Guild Wars 2

SkyShroud.2865:

The artificial balancing is finally here, anet will now successful get people to shut up about night capping and get people to forget about population balancing. However, people will now complain purely on coverage war and thus population balancing reborn again.

Seriously, I hope anet just focus on population balancing, is the root of all problems.

I totally agree with you that ANet should Seriously focus on fixing the problems with Population Balance.

Skirmishes only seems to upgrade Wack-a-Mole v1.0 by using Time Slices to encourage players to fight harder in the Time Slice they’re in.

Wack-a-Mole v1.0 – 2 Month Link Pairing – Weekly Resets
Wack-a-Mole v2.0 – 2 Month Link Pairing – Weekly Resets – Hourly Resets

(Currently WvW is all about the Quick Cap & Run by Zergs = Wack-a-Mole)

I could be wrong, and it might transform the Match-Ups.

Players may get a chance to feel a little better about their 2 hour Match-Up instead of Focusing too much on their Week long blow out.

However, I still feel that a Pure King of the Hill Fight Model would be a better choice in creating Match-Ups.

For a Better Long Term Solution for WvW – Try a Google Search of – wvg world vs globes

Sarrs.4831:

On the contrary, kill score will be drastically increased in relevance. If a guild group can reliably and efficiently murder zerglings, it can create score swings in the skirmish that would otherwise be irrelevant in the current state of WvW.

Which isnt good at all. All that kills having drastically increased relevance means is that people will PPT and avoid fights whenever possible. Oh did you die? Its your fault we lost, gtfo out of WvW!

The zergs become stronger and the outnumbered become weaker, well played if you think thats a good thing. Think guilds can kill zergs? Hahaha… port to another map and keep the train going!

As it is now, people have nothing to loose trying to fight.

Dawdler.8521:

Sarrs.4831:

On the contrary, kill score will be drastically increased in relevance. If a guild group can reliably and efficiently murder zerglings, it can create score swings in the skirmish that would otherwise be irrelevant in the current state of WvW.

Which isnt good at all. All that kills having drastically increased relevance means is that people will PPT and avoid fights whenever possible. Oh did you die? Its your fault we lost, gtfo out of WvW!

The zergs become stronger and the outnumbered become weaker, well played if you think thats a good thing. Think guilds can kill zergs? Hahaha… port to another map and keep the train going!

As it is now, people have nothing to loose trying to fight.

Not necessarily, depending on how the scores for skirmishes go. If the score gain stays the same, it would probably end up badly. If they change how much you get for holding stuff at the point scores, it could change things up. Because it would mean that while you’re so busy dealing with those small groups, your stuff is getting flipped and you could lose that skirmish.

I feel skirmishes favor Divide-and-Conquer over Karma-Train-Omniblob. Wish was what WvW should have been about in the first place…

Rotteny.8743:

I feel skirmishes favor Divide-and-Conquer over Karma-Train-Omniblob. Wish was what WvW should have been about in the first place…

Depends on the situation really, right now you can split an omniblob up for more PPT but if there’s no point in doing so (since you’re gonna win the time slice anyway) it’s more favorable to just blob and ktrain as opposed to try knocking out that last inkling of ppt.

QQing.3089:

Sounds interesting. I’d like separate WvW balance to be next. I don’t want boon meta to die, just get leukemia.

It’s funny they should mention the first poll. The context makes it sound like this is the clear #1 request from the community, yet in the thread they made prior to the polls, skill balance won by a fair margin. That part seems to have been forgotten.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they’re working on something WvW related.. but I do wonder what happened to “future balance updates will take WvW into consideration” (paraphrased from MO).

I’m also not convinced by this new system. It’s a band aid on runaway matches, but people are still going to be logging in to empty maps ~18 hours of the day.

“Skirmishes will keep the winning and losing scores closer together, allowing the losing worlds a better fighting chance. Skirmishes should also help lessen the severity of runaway matches caused by off-hour coverage.”

The new system is clearly designed to battle off-hour coverage, but I do NOT understand how it would make the winning and losing scores closer to together if one server has much higher player and coverage?

In other words: I believe that the skirmish score will partially solve the off-hour capping problem (but still structures and their upgrades are lost), but I don’t think the it would necessarily lead to more even final score.

