Guild Wars 2

When this idea occurred to me, it seemed like a very obvious one, yet I don’t recall having seen it before. As such, I’ll explain the idea, the existing problems it attempts to resolve, and address any concerns that will arise.

Bear in mind I use the term overnight to refer to the time in a specific region, recognizing that players come from different time zones and therefore are not necessarily playing overnight. I myself am a Canadian (guild leader, commander, scout, roamer) playing on an EU server.

The Idea

It’s simple: At a certain point in the night WvW participation on most servers drops off substantially. My guess is that this is around 12am-2am for the latest time zone in the given region (NA or EU), although I’m sure Anet has the hard numbers.

The proposal is to shut down WvW on all borderlands at this time, suspend upgrades and siege despawn timers, and consolidate all WvW players onto EBG. Limit the PPT to EBG objectives. Once numbers begin to pick up again, likely 6-8 hours later, re-open the borderlands. Opening and closing of borderlands should be set times, this could be done differently for weekends.

I’ll just add that this idea seems to me like something that should have been present since release (EBG is, after all, Eternal Battlegrounds), and that the issue of coverage is not one that is likely to be solved by the main ideas proposed (scaling PPT off-hours, merging servers or creating alliances). Despite efforts to make lower tiers more attractive, this is an issue that will persist if no targeted solution is provided.

The Purpose

At the moment, off-peak coverage in WvW is a huge issue. This is particularly acute during the overnight hours, when some matchups will see a single server ticking 600 or above. It’s detrimental to the quality of play, the accurate assignment of ranking, and to the competitiveness of many servers.

Quality of Play: Night watch and commanding is very different from regular play. During hours where WvW participation is low, much of the effort has to be directed towards scouting, quickly responding to any threats, and often predicting enemy attacks. This has to be done across 2-4 maps, spreading thin the population of all servers and reducing the amount of action that the players actually find. It can be very frustrating to spend a lot of time upgrading during this period only to lose an objective because of the difficulty of tracking enemy movements. When it is possible to go on the offensive, taking of objectives will often involve little more than PvD.

This change will remove the necessity of border-hopping, ensure that all players who are in WvW during these hours will be able to find one another easily to work together, and minimize the number of upgraded objectives that might be lost by an outmanned night crew. Even if all EBG objectives are lost, they are usually the easiest to upgrade.

Ranking: Because a night crew can have a much bigger impact on PPT than an equally-sized daytime crew, the PPT may not accurately reflect a server’s competitiveness during peak hours. Consequently, servers may find themselves in lopsided matchups, which reduces the quality of play because there is little to be had in the way of either even battles or difficult sieges.

This change will ensure that differences in night coverage do not severely impact the final scoring of a matchup and a server’s position in the rankings.

Competitiveness: The two issues described above have contributed to the most chronic issue in WvW: the steady migration of population from low tier servers onto high tier servers. Due to quality of play issues associated with overnight hours, the population of players who normally play during their server’s overnight hours find the higher tiers more attractive.

Due to the consolidation of “overnight” players into the top tiers, servers that lack this coverage will simply not be able to find themselves matched up against servers that have this coverage, even if they are very competitive at primetime. This can make them less attractive to play on, resulting in a downward spiral.

This change will give two incentives for overnight players to spread among all servers rather than consolidating on higher tiers: Firstly, they can expect to find more competitive play on other servers if there is a lower player cap at these hours; and secondly they will wish to avoid queues that may appear at the highest tiers due to the restriction of WvW to one map.

Continued…

Potential Concerns

It’s unfair to give players from other regions a reduced impact on PPT
This solution provides a way for these players to still provide an impact in terms of their direct contribution to the battlefield. The fact is that against a server with limited coverage an overnight crew of 10-20 can monopolize an entire borderland or more, even though they may only be directly protecting one objective at a time.

I like roaming at night and I don’t want to have to deal with zergs
There are still options for late night roamers, especially since EBG is a large map with a lot of space for movement. This can also be a boon to late night roamers who may find it hard to encounter opposition when populations are spread across 4 maps.

