Guild Wars 2

Here’s a proposal I pieced together from several ideas posted by forum users:
(exactly one year ago! o_O)

http://youtu.be/qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Exactly what do you want from this discussion John?

Do you want to know which option out the 3 or another would provide the most beneficial solution? Do you want to know the pro’s and con’s to each method stated?

The only real insight i can constructively give you is yes, coverage is an issue at the moment. Snowballing i feel is due to the overall effectiveness of a server, which leads towards server guilds, teamspeak etc. Apart from that, i feel that it’s unclear as to what you want to be discussed.

Thanks for reading.

I think scoring needs to get rid of ppt. Make capture and defend just gain flat points, but also get rid of defend events for someone beating on a wall, the only defend event that would count is the capping circle with the vet/champ/lord.

I read some good ideas in other posts on the issue about having a scaling factor based on the number of people in wvw at any given time. In a match if server A, B and C all have 50 people playing, there’s no scaling. If server A and B both have 50 people, but server C has 20, then their (server C) captures and kills count for “more” each cap or spike.

Just throwing numbers out there:

Player kill: 25 points
Player stomp: 50 points
Camp capture: 1000 points
Camp defend: 1500 points
Tower capture: 5000 points
Tower defend: 7000 points
Keep capture: 10k points
Keep defend: 15k points
Garrison capture: 25k points
Garrison defend: 30k points
SMC capture: 35k points
SMC defend: 40k points

This would encourage people to fight and take things, and if there’s no tick to wait for, it can’t be abused by someone telling their zerg to log out before it ticks. If you have a team fighting uphill against a force who runs double your number, you get rewarded for what you’re capable of taking by it scaling to be worth more and catch up your score. Also to avoid abuse, maybe the population across all borderlands and ebg are summed up. So the server can’t just send a havok group to one borderland and get a ridiculous amount of points for being outnumbered when all servers have the same number of players just in differing maps. I think if the scores were closer more people would play, more capture and defenses would happen, and more people would fight, not just zerg v zerg, but small roaming groups and soloers, too.

It’s not possible to make a competitive scoring system for a game that’s played 24 hours a day and allows players to play as often or as little as they want. Not while preserving fun gameplay, at least. The way I see it the score already does what it should by matching up servers with similar coverage so they can have good fights. The only problem is that wvw has lost so many players that this doesn’t really hold true in most tiers anymore.

John, one very simple step that could be taken to moderate the effect of coverage and number disparities is giving teams a better “foothold” on the map when they are outnumbered.

Make the garrison keep on the borderland maps, and the corner keep on eternal battlegrounds function like the EotM keeps. That is, when the home team has it, it always has a waypoint, cannon build sites, plus the doors and walls that are halfway between paper and reinforced. When an enemy holds has those keeps, block siege deployment and upgrades so they must hold it with fighting players. Fix the garrison watergate upper while you’re at it too, or just get rid of it and make the southwest gate (frequently referred to as the suicide gate) less risky.

Frequently the coverage and number disparities are greatly exacerbated when a team has their whole borderland or EBG corner papered, then camped by a much larger group. People very often quit when this happens because it’s so demoralizing. If teams had a faster way to recover a defensible keep as a foothold on the map, they would be far more inclined to rally some people together and try to get that back at least, then maybe keep fighting elsewhere.

Now there is too much pvd.
Its very annoying when your own spawn tower is upgraded to t3 and full of with sieges.
My ideas:
1: upgrades should work as ruins: hold x supply camp for y seconds to upgrade/downgrade towers/keeps/garrisons
2: Less points for objectives and a fix amount of points for kills (and bonus for stomping ofc)

Less pvd more pewpew

Now you cant siege a garrison, just facerub it. If they have supply and the gates are upgraded it takes 1 hour just hit tha gate and healing. Boring, no fun at all

24 hour coverage: I don’t feel this can be solved through a change in scoring. In my opinion whenever you play you playing should be worth the same and therefore scoring should always be the same. There are probably solutions to this but, in my opinion, those can not be found in changing the scoring. (The solution is, in my opinion, an overhaul of the outnumbered effect to buff certain NPCs depending on how outnumbered a world is.)

Stagnation: In my opinion this also can’t really be solved through changing scoring only through shorter matches (which could be seen as related to scoring in some far-fetched way but probably shouldn’t count as such). The obvious “solution” would seem to be to have scoring increase as the week goes on making play at the start of the week more or less worthless. Building an early lead should be just as valuable (purely in terms of the game) as a late comeback.

In short: In my opinion there is nothing wrong with the current scoring regarding the topics mentioned.

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

Points for Kills, this in addition to everything else, not as a replacement for stomps. Bloodlust does well promoting small force/solo play.

As for PPT, I think there are a lot of options but nothing has been perfect so far that i’ve seen.

I do like the time scaling based on overall active population. It sounds the least manipulative and the most fair. Though it like all other ones really kinda screw people who just happen to play at lower populated times, their activity is less valuable, which is pretty lame.

The idea though is basically if all maps are full it’s an 8 min per tick, if all maps are nearly empty it’s 24 mins per tick. Simple, clean, and IMO a solid idea as it’s not about one map vs others which opens up manipulation of the scoring.

LMAO FINALLY!

Well first of all you need to completely overhaul WvW!

Thanks to the extended free transfer at launch, lack of updates, and bad balancing and poor planning, and the sheer lack of knowing what the hell is actually going on; WvW is a complete mess!

We have complained over and over and over and over again, WvW is all about numbers and coverage.
What is the point of dominating at during the days when everything is lost during the night as the other server(s) have a night capping team.

But I dont expect much to happen from this discussion, it is after-all only a discussion, it’s not even a CDI.
If it took over a year to implement coloured tags, a complete overhaul of WvW is most likely out of the question.

So unless you monitor WvW activity 24/7 then allow controlled free transfers to servers with inactive periods for player who play in those periods, then population balance is remain as it is.

This swiss style of play has allowed some silver league servers to fight some gold league ones. And some of the silver league guilds have laughed at the gold leagues zergs as they have wiped them several times with fewer numbers.