Wow!!! Such a huge change! It must of took them 2 days to code this and 3 days to test it!!! Such involvement, so much different!

Now we have same situation as before, same blobs as before, same lags (not to forget skill lags), same bugs BUT we need to reenter map every 2 hours!!! This is gonna improve GvG so much!!

I’m so excited!!!!!

Zero.4935:

Hexinx.1872:

And two hours of work equates to 3 points. Or 2, or 1.

Not 190, 160, 75, 40 every five minutes. So the first place has a total potential of 252 points across the week.

It’s the same points with smaller numbers.

No, it’s not.

I’ll simplify it all down for you and everyone else who doesn’t seem to understand.

Let’s say a WvW match goes for 10 hours right? That’s 40 ticks at 15 minute scoring intervals, or 5 ticks at 2 hour scoring intervals.

Let’s also say that the total combined PPT in the entire matchup is 100 points.

And let’s say that server A is constantly ticking at 85 PPT, server B at 10 PPT and server C at 5 PPT (total of 60 PPT)

This gives us the following two scenarios, which are not the same.

Before:
Server A finishes with a score of 3400
Server B finishes with a score of 400
Server C finishes with a score of 200

Now:
Server A finishes with a score of 15
Server B finishes with score of 10
Server C finishes with a score of 5

Notice the difference? Before server A would have a massive lead (Server B’s score is merely 11.76% of server A’s score) but now server B’s score is 66% of server A’s score.

It makes more much closer match ups.

Just to show you the difference it would make, here’s a small example from the last Olympic volleyball semifinals game Italy vs USA. In the attached image the “Points” are similar to the current WvW scoring system. Each team scores some points and then add them to the total to see who’s the winner. The “Sets” are similar to the skirmishes – no matter how many more points you got in the set (2 hour window) respect to your rival, you still get the same amount of points to the total score.
Italy lost the second set 9 to 25, as if USA were night capping when the italians were asleep. That advantage would have allowed the USA to win based on total points scored 112 to 105, but the USA only won 2 sets and Italy won 3. So despite the night capping set 2 Italy still won.
Obviously, in this example the USA only night capped for one set out of five, but still, it shows that winning more sets gives you the final victory, not simply accumulating more points.

My five cents.

Rod.6581:

Wow!!! Such a huge change! It must of took them 2 days to code this and 3 days to test it!!! Such involvement, so much different!

Now we have same situation as before, same blobs as before, same lags (not to forget skill lags), same bugs BUT we need to reenter map every 2 hours!!! This is gonna improve GvG so much!!

I’m so excited!!!!!

I think the score is all that resets, we won’t have to leave wvw. Pretty much as it is now only determined differently.

Well it is mathematically simple. The new system avoids score imbalances that are bigger than:
1 server average of 126 points (3/6),
one average 84 (2/6) points and
one average 42 (1/6) points

But all the times the actual imbalance is smaller than this it sets it to that imbalance. In NA all the matchups have smaller average differences in scores than this, thus the new system actually increases the gaps in score.
I calculated it for all the current NA matchups. The gaps are bigger. check here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Where-are-the-promised-scoring-changes/first#post6317807

I know it is too late, but here what I would propose:
If you want a system that a) reduces the impact of “blowouts” where a server overruns everything and b) reduces the impact of night-capping:
a) Anti-blowouts:
Instead of reducing variance to a simple ranking system: just make dimished returns for high ppt. So capturing a keep does give you more ppt if your ppt is 40 than if it is 100. This will cut off having high ppt mostly but still gives you a reason to capture stuff. You can make this gradually and show rounded numbers. New maximum ppt would be lower and the impact of temporary blowouts would be far less heavy.
b) Anti-nightcapping:
Make an activity index that measures the number of active players in wvw across all three servers and boost the ppt by that. I would make that a linear function that boosts ppt by 100% maximum with a hard cutoff at the top, but other functions would work fine as well (for example 80% or more full servers = double the ppt. 8% full servers = ppt * 1.1; 16% full servers = ppt *1.2), this would have a serious impact while still making it not really lucrative for servers to fully leave wvw to “pointblock” other servers.