I play from another time zone and I don’t want to miss out on the experience of having 4 maps to choose from
The window where maps are closed will probably not have to be a very long one, which means that this option is still available for players from other time zones. As well, blackouts would be staggered between NA and EU servers, meaning that these borderlands are never fully blacked out for a particular time slot. This change is meant to acknowledge that 4-map play during the slow hours of a server is simply not the same as 4-map play during its peak hours, and will never be.

Having overnight players spread means breaking communities
The goal of this idea is to renew communities and help existing ones stay strong, but one side effect is that existing overnight communities in high tiers may be broken up. I believe that this change can offer more in the long term for communities to be built and sustained in this game.

Substantial coverage differences exist across the day, not just overnight
Late night/early morning is when the coverage differences are most acute, and in addition to my experience I will probably be backed up by score graphs. The point of this change, however, is not to address issues arising from a preponderance of players, but rather from an overall absence across 3 servers in a matchup.

If there are other concerns about the impact this change might have, please share them! I invite you to debate the acknowledged concerns as well, and whether this change can actually be effective.

Question to players who play during their server region’s night watch: Would you enjoy WvW more if all players were consolidated onto EBG while populations were low?

tl;dr Close BLs at night and limit PPT to EBG. This will make overnight play more fun and help make all servers competitive. If you have criticism to offer, please read through the post first.

Thank you for this long and detailed post. The first response I can think of is, who’s overnight? Every minute of the day is another’s night time. I ask this because you keep using the term “overnight”.

The next issue is, what if you have the coverage for more than just EB?

Sounds weird coming from a Canadian playing on a EU server.
You’re actually part of the problem.
Anyways, this ‘issue’ has existed since HoD dominated the first month GW2 released with their 24/7 alliance with [Syn] capping everything versus SBI and ET overnight.
Nothing has changed, 500 gazillion ideas and complaints have arisen since. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change anytime soon.
It’s coverage wars.
If it bothers you being on a certain server, transfer to one that compliments your wants and desires for WvW.
Nothing much else to say.
NA primetime or EU primetime is essentially 6 hours a day.
Closing the BL’s for 18 hours a day seems silly for off peak hours depending on region.

DeWolfe, I did explain in the second paragraph why I use the term, of course I recognize there may be other ways to describe this time.

Regarding servers with more coverage, the fact is that there are many servers without coverage at those times. I realize it’s contentious to propose breaking up servers, whatever the time zone, which is why I am looking forward to people’s views.

Shonie, the point of this proposal is to address coverage wars directly. I’ve been on my server since headstart and only did PvE when I began. Maybe you are right that it is too late to fix anything but a constructive attitude would be appreciated.

It’s daytime for other people in the world.. Not happening.

It’s not that I’m not trying to be constructive…
But for instance my work schedule basically forces me to play southeast Asian time most of the time. I play on an NA server. Are you saying I should never have access to a borderland? SEA time is not primetime in either a US or EU server… so no matter where I go, I would not be able to play on a BL most of the time. Is it fair? No. Is Wvw fair? No.
But you can’t exclude people from content based on what time zone they live in.

1. day and night is different for everyone…
there are only EU and USA servers… what about the rest of the world…
what about the EU players that play in USA servers and visa versa
you cannot force people to move to a server where there is a ‘daytime concept’

2. ^also leads to the fact that some servers got way more people playing wvw in nighttime than EB can handle… means you are forcing people not to play WvW.

3. Probably most important one…
WvW isn’t about winning the match-up
It is about enjoying the concept, the fights, taking towers/keeps
Do you really think countless of people log-in everyday just because they want to win a match-up? no…

It’s someone else’s daytime when it’s your off hour. And when it’s my off hour, it’s someone else’s day time.

Once you put that into perspective,

You are proposing that Anet closes all the borderlands after reset night and focus everyone into EBG.

I only proposed a 6-8 hour closure, not an 18 hour one. The fact is that coverage wars have destroyed servers and royally kittened the ranking table for 18 months and counting. This proposal is a compromise because the above is the main problem, I balk when regional players say WvW should be shut down or certain regions locked out, you can’t control where your friends are. Anyways, the “overnight” experience on most servers pales far in comparison to the typical daytime/evening experience of a regional player and this should be a step towards improving it, while also addressing many other serious issues.