As for points, Points = Numbers + Coverage
There is no need for any skill or tactics if you have enough numbers and coverage.
This is why I laugh whenever I hear Hugh proudly claim he is on Blackgate.

Basically WvW is a mess, unless you put in the time, effort and resources it deserves, it’s just gonna keep on dying!

No matter how much you divide the match up timezone, coverage will matter. In fact the more divided timezone ppts are, more stacked servers will be. Give more incentives for open field fights/stomps rather than ppt so that even small population servers will have chance to gain significant amount of points.
For stagnation, it is the fault in match making and lack of people playing wvw. Since you have removed almost all farms for pve people, increase the drop rate of something for killing players in wvw so that people will come do wvw even just for the reward.

phys.7689:

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

I love this idea, of breaking the day into 3 parts and winning the 2 of the 3 to win the day… But since it’s 3 servers, how do you break tie?

Highest sum of point during that day? Split the day in 4(6 hours)

But then when you split it like this, upgrade prices become a factor. In EOTM which runs on a 4h timer, you have no upgrades to pay for.

I do like the idea of removing the pot completely and going on a flip/defend mechanic.

phys.7689:

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

What would this actually solve? And how?
Wouldn’t this make having people at night even more important?

I also really don’t like this idea although I can’t quite determine why.

Want to fix coverage and server populations ?

EoTM is the first thing that has to go or be extremely neutered. It is the biggest problem there is with population problems. Second issue is “free transfers”. These need to never occur again.

Then you need to work on actively cutting the matchup into segments of play. Whether its 6/8/12 hours its better than the current 24/7 PPT system.

Kills from non-siege placements need to be worth way more than kills from siege. Honestly it’s not skillful to fire an AC and get bags. Especially when an Arrow cart can hit 50 people and players can hit at max 5.

Want people to actually take objectives through a multitude of means and strategies ? Get rid of Siege Disable. That abomination ruins any thought out or coordinated pushes during even resistance time zones and only enforces off hour PPTing.

Finally restore the sense of server pride and integrity. Right now all you have servers for is WvW. With the advent of the megaserver system, and removal of world specific guild banks you’ve basically said that server pride and loyalty are irrelevant. Which only leads to more stagnation and people jumping on the bandwagon to t1/t2 servers.

To elaborate on points for kills. Make it really matter. PPT in a close match assuming ~225 points per tick all week you’re looking at about 150k points. Look at your metrics, see how many kills are happening each week, scale it that way. If that means 1 point per kill, maybe 2? /shrug.

Make winning a fight matter regardless of bloodlust. Make failed objective takes hurt because you racked up a lot of deaths. Make open field fighting rewarding. And to second what someone else said, up the rewards for doing so. I’m not saying do something huge but a little boost to drops on kills would go a long way. Or even as an alternative to that, for the love of god, let us salvage the WvW armor. I still don’t see why it’s ok in Dungeons but not in WvW, boost the cost if it’s too much.

weird idea popped in my head:

what if the overall point value of structures was relative to how many points you have VS the total amount of points in the match up?

say for example, we have 3 servers, A, B and C. A has 150k points, B has 100k, and C has 50k. the total tally is 300k points. so if a structure is worth, say, 30 points baseline, in this system it could (easy to follow theoretical values for brainstorming’s sake) translate to:

• A: 30 x (300k/150k) = 60ppt
• B: 30 x (300k/100k) = 90ppt
• C: 30 x (300k/50k) = 180ppt

this would translate to unfairly populated teams scoring more until the score evens out. balanced match ups wouldn’t be affected because they all would have similar multipliers, whereas skewed match ups (be it a population or a coverage problem) are dynamically corrected the more skewed the points get.

this doesn’t mean covering off hours becomes less important, because even though you’ll be scoring significantly less if you own everything and are far ahead, letting the other team capture points during the off hour times could rocket them past you if unchecked.

of course, the numbers i showed might not be the best example, but the core concept is there.

TL;DR: a dynamic ppt readjustment based on the total tally VS individual scores.

TexZero.7910:

Want people to actually take objectives through a multitude of means and strategies ? Get rid of Siege Disable. That abomination ruins any thought out or coordinated pushes during even resistance time zones and only enforces off hour PPTing.

i don’t know, ever since siege disabler became a thing, my WvW group (we never get larger than 15 people, usually 5-10 people) has used a bunch of varied siege to take objectives, rather than just stacking a bunch of rams.

24 hour coverage
How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
The first and most obvious option is to change how Outnumbered works. Here are some of my suggestions:

Rework Outnumbered – Keep lords gain event scaling, and get buffed to be like EoTM keep lords in that they get a wider variety of attacks and mechanics. Perhaps pull some mechanics from Guild bounties so that there’s an additional challenge to taking keeps.
Double yak movement speed and reduce building costs of upgrades and sieges by 25% Increase camp supply generation rate by 25%
Keeps project Commander’s Presence to the same radius of a guild buff (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Commander's_Presence)

Snowballing
How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?

currently, there are clear winners in many matchups, especially when servers are not eye-to-eye on coverage. These screenshots show how consistently outnumbered servers do:
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/168419/Lol_Green.png
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/168420/Lol_Green_Na.png

Barring a solution to population imbalances, it would seem the next best thing would be to offer servers with significantly poorer coverage a structural or terrain defensive advantage. I mean make the keeps harder to take, or design a map to significantly advantage the defending team.

I go into more detail on this terrain and structural advantages here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Proposal-PvP-Map-Rotation-for-Borderlands

Stagnation
How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?

When a run-a-way victory is at hand, give enemy servers more access to points on player kill. The Bloodlust doesn’t contribute THAT much to world score because it’s based on stomps, If a huge margin is opening up, offer the servers that are behind more ways to gain points, by any and every player kill.

this scoring balance could trigger when you’re behind by 50k+ points, and turn off when you’re at 10k.

