Guild Wars 2

Hi,
I’ve been spending quite a few hours over the last couple of days coming up with a scoring and matchmaking system which I believe will revolutionize and massively improve the WvW experience for all!

I have designed these solutions with the following criteria:

1. It must reduce the impact of population imbalance at different timezones
2. It must still count “nightcapping” as an equal scoring opportunity to “Primetime”
3. It must reduce the “For the Tick” mentality and make capping any time equal.
4. It must NOT include mechanics which would confuse people
5. It must avoid possible exploitation
6. It must dissuade double teaming but not eliminate it as a tactic.
7. IT MUST BE SIMPLE TO IMPLEMENT (bolded for devs!)

Scoring system changes

1. Split the day into 8 timezones of 3 hours.
2. After 2 hours an 50 minutes scores are counted and reset during a 10 minute breathing period. (Ideal for bathroom breaks!)
3. Winner of that time period gets 2 points, Second place gets 1 point, last gets zip!
4. “ticks” are reduced to 1 minute intervals, which means that a cap at anytime guarantees at least 5 “ticks” of points for that objective. (no more capping an objective for 0 points as enemy recapped 30 seconds before tick…)
5. At end of the week, if 2 servers are equal points, the last 3 hour period gets added on again. makes that last period before reset extra special for 2 head to head servers!

But calculating a tick every minute isn’t possible is it?
Whilst this sounds tricky, all that needs to happen in reality is that the number in the current tick box gets added to a running total for the 3 hour period.

The current tick box is already real time, and adding 2 numbers together is trivial.

At the end of the 3 hours (2:50) a bit more needs to happen with changing scores to points, adding points on to total, clearing scores etc, so I have allowed a 10 minute grace period. during these 10 minutes ticks do not happen, but you can still flip objectives, fight etc but points don’t start accumulating until the 10 minutes are up.

You could display a victory text on the screen if you wanted some fanfare!

An idea of how 24 hours of points could look are here:
http://imgur.com/onA3JAY

What is most obvious with this change is that servers, whilst able to get a decent lead, can never completely destroy a days worth of activity with just 3 hours of 600-0-0 ppt.
The most obvious example of this is in the Drakkar Lake, Miller’s Sound, Ring of fire MU.
In the real world after 3 days they are ~60k points ahead. This would require the other two servers to not only get a better PPT than DL, but also by a huge margin.
In the suggested improved version, 1 day of slightly better that DL ppt can close the gap or even overtake DL.

By allowing PPT score to be less relevant than simply being more than the enemy allows for more fights, less runaway scores and thus more morale and more fun!!!

Matchmaking Changes
1or2 up 1or2 down…
At the end of a matchup, the matchmaking server randomly decides if T1 is going to drop 1 or 2 servers. The rest of the servers follow suit!

This basically means that

• The winning server will ALWAYS climb up to the next tier (except in T1)
• The loosing server will ALWAYS drop down a tier (Except T9).
• Second place could go up OR go down!

This removes the temptation to double team, as the second place wants to beat first to guarantee to go up. Last place will not help second place, as they will want to get a 50/50 chance to climb the ladder!

It also has the benefit of matchups changing 100% every week.

Here is an example of how this weeks EU matchups could change if the following results come in (completely not accurate btw!!)
http://imgur.com/7tXZFeU

As you can see, from the start, the 2 possible outcomes are very different. This adds variety which is always a good thing!

And that about covers the suggestions

Again, none of these changes are HUGE to implement (though not a 10 minute fix)
None of these changes involve fancy buffs or calculations behind the scenes
All of these changes will improve the matchups and the enjoyment of all involved.

Please give feedback or faults you see!

your criteria is sound but your idea is not original. I suggested an almost identical concept on similar thread, but like 4 – 6hr games instead.

all suggestions are for wvw are pointless though. anet has their own vision for what wvw should be and they are going forward with it.

Good idea…let me add to your post, but I still believe ANet needs to fix the Base Map Mechanic…this is just a band aid solution.

