Guild Wars 2

Anyone else notice that the scores in the skirmish matches are creating more points for the first place and less points for third when compared to the previous scoring method?

Data from Millenium

BG/FA 160/73 2.19 297801/177265 1.68
Mag/DB 156/83 1.88 292599/177174 1.65
YB/SoS 165/85 1.94 316256/193906 1.63
NSP/CD 141/101 1.40 271240/218515 1.24

Piken/Deso 169/77 2.19 322820/189724 1.70
FSP/Kodash 167/98 1.70 328005/201104 1.63
Viz/Riverside 157/94 1.67 285151/217272 1.31
Abbadon/SFR 161/92 1.75 288907/209429 1.38
Elona/Gunnar’s 166/86 1.93 273427/193811 1.41

Sorry for the bad formatting, but in every match, the score ratio between first and third place is higher(worse) with the new Skirmish scoring.

That guy Rink in the other thread basically illustrated that before skirmish scoring was rolled out. He also showed FA coming in 2nd over JQ last match due to the change and indeed that’s what happened.

Chaba.5410:

That guy Rink in the other thread basically illustrated that before skirmish scoring was rolled out. He also showed FA coming in 2nd over JQ last match due to the change and indeed that’s what happened.

I’m sure with a few more weeks of beta Anet will see that population and coverage are more important to winning and that night capping isn’t as big as it was in the beginning of WvW.

How about a change to the scoring system that doesn’t let the first place server run away with the score while also not letting the third place server fall so far behind?

Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn’t a first place server running away with a match under the new system just show that it has the best overall coverage, and it’s opponents had been relying on shorter periods of massive population imbalance (e.g. night capping)?

In other words, isn’t that exactly what the new system is supposed to do?

Swamurabi.7890:

How about a change to the scoring system that doesn’t let the first place server run away with the score while also not letting the third place server fall so far behind?

That won’t change anything. That will simply make it harder for servers to move from tiers they don’t belong in. It isn’t scoring that needed to be changed. It is population and skill balancing, as well as reduction in skill lag. If the game is fun, people will come out and play it. People won’t have fun if there’s population and skill imbalance, no matter how close the scores are. All you’ll have are empty maps.

I didn’t vote for scoring changes myself, but many people did. This is the consequence. People in this game are far too short sighted.

And how exactly voting for QoL updates would balance the game or make it funnier? With UI changes? With a new shiny aura effect?

Scoring is a way to balance the game, because it eventually end up balancing populations. This is just the first step of the scoring changes, they said that more will come. Just remember about the leaked WvW document, were a bunch of stuff came out to be true. I have no idea if this will work or not, if it will be better or worse, but is something. We weren’t even able to see how this will affect the game in the long run. I’ll be waiting and watching.

It doesn’t matter how scores are calculated. Whoever has the most players wins. It’s just the way the game is designed.

Boysenberry.1869:

It doesn’t matter how scores are calculated. Whoever has the most players wins. It’s just the way the game is designed.

You sound like a cynical kitten, but you’re also very right. The game is going to have a fluctuating population because it’s a 24/7 thing (which is really cool) but the whole of the design favors greater numbers to the exclusion of everything else…even game mechanics like walls and supply.

That said, I think that skirmish scoring is still a good change because it diminishes the effect of cheesing the game system by stacking in an otherwise underpopulated timezone. I say this even as an SoS native—I’ve seen us get carried by OCX some weeks.

Skirmishes don’t fix a slew of other problems, though, but they aren’t meant to.

As to the OP, while the ratio is larger the amount of time needed to catch up is not. The possibility of catching up is about the same unless a server was relying on an off-hours crew.

Sviel.7493:

Boysenberry.1869:

It doesn’t matter how scores are calculated. Whoever has the most players wins. It’s just the way the game is designed.

You sound like a cynical kitten, but you’re also very right. The game is going to have a fluctuating population because it’s a 24/7 thing (which is really cool) but the whole of the design favors greater numbers to the exclusion of everything else…even game mechanics like walls and supply.