How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

This is a very challenging question, because there’s a social factor involved. When you’re running around with the only group of allies in WvW, and your enemies have 3 groups to your 1, It’s quite difficult to hold more than one or two things, because of how map politics play out. It looks like this!
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/155564/StaringDown.jpg (In the picture, is Everyone from our team except for a few scouts in towers and the keep. Among the enemies, is 3 enemy guilds, with a fourth snaking its way around a rock somewhere. Enemy server also has a militia zerg. And then there’s the third server in the matchup)

When this happens, people typically get into K-train mode, If they can even manage that. When you’re facing an entrenched enemy who has upgraded your holdings, and does not allow you to K train, THAT is when people get realllllllly frustrated and start to move to other modes of the game.

Thus you’re in a negative feedback loop.

The only thing that I can think of to help this part would be to give better loot from recapturing your lands from an enemy who seriously outnumbers you. If you got Karka Queen, tequatl or Triple Trouble level loot from taking a keep from an entrenched enemy (It’s about the same difficulty as teq and karka) There might be more players willing to tough it out for the increased rewards.

in short, Morale is difficult to manage when you’re getting absolutely squashed. and I dont know how to help that side of WvW. the main problem is that it’s not fun for either server, either to squash or get squashed.

Been waiting for this, old post.

The current game.
Team A, usually has the best coverage, gains the Bloodlust buff more often than not, gains the bonus points for stomps which helps sway the match more into their favor, usually accumulates enough points by Monday to run away with the match.
Team B and C, anywhere from close to equal cover to don’t even belong in that tier, Team C is usually getting double teamed for their bases because they are an easy target, when really Team B and C should be beating on A.

Arenanet introduced a very interesting mechanic in earning score points from stomping people while under bloodlust, so why don’t we expand on that.

Proposal.
Team A earns 1x points from bloodlust as normal, they would earn no bonus points from outnumbered buff.
Team B earns 2x points from bloodlust stomps, they would also earn 2x bonus on held structures and also earn 2x score points from siege kills while under outnumbered buff.
Team C earns 3x points from bloodlust stomps, they would also earn 3x bonus on held structures and also earn 3x score points from siege kills while under outnumbered buff.

The bonus amount will need to be tweaked obviously, and teams will have their bonus points gain change according to their current rank in the matchup. If teams are within 10k points of each other then the bonuses should be turned off. If Team A is 5k ahead of Team B but Team C is more than 10k behind Team A, then only Team C is earning the bonus. The two conditions of Bloodlust and Outnumbered buffs are random enough that the two lower teams will not completely keep up with the top team.

The bonus conditions should be helping the lower teams rather than only buffing up the top team. The top team should be rewarded as Arenanet explained in their reasoning for the bloodlust buff back when it was the orbs, but their coverage is already the reward for them which allows them to win matches easier, as well as in this scenario of points collecting they have the ability to deny/limit their enemies access to the bloodlust buff much more than the other two teams.

So what’s the point of keeping teams so close in points you may ask, might as well not have a points score. Well the reverse is also true since the start, what’s the point of scoring when the top coverage team is always running away with matchups. The point is to keep the matchup close enough so that all sides continue to compete through the week, but you still have to work at keep it close. Many times a server will just give up on bothering about ppt when they know who’s going to win the matchup from the moment the match starts.

END: The short story – 2nd 3rd place earn more points while under bloodlust and outnumbered buffs to help stay competitive. Instead of just outright rewarding the bonus to the top team, use the buffs to help the lower teams, the top team still gets rewarded with coverage and the option to deny their foes points.

WvW will never be comparable to sports competitions because of population imbalances, so change the points system to compensate not just the population.

xvalkyrie.6742:

I think scoring needs to get rid of ppt. Make capture and defend just gain flat points, but also get rid of defend events for someone beating on a wall, the only defend event that would count is the capping circle with the vet/champ/lord.

I read some good ideas in other posts on the issue about having a scaling factor based on the number of people in wvw at any given time. In a match if server A, B and C all have 50 people playing, there’s no scaling. If server A and B both have 50 people, but server C has 20, then their (server C) captures and kills count for “more” each cap or spike.

Just throwing numbers out there:

Player kill: 25 points
Player stomp: 50 points
Camp capture: 1000 points
Camp defend: 1500 points
Tower capture: 5000 points
Tower defend: 7000 points
Keep capture: 10k points
Keep defend: 15k points
Garrison capture: 25k points
Garrison defend: 30k points
SMC capture: 35k points
SMC defend: 40k points

This would encourage people to fight and take things, and if there’s no tick to wait for, it can’t be abused by someone telling their zerg to log out before it ticks. If you have a team fighting uphill against a force who runs double your number, you get rewarded for what you’re capable of taking by it scaling to be worth more and catch up your score. Also to avoid abuse, maybe the population across all borderlands and ebg are summed up. So the server can’t just send a havok group to one borderland and get a ridiculous amount of points for being outnumbered when all servers have the same number of players just in differing maps. I think if the scores were closer more people would play, more capture and defenses would happen, and more people would fight, not just zerg v zerg, but small roaming groups and soloers, too.

i’d argue that the defend ticks should be lower than the attack ticks, since long fights will go through the event timer multiple times. especially with SMC and garrisons, a defend event can succeed like 4 or 5 times before the attacking team gets through and captures the place.

You have a very complex situation to deal with. On one end, you don’t want your pvp center to revolve around off hour coverage, at the same time you don’t want to neglect groups of players. Proposal will be alot of testing then tweaking, you won’t get it on the first try. The wvw system is great, it just needs tweaking. the combat mechanics are great in gw2.

Possible Changes:

-Break the scoring into 6 hours on 2 hours off intervals. Scoring is still the sum total of each time period collectively over the week. Similar to eotm, except the duration of the thing should be 6hours (24hour day= 3 matches/day). most guilds raid 3hrs+ a day, rarely can they raid 8. this also allows them time to take a break, take some fresh air, get a life, and come back for more.

-King of the hill PPT- similar to spvp, but larger areas with multiple points of entry, and terrain advantages. PPT accumulates for area every 5mins instead of 15. As long as there is at least 1 person on it. PPT accumulates in bulk of players on an objective but needs to taper off in larger numbers. IE: 1 ppt/1 person, 5/5, 10/10, 20/15, 25/20, 30/25 etc.

