Guild Wars 2

Night capping has been a major problem for quite a while now, servers with a more balanced community in terms of timezone always has better chances of reaching high tier due to the simple fact that you can get just as many people during the day and the night, or at least quite a few, this promotes WvWvW unbalance because not every EU server is filled with North American users who are guild leaders or can find enough people to lead during the night time.

While when both servers are on peak even if you can see quite a skill and coordination difference between servers, it’s fairly possible and easy to lose to unorganized / less skilled servers due to the simple fact that your server doesn’t have enough Americans to cap during the night.

I believe even with an “easy” change like splitting the Matchup into 8h little-matches, and the server who won more of these “little-matches” will win the MU would Nightcap less important.
With the system we have now you can get 10-30k lead during the night.
With the little-matches, you can get only 1/3 of the “points”, so if a server has only nightcap, they’ll lose.
Dunno who wrote this idea first, but I like it

it’s not that easy, because you don’t just get points overnight, you also get upgrades.

when your prime-time population shows up at the same time as your enemy’s, whichever side got more upgrades built during off-hours is going to have a big advantage.

also, unless your server is populated mostly by unemployed people, 8-hour mini-matches will make off-hour coverage twice as important as prime time. you’d have 1 prime-time mini-match, 1 overnight mini-match, and 1 work-hours mini-match, and the servers that have people up all night and/or not going to work will dominate the points.

-ken

You can just reset the map every 8h (but you have to make upgrades faster/cheaper then, otherwise none would bother with it), so every shift will have the same chance to upgrade.
If you have only prime-time coverage, ofc you will lose, it’s wvw which goes 24/7, you can’t make other ppl’s work meaningless just ‘cos they’re playing when you’re sleeping.
What you can try to do is lessen the advantage of coverage, but I’m interested in your idea of How to make nightcap not a problem without denying the work of the ppl who can play only during “the night”.

The only way for them to change the effectiveness of night capping is to change how points are granted. It’d have to be some kind of modular system based on population as taking something when there’s less population on map isn’t challenging or difficult and shouldn’t be rewarded the same.

This is pretty complex and would require a complete overhaul, which honestly I doubt they’re ever going to realistically do. WvW is pretty much as is and expecting more or wanting more out of WvW is just going to lead to frustration.

Not until Arenanet change the Point value so you gain nothing capping undefended Buildings and gain no static tick Points.

Kodiak.3281:

This is pretty complex and would require a complete overhaul

No, its really not, because they are already using something similar in both EoTM and PvE. If we number WvW maps from 0 to 3, it becomes easy.

For example, where percentage is total population:
When 0 has > 75%, 1 opens up.
When 1 has < 10% and 0 has < 50%, everyone from 1 is moved over to 0 and 1 closes.
When 1 has > 75%, 2 opens up.
When 2 has < 10% and 1 has < 50% or if 1 is closed, check 0, everyone from 2 is moved to 1 or 0 and 2 closes.
Etc

The math increases sligthly at higher numbers as you need the check whether the border before or further down the line is used to determine where to move people upon closing.

Its just an overflow system for WvW. Borders would close one by one as population decrease during the night. Border hopping to cap everything is no longer possible. If a server can maintain > 10% population on all borders while still holding EB in the night, well then kudos for them – scoring would be exactly like now.

I think there’s both a scoring component and a population imbalance component that contributes to night capping, but these are two very distinct issues (which is why there was a separate CDI for each one).

At least in the scoring CDI, the consensus agreement was that a good fix for this is to split each day up into scoring periods (similar to what one poster above said about 8 hour mini matches, though I think we agreed that shorter periods of 3 or 4 hours would be better). This would prevent a server that has a very stacked nighttime population from running up the score while the majority of players on the other team are asleep. I don’t think the maps should be reset between periods though, that would discourage upgrading and defending.

For example: Say you had 4 hour scoring periods. PPT would accumulate during each period, and the winning server in each period would gain, say, 5 points toward their weekly score, while the 2nd and 3rd place servers would gain 3 and 2 points, respectively. At the end of the period, accumulated PPT would reset, but the map and all placed siege would stay the same. So, if you had a server with a crazy stacked nighttime population, they would likely win 1 or 2 scoring periods, gaining 5 points each time, but the magnitude of their win (the total amount of PPT they accumulated) wouldn’t matter. Obviously this wouldn’t prevent servers from night capping everything and making all objectives paper, but ideally over time the changes to scoring would encourage player populations to spread out more evenly across time zones (since stacking a time zone is no longer nearly so beneficial), which would hopefully eventually eliminate the problem with night capping.

