Guild Wars 2

While informative, one thing these historical scoring number crunches are leaving out is that things may have turned out differently if this kind of scoring was in place at that time. You gotta keep in mind that since shortly after release most of us abandoned any concern for ppt since all that mattered was off hour ktraining. If folks had any inkling that they could win a match they may have put more effort into ppt, considerably changing the data we see.

Straegen.2938:

My guess is the players that voted for scoring changes will finally learn that changing the scoring won’t effect coverage and general population issues. PvD and mowing down out manned players will still be dominant issues in WvW.

On the plus side, winning will be… oh wait… still utterly pointless since we aren’t rewarded for winning with anything meaningful.

Population imbalance mainly driven by players, not anet.

Well, at least it’s easier to calculate when a matchup is over.

Offair.2563:

Population imbalance mainly driven by players, not anet.

Yes, Babs, but it’s important to recognise that Anet has the power to do something about it. Whether what they do is the right thing is another discussion.

Svarty.8019:

Offair.2563:

Population imbalance mainly driven by players, not anet.

Yes, Babs, but it’s important to recognise that Anet has the power to do something about it. Whether what they do is the right thing is another discussion.

The only way for them to stop population imbalance would be if they ended the transfers. And we all know this ain’t happening… However, we can see the majority of the players aren’t interested in balance, since they always decide to stack in a single server to “win”. Then why would them do that?

Rotteny.8743:

Svarty.8019:

Offair.2563:

Population imbalance mainly driven by players, not anet.

Yes, Babs, but it’s important to recognise that Anet has the power to do something about it. Whether what they do is the right thing is another discussion.

The only way for them to stop population imbalance would be if they ended the transfers. And we all know this ain’t happening… However, we can see the majority of the players aren’t interested in balance, since they always decide to stack in a single server to “win”. Then why would them do that?

I disagree. ANet could address population imbalance if they weren’t hell-bent on keeping gameplay and rewards that give advantages to over-stacked servers. Every piece of WvW gameplay currently reduces to “bring more people, play more person-hours”. They have indicated that they want to give valuable rewards to players who win a matchup or win skirmishes, and that will only encourage more stacking.

There are rewards for winning WvW? This is news to me.

RyuDragnier.9476:

There are rewards for winning WvW? This is news to me.

Are you familiar with reward tracks, rank-up loot, bonus chests for the winning team, or wvw season rewards (when those were a thing)? You may not consider these large rewards, but they all exist and are much easier to gain when you’re on the winning side.

Additionally (former) WvW Developer Tyler Bearce noted the option of improving rewards as one of the 4 motivators for changing scoring:

Currently we can’t give out worthwhile rewards for winning, as most match-ups are already decided before they begin

I’d note that skirmishes have not changed that situation very much. The distribution of first, second, and third place finishes in a skirmish is largely decided before the skirmish begins, and so is ranking at the end of the week.

Heimlich.3065:

Rotteny.8743:

Svarty.8019:

Offair.2563:

Population imbalance mainly driven by players, not anet.

Yes, Babs, but it’s important to recognise that Anet has the power to do something about it. Whether what they do is the right thing is another discussion.

The only way for them to stop population imbalance would be if they ended the transfers. And we all know this ain’t happening… However, we can see the majority of the players aren’t interested in balance, since they always decide to stack in a single server to “win”. Then why would them do that?

I disagree. ANet could address population imbalance if they weren’t hell-bent on keeping gameplay and rewards that give advantages to over-stacked servers. Every piece of WvW gameplay currently reduces to “bring more people, play more person-hours”. They have indicated that they want to give valuable rewards to players who win a matchup or win skirmishes, and that will only encourage more stacking.

On the other hand, if stacking happens to an extreme and the other two server teams decide not to participate, there go the rewards. Rewards are much better when teams are balanced. How can you continue to gain participation points by flipping a camp or tower that hasn’t already been flipped by another server? If there’s no one to fight, how can you get PPK?

Heimlich.3065:

I disagree. ANet could address population imbalance if they weren’t hell-bent on keeping gameplay and rewards that give advantages to over-stacked servers.

What plan or strategy exactly would you suggest they worked on to fix the population imbalance, if you don’t mind me asking.

Heimlich.3065:

Additionally (former) WvW Developer Tyler Bearce noted the option of improving rewards as one of the 4 motivators for changing scoring:

That’s news to me that I guess I missed, care to share where you saw the news of that?

Heimlich.3065:

I’d note that skirmishes have not changed that situation very much. The distribution of first, second, and third place finishes in a skirmish is largely decided before the skirmish begins, and so is ranking at the end of the week.