-Points for kills

-Points for stomps

-3 different maps, not 3 of same BL maps.

24h coverage -> this is more related to balancing population tbh. I’m not a big fan on ppt scaling on population because of possible toxic behaviour. But we can face that some time zone have more people playing than others. What about decide some time modificators, like primetime 1x, afternoon 0.75x, night and early morning 0.5x

Snowball → cap the ppt on enemy borders (or maybe all maps) for a server far ahead (like > 150% of others). Give extra ppt for a server way behind if certain conditions are met (like owning all 3keeps in home border). Not sure it will help thought.

Stagnation →
What about gave a partial score for each night and give some rewards to all the participants.
Another possibility could be give feasible targets for server way behind.
Like take our current matchup, DZ is ridiculously far ahead on us and UW. PPT has no meaning, you play for fights. So, a new target is set for us and UW: get a certain amount of points from home border in primetime on a given night (say Thursday). DZ target ia to prevent this to happen on both borders. So we both fight half forces from DZ while we race with other world to get our target. The first world to get the target earns a prize. If DZ make us fail both the targets, will get the prize. (Details to address: starting condition, having 2 different targets and so on)

With this in mind, all rewards from WvW have to be revamped, having bigger rewards for a victory than 3 bonus chests.

BrunoBRS.5178:

TexZero.7910:

Want people to actually take objectives through a multitude of means and strategies ? Get rid of Siege Disable. That abomination ruins any thought out or coordinated pushes during even resistance time zones and only enforces off hour PPTing.

i don’t know, ever since siege disabler became a thing, my WvW group (we never get larger than 15 people, usually 5-10 people) has used a bunch of varied siege to take objectives, rather than just stacking a bunch of rams.

Why should any siege or strategy be made obsolete ?

Rams are in the game for a reason, right now its clearly to be the punchline of every other siege weapon.

From the other thread, concerning point handicapping as a solution:

If it’s beneficial for an overpowered server to sandbag and leave WvW, players will do that as a tactic to deny their opponent points, and that could create exactly the sort of hostility that ANet wants to avoid — players abusing other players for playing WvW when doing so might help the enemy’s score.

To be viable, any population-based handicapping:

1. Must react quickly to upward population shifts but slowly to downward population shifts to reduce the benefit of quickly abandoning a map or WvW or rapidly surging into a map on WvW. In the past, I’ve recommended calculating a server’s WvW strength as a 1 hour rolling average (average population for the last hour) or current population, whichever is greater across all of WvW.
2. Must never make it more beneficial to for players to leave WvW and let opponents rampage less impeded instead of staying in WvW and fighting to slow them down. This likely means a handicap that provides a partial benefit to the weaker opponent but does not entirely erase the disadvantage. This likely also means retaining some benefit to PvDoor so that an abandoned map remains beneficial to control.
3. Must be gradual rather than having sharp tipping points, so that the presence or absence of one player never makes a huge difference and changes the game significantly.
4. Will likely need to include incentives to make the players on the underdog server(s) show up and play even when they are outnumbered and have trouble winning.

“How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?”

For one, if you’re in 1st place, you should receive less points from taking structures from 2nd place, and even less from 3rd.

However, 2nd and 3rd place should get more points from taking structures from 1st. This could and should encourage the underdogs to pick on 1st, and not lead to 1st and 2nd pillaging 3’s structures for points. Currently it makes no sense to pick on the smaller server, when you should be always challenging 1 for their position. In lopsided matches, which happen from time to time, you could see matches getting closer to evening out this way.

We have an outmanned buff, why not add more to it? If a server is ahead by a certain threshhold of points, add in handicaps for the less resilient servers. A few ideas:

1. Persistent bloodlust in home borderland
2. Decapping/recapping bloodlust requiring less time and effort
3. Cheaper upgrades (in gold and/or supplies) on tower/keeps/castles
4. Reduced upgrade times
5. Camps starting off with the doubled yak upgrade
6. Small boons applied to fortified keeps and towers (require spending less supply on repair)
7. Marginal increase on player stats when faced off in outnumbered fights.
8. Automatic +5 supply when the odds are really stacked up.

I don’t want to brag, (ok, maybe a little bragging) but one server you could use as a case study is Crystal Desert. I have seen our zergs be coordinated enough to shred enemy zergs twice their size. But at the same time, we can be overwhelmed in numbers even during our prime time. It’s not just balancing total coverage with extra points – you got to take into consideration the population per hour, and try to match it to the potential strength of the enemy.

You also might want to think about giving incentives to smaller groups, like havoc squad. Outside of a zerg, havoc do not gain very much personal reward. But they can contribute a great deal to strategical advancement. Anything from soloing camps, killing yaks, tapping keeps, and scouting zergs can assist their side to stay ahead. But while everyone else gets to gather loot and champ bags, havocs do not get anything. In matches with weaker coverage and population, havocs can make a really large impact. My advice is not to just give more points to what ends up being capped or stomped, but to give an incentive for more people to come out and play WvW.

xvalkyrie.6742:

I think scoring needs to get rid of ppt. Make capture and defend just gain flat points, but also get rid of defend events for someone beating on a wall, the only defend event that would count is the capping circle with the vet/champ/lord.

I read some good ideas in other posts on the issue about having a scaling factor based on the number of people in wvw at any given time. In a match if server A, B and C all have 50 people playing, there’s no scaling. If server A and B both have 50 people, but server C has 20, then their (server C) captures and kills count for “more” each cap or spike.