Illogical,

1. There are hard numbers about where players are, whatever the server the majority is from that region. That is what shapes the flow of the game and that is what solutions need to be designed around.

2. The reason why some servers have more people at that time is because they STACKED. I probably shouldn’t blame them because that’s what the current design pushed them to do, but correct me if I’m wrong.

3. It’s not about winning, it’s about giving everyone an environment where they feel they can compete. Whether that’s just fights or PPT, this applies to both.

There are 27 servers in EU and 24 in NA.
They all have a ranking either 1-27 or 1-24.
It’s impossible, literally impossible to balance things for that many servers, for that many players, for that many variables.
Things will NEVER be even for every server, not even remotely close.
Not 1 server anywhere has a queue 24/7 for all 4 maps.
As a player, you’re free to go to any server you want to find exactly what you desire.
It’s nearly impossible to balance this game mode in a way that is fair to all players in all time zones on every server.
Whatever the solution is, if there is one, can’t punish anyone for being in a specific timezone, or punish anyone from playing at a particular time of day.
Closing certain maps, for however many hours you feel is reasonable, isn’t reasonable to the players that play at that time of the day, wherever they happen to play in the world.

I proposed an idea similar to this, but instead it reacts to coverage instead of time.

EDIT: but most players play in highly populated servers, and literally don’t care about these realistic problems and their possible solutions

DeWolfe.2174:

Thank you for this long and detailed post. The first response I can think of is, who’s overnight? Every minute of the day is another’s night time. I ask this because you keep using the term “overnight”.

This essentially already sums it up. Since GW2 is an international game, you will never see such a ruling implemented (for very good reason), regardless of how many times players will keep proposing “change stuff overnight” modifications.

There are already smarter approaches to fight “coverage wars” that do not depend on local time. The introduction of the bloodlust buff already introduced a source of war points that scales with “player activity” instead of just mere “time passing by”. This mechanic is scaling that way since if there is no enemy to stomp, then you gain nothing from having the buff, and it even allows skilled small teams to contribute significantly by stomping other teams more effectively.

I understand such game mechanics as step in the right direction, although ANet has been a little bit too reluctant to have it have a major impact on the war score. (Current impact is merely about 25%, see http://www.gw2score.com for a breakdown of current matches.) By improving the impact of the borderlands buff, and/or introducing further game mechanics along that line of thought, will help to fight the dominance of coverage in a more reasonable way.

~MRA

I died from the wall of text.

Simple solution, come to t1 and t2.

I like this idea. The reason I like this idea is because when I’m playing at silly hours four maps is just too much and it takes forever to find fights since generally everyone sticks together at that time and they could be anywhere.

If it was just EBG open it’d be much easier and feel a lot more populated from I guess… 2-3am to about 8am GMT ish. This could actually boost players

Fuzzion.2504:

Simple solution, come to t1 and t2.

Wouldn’t this actually the most dumb and lame solution? It would mean abandoning your home server, and joining a server that already has more than enough active players. I don’t see this solving anything.

~MRA

I actually like this idea very much. Shutting down the borderlands from between 12-6am server time on NA servers won’t really have a huge impact as many people think, and will dissuade the idea of NA commanders pulling overtime to cover that period since the oceanic player base is tiny compared to the others, and that timeslot so happens to be oceanic. I know that in BG at least, we still wouldn’t be able to queue EBG during those hours unless the stars align, and TC, JQ and SoS wouldn’t have very big queues either

Plus, with EoTM, it’s not like you can’t have some semblance of wvw experience.

Reverence.6915:

I actually like this idea very much. Shutting down the borderlands from between 12-6am server time on NA servers won’t really have a huge impact as many people think, and will dissuade the idea of NA commanders pulling overtime to cover that period since the oceanic player base is tiny compared to the others, and that timeslot so happens to be oceanic. I know that in BG at least, we still wouldn’t be able to queue EBG during those hours unless the stars align, and TC, JQ and SoS wouldn’t have very big queues either

Plus, with EoTM, it’s not like you can’t have some semblance of wvw experience.

