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So, server A has 100% of it’s population playing during the prescribed hours, and server B (who has the exact same total population) has 50% of it’s population play during prescribed hours, and 50% at non-prescribed hours. Server A dominates during “primetime”, but server B comes back each night. Except, the rules are going to change so the night peoples efforts don’t count as much and Sever A gets to win every time because they all play during the prescribed hours?
And this is suppose to improve WvW? Sorry, I just don’t see it. If people don’t like losing their towers and keeps when they are not playing…they can stay up all night and fight it. Punishing people because their normal game time isn’t “primetime” would be poor game management. I think you’ll lose a lot of night people as players.
Okay, so here’s the thing.
If Server A only has an NA crew, under the current implementation, these players are marginalized to server B’s because A’s players’ contributions actually mean less than B’s; all B has to do is do slightly better than break even overall when their combined no-resistance OCX crew takes over, which lets NA slouch and act as a barrier.
If a server has a steamroll OCX and a horrible primetime, they deserve to be in a lower tier because the matches are either more ktrain and/or less competitive where most new players are going to go. This gives a bad spin on WvW into the future and discourages people from joining later on, while encouraging server stacking.
This is a game in which enjoyment should come from playing. If one wants to win, they should relish in playing better, not when their opponent isn’t, which in most cases is often viewed as cheating in most games.
I’d genuinely like to see OCX have its own servers as the best approach, and then this way NOBODY gets to complain about being marginalized.
As far as people staying up later, sorry, but people have work. OCX is 14-17 hours ahead of NA. Assuming OCX prime starts around 7pm OCX, it’s roughly 2-5 AM for NA, meaning that to make a difference, you’re talking people needing to play between the hours of 2 to 5 or 5 to 8 AM. People have commitments like work, which you can’t just “stay up late for” in this case, because for some, this would lead to massive sleep loss/productivity drops which is both unhealthy and bad for the company they work for and/or being constantly late/missing hours, which can snowball to much greater things for obvious reasons.
Scoring needs an adjustment mechanically, via it combining pools of players with similar play times each week, or through reducing the effectiveness of off-hours capping. It’s not like they’re removing OCX’s performance here, either. Even if OCX’s point margins are lowered, over the week, it’s still a substantial sum of points. I’d also mention that all the captures, upgrades, and siege which OCX places can be maintained and can affect the NA prime matchup. A well-defended, fortified keep and maybe even some enemy objectives being controlled upon the leadup to EU and early NA can get a server get ready to snowball hard during prime hours.