That said, I think that skirmish scoring is still a good change because it diminishes the effect of cheesing the game system by stacking in an otherwise underpopulated timezone. I say this even as an SoS native—I’ve seen us get carried by OCX some weeks.

Skirmishes don’t fix a slew of other problems, though, but they aren’t meant to.

As to the OP, while the ratio is larger the amount of time needed to catch up is not. The possibility of catching up is about the same unless a server was relying on an off-hours crew.

I’ve been up against DB and SoS, both were carried by large non-NA populations. All that did in a lot of the matches was make for a close final score but uneven coverages during NA, OCX and SEA times. That’s not fun for the outmanned sides. This scoring system won’t force stacked off hours players to spread out. It also won’t force overstacked servers to de-stack.

The root cause for the lack of fun in WvW is imbalanced populations, not night capping.

But night capping is totally related to imbalanced populations. Fixing one you’re fixing the other. There’s night capping because one side has way more people than the other one. If there’s people to stop them, there’s fights instead of PvD.

The new skirmish system makes populations that are not even spread out matter less. It they matter less, they will start to lose and go down (and others go up) until they find a tier who have similar population spread, where evevybody can find numbers close to their own and have fun.

And this is the secret. Fun doesn’t come with close scores. It comes with close populations in each timezone. Not overall, but each timezone. Is not about JQ having a lot os SEA and no NA while Mag having a lot of NA and no SEA and both having close scores because each can PvD in their own timezone. Slicing the timezones into skirmishes make each individual timezone matter less because you can only get so much VP no matter the PPT, indirectly asking for people to spread into a full coverge (making it easier to match the numbers) instead of stacking a timezone (and making it harder to match the numbers).
EDIT: grammar.

You’re right that it doesn’t force people to spread out, but it also gives them less incentive to stack a single time zone than the original system.

I think you underestimate the staying effect on a guild that a server community has in a particular time zone. Although JQ might have very little NA, their SEA community has been there since the start and won’t be moving off regardless of what’s happening. Same with DB’s SEA and SoS’s OCX. It makes very little difference to them, because they’re not there primarily for WvW, they’re there primarily for the community they have.

Reverence.6915:

I think you underestimate the staying effect on a guild that a server community has in a particular time zone. Although JQ might have very little NA, their SEA community has been there since the start and won’t be moving off regardless of what’s happening. Same with DB’s SEA and SoS’s OCX. It makes very little difference to them, because they’re not there primarily for WvW, they’re there primarily for the community they have.

I was in one of those “anchor” guilds. when the guild leader quit the game it felt like the whole server vanished.

It’s pretty depressing finding under 10 guildmates in WvW when you used to have 40.

Yes?
I mean, if they rather stay in their communities instead of having fun with competitive matches, no system that ANet creates can change it. Unless they kick everybody out or we go in full EotM style and merge everything.

Not everyone cares about competitive matches. Even fewer people actually care about PPT at this point. I don’t get what you’re trying to say. Scoring won’t affect people’s decisions to move servers. It’s usually either moving to fight particular guilds, or moving to join a particular community. It’s very rare that a guild will move to prop up a server or to push a server up a tier.

Total ppt is now 252. As the skirmishes result in a 1:2:3, this corresponds to a standardized ppt of 42:84:126, whenever the real ticks are more balanced, the skirmishes increase the contrast of the result, whenever the real ticks are more imbalanced, the skirmishes reduces the contrast.

I think in real games we rarely have a tick similar to 1:2:3 (44:84:126). I think the most common situations are the following 3:

• 1 side dominates, ticks of 2nd and 3rd are rather close (skirmishes favour the 2nd over the 3rd)
• 1 side is not present, (skirmishes harm the 2nd vs the 3rd)
• all sides are quite balanced: (skirmishes favour the 1st and harm the 3rd)