If you shut down kitten T2 Maps, be it EB or any other BL , u are effectively destroying a huge community in NA who come home from a hard day at work to unwind and fight while the other side of the planet sleeps. Effectively cutting a good portion of Anets revenue stream. The OP should consider ramifications to the thousands of WvW players in t1 and t2 during that timeszone. I have seen in his sig that his from an EU server so no complains here if it is just restricted for EU servers.

Fuzzion.2504:

Reverence.6915:

I actually like this idea very much. Shutting down the borderlands from between 12-6am server time on NA servers won’t really have a huge impact as many people think, and will dissuade the idea of NA commanders pulling overtime to cover that period since the oceanic player base is tiny compared to the others, and that timeslot so happens to be oceanic. I know that in BG at least, we still wouldn’t be able to queue EBG during those hours unless the stars align, and TC, JQ and SoS wouldn’t have very big queues either

Plus, with EoTM, it’s not like you can’t have some semblance of wvw experience.

If you shut down kitten T2 Maps, be it EB or any other BL , u are effectively destroying a huge community in NA who come home from a hard day at work to unwind and fight while the other side of the planet sleeps. Effectively cutting a good portion of Anets revenue stream. The OP should consider ramifications to the thousands of WvW players in t1 and t2 during that timeszone. I have seen in his sig that his from an EU server so no complains here if it is just restricted for EU servers.

NA prime ends at 11-12pm server time. Oceanic starts at 1-2am server time. SEA starts at 6-7am server time. You are really affecting very few people with this hypothetical change. 20-21 of the 24 NA servers won’t be affected

repeat after me: your time is not more valuable than mine, and my time is not more valuable than yours.

This would definitly kill my time i enjoy in WvW as i really dont like EB, always lag around and hardly space around to roam around solo which i do on borderlands.

Just drop the PPT attitude and enjoy your time being online, get kills/caps etc.

Your night times, are someone else’s daytime

No.

If it weren’t for the message body length minimum of 15 characters, “no” would be all I’d say.

No.

Offair.2563:

Your night times, are someone else’s daytime

Exactly mate.

Ergh I hate being an Aussie when these posts come about…

“Only Americans can play with all access on NA servers”
“Only EU can play with all access on EU servers”

All of these threads are the same, basically telling everyone who is not in those countries or who are in those countries but are busy during prime time due to a job or other real world obligations have to be restricted for the sake of “prime time”….

Thanks all for your feedback, I especially appreciate the input from Southeast Asia and Oceanic players whom would be most directly affected by such a change. It would be great to learn more about your background and current experience of this game. I’d be playing during my own server’s borderland blackout much of the time but feel this could improve that experience. I’m also curious how many of the respondents have extensive experience with their own server’s low coverage period.

I would like to reiterate that I recognize overnight is not a universally applicable term, not being from the same region as my own server. However you phrase it, it is a period where WvW activity across servers drops off substantially for a given region, which is what this proposal is meant to address. Given the global, 24/7 nature of this game, this is a fact that will never change.

Were this implemented, the borderland blackout would be staggered between NA and EU; about 2am-8am GMT for EU and 8am-2pm GMT for NA. Where does this fall for SEA and Oceanic players, and which is more appealing?

No, the term of overnight is completely wrong. If you want to address coverage, then adress that. Every time a server has less active WvW players on that map, this should kick in and affect outcomes, and beware of those who will intentionally manipulate this, and leave the map.

Also if PPT is removed/ignored, then why to fight: for loot and “fun”? The sole reason I start GW2 is to help my servers PPT. Nothing else.

But: taking empty, undefended objectives (because there’s not enough coverage at that time) is bad gameplay. Receiving PPT for just having empty objectives – bad game design. At least don’t give any PPT for any objective taken, until was held for at least 15 minutes or so, and place a minimum number of players required to defend it, or the NPC’s at that objective will “rebel” and turns white.

Or make bloodlust stomp the only source of PPT – this eliminates receiving PPT if you don’t have enemies. Or combine both ideeas, and this will split zergs, since every keep needs at least 10 players to hold it, towers 7, camps 3.

But then think about how much fun will be to stay in a keep, doing… what? Watching TV? Want me to invent a fun WvW or what? If I would be the one who decides the fate of WvW, I would think about, and try things, and ask players and listen to ideeas – some would improve, some not. But I’m not, and no matter what we post here, nobody cares at all – at least not those who have the power to change.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

repeat after me: your time is not more valuable than mine, and my time is not more valuable than yours.

