k behind. It’s getting frustrating.

Is it the PPT or the loss of upgrades that ticks people off the most? I can understand the loss of upgrades being an issue because it puts the lower coverage server at an ongoing disadvantage due to paper structures and no waypoints. As for ppt, it dosent really matter any more these days as a lot of people are just playing for the quality of the fights or just farming wxp.

How about we do away with upgrade system altogether and everything is permanently T3? The reason I suggest this is that with the cheapness of superior siege plus all the bonus damage from wxp trait lines it is quite possible to be at the lords room in a paper keep these days before the white sword symbol even shows.

The upgrade gold sink could be replaced by charging for sups 10c each or whatever price makes sense. Still gonna use a shed load of sups making siege and repairing stuff.

Lurch, for me, I find it a bit disheartening and a bit morale killer when you log on the next day to see all your hard work the night before gone to waste. While many of us log in for the fun of WvW and couldn’t care less, a lot of people out there don’t do it that regularly and I think for them, it’s hard to come back the next day when you see at what little progress was made.

Now as for removing upgrades, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind seeing walls and gates being automatically improved in some fashion as lot of the other upgrades are kinda meh to begin with and only add a little novelty and such. But the upgrades add to the whole ‘defense matters’ strategy that some people enjoy.

Lurch.9517:

How about we do away with upgrade system altogether and everything is permanently T3? The reason I suggest this is that with the cheapness of superior siege plus all the bonus damage from wxp trait lines it is quite possible to be at the lords room in a paper keep these days before the white sword symbol even shows.

So basically removing the whole point of taking camps and defending dollies?

Atherakhia.4086:

Just make it so things give the same PPT they do now for the first hour after it’s been captured. The second hour it gives half. the third it gives 10%. The 4th and onward it gives 1%. Just something to slow things down some.

I liked this idea as I read it, but then I realized it’d completely wreck the point of trying to defend as we’ll as conquer. They’d have to consider if anyone was in the keep and active, too.

lordkrall.7241:

Lurch.9517:

How about we do away with upgrade system altogether and everything is permanently T3? The reason I suggest this is that with the cheapness of superior siege plus all the bonus damage from wxp trait lines it is quite possible to be at the lords room in a paper keep these days before the white sword symbol even shows.

So basically removing the whole point of taking camps and defending dollies?

You still need to have supplies to make siege and repair damage so no not really

Atherakhia.4086:

Lurch, for me, I find it a bit disheartening and a bit morale killer when you log on the next day to see all your hard work the night before gone to waste. While many of us log in for the fun of WvW and couldn’t care less, a lot of people out there don’t do it that regularly and I think for them, it’s hard to come back the next day when you see at what little progress was made.

Now as for removing upgrades, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind seeing walls and gates being automatically improved in some fashion as lot of the other upgrades are kinda meh to begin with and only add a little novelty and such. But the upgrades add to the whole ‘defense matters’ strategy that some people enjoy.

If there was not a coverage issue in 90% of the matchups then your points would be more valid. The problem as it stands is that this would have no positive/negative effect in a balanced matchup but it would give a better chance to the undemanned server in an unbalanced match up unless they are incapable of taking a T3 structure against an enemy spread across 2 or 3 maps in which case they are beyond help anyway.

I am definitely not in favor of locking maps…

I am definitely in favor of adjusting PPTs to the current map(s) populations.

I feel bad for the folks that play on servers whose night-time is really their day, but I am sorry: Your 5 minute PVDoor on an empty tower/keep at the server’s 3am should not be as valuable as me taking the same thing in “server prime” against 50 arrowcarts and equal or more defenders.
Same thing with me, if we were facing a huge oceanic server, that allowed us to run around all day and PVgate everything down: I would not mind if it counted for less.

Never gonna happen to the OP. This was answered a year ago: can’t punish people who play at late NA hours -oceanic servers etc-.

They are customers and Anet won’t alienate them.

Some ppl play wvw mostly, lock them out and they call it discrimination/quit the game=anet loses money. Nope.

nglcpyro.4906:

USA != the entire world population.

If you’re annoyed by so called “night capping”, don’t sleep. Ever. Now to sit back with my popcorn

Yes I’m quoting myself.

One of the definitions of emotional maturity is understanding the world doesn’t revolve around you.

So, this is the most immature conversation in GW2 and it doesn’t help that it’s been repeated over and over again.

Right now in the T1 thread they are arguing over EST presence versus PST (and don’t get them started on the Brazillians!)

Coverage will always be a decisive factor and eventually you have to take the matches as they are regardless of score.

