Guild Wars 2

Problem: WvW is not balanced and probably never will be. This is largely due to coverage of players between the different servers, as well as the style of play arising from that over the long term on each server. However, the game still tracks scores as if the game mode was fairly balanced, making many matches result in completely lopsided tallies. Trailing with half the score of your competitor discourages many people. PPT doesn’t always matter in the sense of progression or one’s ability to play WvW, but it does have a psychological effect since it’s always taunting you from the UI.

Solution: Rather than determining the score in WvW based on flat rates, the volume of players should also be taken into account. In addition, the score should take into account a variety of WvW areas. Essentially, the goal is to also value the per-player contribution to matches, rather than merely the combined efforts.

In addition, other things could contribute positively to a score. The number of minutes a fortification (e.g. tower or keep) has been under your control, the more points you get. The greater upgrades it has, the more points you get. This makes upgrading and defending desirable, and the opposing teams will do their utmost to keep you from doing so. It may even encourage zergs to split up and cover more ground on multiple fronts.

In my idea, I envision that we track the “normal” areas of the game: Garrisons, Keeps, Towers, Camps, Supply Escorts, Yak Kills, and perhaps more. This gives smaller servers a chance to not only be competitive score-wise in the primary game, but also to focus and excel in certain areas of the game.

At any given time, the number of players on a map is counted into the score of what is currently going on. If one side has 20% more players on a map, they will have to do 20% more to achieve the same score as a side with fewer numbers, or put in other words, each individual player’s contribution on one side is put against each individual player’s contribution on the other sides. As the teams fight to defend and capture points, escort or kill yaks, or perhaps simply kill other players, the score will now reflect the actual quality of the effort being put in across all fronts.

More: There is also better potential for adjustment in this score system. You can tweak several things to get more balanced scores, whereas with PPT, you can change it all you want, but it is pretty much always going to scale the same.

At the end of each match up, the winning server is obviously still the one with most points, and we would also get to see which server is best at tower play, defense, yak related incidents, and so on. Dare I suggest different rewards depending on how you fare in each?

I think this style of scoring would also combat the tendency to flip-flop capture points, given the value of defense on a constant basis, not just with PPT in mind.

I am sure you could find a way to factor the bloodlust capture points into this, in a way to make them more desirable. Let’s say owning one of them slightly augments your score (by how much also depending on the amount of players on the map).

There would be no particular benefit to having more or less players, so no one would grief anyone to leave. I’d venture a guess that a system like this would encourage more people to give WvW a shot even if they’d traditionally be pummeled in PPT. Also, if it is difficult to calculate the player percentage in a three way match, just base the percentage off the maximum number of players allowed for each side.

Cons: I gather some people may say that it will make some people annoyed at “passive” players. I doubt it. A player standing around doing nothing now doesn’t contribute to PPT, and presumably each side would have the occasional idle players to balance each other out (or a few idles here and there wont make that much of a difference). I think the pros far outweigh the minor cons.

It’s just an idea I’ve been thinking about.

many ideas were thrown to anet, and yet most of them fell to deaf ears……

I would find people’s ideas to improve on the above rather interesting. Score modifiers, for example. I’ve been thinking that maybe capture points further away from your home base are worth more points to hold than those close to your spawn. Encouraging people to engage in combat and hold positions deeper into enemy territory could create an interesting dynamic when deciding which points to attack. When paired with the ideas in my original post, I think it would have a positive effect on the combat scenario as a whole.

I’ve been thinking some more about this idea and wanted to elaborate a little. The following could potentially work in some fashion whether the original idea (in the first post) is implemented or not – it builds on the idea in the previous post about capture value based on distance from spawn. First of all I’ve attached an example image, using my crude editing abilities, so that you may have a visual representation of what I mean.

If you find yourself on green’s borderland, for example (and you’re not green), you will receive the most points for objectives deeper into the map. In addition, I’ve also added some extra points for the southern camp, hoping it would lead to some strife between the two attacking teams. It is of course open to edits. The essence is that you get the incentive to strike deeper into enemy territory (i.e. risk is rewarded) and at the same time you will want to prevent another team from getting their high-point objectives.

My first inclination is that the defending borderland should not necessarily receive extra points on their own map, mostly to not encourage camp spawning. At the same time, defending your borderland is still a good idea because preventing other teams from getting high scoring capture points is a benefit.

Additional Defense
In addition to this, even if the PPT system is kept, you could use a variation of the original idea and make capture points worth more the longer they are held. For each tick you own a structure, the more points it will be worth the next tick. This would encourage defense, as rather than trying to run around and capture points while losing others, you could obtain similar or more benefits from holding what you have. Other teams will, of course, be increasingly interested in getting those from you, which makes upgrades more valuable. Paired with the enemy territory bonus, you’ll be amply rewarded for holding out for longer. Maybe a slight decrease of the tick timer would help in making this an even more useful addition. There are also other adjustments that could be made, such as defending points having some decent achievements.

Some variation of everything in this thread so far would be interesting to me.

Kosmo.5187:

For each tick you own a structure, the more points it will be worth the next tick. This would encourage defense, as rather than trying to run around and capture points .

