Guild Wars 2

Just an idea to put out there that might help resolve some of the issues being discussed so heatedly. I wanted something that would give purpose to blobs and roamers, that could suit prime and non-prime players, and would allow us to play WvW more or less as we wish to. The idea is based on keeping WvW pretty much as it is, after all despite our posts and gripes as a community it’s been fairly ok for three years or we’d have quit playing here.

The Idea:
Change the circles in WvW objectives to make them like the circles in Ruins. When a player has “claimed” an objective the objective counts towards the score and the players get WvW xp for the cap. When the player leaves, the circle starts to decay (like a Ruins does – timer needs to be carefully decided here though). Once the circle is back to unclaimed, the team that captured the objective still holds it, but it is considered inactive and no longer counts towards match score.

For Defenders:
This would mean that there would be some clear merit towards defending a location. With WvW xp for being in the claiming circle at completion (like with PvP caps and Ruins) Defenders can keep the objective active and get some XP reward (and ultimately loot) for maintaining the camp/tower/keep as a point scoring position.

For Roamers:
Roamers particularly on a lower tier or non-prime game would be able to run around and “top up” objectives to keep them active. This would be similar to taking the objectives or checking on upgrades, which is one of the things roamers do anyway.

For Attackers:
No difference. There are no changes that would affect your attack or capture as the objectives themselves are the same and the circles give xp on cap anyway.

For Servers:
Now this is where the change would make a difference. For bigger populations you can leave a defender or two in each objective – which seems to happen anyway. Provided the maps and game play is relatively balanced an attacking force has a chance of taking the camp/tower/keep anyway.
For lower tier matches and non-prime times however we would not only have to capture the objectives but keep them active to gain the score. This idea would end the situation where a small group can cap a dead borderlands and leave to cap another yet still gain points from the empty map. With Active Claiming Circles, to retain the score from a borderlands you would need to leave a small number of players to run between objectives keeping them active. A small defending force has a chance to stop these people so even if they can’t reclaim the objectives they can at least stop them counting towards the score and so can influence the match outcome.

Overall, I feel this idea has the possibility of bringing balance to the issue of a few players having a disproportionate effect on match score without affecting the game play too much or penalising people because of when they can find time to play.

What do you think and what length timer is required for this to work properly?

So you want people to stand like a lemon in a circle? Sounds a wonderful way to spend an evening, highly entertaining.

Idea favours stacked servers, who have more bodies available to do this.

Idea also favours putting alts in other servers to stack a map so that they can’t spare people to do it.

Also favours logging in alts to sit on circles with a macro to hit a skill every 5 minutes to ensure it doesn’t disconnect.

If you want to play ‘stand in a ring’, go play spvp.

Hmm… I think you missed the point. Oh well nvm, it’s your opinion and your reply. I don’t usually reply to posts like this but feel I need to in this case because your concerns may well be genuine but I’m not certain that they are caused by the concept I put forward.

My idea doesn’t favour stacked servers any more so than the current system. Numbers have always made a difference and arguably should do (or are you saying ET vs Blackgate should be a fair match?). However it does address the issue of a large number of claimed objectives affecting the score without a number of people to support this happening.

As for trying to map-limit with alt acounts, this would be possible but if this would happen you can bet it will be happening now anyway. And you’d have to play the alt account or it would be kicked for inactivity. Don’t see this as an issue tbh.

Logging in alts to sit on circles with a macro to hit a skill every 5 minutes to ensure it doesn’t disconnect would be against terms and conditions and would be reported as botting – account ban. It would also be fairly easy for Anet to detect. I’m not convinced that players would be this stupid, and again it’s nothing you can’t do at present, eg bot with an AC aimed at a gate on auto fire (not seen anyone try this though – it would be a bit obvious!).

I do play sPvP, and and enjoy that too. Ironically my WvW experience has made me a better PvP player. Please note however that there is no suggestion that YOU should be the person standing in the circle, or roaming to keep things active… in fact, if you don’t then this idea would have no impact on you at all, but it might just balance the scores from your matches and that was the point of suggesting it.

I’m suggesting using an existing WvW mechanic to try to bring a balance to the game that many players believe doesn’t exist at the moment. What I’ve suggested doesn’t affect GvG play, roamers or zergs. There are dedicated players in WvW who make a point of defending their borderlands, and yes, sometimes this involves sitting in a tower for hours – that’s their choice – and as a commander and experienced WvW player I’m very grateful for it too. Perhaps you’ve not met any, but they do exist and they would happily take some extra xp and loot for what they do anyway.