Currently off-peak players time IS more valuable than prime time players.
10 decent players in the early hours of the morning can completely alter a matchup.
10 decent players during primetime make almost no discernable difference.

You say nobody’s time should be more valuable. Then make it so. Don’t be a hypocrite.

Not that I agree with this specific suggestion, but something needs to change regarding population/coverage for WvW points to ever have any meaning.

PPT will never be fair anyway, so trying to “fix it” isn’t my priority.

being able to play on the map that I want to when I want/can is what’s important to me.

but thanks for the name calling, very classy.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

PPT will never be fair anyway, so trying to “fix it” isn’t my priority.

being able to play on the map that I want to when I want/can is what’s important to me.

but thanks for the name calling, very classy.

^ +1

We all bought the same game and since this is 24/7, all people are allowed to play whenever they want, yes even in YOUR off peak hours since it could be ANOTHER ones prime time. If you are really concerned about the PPT, join a server that cares about it, if not, just play for the fun on your online times.

Countless of threads been around regarding this issue already and yet nothing has happened, so best dont put to much effort in it since it seems useless.

It IS a problem, but this isn’t the solution.

In fact I have no idea what the solution is. I’m on BP atm and IOJ’s nightcrew/oceanic way, way outnumbers us, its annoying logging on to find your waypointed keeps where basically pvd ever day.

This has come up before, and my response then was also no, you cannot limit access to players because of their time zone, too many people play from different time zones and play at different times. You will never be able to balance the wvw population of servers unless you manage to get the servers to max status and all maps queued all the time, like T1 is pretty close to, but even then there are coverage gaps.

Anet has little control over the population, they can offer transfers but it will never be balanced. What they do have control over and can change according to the situation is the points given, they give bonus points for stomps when you have the bloodlust buffs, well expand that to the outnumbered situation as well.

Keep foreigners out of NA.
BAM
Problem solved.

Bertrand.3057:

the change in experience for the specific population that plays overnight in high-tier must be considered against the experience for players across all servers.

We’ve seen a good amount of threads promoting similar ideas by now, and to be honest I usually don’t think they’re worth replying to, simply because the shortcomings of the argument are so obvious as to make it unnecessary. This one is something of an exception though – partly because it’s well written (to your credit), and partly because it devotes an inordinate amount of effort to persuading the reader that its conclusions are somehow the result of a logical, fairminded process. That doesn’t change the argument itself of course – the disenfranchisement of certain players for the benefit of others is still just as bad an idea as it ever was.

Like in society, there are certain privileges within gaming communities that are afforded unto the player. And like in society, some of these privileges are considered inherent to our existence. They are rights that we hold simply due to our capacity as players. They are not subject to a vote, and cannot be rescinded on the grounds that the majority thinks it convenient. Of course this analogy only holds so far – where societies have constitutions, MMOs have terms of service agreements. Nonetheless, if ever there were such a thing as the “constitutional rights” of an MMO player, equal and unrestricted access to the content you pay for would certainly be among them. Hence why I’m quoting the above paragraph from your post, because that’s really where the argument falls apart. All players are created equal, as it were – and even though the online world we inhabit is more accurately described as a benign dictatorship than a democracy, I guarantee you that any gaming company worth its salt will uphold this value.

This is not to say that there are no circumstances under which such rights might be invalidated, only that those circumstances would have to be overwhelmingly compelling indeed, especially if you wish to revoke the rights of whole groups of players. Unless and until you can lift that burden of proof, I remain unwilling, purely as a matter of principle, to sacrifice the rights of so much as a single player on the altar of majority rule.

@OP: Bad idea.

Plus only a few people really care about PPT anyway. Most just want to have good fights whenever they play.

This won’t work since it puts restriction on when and where players can play. I think a more better approach is to change the scoring system to diminish the effect of coverage on the score. This way, everyone gets to play the same way and it doesn’t restrict any players in any time zone.

Currently, the scoring system is this:
total score per tick = structure points + bloodlust stomps

Now if it is changed to so that the structure points becomes a percentage of held structures over total structures multiplied by the number of kills, then during off peak hours, a server with superior coverage won’t be able to score as much since the scoring depends on number of kills.

