Guild Wars 2

What are your thoughts, would the game be better or worse if ANET removed the “tick” style 24/7 scoring system and replaced it with a point per cap system? IE: You take SM you get 35pts, but only the initial 35pts. You take a tower it adds 10pts, but not 10pts recurring. So if you take nothing else in the next hour you have 45pts, nothing more.

You could possibly randomize it even further by allowing kills to count in some fashion to the score. I know it is probably not the best method/idea, but it just seems to be that PPT simply further rewards coverage and does not necessarily reward skill.

I am a big proponent of ignoring the PPT and the Score in general, but I think a system like this would legitimize the scoreboard a bit more. The biggest negative I can see is that people would claim that it would foster an environment of “Tower Flipping”, because without flipping something in this method there can be no points gained. But you could also argue that defending would be just as important as you would not want to allow an enemy to gain that “10pts” from said tower.

Interesting idea.

Tie it to player kill points and you might be onto something.

Give additional points for each upgrade completed also to encourage defending.

Could solve the coverage problem and make every server competitive.

I am all for a system that allows me to play against all 24 servers.

Great idea, simple yet effective, +1! I also agree that adding points for upgrading keeps and towers etc would be great, give people incentive to upgrade and defend.

Jahn.7019:

Interesting idea.

Tie it to player kill points and you might be onto something.

Yeah I would think that at some level points per kill would have to be evaluated. It would give some variety to the score, also when that 15-man zerg bust group continues to wipe a larger force it would amplify their contribution to the overall score.

Evolut.2398:

Great idea, simple yet effective, +1! I also agree that adding points for upgrading keeps and towers etc would be great, give people incentive to upgrade and defend.

I think so as well, I hadn’t thought about that at the time of my original posting, so credit to Jahn for that thought.

Going even further you might could adjust the scoring per cap based on what tier the objective is. Maybe make a T1 tower 5pt, a T2-10, a T3-15. (just throwing random numbers around).

I just think a system like this would level the playing field a bit for servers that are constantly outnumbered. It would not penalize the larger servers either, all they would lose is the PPT they were gaining from sitting on an objective.

At the end of the day if Server A can take everything on the map then they would still be winning at the end of the day, but the difference is that they would not be winning by a margin that keeps on growing over time. They would eventually “cap” their points, thus allowing the losing servers a shot in the match assuming they were able to take some points back.

One possible issue I see is endless back capping becoming the meta du jour.

But this is an interesting base to start from.

King Amadaeus.8619:

But you could also argue that defending would be just as important as you would not want to allow an enemy to gain that “10pts” from said tower.

This argument would work if WvW weren’t a three-sided match. It’s of no value to prevent server A from making points by capping one of your towers when your primary rival (points wise) is server B, either because server A is leading or losing by a large margin.

I think awarding points for capturing an objective is probably a bad idea. two servers could easily conspire to make a third server lose by trading objectives back and forth between them, racking up a lot of points.

But I think awarding points for completing upgrades is a good idea. If the only source of points were from upgrades, the path to victory would be:

1. capture objectives
2. hold objectives until all upgrades are complete
3. allow enemies to take objectives
4. immediately (before your enemies can build upgrades) go to step 1.

it’s still possible to ‘game’ this system, but it takes so much longer that a lot fewer people would have the patience for it. a very strong server would have two options: (a) get a lead then attempt to hold everything, preventing opponents from scoring any points, or (b) allow your opponents to take objectives in hopes that you can take them back and score more points. option (a) would be very boring for everybody. (b) would be more fun, but letting your opponents take stuff only so you can take it back is kind of lame.

and the biggest flaw here is that the last server to go to sleep has a big advantage, because they can capture everything and let their overnight crew upgrade it all getting essentially uncontested points. but the current system has that flaw too so at least this wouldn’t be any worse.

-ken

I really like the idea of taking a point then getting the initial points, with no PPT, along with more points for each additional upgrade completed. On the flip side, make upgraded enemy structures worth more to take, and then make kills incorporate somewhere into the scheme of things.

Great post and great ideas!

Snowreap.5174:

and the biggest flaw here is that the last server to go to sleep has a big advantage, because they can capture everything and let their overnight crew upgrade it all getting essentially uncontested points. but the current system has that flaw too so at least this wouldn’t be any worse.

-ken

Right, absolutely. The only difference is that the last server to go to sleep can only gain a finite amount of points, whereas in the current system they can gain much more as the points tick away throughout the night theoretically depending on when each objective is taken from them.