The population imbalance problem is a little trickier. Frankly I’m not a big fan of changing map population quotas or introducing a handicap based on current map populations; if anything this presents an opportunity for servers to game the system by purposefully not queueing into WvW. I have a feeling that the scoring changes above would end up fixing most of the issue given enough time.

That said, I think there should be more of an incentive for players to spread out throughout the tiers. Not to the point where there’s an even number of players across servers — I think players should be able to choose whether they want to be on a high pop or low pop server — but to at least where it’s less likely that you’ll be matched up with a server that has a population an order of magnitude greater than yours. I think the best way to encourage this would be to implement a tiered pricing scheme for transfer costs, where the servers consistently in the lowest tiers are cheaper to transfer to than the servers consistently in the highest tiers.

No. Because it is about as fair as it can be now. If they change the scoring, they take value from players who do not have prime time schedules.

Varying coverage and issues of that nature are 100% players driven, and thus, in my opinion need to be solved by players, not artificially forced by Anet.

Bubi.5237:

I believe even with an “easy” change like splitting the Matchup into 8h little-matches, and the server who won more of these “little-matches” will win the MU would Nightcap less important.
With the system we have now you can get 10-30k lead during the night.
With the little-matches, you can get only 1/3 of the “points”, so if a server has only nightcap, they’ll lose.
Dunno who wrote this idea first, but I like it

The problem of this is still:

The handfull of people in the match during two of the mini-matches are twice as important for the match outcome as the majority of people that in worst case even have to queue in their single mini-match.

Your night is my day, my night is your day…

my points should not be worth less then your points.

Outmanned buff should work on keep walls/doors/npcs. giving them damage reduction when outmanned is up.

Dayra.7405:

Bubi.5237:

I believe even with an “easy” change like splitting the Matchup into 8h little-matches, and the server who won more of these “little-matches” will win the MU would Nightcap less important.
With the system we have now you can get 10-30k lead during the night.
With the little-matches, you can get only 1/3 of the “points”, so if a server has only nightcap, they’ll lose.
Dunno who wrote this idea first, but I like it

The problem of this is still:

The handfull of people in the match during two of the mini-matches are twice as important for the match outcome as the majority of people that in worst case even have to queue in their single mini-match.

Is that the players fault who was on at that time, or entirely your fault for not being on yourself? How do you justify changes that punishing those who do not have the same schedule as you? As far as I am concerned, perhaps they should devalue points during primetime in an attempt to artificially force players into play schedules outside of primetime.

Dayra.7405:

The problem of this is still:

The handfull of people in the match during two of the mini-matches are twice as important for the match outcome as the majority of people that in worst case even have to queue in their single mini-match.

True, but it would make Nightcap less important. At least you would not face 3 borderlands with enemy wps in every keep if you have less ppl during non-prime time, so maybe you can have fun fighting?
(Personally I don’t really care about PPT, only about fights.. but it’s hard to find ppl when our nightcap makes 30k lead during the weekend and the enemies are not playing. With mini-matches, there’s more chance that they’ll try to push sometimes, as they can “ignore” some.)

dancingmonkey.4902:

Dayra.7405:

Bubi.5237:

I believe even with an “easy” change like splitting the Matchup into 8h little-matches, and the server who won more of these “little-matches” will win the MU would Nightcap less important.
With the system we have now you can get 10-30k lead during the night.
With the little-matches, you can get only 1/3 of the “points”, so if a server has only nightcap, they’ll lose.
Dunno who wrote this idea first, but I like it

The problem of this is still:

The handfull of people in the match during two of the mini-matches are twice as important for the match outcome as the majority of people that in worst case even have to queue in their single mini-match.

How do you justify changes that punishing those who do not have the same schedule as you?

Exactly, how do justify the punishment of the majority of prime-time players by a minority pf off-time players since nearly 3 years?

Dayra.7405:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Dayra.7405:

Bubi.5237:

I believe even with an “easy” change like splitting the Matchup into 8h little-matches, and the server who won more of these “little-matches” will win the MU would Nightcap less important.
With the system we have now you can get 10-30k lead during the night.
With the little-matches, you can get only 1/3 of the “points”, so if a server has only nightcap, they’ll lose.
Dunno who wrote this idea first, but I like it

The problem of this is still:

The handfull of people in the match during two of the mini-matches are twice as important for the match outcome as the majority of people that in worst case even have to queue in their single mini-match.

How do you justify changes that punishing those who do not have the same schedule as you?

Exactly, how do justify the punishment of the majority of prime-time players by a minority pf off-time players since nearly 3 years?

My point exactly. Similarly, you cannot punish players who have a different life schedule, thus a different play schedule then others.

For the same reasons you do not play off prime hours, they do not play prime hours. No matter how you look at it. it isn’t reasonable to punish players who do not play the same times as others.