All nice and stuff but to be fair, to me nothing will change. Still the same ole blobs and condi cancer around and class imbalance.

The system won’t entirely prevent nightcap but it’s a good beginning.
I’ve experienced it myself for over a year in EU t1. You have one server that is basically incapable of playing this game at all, always at the bottom in prime and only wins because they have like 6 hours with 600+ score. Now all they’d get for it would be 9 points which is very easily recoverable over the rest of the day.

Entenkommando.5208:

The system won’t entirely prevent nightcap but it’s a good beginning.
I’ve experienced it myself for over a year in EU t1. You have one server that is basically incapable of playing this game at all, always at the bottom in prime and only wins because they have like 6 hours with 600+ score. Now all they’d get for it would be 9 points which is very easily recoverable over the rest of the day.

Are you talking about Desolation? ;-)

Art, the main commander of Deso Night Crew [ROCK], only plays on weekends nowadays. Our night team is actually quite small (20 or less) at most nights. Mornings are outnumbered, like the rest of the day & evening. But Deso won’t be tier 1 soon anymore. Predicted ranking is now 4 and I think we will still drop because the off time coverage wins will matter even less thanks to this Skirmish score system. So maybe Kodash vs Deso will happen in few weeks

Deniara Devious.3948:

Are you talking about Desolation? ;-)

Nope
Just going to say it’s been 3 years ago…

Oh noes world has come to an end, deso soon won’t be in tier1 anymore!!!!!!

Seriously shut up already with it, we on the bottom really take it as an insult and you only make a fool of yourself….

Def improvement and going in the right direction. I would just prefer if they didn’t split scoring into tiny pieces. I feel 2h chunks are still working in favor of night capping. If they split day into 4 × 6h then servers with small night presence could ignore 2 × 6h and only focus on 2 big skirmishes and actually try to win with strategy like this.

I generally like what I read, but maybe they could consider changing the war scores to 4-3-2 for each skirmish, 3-2-1 can actually increase the gap between closer matchups drastically.

Rink.6108:

Well it is mathematically simple. The new system avoids score imbalances that are bigger than:
1 server average of 126 points (3/6),
one average 84 (2/6) points and
one average 42 (1/6) points

But all the times the actual imbalance is smaller than this it sets it to that imbalance. In NA all the matchups have smaller average differences in scores than this, thus the new system actually increases the gaps in score.
I calculated it for all the current NA matchups. The gaps are bigger. check here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Where-are-the-promised-scoring-changes/first#post6317807

Your calculations are great!
So if I get it right the new scoring may give incentive to the losing servers to still win some skirmishes and it may reduce the impact of blowouts (that do generally happen in the night). But it will probably make match-up scores more imbalanced and it will render winning impossible earlier in the match to the previously weaker servers.

Setting the Victory Points to +4 / +3 / +2 would probably help with the bigger imbalance of match-up scores (it meant an average of +112 / +84 / +56 over 2h respectively). However I’m not so sure it would increase the chances of turning the match later on. Probably the Last Stand concept of theirs is required to help with that ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Let-s-Talk-Scoring ).

What are your thoughts?
Can you please make some calculations on whether that would make a relevant difference? Especially on chances of turning the match.
I’d really like to see them!

I agree that if they actually want to give smaller servers a fighting chance, they should also implement last stand. If they want to “fight” offtime-capping more efficiently, then they will also have to implement the action level as well. Those changes are listed here and imho not perfect yet, but go in the right direction: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Revisiting-April-s-WvW-leak/first#post6318194

Yea, you are right 4/3/2 leads to results that are more similar to current values, it still does not “close” the gap between servers, in current NA they are opened up a little bit, but it doesn’t open it even more significantly. It is possible that last stand could actually give the small server the possibilty to win the match then, as the impact will be bigger. Very close matchups (tier 4 NA) will still be pulled apart somewhat, but I would think that matches that close rarely happen. Thank you for the great suggestion.