It’s more important that things be done to balance out the few people who play against overwhelming numbers.

Some ideas:
1. Outnumbered buff removes the delay on swords appearing at towers
2. Outnumbered buff increases out of combat speed by 15%
3. Outnumbered buff +5% offense and defense vs guards and supervisors.
4. Outnumbered buff all siege costs 10 less supply to build.

To the idea of adjusting PPT over time, that would change the whole dynamic of the game into a three-way karma-train race.

Which would still benefit the night-time presence servers when you stop and think about it.

T3 and above all have significant off hours coverage with T1 + TC having 24/7 coverage.

That’s how this game is at this point in time.

Lurch.9517:

lordkrall.7241:

Lurch.9517:

How about we do away with upgrade system altogether and everything is permanently T3? The reason I suggest this is that with the cheapness of superior siege plus all the bonus damage from wxp trait lines it is quite possible to be at the lords room in a paper keep these days before the white sword symbol even shows.

So basically removing the whole point of taking camps and defending dollies?

You still need to have supplies to make siege and repair damage so no not really

Siege and repairs should, under most circumstances, come from people bringing in supply on foot unless the tower/keep is fully upgraded and near supply cap, so the point stands.

Benjifu.8451:

I will once again start this by saying I apologise if there is already a topic on this!

It is in reference to the fact that I feel a servers own BL’s should be locked down overnight whilst the majority of players are in bed, leaving EB as a playing field.

There’s nothing worse then to have a really good day of WvW upgrading 3 keeps in your BL (is that like 4-5g ish?) only to wake up in the morning and find out a team of 5 people raided your BL with 4 golems. Its demoralising to WvW players and somewhat unfair?

What do you people think about the idea of locking a Servers own BL down so invaders cannot go there but allowing EB to be an overnight playing field?

this would be unfair to servers with entire crews in different timezones. A lot of EU players play at NA servers, because of the increased WvW activity abroad, thus they would be forced to move to other servers/play during the night.

Not keen on OP idea at all… Penalising players for playing the game is never the solution.

Lots of ideas in the past, this thread and others have been thrown, never one implemented or discussed by Anet.

• Remove gold from upgrades – only supply
• Make outnumbered buff actually do something worthwhile (+X% point gain per objective?)
• Give more points for T3? that way defenders can focus in one structure to keep and T1 ones give less ticks
• Merge timezones (ha – pipedream)
• Make killing players give points too… not only focus on structures.
• Have access to WP to keeps for outnumbered server only for better defence chance
• Don’t care about points while you sleep, only care about the time you play.

Atherakhia.4086:

Just make it so things give the same PPT they do now for the first hour after it’s been captured. The second hour it gives half. the third it gives 10%. The 4th and onward it gives 1%. Just something to slow things down some.

That’s a really dumb idea. It would just make everybody abandon towers after the first hour … no matter whether it was during prime time or not. There would be no incentive at all to hold anything, so nobody would and you’d still get your kitten handed to you off peak anyway.

Chris.3290:

To the idea of adjusting PPT over time, that would change the whole dynamic of the game into a three-way karma-train race.

Which would still benefit the night-time presence servers when you stop and think about it.

So its not a 3-way karma train race now? How would it do it any more so? If you wanna karma train an empty map then it counts less, if people show up to defend and the numbers balance out: then the scaling goes back to normal. Does not matter who it would benefit, when an objective does not count as much because the map was empty when you capped it, it would help to balance the score some assuming the issue was due to a coverage gap in the first place.

I say this as someone who has been leading a matchup by 4-5k and went to work, came home after 8hrs and been losing by 14k. If those objectives were only worth even 50% while the enemy PVgated everything down, then you are talking about logging back into a 7k lead to overcome. After 3-4 days that 14k starts to really build, and then you get the lop-sided matches that we all see by Thursday.

Like I said I have no problem with it working both ways, if I jump over into a BL with guild group and golem rush an empty map….Then it SHOULD be worth less, than if I encountered massive resistance after the first tower etc…

To me that is the easiest way to solve “Coverage Wars 2”…There will always be downsides to every plan/idea, so I am not saying it is fool-proof or that it couldn’t be exploited (You don’t think servers are exploiting coverage gaps now???). I think this would give us somewhat closer matches, and might even reduce the massive transfers that are going on that in effect kill entire servers. (See: Anvil Rock)

Edit: you may have been talking about the PPT over time idea that someone else had which gives diminishing returns on PPT over time, if so my bad…My idea was to make PPT adjustments based on map populations not the duration held etc (Still would be hard to implement I know)

King Amadaeus.8619:

Chris.3290:

To the idea of adjusting PPT over time, that would change the whole dynamic of the game into a three-way karma-train race.