Bubi.5237:

True, but it would make Nightcap less important. At least you would not face 3 borderlands with enemy wps in every keep if you have less ppl during non-prime time, so maybe you can have fun fighting?

So you believe players who do not play the same schedule as you do, deserve to be treated with less importance?

This is how it is with non-instanced RvR system. It is what it is, changing it would make it more instance-like and I’m pretty sure WvW/RvR enthusiasts want to avoid instancing altogether. There are too many instanced PvP games already. Embrace GW2 for delivering what most MMO’s shy away from since DAOC.

You have to kind of take the good with the bad. This is one of the very few downsides to this live, organic, WvW/RvR system. It sure beats boring “read, set, go” type of instanced PvP.

There isn’t much Anet can or will do about night capping.

If you change the system to be different during “off hours”, than you punish people with different play times.

Why should a group of people who only get to play during certain times be punished for not being able to log in?

They changed this with the world boss schedule, and it already punishes players who cannot play until a certain time. However, they did allow guilds to be able to activate those events so they could still do them. So there are still options.

Yeah changing the way points are distributed would be a bad idea. There is no reason that I should not be able to get as many points, or points at all, simply because my life style doesn’t allow me to log in during “prime time”.

If anything, the servers should try to get more “off hours” players into WvW to help defend or cap during those times. They are there, but not very organized as many of the well known commanders are offline at that point. It should be up to the servers/players to get more off hours players invloved.

dancingmonkey.4902:

So you believe players who do not play the same schedule as you do, deserve to be treated with less importance?

A system where there’s a new match every 8h (same servers, just points/maps reset) makes other’s work less important?
I don’t think so, so pls say something more specific.

Bubi.5237:

dancingmonkey.4902:

So you believe players who do not play the same schedule as you do, deserve to be treated with less importance?

A system where there’s a new match every 8h (same servers, just points/maps reset) makes other’s work less important?
I don’t think so, so pls say something more specific.

So you idea is to redesign the entire game systems around your personal play schedule? In my opinion, your specific out look is harmful to the game mode as a whole. There is no need to turn up your nose at others simply because they have different schedules. For that matter, who is to say you are not part of the problem. Start playing in off peak times, if you dislike what your opponents do during that time.

coglin.1867:

So you idea is to redesign the entire game systems around your personal play schedule? In my opinion, your specific out look is harmful to the game mode as a whole. There is no need to turn up your nose at others simply because they have different schedules. For that matter, who is to say you are not part of the problem. Start playing in off peak times, if you dislike what your opponents do during that time.

Wait, what?
So you think that a 30 man group karmatraining during the night, building wp everywhere and getting 30k lead is good design?

Where will “my” idea make other’s work less important? Besides evening out the field for everyone? Where will it give other’s work more meaning? All I see it just your personal attack without any specifics.
And btw I have a problem with OUR own nightcap which makes the enemy quit after the weekend…

Alright, so how about this idea:

1. Take all existing servers and sort them into three groups of nine. EU has 27 servers so this divides cleanly. NA would need three additional servers to bring its total up from 24 to 27. Next, mark each of these groups of servers with an 8-hour time block. Let’s arbitrarily say Block A goes from UTC+12 to UTC+4, Block B goes from UTC+4 to UTC-4, and Block C goes from UTC-4 to UTC-12. We would now have nine (and potentially 18 if EU and NA are merged) servers competing in each time block.

3. Active play on borderlands maps begin each day at the start of the server’s designated time block, and will reset at the end of the 8-hour LIVE period. Eternal Battlegrounds becomes available for players from all servers of a particular color or time block to play with and against, 24/7. Players would be prioritized for loading into the same map shard as the rest of their server. Only points earned during this 8-hour period from the borderlands maps and the 24/7 period of EBG will be tabulated to the matchup score. Existing concepts like stomping players and bloodlust will still exist.

4. When the time block for a player’s home server comes to an end, the three borderlands maps will be shut down and players then have the option of continuing to fight on the dynamically generated EBG maps or join home servers in the other two time blocks. The goal is to have every active WvW player enrolled into three different servers at end of the transition period, with the option to play with anyone regardless of time block in EBG, making it truly ‘Eternal’.

5. Obsidian Sanctum will put you on the same team as all other players with the same color server, and will remain open 24/7, similar to Eternal Battlegrounds. This allows guilds to participate in GvGs and further fosters high-level competitive play.

With these changes, WvW servers with smaller, predominantly one ‘hemisphere’ populations will be favored. Larger servers with significant coverage at all hours will be hampered. Borderlands map play will become more “action-packed”, making skilled offensive, defensive, an scouting play much more important. There will be no ‘off-hours’ to karma-train while your opponents are sleeping. By allowing players from similar color servers to play with each other, Eternal Battlegrounds will live up to its name by featuring large-scale, high-intensity combat.

