Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed a trend with the new scoring system, (okay, well its not that new anymore,) that’s in place to encourage defending. The more a structure is allowed to upgrade the more points it is worth.

I understand the premise for such a system (to encourage defending and discourage karma training) but I don’t think it works well in this particular game. Why? Because it grants an inherent advantage to servers with heavy coverage in certain timezones over servers with weaker coverage, and I don’t just mean in those timezones.

For the example I’m going to give lets pretend there are three distinct timezones with equal influence.

Lets say server A has overwhelming coverage in one timezone while servers B & C do not. Server A now owns the majority of objectives and might even have waypoints on enemy maps before B & C “wake up”

Server A wins the timezone.

The next timezone arrives and (lets say) all three servers have about the same coverage. Now lets be optimistic and say servers B & C reclaim each their own borderlands & third of ebg pretty quick (this is hardly a given). For the next 2-4 skirmishes (at least) server A will win the skirmish, even if B or C pop SMC. Why? Their structures are upgraded while B & C all own unupgraded cardboard cutouts. Even if servers B & C focus on server A, A has thicker walls, more wall siege and tons of supply in all of their keeps. As well, server A will often keep server’s B & C paper as their backcappers can flip paper walls like its nothing.

Server A wins the timezone because they own higher ticking structures going into and throughout the timezone, even if they own the same number of structures as their opponents.

The next timezone arrives and now server A has poor coverage while servers B and C have moderate coverage. Maybe server A’s stuff is all papered and they tick 3rd for a while.

Server A loses the timezone. Fine.

Now we’re back to the first timezone. Server A quickly paper the sleeping opposition while their own structures upgrade relatively unimpeded.

To sum up my point, upgraded objectives provide too much of an advantage to the server with really strong coverage in one timezone even if the overall 24 hour coverage of the matchup is relatively the same.

I’m awful at explaining things so let me give an actual example based on experience as an FA player. Last week by the time NA hit Maguuma was able to fortify their own structures including SMC during EU and paper many of FA & SoS’s. Throughout NA, FA & SoS frequently owned more objectives but never won any skirmishes in that timezone in part due to the fact that Maguuma’s objectives were worth more points. Why? Because Maguuma had a timezone advantage to upgrade their stuff before NA which bled into NA, where the coverage was relatively equal. Now lets flip ahead to this week. FA has that same EU advantage over SBI and by the time NA hits FA has a waypoint on SMC while SBI BL’s side keeps & often ebg keep are paper. Throughout NA SBI & FA own about the same number of objectives but (with the exception of reset night where everything was paper) FA won all of the skirmishes because all of their stuff had been upgraded during EU.

The old scoring system wasn’t perfect, but at least servers aren’t at as much of an inherent disadvantage in one timezone because their coverage was weaker in the previous.

My thoughts on potential solutions:
— Increase the points for papering reinforced objectives. Heavily increase the points gained for papering fortified objectives. Maybe flipping a reinforced structure is worth 2x current value while flipping a fortified structure is worth 3×. Generally papering upgraded stuff is a big deal and takes more effort than simply backcapping the paper stuff.
— Decrease the difference in points gained by an upgraded objective compared to that of a paper objective. Right now owning a keep grants 12/16/20 depending on its tier. (For example,) maybe decrease that to 12/14/16.
— Increase points gained by an objective which has white swords placed on it during a 5 minute skirmish, drastically. You want to to encourage denfending? Have a keep normally worth 12 points worth 24 while it is under attack. That might discourage “tagging” a little bit, but I think its worth it to encourage defending.

This system would encourage actively attacking & defending while decreasing the impact of a server having massive coverage in one timezone bleeding into the next, (while not negating it entirely).

Thoughts?

~ Kovu

Simply put dominating one time zone has too much impact on other time zones play and that is bad. The structural advantages of higher tier objectives is enough to make us want to upgrade them, the points are overboard and in some ways ruin the skirmish idea that you can compete in your time zone as previous time zones have too much impact.

Anet chickened out on addressing nightcapping.
Waaaaayyyyy more words than needed, Kovu.

Yeah sorry I’m awful at explaining things.
Long story short read the stuff under the line.

~ Kovu

It’s asking too much to account for such wide differences in coverage. They need to be considered, yes, but it’s better to give players the tools to deal with it.