Which would still benefit the night-time presence servers when you stop and think about it.

Edit: you may have been talking about the PPT over time idea that someone else had which gives diminishing returns on PPT over time, if so my bad…My idea was to make PPT adjustments based on map populations not the duration held etc (Still would be hard to implement I know)

yes, the over time idea.

I have alway felt that if they had not split servers into na and eu then night capping would not be near as much of an issue

XII.9401:

Never gonna happen to the OP. This was answered a year ago: can’t punish people who play at late NA hours -oceanic servers etc-.

They are customers and Anet won’t alienate them.

Some ppl play wvw mostly, lock them out and they call it discrimination/quit the game=anet loses money. Nope.

At some point though, Anet may have to decide if keeping their off-peak customers is worth alienating the far larger peak base.

Off-peak capping hasn’t reached the point where it’s making people quit. But when other options in the market become available (ESO, CU), it will be a factor if people decide to change games.

Remove the score board. This will fix a range of issues. Won’t fix this, but this isn’t an issue to begin with, so….

Thrumdi.9216:

Off-peak capping hasn’t reached the point where it’s making people quit. But when other options in the market become available (ESO, CU), it will be a factor if people decide to change games.

It will definitely be a factor if the question is whether the game will even let them play when they’re available to play. If wvw shuts down at night and ESO is up, there’ll be no contest at all.

Sitkaz.5463:

Thrumdi.9216:

Off-peak capping hasn’t reached the point where it’s making people quit. But when other options in the market become available (ESO, CU), it will be a factor if people decide to change games.

It will definitely be a factor if the question is whether the game will even let them play when they’re available to play. If wvw shuts down at night and ESO is up, there’ll be no contest at all.

Been lucky enough to get an ESO beta invite yet? You won’t be impressed. Looooong time before that game will be fun IMO.

The PPT from “night capping” isn’t the issue, NA off hours is Asia or EU’s prime time and their points aren’t worth any less. My issue comes from having to log into fully upgraded T3 keeps and enemy siege placed everywhere when very few people are on and the enemy server has little motivation to do anything but sit inside their buildings. WvW has become a slow slog of assaulting T3 keeps every night. It becomes a vicious cycle where by the time a few things have been flipped, people have to start logging off for the night. The meta has become chaining time zones together from dominating an empty timezone leading to easy mode defending with seige during NA and massive PPT blowouts.

My server has done this to others and others have done it to us, there needs to be some sort of natural decay to siege weapons, a limit to how many times they can be fired or a massive reduction in the amount of siege that can be placed on a map.

renmei.3102:

The PPT from “night capping” isn’t the issue, NA off hours is Asia or EU’s prime time and their points aren’t worth any less.

Throw timezones out of it….

If you assault a Keep with 50 people in it, spend an hour or so draining supply, build multiple sets of siege, fight Arrow Cart hell….Wipe a few times…FINALLY you cap that keep.

Now 12hrs later, your server is mostly asleep, but some on the enemy server are either just up late, or play from a different time zone….They drop 4 rams (2 at each gate), and waltz in and take the keep with little to no resistance because there are 5 people on the map.

I am sorry but those PPTs should not be worth the same….The fact that everyone is so worried about “equality” in terms of timezones, is one of the leading factors that is stopping us from having better matchups. In this current system you can have 1-bad day, and it ruins the whole 7-day match.

This would also balance the lower tiered servers when fighting a tier or so above them severely outmanned 24/7.

Come to JQ where we will take care of all your night tower cap problems.

Did i mention we having an awesome t1 to t2 fight with constant action, guaranteed.

At the end of the day, no matter how you attempt to justify it, this simply will not work. Any solution that favors US time zones over others will significantly diminish the playing experience of non-prime time players. On a more fundamental level though, the root cause of this problem is ultimately a disparity in coverage. Assuming equal coverage over all time zones, each server would perform just as well relatively speaking during off hours. The reality, though, is that the server-based system that WvW is designed around encourages stacking a single server in order to create continuous coverage to exploit eventual gaps in opposing coverage. This is an issue endemic to the format and will likely never be fully resolved.

There are ways to mitigate the effects, though. One of them is improving the outmanned buff, as has already been discussed. But that won’t do it alone. To really get to grips with the issue, a.net needs to adopt a much more proactive stance when it comes to WvW maps. Map design needs to become a much more integral part of WvW balancing than it currently is. Case in point, for those that remember the GW1 Alliance Battles, the map system was designed precisely so that it favored the underdog in an effort to mitigate the effects of winning streaks. The more battles you won in a row, the more you would push into enemy territory, and eventually onto new maps that would become incrementally more advantageous for the losing side. The net result was a “bend but don’t break” effect, where battles would constantly fluctuate back and forth across different maps depending on which side had the momentum.