Just throwing numbers out there:

Player kill: 25 points
Player stomp: 50 points
Camp capture: 1000 points
Camp defend: 1500 points
Tower capture: 5000 points
Tower defend: 7000 points
Keep capture: 10k points
Keep defend: 15k points
Garrison capture: 25k points
Garrison defend: 30k points
SMC capture: 35k points
SMC defend: 40k points

This would encourage people to fight and take things, and if there’s no tick to wait for, it can’t be abused by someone telling their zerg to log out before it ticks. If you have a team fighting uphill against a force who runs double your number, you get rewarded for what you’re capable of taking by it scaling to be worth more and catch up your score. Also to avoid abuse, maybe the population across all borderlands and ebg are summed up. So the server can’t just send a havok group to one borderland and get a ridiculous amount of points for being outnumbered when all servers have the same number of players just in differing maps. I think if the scores were closer more people would play, more capture and defenses would happen, and more people would fight, not just zerg v zerg, but small roaming groups and soloers, too.

theres a couple interesting points in here.

first, imo we do actually need to keep defend events based on the vaguest definition of an attack (tapping a wall with siege for example), because a successful defense just means the attackers left the scene without getting the objective. it should count for something when a server can make another server just go away.

tangentially, if you dont want to give out free score to an opponent, dont proc the defense event. imo servers should be punished for sloppy play in a way not detrimental to the actual experience of fighting, which this fits perfectly. if you have the coordination to take a keep within the time limit of 2-3 defenses, you ought to get more for your efforts than a similar group taking a keep in 10 defenses.

which, also tangentially, would bring up the point of tapping… we would suddenly somehow be giving up some score advantage if we tap a wp in order to secure a (different) objective, so it makes tapping a tactical decision instead of an obvious ezmode or a call to fights.

on another note, youre also suggesting we should make defense a valuable addition to total score… which is something im sure everyone agrees with.

1. redesign the maps and actually add something.

Then come back and discuss how to ‘fix’ the scoring, which is papering over the cracks.

To tackle offtime dominance I’d like to see a decrease in importance of the ppt for the amount of total points.

• This may be achieved by awarding every stomp with a point regardles of bloodlust.
• Furthermore, stacks of bloodlust award additional points while having three stacks of bloodlust awards every kill (that results in armor damage to nerf it against outnumbered servers) with one point, if that player was stomped, the kill awards 3-5 (discussable) points.
• Outnumbered players could also receive additional points for stomps or even kills without having a bloodlust stack.
• Taking upgraded structures from enemies could give a set amount of bonus points (or points by the formula “Current supply capacity” – “Base Supply Capacity”) to the attacking fraction.

I can’t do any guesses about the actual impact of such changes (mostly because we don’t have several statistics), but if the share of points for objectives drops to less than 2/3, one might establish a ranking based solely on PPT while the weekly outcome is heavily influenced by those bonus points.

This ideaset however might be working well for already balanced matches, but I fear it wont really help for complete blowout matches.

Would simply making the outnumbered buff meaningful change things?

What if NPCs were the ones that got it and all siege around them cost less to build and did dramatically more damage? What if walls and gates near the NPC took 0 damage from players and much less damage from siege? This way fewer people could hold out longer.

What if taking a keep when the NPCs have outnumbered on actually gave reduced PPT on capture and if you captured a tower and your NPC spawns with the outnumbered buff you gained bonus PPT?

John Corpening.9847:

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?

The most obvious solution here is to handicap the score based on how many people are playing with a basement so that it’s always worth something, even if the enemy doesn’t show up (see my previous post about the form handicapping points should take). In other words, implement a handicap system that reduces the benefit of a higher population but does not entirely erase it.

John Corpening.9847:

• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?

Another way to handle the score problem, independent of the population, is to based the changes in score on the current score disparity rather than population at all. This would help avoid the problem of sandbagging, penalizing certain time periods, and counting participation. Basically, make the scoring non-linear and make the points worth less toward the score the further ahead a server gets.

For example, divide the PPT earned by each server by the points between the server and the bottom server divided by 10,000 before adding it to the total score (these are probably not the exact right numbers, but I’m offering it as an illustration because the math is easy). So if Server 1 has 12,000 points, server 2 has 7,000 points, and server 3 has 2,000 points, the PPT for the Server 1 would be divided by 10, the PPT for Server 2 would be divided by 5, and the PPT for Server 3 would be divided by 1. So if server 1 holds 500 PPT of objectives, it would only add 50 points to its score during that tick. If Server 2 holds 150 PPT of objectives, it would add 30 points to its score. If Server 3 holds 45 PPT of objectives, it would add 45 points to its score

If the bottom server starts to reduce the gap, then the top servers will get to keep more of their points added to their score because it will be divided by less. The goal here is to prevent runaway score gaps and keep the match-up competitive because under the existing system, it’s easy to reach a point where the top server can’t be caught. The downside is that a server that shows up strong late in the week could catch up and pass servers that fought strongly earlier in the week. It will also not eliminate the benefit of night-capping, but it will reduce the effectiveness if the night-cap changes who is ahead. The benefit of this approach is that it requires no accounting of who is playing when or where.

John Corpening.9847:

• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

A problem I think WvW has, in general, is that it’s simply easier to attack the weakest target (an undefended tower, the third-place server) than the strongest target that will put up the best fight. As such, there should be benefits to making the hard choices instead of the easy choices. The suggestion to make points-per-kill a bigger factor is one way to do that. Another way would be to make upgraded towers or defended towers (which could be determined by siege weapon or player damage to the attackers from the other server) worth more points or rewards than undefended and not upgraded towers, perhaps by way of bonus capture points. The lower-scoring servers could also get bonus points for attacking up at servers with a higher score rather than attacking down, or maybe attacking down would lessen the rewards or score.

As for breaking the hold of the top server, see my suggestion to limit the point gap, above, or try to stop the gap from getting so large in the first place. See my suggestion for limiting the gap above.

John Corpening.9847:

These are all very much related and solutions are not just in one area but I’d like to keep this discussion focused on scoring. Also, if there is another aspect to scoring that we should consider that I’m missing please feel free to bring it up as we kick off this discussion.

While it won’t help the score disparity problem (and might make it worse), I think it might be nice if the points of an objective were based on how upgraded it was, and this could be a part of encouraging other servers to do the hard thing or two weaker servers to gang up on the stronger server in order to reduce the points the top server is scoring. Other’s have made similar suggestions, too, and in the past, I’ve suggested:

• Camp – 1 point + 1 point per upgrade (1-5 points)
• Tower – 3 points + 1 point per upgrade (3-15 points)
• Keep – 6 points + 2 points per upgrade (6-30 points)
• Castle – 9 points + 3 points per upgrade (9-45 points)

Basically, this might provide encouragement not only to run and complete upgrades but for servers to attack the upgraded servers of their opponents rather than simply flipping the same not upgraded objectives over and over again.