Anyway…

Have you considered adjusting the Lord’s RI in conjunction with the tick timer interval to reach a better fit?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Righteous_Indignation

Splitting the match into time periods is one of the suggestions floating about. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a period as short as 3 hours though.

A few questions for proponents of time period matches:

1. What is the proper length of a time period?

• We’ve seen periods of 8 hours down to now periods of 3 hours. Why did you pick 3 hours op?

2. How to score the victories?

• 3-2-1? 2-1-0? 3-0-0? Why did you pick 2-1-0 op?

Regarding the 1 minute tick intervals – why is this advantageous over 15 min intervals? Didn’t it used to be shorter (like 5 min.) but Anet changed it to give less advantage to the strongest server?

I’ve never seen the score broken out to results like in your imgur pic. But you say you just made up the numbers right? I wonder how it would be in reality? Because the numbers you came up with don’t really seem like it makes the match any better. Its still a huge mismatch. I mean Vabbi is getting blanked. I wonder how that would affect server morale?

I find your 1U 1D or 2U 2D very interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard that before. I wonder if it would work better than simple 1U1D? Or just provide more variety. I’m on NA and I’m not sure if 2U2D would work at all. BG/YB/SoS comes to mind

Johje Holan.4607:

Splitting the match into time periods is one of the suggestions floating about. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a period as short as 3 hours though.

A few questions for proponents of time period matches:

1. What is the proper length of a time period?

• We’ve seen periods of 8 hours down to now periods of 3 hours. Why did you pick 3 hours op?

2. How to score the victories?

• 3-2-1? 2-1-0? 3-0-0? Why did you pick 2-1-0 op?

Regarding the 1 minute tick intervals – why is this advantageous over 15 min intervals? Didn’t it used to be shorter (like 5 min.) but Anet changed it to give less advantage to the strongest server?

I’ve never seen the score broken out to results like in your imgur pic. But you say you just made up the numbers right? I wonder how it would be in reality? Because the numbers you came up with don’t really seem like it makes the match any better. Its still a huge mismatch. I mean Vabbi is getting blanked. I wonder how that would affect server morale?

I find your 1U 1D or 2U 2D very interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard that before. I wonder if it would work better than simple 1U1D? Or just provide more variety. I’m on NA and I’m not sure if 2U2D would work at all. BG/YB/SoS comes to mind

Thanks for the feedback and questions.
1. 3 hours was chosen primarily because it is the split on http://coveragewars2.com/ to be honest, but it does make sense as its long enough that it’s not intrusive, but short enough that you can experience at least the end of one period with a victory/failure state in a normal play period.
4 hours could work fine too, but the fewer periods in a day, the more a “nightcap” can impact a score.
2. The score 2-1-0 is just the lowest scoring to allow 1st,2nd,3rd all get different points and also not allow servers to run away with the score.
3. The tick change is primarily to counter the whole “for the tick” attitude which is a problem at the moment. capping an objective should ALWAYS reward points equally. currently capping an objective between 15 and 5mins untill end of tick is worth potentially 0 points as the enemy can cap back before the tick… but sub 4mins is a guaranteed score due to righteous indignation.
4. Vabbi IS getting rolled in reality, by 109k points… the difference is that this is not recoverable unless Vabbi somehow gets a huge PPT lead and holds it. The points system means the Vabbi would only have to win or come second for a majority of the next days score periods, but they don’t have to get 600PPT… only more than the others, that could be as little as 201ppt if the other servers get 200ppt and 199ppt. This is far more manageable than the current system.
5. The matchmaking idea is mainly to provide the benefit of 1U/1D (whereby winning servers get to face harder opponents and loosing servers face easier ones.)
but also adds an element of random which makes the server in position 2 uncomfortable enough that they should want to fight to the end instead of just secure second place. And 3rd place fights till the last to come second as they MIGHT go up.

I don’t think there are perfect solutions to the issues in WvW scoring/Matchmaking, but I hope that these ideas are possibly the best ones when taking into consideration different timezones, complexity to change, server morale, server populations and most importantly, FUN.