More numbers (sorry!) For 4 days in current matchup with the 4/3/2-scoring instead of 3/2/1

Tier 1 current points BG 42%, TC 32%, DB 26%; new score: BG 43%, TC 32%, DB 25%
Tier 2 current points Mag 36%, JQ 33%, FA 31%; new score: Mag 36%, FA and JQ 32%
Tier 3 current points YB 42%, SBI 30%, SoS 28%; new score: YB 43%, SBI 29%, SoS 28%
Tier 4 current points NSP and HoD 34%, CD 32%; new score NSP 36%, HoD 34%, CD 30%

Comparison the currently proposed 3/2/1 system:
Tier 1 current points BG 42%, TC 32%, DB 26%; new score: BG 47%, TC 32%, DB 21%
Tier 2 current points Mag 36%, JQ 33%, FA 31%; new score: Mag 37%, FA 32%, JQ 31%
Tier 3 current points YB 42%, SBI 30%, SoS 28%; new score: YB 48%, SBI 27%, SoS 25%
Tier 4 current points NSP and HoD 34%, CD 32%; new score NSP 37%, HoD 35%, CD 28%

Hmm did some further calculation in the 4/3/2-system, while the matches “look” closer, it is still the same amouth of difficulty for the servers in the back to actually catch up with the server in front. So while the 4/3/2 system does make the matchup look closer, it doesn’t solve the problem that by mid-week the winner will be fixed..

3 hours on and 1 hour off time slices to promote a healthy lifestyle and commanders time to go poop. Most guild raids are 3-4 hours also with a few exceptions on each server. The 1 hour off times will take away some PPT during prime time hours but will have a greater effect on free ppt on off hours.

If the skirmishes are the only source of points, then
4,3,2
3,2,1
2,1,0
Each and all will results in the same exact placement results all the time. The differential between scores are the same in each situation, and the differentials in score is what determines 1st 2nd and 3rd. It has psychological differences, but the are in reality the same.

Rink.6108:

I agree that if they actually want to give smaller servers a fighting chance, they should also implement last stand. If they want to “fight” offtime-capping more efficiently, then they will also have to implement the action level as well. Those changes are listed here and imho not perfect yet, but go in the right direction: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Revisiting-April-s-WvW-leak/first#post6318194

Yea, you are right 4/3/2 leads to results that are more similar to current values, it still does not “close” the gap between servers, in current NA they are opened up a little bit, but it doesn’t open it even more significantly. It is possible that last stand could actually give the small server the possibilty to win the match then, as the impact will be bigger. Very close matchups (tier 4 NA) will still be pulled apart somewhat, but I would think that matches that close rarely happen. Thank you for the great suggestion.

More numbers (sorry!) For 4 days in current matchup with the 4/3/2-scoring instead of 3/2/1

Tier 1 current points BG 42%, TC 32%, DB 26%; new score: BG 43%, TC 32%, DB 25%
Tier 2 current points Mag 36%, JQ 33%, FA 31%; new score: Mag 36%, FA and JQ 32%
Tier 3 current points YB 42%, SBI 30%, SoS 28%; new score: YB 43%, SBI 29%, SoS 28%
Tier 4 current points NSP and HoD 34%, CD 32%; new score NSP 36%, HoD 34%, CD 30%

Comparison the currently proposed 3/2/1 system:
Tier 1 current points BG 42%, TC 32%, DB 26%; new score: BG 47%, TC 32%, DB 21%
Tier 2 current points Mag 36%, JQ 33%, FA 31%; new score: Mag 37%, FA 32%, JQ 31%
Tier 3 current points YB 42%, SBI 30%, SoS 28%; new score: YB 48%, SBI 27%, SoS 25%
Tier 4 current points NSP and HoD 34%, CD 32%; new score NSP 37%, HoD 35%, CD 28%

Hmm did some further calculation in the 4/3/2-system, while the matches “look” closer, it is still the same amouth of difficulty for the servers in the back to actually catch up with the server in front. So while the 4/3/2 system does make the matchup look closer, it doesn’t solve the problem that by mid-week the winner will be fixed..

A 4-3-2 scoring may not close gaps, but that wasn’t the point of it. If you look at the matchups of tier 2 and 4, which seem rather balanced, a 3-2-1 scoring would actually increase the gap between 1st and 3rd place and make it a lot harder for the 3rd place to catch up. That’s because the first place gets three times the points.