The other main difference is that in this system when you wake up the lead should not be theoretically “insurmountable”.

Another thing you would eliminate is that in the current system it is possible to (for all intents and purposes) “win” a matchup in a single day. I have seen it happen, a server gets together and builds a lead on Tuesday, that is essentially too far to catch for the rest of the week.

This is a terrible idea. Like OP mentioned it would only encourage tower flipping.

What would anyone have to gain by defending an objective then? Can you honestly say most people will think “defending this one boring objective is a good idea because it will stop the enemy from getting 10 points rather than going on the offensive, capping 3 towers to get ahead, and getting a ton of loot/XP in the process?”

Meanwhile, where action is happening, the two enemy servers are killing eachother and PvDooring for mad points leaving the defending server severely disadvantaged.

A new system that further discourages defense is awful horribad no.

Also, basing the points on kills will just result in numbers being even more important and solo roamers getting yelled at for being easy points for the enemy. It will also increase the chance of having people run back into their objectives to prevent dying, which is already a nuisance.

Your suggestion would cause people to stop defending anything. There goes half the fun already. And for those who would argue that people would defend to get points from upgrading, you may want to rethink that.

What do you think would be worth more points, getting a few upgrades on a single keep, or ditching the keep and capturing multiple towers and other keeps? And even if they did make upgrades worth so much that nobody wanted to risk losing the keep, there goes the other half of wvw instead – offense. Everyone would just turtle up and never go outside.

All in all, we stand to lose either way, with a system like this in place. Oh and it wouldn’t make it any more fair against stronger servers. I can guarantee that the stronger ones would still come out on top.

Player kills should count as points….Tower/Keep/Camp defenses should count as points… flipping objectives should count as points on top of holding the objectives and yaks and sentries should continue to count for points…..AND…..anet needs to display the breakdown of yak/sentry points…player kill points….points obtained from flipping objectives and points obtained from holding objectives…..if we see the breakdown….then you can see which server is getting more points through killing people vs objective flipping vs objective holding….

Interesting….

Now how about adding an additional upgrade for structures, one that would reward points instead of a structural upgrade, but require a lot of supply and be available only if the structure has all personel upgrades (or something like that.)

Then again; rewarding points like that may seem too much like p2w.

Seems to me this would basically encourage zerging more and less on any kind of defensive play. If you take away the ppt, and just give finite points per objective/kills, it amounts to basically the same as it is now, just fewer points overall.

You currently get points for holding objectives. You currently get points for flipping objectives. The only thing you’re adding here is points for killing players really, and taking away the 10 minute mark for calculating recurring points generation. Bigger stacked servers would win by default — simply because they’d wipe smaller numbers over and over again. Not much change from how it is now. Only this idea would increase zerg sizes, not reduce it. Karma tower trains would be rampant. Everyone would just jump on the tower flipping train, steamroll through a map and leave everything undefended (because why bother?), and any kind of strategy would become moot.

Edited to add: On top of that, making player kills count toward overall score would inevitably encourage spawn camping. Players would set up siege at all exit points and just farm points for their server — meaning fewer open field fights and less map mobility. It would kill the game.

No thanks.

all these posts about tower flipping, more zerging and less defending are the reason that giving points for objective captures is a bad idea.

giving points for upgrading objectives (and only for upgrading objectives) is still a good idea though. although if ArenaNet does this I hope they change the upgrade pricing so the burden of winning a match doesn’t fall on the few players who pay for the upgrades.

-ken

hell no

player kill points would result in endless kittening in /map chat about newbs and bullkitten like that

No, because if points were only given for taking a tower or keep, no one would leave an attack to go defend. WvW would simply become a race of who can take the most, in the shortest amount of time. It’s already hard enough to get people to defend, as the game is now. If anything, defending needs to have a higher reward structure.

now here could be an issue.

lets say SOR gets teamed up with us(FA) and MAG
they will cap everything and all is green….. erm does that mean no more points for them anymore? they own EVERYTHING!they will deny the other servers EVERYTHING… they either get 700ppt and then nothing until we actually cap something back? and also if they already capped everything and spawncamp the other servers in each bl 24/7 the weaker servers will probably get 0 points…..

nah

I kind of chuckle when I read some of the responses like this would “encourage zerging”, or “karma trains would be rampant”….I say that because people are insinuating that does not occur in the current system.

I have been on a server that has capped every single point in WvW (all 4 maps), and been on one that has had all points capped by the enemy. With that being said, when this is happening there is no system to where you could win, obviously you are overmatched. But capping the points and removing the PPT would encourage closer matches even in a “blowout” by comparison to the current system.