That same system is actually evident in GW2 as well, albeit not to the same degree. Look at the EB map; it is specifically designed to offer Red an advantage by giving them the high ground. Blue is given the middle-of-the-road territory, and the Green side gets the low ground. This philosophy could be adopted to include the borderlands as well, where right now each server is awarded the same map with the same benefits and drawbacks, irrespective of the degree of actual advantage one server possesses over another. Each side could instead be given a different map, one that more accurately reflects the current position of the server.

But of course, since a.net seems unwilling to devote even the slightest amount of resources to implementing new maps for WvW, this sadly remains, at least for the moment, nothing but a pipe dream.

The issue is, we the players, have to divide ourselves as equally as we can across the servers and time zones. Coverage cap’s hurt, yes. Especially to those of us that try to fill those quiet times while outnumbered.

The best we can do is try to fill in the those caps. Not have Arenanet kittenize WvW.

Speaking of which, any EU or Oceanic players looking for great WvW server, JQ is the place for you!

Yeah i think its a bad idea but lets face it oceanic population tend to bandwagon on a few servers and when they face a majority NA server they get all their stuff capped overnight which sucks for them. So i feel your frustration but its another 1 of those things we have to deal with

King Amadaeus.8619:

renmei.3102:

The PPT from “night capping” isn’t the issue, NA off hours is Asia or EU’s prime time and their points aren’t worth any less.

I am sorry but those PPTs should not be worth the same….The fact that everyone is so worried about “equality” in terms of timezones, is one of the leading factors that is stopping us from having better matchups. In this current system you can have 1-bad day, and it ruins the whole 7-day match.

I know it sucks but you are getting owned during that time period so the points earned during that time is valid. The real issue is that during the non-NA time period the keeps and fully upgraded to T3 and siege is placed everywhere so when NA rolls around the defenders have such a massive advantage that it can’t even remotely be called fair.

renmei.3102:

I know it sucks but you are getting owned during that time period so the points earned during that time is valid. The real issue is that during the non-NA time period the keeps and fully upgraded to T3 and siege is placed everywhere so when NA rolls around the defenders have such a massive advantage that it can’t even remotely be called fair.

Of course it’s fair. All you have to do is upgrade everything to T3 yourself before you bed down for the night. What’s the difference?

Contiguous.1345:

renmei.3102:

I know it sucks but you are getting owned during that time period so the points earned during that time is valid. The real issue is that during the non-NA time period the keeps and fully upgraded to T3 and siege is placed everywhere so when NA rolls around the defenders have such a massive advantage that it can’t even remotely be called fair.

Of course it’s fair. All you have to do is upgrade everything to T3 yourself before you bed down for the night. What’s the difference?

It’s kinda funny because you can sometimes tell people who have never dealt with the kind of coverage gaps we are talking about….

You could have t10 towers/keeps does not matter if you face a server that predominantly plays at 4AM server time.

It is really not a complaint on my part, it is just something that makes WvW kitten. I mean really, the whole “You just have coverage gap statement”, does nothing but highlight how this game is just coverage wars 2. All of the wrong things are encouraged in this game (wvw-wise), and all it does is create more problems. The current system just foster’s entire guilds and guilds of people transferring from one server to the next.

Most of the time they do it trying to find a server that is competitive in WvW, or at least can hold its own so the guild(s) does not have to carry the entire server. And often the reason why these guilds have to do that in the first place is because the HUGE blowouts you have week-in-week-out. Those blowouts send the fairweathers/PUGs/randoms out of WvW and it all creates a vicious cycle.

The system I proposed is essentially a handicap system, if my server sends 100 people on every map against your servers average of 20-30, then everything I hold during that time should be worth less. If your 20-30 come take something away from my 100 people, then it should be worth more because you were at a disadvantage.

It does not penalize people for living in “x-timezone” etc. What it would do is give some of the smaller servers a fighting chance, and would not allow others to win because of coverage.

Fuzzion.2504:

Come to JQ where we will take care of all your night tower cap problems.

Did i mention we having an awesome t1 to t2 fight with constant action, guaranteed.

JQ posts are like the two guys who appear on your shoulders in bad sitcoms and cartoons from the 40’s. One angel, on devil.

Devil JQ: “Just transfer to fix your problems”

Angel JQ: Suggests servers other than their own at times.