As you can see with your calculations of the 4-3-2 scoring, these gaps for tier 2 and 4 don’t increase as much, and the gap actually decreases for tier 2. In this case the first place only gets twice the points of the last place. The point at which the leading world is the fixed winner should be a little later in the week as well, maybe only slightly. Runaway matches like tier 1 and 3 can’t be fixed with this, you would need far higher scorings (like 10-9-8 or even higher) for that, but that would only be an attempt to artificially balance unbalanced matchups and wouldn’t clearly reflect the power distribution between the worlds.

A 4-3-2 scoring does not try to balance unbalanced matchups, it simply doesn’t unbalance balanced ones. These are problems that don’t originate in the scoring system and can’t and shouldn’t be fixed by it.

I am really interested in the effects of skirmishes on night capping. Do you have any calculations on matchups where one world usually leads because of that? That would be awesome! (I don’t know which worlds these would be myself)

PseudoNewb.5468:

If the skirmishes are the only source of points, then
4,3,2
3,2,1
2,1,0
Each and all will results in the same exact placement results all the time. The differential between scores are the same in each situation, and the differentials in score is what determines 1st 2nd and 3rd. It has psychological differences, but the are in reality the same.

The winner of a match won’t change very often with the new scoring, that’s not the point of it though. However, there is a huge difference between 4-3-2, 3-2-1 and 2-1-0.

4-3-2: 1st place gets twice the points of the 3rd place. Creates mild gaps.
3-2-1: 1st place gets three times the points of the 3rd place. Creates medium gaps
2-1-0. 1st place gets infinite times the points of the 3rd place. This creates huge gaps and can completely unbalance otherwise balanced mathups.

All of this kind of reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdK6LVDI3kg

Gotta mix em up & keep em on their toes!

Is it really that complicated?

For a Better Long Term Solution for WvW – Try a Google Search of – wvg world vs globes

Sphinx.8014:

PseudoNewb.5468:

If the skirmishes are the only source of points, then
4,3,2
3,2,1
2,1,0
Each and all will results in the same exact placement results all the time. The differential between scores are the same in each situation, and the differentials in score is what determines 1st 2nd and 3rd. It has psychological differences, but the are in reality the same.

The winner of a match won’t change very often with the new scoring, that’s not the point of it though. However, there is a huge difference between 4-3-2, 3-2-1 and 2-1-0.

4-3-2: 1st place gets twice the points of the 3rd place. Creates mild gaps.
3-2-1: 1st place gets three times the points of the 3rd place. Creates medium gaps
2-1-0. 1st place gets infinite times the points of the 3rd place. This creates huge gaps and can completely unbalance otherwise balanced mathups.

I’m with PseudoNewb on this one.

One advantage of the victory points is that the awards are easy to adjust. Tweaking the war score components (kills/bloodlust/sentries/dolyaks/objectives) is a lot harder.

With the old war score system any team could (in theory) kill 50000 enemies in the last tick and steal the matchup victory.

Let’s look at a scenario where the green team wins all skirmishes at the beginning of the matchup. Red loses them all. How far into the matchup this can continue until the losing teams no longer have chance to win?

3-2-1: Blue team: 56 skirmishes. Red team: 42 skirmishes.

With the 3-2-1 victory points system the blue team could lose (2nd place) 56 skirmishes to the green team and still be able to win the matchup. Green team would have to be at the 3rd place in all remaining skirmishes.

If the green team won the first 57 skirmishes, then the victory points after Wednesday afternoon would be irrelevant.

Running the numbers for different skirmish victory points awards:

3-2-1: Blue 56, red 42.
4-3-2: Blue 56, red 42.
2-1-0: Blue 56, red 42.
10-9-8: Blue 56, red 42.
2-1-1: Blue 42, red 42.
1-0-0: Blue 42, red 42.
1-1-0: Blue 84 (*), red 28.

(*) In the last scenario the green team would tie with blue and win the matchup by war score difference.

It may be surprising that while 4-3-2 yields closer victory points totals (thanks Rink), it is still just as difficult to catch up as with 3-2-1.

Maybe there is some psychological factor favoring 4-3-2, but that’s impossible to calculate.