695 = total structure points

points per tick = [(structure points held / 695) X number of kills] + blood lust stomps

Example:
If a superior coverage server holds 90% of the structures but can only kill 10 players since they are facing a server has no off peak coverage, then the scoring is as follows.

(.9 X 10) + 0 stomps = 9 points

Selfish. Servers are only NA or EU and many different people from timezones much different from those play this game. It’s not fair for people of a different timezone to be forced to have a limited playing experience.

style.6173:

@OP: Bad idea.

Plus only a few people really care about PPT anyway. Most just want to have good fights whenever they play.

Not true. Few care about ppt only or fights only. MOST care for both.

Why do these topics keep coming up, Anet cannot change it, if they put restrictions on WvW that affect certain people from certain timezones, them players leave the game, its simple, its called World Vs World, ( World being Global ) going by some of the times you want to close the servers down, giving that I work a strange shift pattern I may only get to play 1 hour a day for a week and not at all the following week, on top of that you want only EBG open in the down time, so means if you log on and see there are 150 ppl in Que to bad for you no WvW today,

WvW and coverage is what you make of it, you either adapt to it or you don’t, if you cannot, don’t make suggestions that work for you, maybe your guild and a few friends, but completely destroy the game for other timezones.

Thanks to everyone who gave a thoughtful response. I emphasize that the main driver behind this proposal is not to combat nightcapping or to balance PPT. The fact is that the experience for night watch crews is markedly different from daytime and primetime, and it’s detrimental to the experience. In most matches, night populations are not large enough to sustain action on all four maps. The proposal is an attempt to redress that by consolidating the population onto a single map. EBG is very well suited to host imbalanced night populations because each server’s position is easily defensible.

I don’t find the suggestion that I am failing to consider the needs of night crew players – whether they are SEA or Oceanic players on NA servera, NA players on EU servers, or simply people with unusual schedules – fair or appropriate. On the contrary, I’m specifically soliciting the opinions of these players regarding how this change would affect their experience in the game. Comments from these players will, I believe, do the most to advance this discussion.

Bertrand.3057:

It’s simple: At a certain point in the night WvW participation on most servers drops off substantially. My guess is that this is around 12am-2am for the latest time zone in the given region (NA or EU), although I’m sure Anet has the hard numbers.

That is the prime time my guild and I play WvW. 11:30 PM to 3:AM.

We are old DAoC/Warhammer Online players. We want strategic play, not EotM.
We do not ever step into EotM. We are PPT players. Although we also enjoy small fights.

I am sure, no matter what time is chosen, it is someone’s prime play time, somewhere.

I agree that there are issues with PPT.

It’s great that you’re proposing a solution to address that.

Limiting access to game content (punishing players who play in "off’ hours) is not the way to go.

They are “punished” enough with lower population at that time.

goldenwing, I understand since my primetime is night watch for my server. It’s not really about whose primetime it is, it’s about targeting the fact that activity dips at certain hours across a region.

I agree that low population is a huge issue with the quality of play during these hours, and I think having that low population spread out across 4 maps is a large part of why it’s less fun to play during those hours.

Illogical.6218:

1. day and night is different for everyone…
there are only EU and USA servers… what about the rest of the world…
what about the EU players that play in USA servers and visa versa
you cannot force people to move to a server where there is a ‘daytime concept’

2. ^also leads to the fact that some servers got way more people playing wvw in nighttime than EB can handle… means you are forcing people not to play WvW.

3. Probably most important one…
WvW isn’t about winning the match-up
It is about enjoying the concept, the fights, taking towers/keeps
Do you really think countless of people log-in everyday just because they want to win a match-up? no…

I think many people don’t log-on when their server is getting pummeled or not have much chance of winning.

Bertrand.3057:

goldenwing, I understand since my primetime is night watch for my server. It’s not really about whose primetime it is, it’s about targeting the fact that activity dips at certain hours across a region.

I agree that low population is a huge issue with the quality of play during these hours, and I think having that low population spread out across 4 maps is a large part of why it’s less fun to play during those hours.

Less fun for whom?