So, because there are some people willing to sit in a captured location and scout, you’d like to change it to require EVERY location to have a scout to remain captured? Of course your scouts can’t actually scout anything because they have to regularly return to the circle or it becomes uncaptured.

It sounds like a really terrible idea. The concept behind NPC defenders is to allow the players the enjoyment of doing something other garrisoning an objective. Even dedicated defenders and scouts can be much more useful than just standing in a circle.

Sigh – that’s not what I posted.

I certainly wouldn’t want to tie a player to every location to keep it active! In the original post I thought I’d indicated this. It all depends on the time scale for the circle to decay to inactive. I would not be at all happy with the short time currently used for the Ruins, that would be silly and would tie up players. I simply used Ruins as the basis for the idea because people know how they work. Think Ruin mechanic with siege life-timing.

Take a look at the idea with a 15 minute decay timer, or 30 minutes, or an hour – much like siege has. You can scout around and pop into structures as you pass to refresh the circle – just as you would to refresh siege. I envisage the circle being capped from neutral to active in a couple of seconds and decaying to inactive over a period of time that would (on the old Alpine map) allow a player to run all the way from the North camp to the South camp for example (with time for a quick skirmish or two in between).

And if you’re new on the map and someone has let things slide it’s no problem. You can still refresh the circles (your team still owns the objective) and you’ll get xp for it, and make a difference to your server score.

I accept it’s my fault for not making this clear in my original post. The replies seem to have assumed I meant the same timer used in the current Ruins – I thought that the comment “timer needs to be carefully decided” and the question at the end would indicate that I thought a different longer timer would be necessary. Mea culpa.

However now that’s out the way, is the idea itself worth pursuing – after all it has minimal impact on the game play as we know it yet should (to my mind) address one of the most vocally proclaimed concerns in recent WvW – that of servers claiming large scores when there are very few people on.

In my opinion if you’re refreshing siege you can refresh the circle. If your WvW group doesn’t refresh siege then you lose it. Why shouldn’t the score gained from a location cease too?

It definitely solves the problem of servers claiming large scores when they have few people on, but that is not the biggest problem in WvW and this sacrifices too much to address it.

Even with an hour-long timer, it’s hard to make a case for taking a break from normal activities to stand in a circle. It makes owning objectives a pain in the butt, albeit one that can be managed, it’s still annoying.

It would be better to fix the root of the problem: population imbalance. While harder, it will lead to a much cleaner solution.

Yuffi…

First read….I like this idea.

Let me spend some time thinking about it more thoroughly.

Diku

Yuffi…

What do you think about this:

…Implement PPT Objective Decay Timer
……Objectives with zero become Inactive & Do Not Earn PPT
……Objectives only earn PPT when Decay Timer Is Not Zero
……Decay Timer value increases when a player stands in Claim Circle area
……Max Decay Timer value – 60 minutes – Adjusted by ANet

If this looks good to you…I’d like to borrow your idea to post it in my thread…that keeps track of really good ideas like this.

Diku

p.s.
Excellent idea…oh…I’d say 60 minutes would be a good max…then let ANet adjust it…based on their research from player feedback.

p.p.s

Sorry…I’ll have to say that I wouldn’t support this solution.

It’s a good idea that would only benefit the Dominant World in keeping the Weaker & Less populated Worlds from fielding a small team to fight back in my opinion.

Would it make sense to spawn non-aggressive things to kill in all objectives that don’t help defend…and the objective guards won’t kill.

So people have something to do while standing around?

Diku.2546:

Yuffi…

What do you think about this:

…Implement PPT Objective Decay Timer
……Objectives with zero become Inactive & Do Not Earn PPT
……Objectives only earn PPT when Decay Timer Is Not Zero
……Decay Timer value increases when a player stands in Claim Circle area
……Max Decay Timer value – 60 minutes – Adjusted by ANet

If this looks good to you…I’d like to borrow your idea to post it in my thread…that keeps track of really good ideas like this.

Diku

---

p.s.
Excellent idea…oh…I’d say 60 minutes would be a good max…then let ANet adjust it…based on their research from player feedback.

What is all of that intended to accomplish or solve?

If I am playing late at night with little to no resistance, this wouldn’t change anything. It would simply promote me to map hop from map to map and run a circle on each map, refreshing locations. This is often what players do to refresh siege. In my experience, it will literally change nothing about the WvW experience or score differentials.