We should focus on the goals Tyler Bearce set in Let’s Talk Scoring post:

Benefits

• Winning a Skirmish by a small margin, or a large margin, awards the same number of victory points.
• This keeps the winning and losing scores closer together, allowing the losing worlds a fighting chance
• Teams will still want to win as many time slices as possible, off-hours coverage is still important, but less dominant

I’m really worried about the second bullet here.

The Last Stand feature will counter the added difficulty of catching up due the skirmishes. I hope. If only the multiplier is set high enough.

There is another way I would like to consider: punishing the skirmish losers by removing victory points.

Same scenario as above: The green team wins the first skirmishes of the matchup and the red team loses them all. This could continue up until Wednesday afternoon (56 skirmishes) and both red and blue still have a chance to win.

1-(-1)-(-1): Blue 56, red 56.

Both blue and red team would be at equal footing to catch up. All they need to do is win all remaining skirmishes.

It makes no difference whether the green team comes 2nd or 3rd, so no added difficulty there. Nor ganging up on the weakest team to secure the second place.

Okay, so 4-3-2 is actually just as bad as 3-2-1 when it comes to keeping matches exciting all over the week. Makes a lot of sense on second thought!

Last Stand will help with that to some extent but finding a balance between promoting exciting matches all week and making the longest part of the match-up feel less valuable will be a problem. Especially because match-ups often aren’t balanced decently, sometimes however they are quite close! Therefore basing it all solely on Last Stand doesn’t seem that sensible to me.
I guess that the multiplication via Action Level ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Let-s-Talk-Scoring/first#post6145749 ) actually is a necessary addition. As match-ups tend to be the most balanced when they are most active it will probably increase scoring quality, favoring servers with worse coverage but decent prime time, in which they have a “fighting chance”. While being pretty fair, because more players fight for more Victory Points. Though an additional factor reflecting population imbalance could be added to the calculation of the Action Level to counter times when one server has huge zergs while the others are weak. But maybe that would be easily cheatable.

To sum it up, I think Skirmishes can only help making closer and more exciting match-ups with the addition of Last Stand and Action Levels. With both of it though there is a chance.
But the upcoming live test of Skirmishes will only suffice for gathering feedback on the Skirmish structure as a basis. As overall the matches will probably be decided earlier in the week. They will be less balanced and exciting. At least for now.

Edited for link

Victory points they called them….wtf are victory points. They said victory points are used in calculting the winner of each week……wtf?!!!??!?! Isn’t warscore supposed to do that? wtf is victory points?!?!!

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.

Hopefully the reward will be WvW Tournament Claim Tickets.

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.

I voted for the scoring change and I knew it wasn’t going to effect coverage and population issues. TylerB’s description of the skirmish scoring said that coverage will still be an advantage. Also it was advertised in threads about server linking that it was an approach to helping (not solving) population issues.

It won’t solve the whole population issue but is a step in the right direction. To fix the population issues would be something more dramatic and generated over tweaking statistical data and variables. They would have to come up with a subjective algorithm with objective data. The easiest “tweak”, would be creating a few off hour(s) in between matches to mitigate free ppt in dead zones with little to no activity.

Server WvW population per week= active wvw population + x*(home server fairweather potential) +y*(inactive accounts)

Where “X” is a subjective multiplier on how much they think fairweathers will come out of the wood works when winning and “Y” is a multiplier for inactives (perhaps inactive <3months, anything >3months are excluded) that may come back to potential changes or fairweather. Where X and Y would range from 0-1.

Once they have this data, it’s gonna be a painful realization for t1/t2. When they have to choose an indiscriminate average of all the servers total population. Say 2000 WvW activity, and T1 has like 3000, while 6 servers from t8 might have 300. They would cap it and T1/T2 would have to shed 1000 players/points so it’s an even 4 tiers. that indiscriminate number of total population would represent that you only get 2000 said wvw population spread throughout your whole 24 hour cycle. how it’s spread in that 24 hours is up to your server stacking respective time zones or not.

The total WvW activity pop would probably be used to determine the links to hit a certain number. They just need to add in a few variables like fairweathers, potential transfers, and inactive accounts.

Given the skirmishes are about to be implemented do we know what the schedule is? Are they every even hour or odd hour? Are they on the half hour?

Cerby.1069:

Victory points they called them….wtf are victory points. They said victory points are used in calculting the winner of each week……wtf?!!!??!?! Isn’t warscore supposed to do that? wtf is victory points?!?!!