Etienne.3049:

phys.7689:

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

What would this actually solve? And how?
Wouldn’t this make having people at night even more important?

I also really don’t like this idea although I can’t quite determine why.

it would make having people at night less important. See, lets say you have close ppt for 16 hours a day, then what happens is night time the ppt can be insane. You lose the match, even if you perform better in primetime and another time.

Thing is right now, at night you can have like 20-600 ppt going on. it basically creates blow outs.
Also, this means if you can perform really strongly over the weekend, you can lose a couple during the week.

My few thought on GW2 PPT and scoring system.

System widely supports sitting in the keep/tower on siege without ZvZ fighting open field, which is ultimately boring thing on the long run.
The following can be done to change that

1. Improve score rewards for killing people (without stomping – stomping for small scale roaming).
2. Decrease PPT reward for holding an object. Ideally you should not be gaining lots of points for just holding an upgraded object
3. Flipping an upgraded object should give your server more points than non-upgraded object
4. Decerase PPT and flipping score reward for teams that outnumber another team. If its 95vs5 on the map – decrease PPT to zero. If one server fielding 95 full map queue during OCX/SEA and opponents have 5-10 ppl on the map you should NOT reward that big server at all. They can paint all map green and upgrade all keeps but they should not get any ppt for that.

5. Ultimately promote open-field combat with no towers/keeps/wall involved. Introduce some kind of ESCORT EVENT that can only be triggered if your server does NOT outnumber other teams – like escort champion NPC from 1 randomized point on the map to another. This event should be visible on map for all teams and that will give them an opportunity to fight openfield and this will be lots of fun. This can allow skilled outmanned groups to actually contribute to their server score by fighting other teams (not their walls and siege)

I would tie everything into supply and demand. Have all structures/objectives and people have a supply cost which is factored as a multiplier so the higher your supply cost is as a server the less supply you get. By tying it into supply a large blob would not be able to sweep and upgrade everything while the other server sleeps without running into supply issues making it easier for the weaker servers to take back some ground.

If my server owns all of EBG for example the supply cost is going to be tremendous and each yak may only deliver 10 supply at a time.The smaller server would have more supply being delivered to their towers/keeps making it easier for them to upgrade and build siege and if my server only has one tower and a camp then that yak may deliver 200 supply per load.

An army marches on its stomach…make it so!

It will be necessary with anything like this to remove the “idle” people, those that are on the map just for crafting bonuses and the like so craft stations would have to disappear.

Problem with scoring periods. When do they start end? Would it kick everyone when it restarts? Wouldn’t it be very weird for people who play during that transition? Start playing, start hitting something, suddenly the scoring resets? Just seems like you’d be screwing people over if they happen to have their playtime split between 2 periods.

a)
There could be a ‘’Anarchy Mechanic’’ , where if you capture 40% of the Castle-Keeps in that specific map , you have to maintain 1 ‘’Suply Deposits’’ , otherwise the ’’mood’’ of the Npcs in those Keeps-Castles will drop after a while and theywill riot , destroying the gates of every bulding (demanding more food or gold) .

b)
‘’Jugment Scale’’ , wih the word ‘’Fury + Wisdom + Sloth’’ ?
If you maintain the 60% of the objectives on the map at the 15 min timer , you scale will be on ’’Sloth’’ that it will increase your damage vs Npcs by 3% , and that efect stack up to 15% , but they can hold only 7 Suplies .
’’Wisdom’’ doubles (x2) the Suplies you got and you can hold .
’’Fury’’ offer you free Bloodlust + 30% damage to buildings + x4 suplies you can hold

Or in the same principal , bringing the djinn Zommoros in the Mist and a Roulette every 15 min .
(Or any other entities that created the Mist and wants to ‘’have fun’’ with the punny hummans’’)

‘’ Zommoros is very pleases with your offers …. now Zommoros will bestow upon you a gift’’
And in each server a Roulette will start spinning (a ‘’more pleasant’’ for the loosing team) , such as :
a) You get +50 WvWvW points if you capure Suply deposit for the next 15 min (cap at 250)
b) You deal +20% damage to eep and Castles
c) You deal 150% damage only to Castles
d) Your suplies you hold and you can carry quardaply (x4)
e) Killing Npcs-Animals or harvesting awards your server withWvWWV points (capped at 150 per 15 min)
f) Increase damage to Npcs by 5%
g) A Keep (not castle) is flipped to your side
h) Any stracture you cature , get x3 free upgrades
i) Your server get a debuff , that reduce WvWvW points gained from Keeps
j) for the extremly weak servers : destroy 2 Keep guards + deploy a trap (or do 10% damage to a door or walls) awards +15 WvWvW points for the next 15 min

reduce the tick timer to 5 minutes but decrease also the scoring of each structure. for example :

currently the point for keep is 25 if you hold it at the 15-minute tick. change it to 8 points, but change the tick to 5-minute . basically reduce the time by a third but also reduce the scoring by a third to reflect the frequency.

this way will prevent the ppt politics, where certain servers wait only for the last 5 minutes to capture structures, due to the invulnerable buff of the Claiming Lord/Supervisor .

EDIT :

and also add 5-points for kill, no need stomp.

azizul.8469:

reduce the tick timer to 5 minutes but decrease also the scoring of each structure. for example :

currently the point for keep is 25 if you hold it at the 15-minute tick. change it to 8 points, but change the tick to 5-minute . basically reduce the time by a third but also reduce the scoring by a third to reflect the frequency.

this way will prevent the ppt politics, where certain servers wait only for the last 5 minutes to capture structures, due to the invulnerable buff of the Claiming Lord/Supervisor .

I don’t see how that does anything but reduce strategy which is something that imo should be promoted not removed.

I’m gonna take a completely different take on scoring here, so my suggestion could well be a shoot for the moon.

I believe the current issues pointed out by John are true and my suggestion won’t cover the off-hour problem, but it could be adjusted to.
First WvW is, apparently a battle for resources, each keep, camp, tower are extraction point from where resources are taken for your realm. We could, based in that, work on a not-on going scoring process based on this premise.