All this would encourage is afkers.

We’ve said the whole thing about basing points based on actual activity before…. while it’s kind of a no-brainer (besides the effort to code it of course), it’s also the #2 problem right now.

If they can’t fix the #1 (overall population) and give good matchups, great ideas about how to fix off-hours advantages do not accomplish much.

These are certainly interesting ideas, but I think they might be band-aids on the underlying issues: that the match-ups aren’t balanced in the first place. While this is a source of frustration for many players, it’s not a “problem” per se so much as it is an inherent factor of the game. Furthermore, I think any attempt on ANet’s part to implement your proposed solutions would result in further gaming of the system.

From the start, I believe that ANet wanted SPvP to be their E-sport baby, while WvW was only ever meant to be a fun little thing on the side. WvW has gotten more and more attention over the past year and change, with balance tweaks and features like masteries leading up to the map overhauls to incorporate the SPvP-esque bloodlust ruins, and the upcoming entirely new maps of the Edges of the Mists. But this still built on top of a system that is, at its foundation, not designed to be fair or balanced in the greater scheme – that’s what SPvP is for, and the problems that come with such a rigorously controlled environment are the price you pay for fairness and balance. There is a true dichotomy here – WvW’s susceptibility to such runaway conditions is a direct result of the uncontrolled environment which, for me, makes it more fun and interesting than SPvP. While I still have my complaints about how those runaway conditions sometimes play out, I largely accept them as better than the alternative (which is why I’m not much for SPvP, even though I still occasionally dip my toe in).

The point of all this is that the point structure, as it stands, is simple and obvious. What the points mean is simple and obvious. How you go about getting those points is where the depth comes in, where there’s room for subtlety in strategy: in player actions. I think this is more or less as it should be. Adding subtlety to a simple and obvious scoring system sometimes adds interesting depth – I actually think your bit on upgrades making an objective more valuable is a good suggestion, in fact, as it encourages “capture and hold” gameplay and devalues the karma train and its attendant Ouroboros effect – but most of the other stuff strikes me as unnecessary complication.

The reason it’s unnecessary complication, rather than further interesting depth, is twofold. In the first place, it’s because it attempts to balance the fundamentally unbalanced: the adjustments based on population would be a back-end Band-Aid on a front-end “problem,” as mentioned above. It’s unnecessary because it goes directly against the design of the game mode. In the second place, such adjustments would certainly (almost necessarily) lead to further gaming of the system by players: the homeopathic amplifying of score with diminishing player presence would encourage servers to field as few players as necessary/possible. While no player could kick another player from a map or report them for any actionable offense (…yet…), there could be “soft enforcement” vis a vis guild kicks and other social retaliation in an effort to keep only the best players on the map. This wouldn’t even be the result of people trying to be mean, it would simply emerge from guild leaders trying to do what’s best for the server (we all know where roads paved with good intentions lead), and it would further divide the WvW community. Additionally, the matter of how often player counts were tabulated would also be gamed, creating a weird pressure for players to duck out right before headcounts in order to maximize server score.

Making upgrades add to an objective’s value is a really good idea, though – I like it a lot!

The main issue I see is the 24/7 coverage issues. Changing strategic points values does little to mitigate one server dominating others simply because they have people at a given time while the others have none. There is no challenge taking undefended objectives that can be upgraded for more points.

One way to mitigate this would be to define general peak times and use a bell curve for PPT scoring. That way you wouldn’t see a single server crush 2 others simply because they have a 5 hour window unopposed and it would put more weight on times when there is actual competition.

The other way would be to lessen the weight of objective PPT and place much more on actual PvP.

At any rate the current system is not working very well if the idea is to promote real competition.

style.6173:

scootshoot.6583:

Kosmo.5187:

For each tick you own a structure, the more points it will be worth the next tick. This would encourage defense, as rather than trying to run around and capture points .

All this would encourage is afkers.

Agreed. You also need to ask yourself why people do not defend more. The answer is because it is boring. I think a lot of servers care much less about ppt already. They are looking for fights.

Let’s just say you are correct though and everyone will begin to defend. Who will do any attacking?

People looking for fights will go look for fights still. As objectives become worth more to defend, they also become worth more to attack, not least because winning an objective would both give you points and prevent the other side from getting their points. As for players opting to AFK, well, a player doing nothing is certainly worth less on a map than a player doing something. I’m quite sure that the team with active players would prevail. I think the best way to look at this is as a measure of team play regardless of the size of your team. If part of your team is not playing, you will give up opportunities to gain points that the more active team will seize.

If the sides ever become balanced, this system would still work. Because the sides are, inherently as is suggested above, not balanced, having a scoring system that respects that fact seems superior to me. The more prudent counter question is perhaps this: If the game is inherently balanced, why even have a scoring system, or why have a scoring system that only counts to emphasize the fact that the game is unbalanced.

Also, there are certainly ways to prevent gaming of the system by leaving the map before “ticks” (which would not exist in the traditional sense). It could be based on ongoing timers and user information, averages, or information gleaned from when the objectives were captured. There are many options here to the extent that this isn’t something I consider a stick in the wheel. I guess I tend to see opportunity rather than insurmountable faults.