Skirmishes were never suppose to fully fix scoring, it was suppose to fix one of the big problems with it. They have other mechanics planned that could help with scoring, the end of week catchup mechanics and high activity times earning more points. These all need to be done one step at a time, as painful as it is to wait on changes.

Coverage is always going to be the factor that decides wins, that’s never going to change with a points system that runs a week long, they need to place mechanics in the game that can counter it. If you can’t get population to be balanced(which they can’t) then you can get the sides to play off/with each other in order to counter the side with the greatest numbers. You either start giving out bonus points to the 2nd 3rd place teams, or promote 2nd and 3rd to go after 1st constantly.

EDIT: Nevermind found the news on Tyler B, yet another wvw dev moved. Oh well, good luck to McKenna.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4zrrpn/what_happend_to_tyler_bearce_uanettylerb/

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

I disagree. ANet could address population imbalance if they weren’t hell-bent on keeping gameplay and rewards that give advantages to over-stacked servers.

What plan or strategy exactly would you suggest they worked on to fix the population imbalance, if you don’t mind me asking.

I’ve made several versions of the same suggestion here and on reddit to, of course, no effect.

My proposal is to forget about balancing population entirely. It’s a pointless exercise to perform. As long as players have the option to move servers or simply to sit out of WvW (or sit out of GW2 entirely) population imbalance is inevitable.

ANet could make the game interesting and fun to play when one side is badly outnumbered (e.g. 10v50 or 5v50). Since those badly-outnumbered situations are bound to occur and are not very fun for either side, then adjusting gameplay to be interesting and fun in those situations is well within ANet’s ability to control.

With that principle in mind, I’d propose dynamic handicapping of combat capabilities. When a server is on the back foot, make their players more effective fighters and territory-capturers.

The simplest incarnation of this would be to grant bonus combat stats when in the northern zone of your home borderland (e.g. north of the line between NE and NW camps).

Alternatively, strengthen the NPCs at Garrison/Earth Keep when it is held by the home server and weaken them when it is held by another server.

More sophisticated versions of the idea would add more variation and gameplay, but NGAF.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

Additionally (former) WvW Developer Tyler Bearce noted the option of improving rewards as one of the 4 motivators for changing scoring:

That’s news to me that I guess I missed, care to share where you saw the news of that?

Sure thing: He mentioned it recently on reddit here.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

I’d note that skirmishes have not changed that situation very much. The distribution of first, second, and third place finishes in a skirmish is largely decided before the skirmish begins, and so is ranking at the end of the week.

Skirmishes were never suppose to fully fix scoring, it was suppose to fix one of the big problems with it. They have other mechanics planned that could help with scoring, the end of week catchup mechanics and high activity times earning more points. These all need to be done one step at a time, as painful as it is to wait on changes.

Coverage is always going to be the factor that decides wins, that’s never going to change with a points system that runs a week long, they need to place mechanics in the game that can counter it. If you can’t get population to be balanced(which they can’t) then you can get the sides to play off/with each other in order to counter the side with the greatest numbers. You either start giving out bonus points to the 2nd 3rd place teams, or promote 2nd and 3rd to go after 1st constantly.

The jury is still out on skirmishes. They don’t seem to have made much difference so far. At best they limit the scoring impact when one server has pathetic coverage during one time period.

Regardless of that, scoring cannot make gameplay itself interesting or fun.

Heimlich.3065:

With that principle in mind, I’d propose dynamic handicapping of combat capabilities. When a server is on the back foot, make their players more effective fighters and territory-capturers.

The simplest incarnation of this would be to grant bonus combat stats when in the northern zone of your home borderland (e.g. north of the line between NE and NW camps).

Alternatively, strengthen the NPCs at Garrison/Earth Keep when it is held by the home server and weaken them when it is held by another server.

Interesting ideas.

There have been some suggestions on the stat boost on players instead for when they’re under the outnumbered effect, but not many seem interested in that either, the limitation you propose also seems fair to keep it to the north of the map.

Not sure if it would make a difference buffing the npcs, it would delay the larger side from capping sure, but there’s no point to that if the defenders cannot muster enough players to counter them, unless of course you double it up with the stat boost for players. You could also buff the walls and gates instead so that you delay the larger force from entering in the first place. If they bring a large force, make them work harder for the capture.

Heimlich.3065:

The jury is still out on skirmishes. They don’t seem to have made much difference so far. At best they limit the scoring impact when one server has pathetic coverage during one time period.

Regardless of that, scoring cannot make gameplay itself interesting or fun.

That was the point to it, to limit the amount of runaway points during terrible coverage times for servers. most NA servers tend to field a good number of players during NA, it’s pst, ocx, sea, eu times that tend to be mid to no coverage and a few with too much in those times.