Sure it might be 750-50, but that is still better (in my opinion again), than 351,000-165,000.

I only bring this idea up because the current system is structured like PVP. Whereas essentially, you cap an area, then hold said area to accumulate score. The more you hold, the more you score.

The problem in my opinion is that, in PVP you have a “cap” and the match ends. In WvW however, there is no reasonable cap to which the match “ends”. The cap in WvW is Friday at reset.

Imagine how some of the blowout WvW matchups that go on week-to-week would be if these matches lasted a full month? Like I said before, in PVP the match ends at a point cap, so the system works better for that application. However, in my personal opinion the 24/7-PVPstyle (PPT) ticker in WvW just creates lopsided matchups that encourage server stacking, poor morale for the servers getting blown out, mass transfers, etc.

selan.8354:

now here could be an issue.

lets say SOR gets teamed up with us(FA) and MAG
they will cap everything and all is green….. erm does that mean no more points for them anymore? they own EVERYTHING!they will deny the other servers EVERYTHING… they either get 700ppt and then nothing until we actually cap something back? and also if they already capped everything and spawncamp the other servers in each bl 24/7 the weaker servers will probably get 0 points…..

nah

They could do that now in the PPT system and have even more points, and still spawn camp you bro…The situation you are implying is no different than a possible reality that exists with the current system. The only difference is that if/when you finally do get some offense going, the current system you will be down 45-50k worth of points, but in this system you may only be down 700-1k (random number).

Really all they need to do is take the current system and tweak it.

Take the existing PPT and scale it based on Tier.

Currently camps are worth 5 PPT. Change it to depend on tier and scale it as 2 PPT @ T1, 4 PPT @ T2 then finally 6 PPT @ T3

Towers could be 5 PPT @ T1, 10 PPT @ T2 and 15 PPT @ T3.

The reward system would also need to be reworked. After all, staying to make sure a camp upgrades is equal to capping another in the PPT department and staying in the area while it upgrades can be an event that rewards the same xp/karma/gold as capping.

However, it would lack in the rewards you would get for tagging and killing the npc’s in the next camp. Thus staying to upgrade, while being an event, would also reward you with a chest containing a reward that is proportional to the level of participation (so depended on getting a bronze, silver or gold medal) and is on par with what you would get for killing the npc’s at the next camp.

So staying to upgrade a tower would grant the same rewards as going and capping another tower. Same with the keeps and castle.

What about after it’s all upgraded? What reason would there be to stay?

Once fully upgraded, have a 3 min cycle running. Every 3 min you are rewarded xp/karma/gold. It would be an event.

If you happened to be within range for less than a minute, it doesn’t apply.

If you were there for a minute or more but less than two minutes, you get bronze.

If you were there for two minutes or more but less than 3 minutes, you get silver.

If you were there for the full 3 minutes, you get gold.

You would get awarded xp/karma/gold accodingly. This would be an easy way to level an uplevel while being able to…

-Tag seige and keep them from despawning.
-Alert the map on enemy activity.
-Make use of seige at an enemy force, slowing them down until the main zerg shows up.

So there it is…

A change to the PPT system that would;

1. Make it benefitial to the server to upgrade by increasing the PPT for each tier.

2. Make it just as profitable to stay and defend as it upgrades as it would be to go and cap the next one.

3. Once fully upgraded, it becomes worth it for uplevels to continue to stay and defend as they are gaining xp every three minutes. They will level up and get the karm and gold needed to upgrade their gear in exchange for keeping a look out. Something most seem to not care to do because it is currently not rewarding (at all) yet it is actually quite important.

I am sorry guys, but people are not staying in towers now because of the PPT. If anything they are staying to keep them upgraded, refresh siege etc.

Points necessary for defending too, upgraded structures=more points per succusful defense and what type of upgrades there are

dunnberry.2964:

Points necessary for defending too, upgraded structures=more points per succusful defense and what type of upgrades there are

Ahh that is a good idea, I like that.

King Amadaeus.8619:

dunnberry.2964:

Points necessary for defending too, upgraded structures=more points per succusful defense and what type of upgrades there are

Ahh that is a good idea, I like that.

Yeah for sure, I just think with the PPT based on cap only and upgrades it would decrease the differential in points between servers due to off peak hours etc and being vastly outmanned.

In regards to above, great idea, they would definitely have to improve reward and incentive to hold your keeps and towers from enemies, and even further when fully upgraded!