Every 2 hours the current warscore is reset (who has what in terms of camps/towers/keeps IS NOT RESET), and whomever has the highest will get 3 points. 2nd highest gets 2 points, last place gets 1. They add up all the victory points to the end of the week to determine the winner.

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.

More on the bright side, stacking one timezone won’t guarantee a win, since you can’t win with this if you can’t win the VP in the other timezones.

morrolan.9608:

Given the skirmishes are about to be implemented do we know what the schedule is? Are they every even hour or odd hour? Are they on the half hour?

If you read the article…it says 2 hours.

RyuDragnier.9476:

morrolan.9608:

Given the skirmishes are about to be implemented do we know what the schedule is? Are they every even hour or odd hour? Are they on the half hour?

If you read the article…it says 2 hours.

I know that but is it 2 hours on every odd hour or even hour?

morrolan.9608:

RyuDragnier.9476:

morrolan.9608:

Given the skirmishes are about to be implemented do we know what the schedule is? Are they every even hour or odd hour? Are they on the half hour?

If you read the article…it says 2 hours.

I know that but is it 2 hours on every odd hour or even hour?

What hour does WvW reset happen on a Friday?

As someone posted above this won’t probably change the winner at the end of the week, most populated servers will still get the lead but it will put incentive into fighting for these “skirmishes” since the goal is clear rather than non stop map flipping. For example a guild raid could run for a random number of hours depending on the map situation but now a guild can have a clear goal to inside and fight for a win on 2 skirmishes=4h etc.

As i said it probably won’t change the end result but gives perspective and another way to interact with wvw content. Regardless of whether it will work or not it is miles better than all the wvw changes we got over the years in terms of direction.

It won’t solve anything … yet. It will give a look at the week with another set of data and smaller numbers. Then Anet wil implement changes that affect these small numbers, and see if it makes matches closer or farther apart. They will look how it affect glicko along the way and see how the matchups can be changed so servers that generally do not seem fit to win matches … may. I am optimistic because it is something that has the potential to affect glicko deviation and match making. All while making it more enjoyable without affecting the actual playerbase one bit, meaning strong NA servers like mags could potentially be a powerhouse enough to combat BG off there throne. Will that happen, I doubt it … but the potential is there, and that’s morethan I’ve ever seen in 4 years.

There is no answer for a 24 hour game mode with varying populations across the 24 hours, there is very little they can also do to affect the skill lag, they put there best foot forward many years ago (and while improved) it didn’t resolve the issue, and its only getting exponentially worse with the ability to stack further boons and numbers on the server. This piece we can pretty much stop complaining about at this point because there is little that can be done with at this point in the games lifecycle without a major rework (and that won’t happen).

We should be happy about this, pot stirring on anets part. It may result in the exact same thing, that they can put minor changes into make drastic impacts (scarily both good and bad) but I’ll remain optimistic because they are ‘thinking’ about how to do things. And that’s the start people have wanted for many years.

Hexinx.1872:

We should be happy about this, pot stirring on anets part. It may result in the exact same thing, that they can put minor changes into make drastic impacts (scarily both good and bad) but I’ll remain optimistic because they are ‘thinking’ about how to do things. And that’s the start people have wanted for many years.

Especially considering we can vote out things that don’t work.

Sarrs.4831:

Hexinx.1872:

We should be happy about this, pot stirring on anets part. It may result in the exact same thing, that they can put minor changes into make drastic impacts (scarily both good and bad) but I’ll remain optimistic because they are ‘thinking’ about how to do things. And that’s the start people have wanted for many years.

Especially considering we can vote out things that don’t work.

Oh you mean like DBL?

Dawdler.8521:

Sarrs.4831:

Hexinx.1872:

We should be happy about this, pot stirring on anets part. It may result in the exact same thing, that they can put minor changes into make drastic impacts (scarily both good and bad) but I’ll remain optimistic because they are ‘thinking’ about how to do things. And that’s the start people have wanted for many years.

Especially considering we can vote out things that don’t work.

Oh you mean like DBL?