It could be something like this: The world work on a stress point resource: Each borderland has a total resource cap of, let’s say, 500.000 points, and during a time of let’s say, 10 minutes , each building generates 10 points of resource , and these resources are carried by a dolyak or something like that to the garrison (or another building a little stronger than the garrison), or, in case it’s been captured by another realm, to it’s realm’s garrison, and every 4 hours, half of these resources are sent to the realm (become a stable point).

So let’s say a realm makes 100 points of resource in 4 hours, 50 will be sent to the realm and the realm will have “50 points” and 50 resources in the map, if again, gets 100 points, 75 will be sent, and 75 will stay, therefore having 125 stable points.

BUT! These points in this garrison are stealable! How so? another server capture this garrison and maintain it for 1 hour (independent from the 4 hours in between shipments), 1/3 of these resources are sent to their garrison so that in their next shipment they’ll have that much summed to their resources. If they end up capturing it 30 minutes after the “shipment” time they’ll prevent the previous owner of that garrison from shipping resources that “tick”. Anyway… after that 1 hour time necessary to steal the resources, the garrison returns to the original owner through an automatic event.

Eternal Battleground:
I haven’t thought anything deeper with it, so it could work just like the borderlands and send their resources to the borderlands.

My suggestion could prevent snowballing, since you can make strategies to keep stealing enemy resources, but also punish those who don’t cap since you only steal a few. This also somewhat improves problem with population since stealing can be more a matter of skill than a matter of number (I’ve seen my server winning outnumbered battles a quite a few times). This also make winning teams worry about their position since their points can be negated AND stole.

John Corpening.9847:

Here is a high level summary (not a proposal) of what is currently being discussed:

• Some sort of point scaling based on population or prime time hours

Please note that I also suggested point increase scaling based on the disparities in scores to create diminishing returns when the score gap widens, or is that part of the “Consider adjusting score based on placement” mentioned below?

John Corpening.9847:

• Break the day into scoring periods. The match is decided on the scoring periods not PPT.

Two things to keep in mind here. First is that the weekends and holidays can the populations in various time periods unpredictable and uneven. An NA player might be able to play until 6AM on a Friday night or Saturday night or starting in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday but not keep that up all week. And even the time zones within region can mean that primetime varies significantly based on how much of an NA server’s population, for example, is in the Eastern vs. Pacific time zones and whether the server has a lot of student or adults with jobs.

Eredon Terrace, for example, sometimes seems to fade out around midnight to 1AM Eastern time just as other servers with more Western US players are just getting started. So an 8 hour time slice that runs 4PM to Midnight EST might help Eredon Terrace while an 8 hour time slice that runs 8PM to 4AM might be horrible for us against NA servers with a strong Western US contingent.

John Corpening.9847:

• Consider score for taking objectives either in conjunction with or in place of PPT

This might be useful in addition to the existing scoring system, but I think it would awful as replacement. The sentry flags are generally pretty pointless in WvW because one server takes them and then another server takes them and they each get a point, so it’s generally a wash. If a server only gets points for taking a tower, and then another server takes the tower back and gets the same number of points, it’s going to be difficult for any server to get ahead. Yes, there are ways to squeeze a net gain of points out of it with three servers, but most towers and keeps tend to get swapped back and forth between the same two servers.

• Boost the outnumbered buff (in a number of ways)

It might also be useful to have some sort of Outscored buff that kicks in when a server is, say, 10,000 points behind or more and ends when the gap is closed to 8,000 points, or something like that, to encourage more player participation when a server is losing. Sort of a counter-fairweather buff to attract people looking for loot. Perhaps something along the lines of the +200% Magic Find buff from the Southsun Cove event, or a large experience buff. Either might draw people in from EotM.

John Corpening.9847:

• Create special objectives/achievements that occur when you are behind that give you a special reward for completing them

One way to do this might be to improve what the mercenary camps provide in EBG (so they send more and also send forces to the adjacent towers for that server), perhaps even with a Siegerazer-class champion and insta-siege if the server is far enough behind. So, for example, if I take the Ogres while I’m red and my server is far behind, I’d not only get the normal Ogre band headed toward Umberglade and Pangloss but also additional bands of Ogres sent to Ogrewatch, Veloka, Durios, and Bravost, perhaps with a Siegerazer-class champion among them. If my server owns the tower, they’d set up shop by the gate as additional guards (like the old Quaggan bands on the borderlands). If my server doesn’t own the tower, they’ll create siegerazer-like capture circles near the gate. Mercenaries should then also be added back to the borderlands to serve a similar purpose. This could either be done with the Skritt and Centaurs in the upper corners or something could be put back into the ruins to replace the Quaggan and create some more action there.

This would basically be extending an existing and well-tested mechanic to have a further reach. It might not do much for high-tier servers where the dominant server could make sure they keep the mercenaries, but this could make a difference in the lower tiers.

Coverage/Snowballing
1) I think there’s merit in significantly increasing the points from kills (and not just stomps when you have bloodlust). Maybe 3 points per kill + extra 2 points if stomp + 1 point per bloodlust or adjust as needed. If done well, smaller organized groups could more effectively gain points even when out-zerged. However care should be taken not to completely diminish PPT, as that could just shift things far to the offense side and wipe out any point of defending structures.
2) I also like the idea of breaking the week long match into many shorter “innings” – e.g. 21 8-hour innings, or maybe 14 12-hour innings – with the overall winner being the server with the most innings won. If this route is taken, current upgrade costs/times for keeps/tower would be prohibitively expensive. Possible problems could show up later in the week when there’s no chance of comeback (though we have that already, so any improvement at all is arguably better).

Stagnation –
1) Handicap boosts would be my proposed solution – just increasing the outnumbered buff isn’t enough, since its a minute-by-minute thing and based on map. For each 5,000 points behind your server is, everyone gets 1% additional stat boost.
2) World bonus enhance stagnation. Turn them into only gold/loot/karma/gathering type boosts.