Personally, we enjoy the spread out population across several maps. We enjoy knowing our small crew can make a difference.

We enjoy PPT.

We enjoy helping our server.

We enjoy making a difference.

We enjoy having our choice of maps strategically.

Emphasis: choice.

If we wanted EotM style WvW we would not be playing GW2.

You are proposing taking away content from players based on a perspective that says only fights matter.

You wanted feedback from players in that time frame: feedback here from me and my guild is: that’s a bad idea.

I agree there could be a different discussion about population issues.

Thanks for clarifying, I’m glad that you’ve spoken up for your guild’s niche. Because of the ethical issues that were raised earlier, particularly by ManuCraft, it has to be people’s opinions who play during this time frame that make or break this proposal.

It would be a change too controversial for Anet to apply. Also, many people earn back ppt during off times that they had lost during prime times. Some the other way around. It is an important factor in the game for any server’s residents to optimize their coverage at different times of the day. For players, it is bound to be something for some to benefit from and some to lose from. For Anet, their focus is on LS, this idea takes too much effort for them to even take time to think about. But they won’t think about it, because it is too controversial. They are very careful in terms of game mechanics and balance. Sorry, but something like this will not happen.

The OP is well-intentioned in their attempt to address what they see as the problem. Within the context of coverage and how it impacts PPT – namely those with greater coverage earn more PPT, which in turn leads to blow-out scores early in the week, leaving the other servers demoralized and searching for something to maintain their motivation – the solution advanced has its own consistent logic.

However, the attempt at a solution misses the mark. Not only for the counter-reasons others have given (one player’s night is another player’s day, not wanting to be restricted to EB only, etc.), but because it doesn’t strike at the true heart of the problem; PPT itself.

Coverage is king because the current scoring mechanic permits those with better coverage to capture more objectives with little to no opposition. Said objectives then earn points over time in the absence of any direct player interaction. Depending on what you believe to be the point of WvW, that – I argue – is the real problem.

What is WvW supposed to be about? Capturing a bunch of empty towers and keeps which earn points-over-time for absentee landlords or fighting opposing servers in epic battle? If it’s the former, then the system is working exactly as intended. Carry on.

If WvW is supposed to be about the latter, though, then PPT as a scoring mechanic is the antithesis of the goal of bringing players into conflict with one another. PPT rewards players for avoiding their opponents. A server earns more points for capturing undefended objectives because there’s no defenders to slow down a zerg’s momentum. It also permits karma trains to farm loot from NPCs faster; in a game mode where – ostensibly – we’re supposed to be fighting one another rather than the AI.

I – and others – have proposed the elimination of PPT altogether as a scoring mechanic. My latest two-part post on the matter can be found here .The TL;DR version is:

• Points are no longer awarded for simply holding a fortification over time. No more PPT.

• World Score points are only awarded by those activities which bring players into direct conflict with one another. Player “Finish Them” moves, successfully completed “Defend the X” events, and capturing actively defended objectives become the only means of earning World Score points.

• Absolutely nothing in WvWvW gives any in-game reward that can be directly or indirectly converted to gold other than scoring a kill on an opposing player, successfully defending an objective during a “Defend the X” event, or capturing an objective which was actively defended by real players at some point during the siege. These rewards will be scaled up substantially to account for the loss of such rewards from their previous sources (capturing empty, undefended objectives and killing the NPC lords and supervisors).

Under such a system, loot and World Score points can only be earned by fighting real players and sieging/defending against the sieging of real players. We are rewarded for our battles with real opponents from the enemy servers; not for karma training undefended towers and keeps and killing NPCs. Change this and it changes everything.

Don’t want to side-track this thread with discussions regarding PPT vs Fights.

Our guild does both.

Eliminating the concept of PPT altogether eliminates the strategic play this game offers.

I understand there are many players out here who want large scale PvP.

Forcing that style play while eliminating other play changes this game into something it currently is not.

Again, the same concept applies to PPT vs Fights as applies to consolidating population into 1 map: removing existing content for the benefit of some at the expense of others is not a good idea.

Adding additional ways to reward WvW players in conjunction with adjusting PPT, not eliminating it, allows for greater diversity in playstyle without alienating customers and potentially causing attrition.