You don’t think we had the chance to vote that out?

morrolan.9608:

Dawdler.8521:

Sarrs.4831:

Hexinx.1872:

We should be happy about this, pot stirring on anets part. It may result in the exact same thing, that they can put minor changes into make drastic impacts (scarily both good and bad) but I’ll remain optimistic because they are ‘thinking’ about how to do things. And that’s the start people have wanted for many years.

Especially considering we can vote out things that don’t work.

Oh you mean like DBL?

You don’t think we had the chance to vote that out?

It’s always the same… People will never get over the fact that DBL won and is here to stay…

vana.5467:

QQing.3089:

Sounds interesting. I’d like separate WvW balance to be next. I don’t want boon meta to die, just get leukemia.

It’s funny they should mention the first poll. The context makes it sound like this is the clear #1 request from the community, yet in the thread they made prior to the polls, skill balance won by a fair margin. That part seems to have been forgotten.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they’re working on something WvW related.. but I do wonder what happened to “future balance updates will take WvW into consideration” (paraphrased from MO).

I’m also not convinced by this new system. It’s a band aid on runaway matches, but people are still going to be logging in to empty maps ~18 hours of the day.

What is funny whatsoever is that people still have no clue how things works on Guild Wars 2. WvW devs are not responsible over profession balance. They might, perhaps, give feedback but all decisions are made by the balance team.

The now introduced system is only the fundament. The next is to give the slots different weightings. Night slot will grant 3, 2, 1 VP. Prime time slots will grant maybe 9, 6, 3 VP. Side times could give 6, 4, 2.

Rink.6108 wrote somewhere that the results in some slots where really close. The question is now whether under the new system server ’2 or ’3 would have been able to change the result. Could they mobilse more players in the certain slot? Would the they able to change tactics to obtain more war scores? Would two servers cooperateover a longer period of time?

How close are matches during prime time? I know from EU that Piken could beat FSP in several slots during prime time. Could this turn the tide with high VP levels during prime time? Could all matched servers field comparable amounts of players how would this change the outcome in certain slots?

In EU we have significant prime times where the over all dominating servers are losing the first place (sometimes even the 2nd one) in certain matchups. How is it in NA?

azyume.6321:

vana.5467:

QQing.3089:

Sounds interesting. I’d like separate WvW balance to be next. I don’t want boon meta to die, just get leukemia.

It’s funny they should mention the first poll. The context makes it sound like this is the clear #1 request from the community, yet in the thread they made prior to the polls, skill balance won by a fair margin. That part seems to have been forgotten.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they’re working on something WvW related.. but I do wonder what happened to “future balance updates will take WvW into consideration” (paraphrased from MO).

I’m also not convinced by this new system. It’s a band aid on runaway matches, but people are still going to be logging in to empty maps ~18 hours of the day.

What is funny whatsoever is that people still have no clue how things works on Guild Wars 2. WvW devs are not responsible over profession balance. They might, perhaps, give feedback but all decisions are made by the balance team.

Off-topic, but the balance team has made some changes with WvW in mind, too:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016

Belenwyn.8674:

The now introduced system is only the fundament. The next is to give the slots different weightings. Night slot will grant 3, 2, 1 VP. Prime time slots will grant maybe 9, 6, 3 VP. Side times could give 6, 4, 2.

That feature was named Action Level – Victory Point Multiplier. ANet is not releasing the action level feature for now. You can find discussion on the feature in the linked thread.

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.

Was population balance fix ever an item to vote on? I think ANet has that as a main goal even without players’ votes.

Population rebalancing is somewhere down the roadmap. Reward for winning a matchup follows.

• In conjunction with population rebalancing, updating Scoring allows us to decide a winner of a match more fairly, and thus reward players more fairly
  • Currently we can’t give out worthwhile rewards for winning, as most match-ups are already decided before they begin

Korgov.7645:

Belenwyn.8674:

The now introduced system is only the fundament. The next is to give the slots different weightings. Night slot will grant 3, 2, 1 VP. Prime time slots will grant maybe 9, 6, 3 VP. Side times could give 6, 4, 2.

That feature was named Action Level – Victory Point Multiplier. ANet is not releasing the action level feature for now. You can find discussion on the feature in the linked thread.

This is a real shame. I hope it can be placed on the agenda quite soon.