One overall thing we need is more iteration. So figure out an overall outline of what we think might work, and then adjust when results come in. There’s only been 3 or 4 changes to scoring since launch.

Scoring is best fixed by more people enjoying wvw 24/7.

IMHO, Removal of stomp points would allow PPT servers the option of fighting rather than running. PPTers currently know that fights should not be entered unless absolutely sure of winning them. Anything else is selfish behaviour and can work against serverpoint/ PPT totals. Reward stomps with something other than points to total.

SO;

Break matches into 6-8 sessions a day, Total Sessions won decide the weekly match. Remove Stomp Points totally. Reward stomps with something other than points to total score, IE finishers, titles.

Remove the gold component of Upgrade costs.

Begin each session with the Home Bl or EBG Garrison at T3 fully upgraded status OR carry over from previous session, start point will need to undergo Test and adjust as needed.

Slant Home BL Map caps in favour of the BL colour ie 50 defenders 40 for each other team.

Introduce WvW channel to chat panel viewable only by people in that worlds WvW.

IMHO, Each of these ideas has the same intent. Reward effort without discouraging participation.

Add multiple scoring categories.

Right now, regardless of how well a server plays, if they’re outnumbered, they have no way of fighting, holding or gaining PPT. This is a huge demoralising factor. Instead of having only PPT as a measuring system on how well you do, introduce different categories such as:

- which server got the most kills
- which server killed the most yaks
- which server flipped the most camps
- which server is holding SMC the longest

Etc etc.. Most of this stuff is already tracked by the game, so make it more visible. If a server is fighting hopelessly outnumbered at all times of the day, instead of trying to win PPT and failing, they can aim to be the best server in areas other than PPT, such as yak kills and camp flips.

Suggestion 2:
Make the borderlands ruins more like sPvP nodes and give them PPT when you’re outnumbered.

Basically what I mean by this is that the cap doesn’t decay. When you have the outnumbered buff on that map, any capped nodes by your server start to provide 1-5 point(s) per tick depending on your position in the matchup (5 points for third place server per node, 1 point for leading server). This makes outmanned buff far more useful and can stem the tide a bit during off hours, or maybe make certain servers’ off hours stronger, depending on the server. It also allows 1 person to cap bloodlust if no one is countering, increasing small scale fights for ruins and bloodlust.

This means that even if a server is ticking 600 PPT, a server can still tick 75 points just from bloodlust alone, not counting stomps.

Two suggestions:

- Break the 7-day match into 4 separate matches. First match is 60 hours which covers the weekend, next 3 are 36 hours. Reset will occur twice during NA primetime and twice during OCX/SEA. The winner of the most matches wins the week. In the event of a tie, the first 60 hour match is the tiebreaker. Balances coverage issues somewhat and prevents scores from snowballing beyond recovery since there’s additional matches to allow a come-back.

- Award killstreak-like points beyond the current point-per-stomp. Some formula of bonus points awarded for each bad guy you stomp. Resets when you’re downed. Alternatively, change the points awarded for stomps to simply points awarded on kill (many bad guys die in large fights that are ground out instead of stomped).

A simple suggestion in regard to scoring:

The longer you hold an objective (camp, tower, keep, SM) the more PPT you get for it.

As it stands now no added points are given to a tower that is held for 15 hours compared to 15 minutes. Nobody bothers to defend because it’s easier to recapture right before the tick.

WvW is supposed to be a battle for control of the 61 objectives on the map, but as it stands now these objectives are more of a sideshow. Some people would love it if WvW was just an open field zerg fight, but I believe they are the minority. Most WvW’ers play because they enjoy the mix of PvP, strategy, and cooperative gameplay.

-

Thoughts on some of the specifics you mentioned:

John Corpening.9847:

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

Scaling PPT based on time held would allow outpopulated servers to ‘bunker’ inside the objectives they already control and still gain enough War Score points to be competitive.

Scaling the PPT would also add a new dynamic to the match in that objectives that have been held for a long time become ‘high value’ targets. To lose one could significantly alter the outcome of the match.

John Corpening.9847:

• Some sort of point scaling based on population or prime time hours

I think this would dull the enjoyment and pride people feel from being part of a server. A server’s ability to rally it’s troops and work together towards a common goal is part of the fun of WvW. If the points we get are dependent on how few people are in the zone the matches would get ugly very fast. (e.g. “All uplevels please go back to Queensdale so our PPT goes up”)

John Corpening.9847:

• Consider score for taking objectives either in conjunction with or in place of PPT

Without any other changes this would do nothing but encourage karma trains that flip objectives non-stop. Maybe I’m wrong here, but don’t we want to move away from PvDoor mechanics?

John Corpening.9847:

• Adjust score of objectives based on upgrade level

This could work too. PPT based on upgrade level or PPT based on time held are somewhat identical ideas. If this is the direction you’re going then you should take another look at the upgrade system. For instance, additional currency types for upgrade purchases would be nice.

-

For the record I’m not advocating that a change to the scoring system alone would fix all the problems with WvW. I believe my suggestion would push WvW in the right direction, but it almost goes without saying that WvW has A LOT of balance issues that need to be addressed, scoring is only one of them.

Regards,

Tekyn

I like the idea of breaking the weekly match into 4 separate matches. Might help prevent the score from steamrolling so badly that an understrength server basically “gives up” and doesn’t even bother showing up in WvW anymore (or just heads to EotM).

I also really like the idea of a side getting absolutely crushed getting some kind of special help to even the odds, like what Siegerazer does, but on steroids. Here’s my idea:

If a particular server is losing so badly (maybe if they tick less than 100 points), they get an ultra-powerful NPC to help them cap and hold objectives. Think something like the Legendary Sand Giant from Dry Top. It has massive amounts of HP, very high AoE damage, and annoying CC abilities. It would take nothing less than a 50+ man zerg to bring it down within a decent amount of time, meaning it could easily hold a Garrison or Keep for at least 10 mins all by itself against most assaults, buying the weak server time to arrive and help in the defense, or even just use it as a sentry while they try to cap other objectives.

Oh, and to hire the Giant, they need lots and lots of Badges of Honor.