For example, while one server may have a big crew in an odd timezone, the other servers should be able to field at least a few people. Unless the imbalance is horrendously gross, a handful of people should be able to backcap or at least suppress the upgrading of the structures lost to the enemy. This already exists in the game.

The problem lies more heavily with players feeling that anything sort of zerging down a whole map is not a worthwhile contribution. Simply hitting camps/Yaks in a situation like this has a larger impact that capping several keeps, but it doesn’t feel like it.

Anet made great progress on this by adding the floating +score indicators. Now, they need to update the second tab of the UI to indicate that not all objectives are valued the same. Perhaps if they showed the amount of PPT swing that flipping an objective gave, it would help. A T3 keep is a 28 swing while a T0 is only 16. That’s probably just as important as showing the points on capture. To their credit, they do show how much PPT each structure gives, but only for allied structures.

Sviel.7493:

Anet made great progress on this by adding the floating +score indicators. Now, they need to update the second tab of the UI to indicate that not all objectives are valued the same. Perhaps if they showed the amount of PPT swing that flipping an objective gave, it would help. A T3 keep is a 28 swing while a T0 is only 16. That’s probably just as important as showing the points on capture. To their credit, they do show how much PPT each structure gives, but only for allied structures.

I’d be interested in a statistics tab with “last matchup” “current matchup” “last skirmish” datas telling how many points are earned through :

• Holding objectives (auto-tick every 5 mn)
• Flipping objectives
• Killing enemies
• Miscelleanous (dollis and probably other things ?)

Not sure what it’d show, but… Well, it’d just be interesting to know.

Kovu.7560:

My thoughts on potential solutions:

— Increase the points for papering reinforced objectives. Heavily increase the points gained for papering fortified objectives. Maybe flipping a reinforced structure is worth 2x current value while flipping a fortified structure is worth 3×. Generally papering upgraded stuff is a big deal and takes more effort than simply backcapping the paper stuff.

— Decrease the difference in points gained by an upgraded objective compared to that of a paper objective. Right now owning a keep grants 12/16/20 depending on its tier. (For example,) maybe decrease that to 12/14/16.

— Increase points gained by an objective which has white swords placed on it during a 5 minute skirmish, drastically. You want to to encourage denfending? Have a keep normally worth 12 points worth 24 while it is under attack. That might discourage “tagging” a little bit, but I think its worth it to encourage defending.

This system would encourage actively attacking & defending while decreasing the impact of a server having massive coverage in one timezone bleeding into the next, (while not negating it entirely).
Thoughts?

~ Kovu

I agree with your analysis of the problem, but I don’t think all those solutions would work.

With your first solution, I think the problem is still that either server A, B, C is going to be strong enough to defend that tier 3 structure and it doesn’t matter how many points it awards for being flipped, it’s just not going to get flipped with a close to equal number of defenders (or even just 10-15 who know how to use siege).

I agree with your second solution, but probably won’t change the outcome of many skirmishes.

I don’t disagree with your third solution either, but it still depends on the players caring about the score. Which I guess is the overall problem — the solutions all might balance the final score more, but will they actually make the matchups more “balanced”? Will that off hours coverage stop doing what they do because they get less points for it?
Probably not, unfortunately.

I agree it just makes the population imbalance issues even more harsh. If a server dominates on the weekend, building up their own borderland with T3 structures, the match is basically over. They can then pop back and forth between maps, defending and killing with relative ease. Add to that they can keep enemy camps flipped and that is how we see scores shoot over +100 difference in the MU by the end of the week.

The comment above mine is dead on. There are a lot of players who aren’t terribly concerned about the score.

Really the only way to take down a server with the higher pop and built up structures is for a double team. In practice what happens is the third server in the matchup often gets focused.

I believe there should be no PPT adjustment for structures moving from T1→T2→T3. The fact that they upgrade defensively should be reason enough to defend an upgraded structure, not that the PPT is higher.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

I believe there should be no PPT adjustment for structures moving from T1->T2->T3. The fact that they upgrade defensively should be reason enough to defend an upgraded structure, not that the PPT is higher.

Upgraded structure usually get defended a lot more in the past just because of the effort and cost to upgrade it. It’s so easy and automatic now, people don’t even care as much when a t3 is flipped.

This is basically eotm now, while it is currently only held together by the last remnant of server pride/competiveness for those that cares about ppt and defending.

But this is probably anet’s final and epic form of keeping their promise on “making defence rewarding”, which they kept selling to us for the last expansion. I wish there are changes to this but I doubt it.