It isn’t the complete answer to imbalanced scoring, just one solution to one of the problems.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

With that principle in mind, I’d propose dynamic handicapping of combat capabilities. When a server is on the back foot, make their players more effective fighters and territory-capturers.

The simplest incarnation of this would be to grant bonus combat stats when in the northern zone of your home borderland (e.g. north of the line between NE and NW camps).

Alternatively, strengthen the NPCs at Garrison/Earth Keep when it is held by the home server and weaken them when it is held by another server.

Interesting ideas.

There have been some suggestions on the stat boost on players instead for when they’re under the outnumbered effect, but not many seem interested in that either, the limitation you propose also seems fair to keep it to the north of the map.

Not sure if it would make a difference buffing the npcs, it would delay the larger side from capping sure, but there’s no point to that if the defenders cannot muster enough players to counter them, unless of course you double it up with the stat boost for players. You could also buff the walls and gates instead so that you delay the larger force from entering in the first place. If they bring a large force, make them work harder for the capture.

The problem with applying combat bonuses to the Outnumbered buff is that players cannot directly control whether they receive the buff or not or whether they will fight opponents under its effects. It also creates incentives for players to tell others to leave the map and treat each other kittenty in order to get the buff.

Making it place-based or something that applies during a score deficit avoids those complications. I came to the idea from self-balancing mechanics in other games. E.g. in TF2’s payload mode, spawn distance gives the attacking team an advantage at the beginning of each stage which shifts to defending team advantage nearer the end of most stages and in KOTH mode, respawn timers are longer for the team that controls the point.

It would even be possible to implement it by introducing 3 new borderland instances (one per side) where the home field team gets big combat bonuses only on those maps.

During a balanced matchup, those homelands would be mostly unused and 100% under home-team control. In a blowout matchup, overflow people from the dominating server could choose to push into the enemy’s homeland maps which creates gameplay opportunities and removes nothing from the existing game.

These concepts won’t go anywhere while the WvW team continues to believe it can create balanced matchups despite player freedom to move around or abstain from playing.

It’s September 12th, 2016 and the skirmishes are not working for me.

We’re outnumbered on all BL and our scores will never catch up to the other BL simply because our server(s) do not have enough population to make up against the other servers. As a matter of fact our score has never been able to catch up to anything since day one.

Unless we are given super-powers on our BL so we can stand a chance to cap a single thing I don’t see the point otherwise. Forget about the new point system.

Ezekiel.7619:

It’s September 12th, 2016 and the skirmishes are not working for me.

We’re outnumbered on all BL and our scores will never catch up to the other BL simply because our server(s) do not have enough population to make up against the other servers. As a matter of fact our score has never been able to catch up to anything since day one.

Unless we are given super-powers on our BL so we can stand a chance to cap a single thing I don’t see the point otherwise. Forget about the new point system.

You weren’t going to be better off in the old system if you’re outnumbered in every map, that’s a server population issue, not a scoring one.

Maybe it’ll be different with the catch up mechanics in place, if they intend to implement it still anyways.

People. Skirmishes weren’t meant to correct population imbalances… If your server don’t have the people, you’ll lose regardless of which scoring system is used.
I think the idea of skirmishes was more to halt servers that relied purely on ticking 600+ a few hours during the “night” to push up in points while not being able to compete in the other timezones.

Jeknar.6184:

People. Skirmishes weren’t meant to correct population imbalances… If your server don’t have the people, you’ll lose regardless of which scoring system is used.
I think the idea of skirmishes was more to halt servers that relied purely on ticking 600+ a few hours during the “night” to push up in points while not being able to compete in the other timezones.

Here is the data: http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/skirmish/3544
Did it achieve it’s objective? I can’t tell.

One thing that skirmishes have highlighted to me is that the balance in scoring has turned too far towards PPK. Its possibly to have a very low PPT but be winning the skirmish due to winning some fights and it doesn’t even require dominating the fights or having bloodlust.

Svarty.8019:

Jeknar.6184:

People. Skirmishes weren’t meant to correct population imbalances… If your server don’t have the people, you’ll lose regardless of which scoring system is used.
I think the idea of skirmishes was more to halt servers that relied purely on ticking 600+ a few hours during the “night” to push up in points while not being able to compete in the other timezones.

Here is the data: http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/skirmish/3544
Did it achieve it’s objective? I can’t tell.

We cant tell because Deso is obviously fighting in the wrong tier. If there would have been a third strong server it probably would have. JS is not far behind Piken but with a weak third part, its a 1v1 fight.