I appreciate what your trying to do, but this suggestion just waste development time to make the keeps work like siege. The same siege that players are already cycling through the maps to refresh. All they will do is refresh the keep when refreshing the siege.

@Dancingmonkey

Yuffi.2430:

For lower tier matches and non-prime times however we would not only have to capture the objectives but keep them active to gain the score. This idea would end the situation where a small group can cap a dead borderlands and leave to cap another yet still gain points from the empty map. With Active Claiming Circles, to retain the score from a borderlands you would need to leave a small number of players to run between objectives keeping them active. A small defending force has a chance to stop these people so even if they can’t reclaim the objectives they can at least stop them counting towards the score and so can influence the match outcome.

It’s a solution to Night Capping…OP explains it very well in this quote above.

Diku.2546:

@Dancingmonkey

Yuffi.2430:

For lower tier matches and non-prime times however we would not only have to capture the objectives but keep them active to gain the score. This idea would end the situation where a small group can cap a dead borderlands and leave to cap another yet still gain points from the empty map. With Active Claiming Circles, to retain the score from a borderlands you would need to leave a small number of players to run between objectives keeping them active. A small defending force has a chance to stop these people so even if they can’t reclaim the objectives they can at least stop them counting towards the score and so can influence the match outcome.

It’s a solution to Night Capping…OP explains it very well in this quote above.

I am well aware of what the OP said. Did you even read what I said?

You lost any opportunity for my support the second it specifically stated that lower tier and non-prime time have to deal with this, in a way that is worded that other servers and so called prime times will not. A bias and direct segregated treatment of the player base is an unfair and despicable idea as a whole. I do not support treating players differently for not playing how or when you do

I simply explained how it will have little to no effect in actual practice. It is by no means a solution to your fictional night capping in any way. Because I cannot be night capping if the sun is shinning where I live for one, and two, it will do little more then be a slight inconvenience if someone is trying to maintain off peak PPT. As I explained, they are often already on a keep rotation to refresh siege in keeps they hold. So they are already on the move in a “refresh” rotation at times. Refreshing the keep as well, while already there, would be little more the an inconvenience to off peak players. I do not see making a minor convenience for off peak players, as a beneficial use of dev time, nor is it a solution to off peak PPT.

@Dancingmonkey

My bad for not reading your original post. Replies to your original post:

1) It’s a band-aid solution to solve Night Capping Issue. Prevents small team of players from continuing to score points after the initial capture period.

2) It does change score differentials. Actually negatively. Small team of players won’t earn as much points if this is implemented. Team needs to physically split up & keep objectives active to earn points. This is bad for the small team that is probably fighting against a larger populated world that dominates them during the “day” hours.

3) ANet would need to make the final decision to “waste” time on imlementing. This is merely a suggested solution to the Night Capping Issue…which is systemic of our current Map Mechanic that is encouraging server stacking that leaves lower tiered servers dead.

You’re correct on a lot of things. We both agree on a few things.

Siege Decay Timer does have a purpose though, but that’s another dicussion…which I’m not so inclinded to start up…it will distract away from what this thread is trying to accomplish.

Hmmm…thanks for pointing this out…I’ll have to think about this. I know how it feels to fight on an under-dog world.

Not trying to offend folks. I was posting on the fly…and whatever came to mind was what I was posting. I guess I should term “Night Capping” as NA Off Peak PPT. My real motive is to support anything that helps to nurture & preserve the WvW Community….both Peak & Off Peak players.

@OP
Sorry…I’ll have to say that I wouldn’t support this solution.

I’d rather ask that our Current WvW base Map Mechanic that encourages server stacking get replaced.

All Worlds aren’t able to recruit a more balanced population across all time zones due to server stacking in my opinion.

NA Off Peak PPT Capping is only a symptom of the greater underlying Population Inbalance caused by server stacking.

Small teams that do NA Off Peak PPT capping…in my opinion…often fight against a Dominant World during the NA Peak PPT….and this is their only chance to even up the score…given how our Current Map Mechanic is structured.

It’s a good idea that would only benefit the Dominant World in keeping the Weaker & Less populated Worlds from fielding a small team to fight back in my opinion.

Update:

Replaced “Night” Capping with NA Off Peak PPT & NA Peak PPT terms to be more sensitive to players that play from a different Time Zone.