The moment I have to play with (and not against) another server besides my chosen one will I quit the game. No, I don’t wanna anything which is like megaservers/eotm.

Fair enough. I can see how enabling cross-server play for EBG and OS might be short-sighted and lead to unintended consequences. Let’s get rid of that.

How do you feel about dividing up servers into three blocks though?

expandas.7051:

Fair enough. I can see how enabling cross-server play for EBG and OS might be short-sighted and lead to unintended consequences. Let’s get rid of that.

How do you feel about dividing up servers into three blocks though?

I can’t understand blocks without any merge, can you please explain it with an example?

Btw “megaserver” for OS is (imo) good, as you’ll have a larger pool for gvg/duels, just make more instance when it’s queued up. (I saw ~10-20 man Q on OS when a famous gvg was there, so yea, overflows are needed )

Let’s say you have 9 NA servers. Three of them would be changed so that you could only play from midnight to 8am on the borderlands. Once time reaches 8am, the map resets and boots everyone back to Lion’s Arch. EBG and OS would be open 24/7 though. From 8am to 4pm, three other servers have their borderlands maps opened up, and then the last three play from 4pm to midnight.

Every server would have coverage because you’re only worried about the 8 hours that the borderlands are online. Even if one server in the matchup has a huge off-hours advantage the most you’ll lose is EBG. People that defend and scout are more valued because of how there are more players fighting in a smaller chunk of time.

The Schedule Argument: Why should I be punished for playing my normal hours?

When you break down the argument against “night capping” it’s essentially people have a problem with equal rewards for unequal effort. More than a few servers only win their matches not because they fought better, not because they used unconventional superior tactics, but rather simply because they had more numbers when the other sides had to go to bed.

The only way to address that is a modular system that reacts to the number of people on the map.

The most accurate way to do this is to adjust point scores based on population. So taking an objective from a lower pop server on that map will yield less total points. For example, for the sake of argument, lets say Red loses their keep but had 25 people compared to 100 on Blue, Blue would only get 19 PPT for that keep. While 10 PPT is better than nothing, it’s still not it’s full value and it won’t skew the score beyond the hope of being able to recover. Naturally this is a rough idea and would have to be fully thought out further (such as windows where if suddenly everyone map hops right before a cap it obviously wouldn’t reduce PPT).

Opening and closing and adjusting servers gets extremely messy. Do you wait for all 3 sides to have population or do you open up another map if two sides have enough population knowing the third is going to be boned? It’s just…messy.

Bubi.5237:

coglin.1867:

So you idea is to redesign the entire game systems around your personal play schedule? In my opinion, your specific out look is harmful to the game mode as a whole. There is no need to turn up your nose at others simply because they have different schedules. For that matter, who is to say you are not part of the problem. Start playing in off peak times, if you dislike what your opponents do during that time.

Wait, what?
So you think that a 30 man group karmatraining during the night, building wp everywhere and getting 30k lead is good design?

Where will “my” idea make other’s work less important? Besides evening out the field for everyone? Where will it give other’s work more meaning? All I see it just your personal attack without any specifics.
And btw I have a problem with OUR own nightcap which makes the enemy quit after the weekend…

For one, your justification is to change the game to suit your personal play time and design it to limit the value of those who have a different schedule.

If you want the field evened out, show up and do so. Redesigning the game forces lesser experiences on other players.

coglin.1867:

For one, your justification is to change the game to suit your personal play time and design it to limit the value of those who have a different schedule.

If you want the field evened out, show up and do so. Redesigning the game forces lesser experiences on other players.

Can you please READ before writing?
Thanks

@coglin.1867

I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of players that make up a “PvD K-train” blob do so not because of the PPT but because of the WXP, loot, and karma. Changing how points are rewarded based off whether a server is outnumbered or not doesn’t change the underlying reason of why these incidents occur. I fear that with your proposed changes, you’ll still see a lot of off-hours “PvD K-train” blobs, except now it will take twice as long to lose enough Glicko to drop down the ladder.

expandas.7051:

@coglin.1867

I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of players that make up a “PvD K-train” blob do so not because of the PPT but because of the WXP, loot, and karma. Changing how points are rewarded based off whether a server is outnumbered or not doesn’t change the underlying reason of why these incidents occur. I fear that with your proposed changes, you’ll still see a lot of off-hours “PvD K-train” blobs, except now it will take twice as long to lose enough Glicko to drop down the ladder.

Shall we let them post for themselves then please. I am sharing my opinion. It is probably best if you just share yours. No need for us to presume to speak for others to be honest.

expandas has always been a good guy, but it’s shocking to read anyone from DB argue against nightcapping (probably from being on the receiving end as well)