Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,
I do not know if this is even considered a problem with in low tiered servers or even something Anet considers to be an issue to be addressed but I felt I might have something to provide for as a solution.

What we are discussing here is servers that have problems manning people equal to other servers at off peak hours. One solution I can think of is nerfing the scores calculation during off peak hours based on the number of people online on a given map. I feel it will bring equilibrium between very high, high and medium sized servers in terms of match up and we will know what servers are actually very good at competence in wvw rather than a win for the biggest blob averagely over a day.
As for discussing solutions ofcourse every solution brings about its own problems but and for this one is that guilds who are playing in off peak hours will find it less of a contribution to wvw during there time of play.

I am not saying Anet should implement my solution but all I am asking for is an open discussion how other servers feel about this as a problem or not. If it is a problem you can write down your own solutions if you have any in this regard.

Suggested a % off player on maps / score % back in October. Think it should be same with capturing buildings, if no on is defending then you get 0points or close to it for taking it, coin you still should get.

Off-peak capping has been discussed a lot on these boards. We’ve had a definite answer: players who play off-peak times will not be punished by changing the game rules during that time.

I agree there are coverage problems between high and low pop servers, but they go beyond time of day. Changing points depending on number of people on the map is interesting, though the issue has been raised about guilds bullying pugs off the maps when they want to keep the pop down.

Yeah every solution has its own drawbacks with it. But I really want to see Anet to do something about it to bring servers to equal level in wvw irrespective of population size.

Off peak hours? In a world-wide MMORPG, I like to think that doesn’t exist..

My solution would be this:

Introduce superiority based scoring and visibility system. Solve both zergs and off peak scoring in one blow!
Split all borders and EB into say an 8×8 grid (roughly, may not be exakt squares). Lets call them “areas of influence” or whatever. Score income is based on how many people you have and how many people the enemy have in an area. If there is 50 from the Green team and 2 from the Red team (ie a common night for a T1 vs T5 server) in one of these “areas”, the Red team gets a massive point boost to anything they do, while the Green team get very little. If Green team is holding a tower against these 2 people, the score income for that tower is very, very low. If there is no players at all in an area (ie night), score income slows to a trickle. This would allow low pop servers to actually focus their efforts without having the other servers gain a huge amount of points in the meantime. It would also make it fun for all three servers, as they could fight on a single borderland while the others can be almost “ignored” in terms of the points they bring in (since no one is there).

This change should increase the importance to defend (after all you get more points the longer you can hold it against overwhelming forces), reduce the importance of both the night shift and slow days unless there’s actually fighting going on and encourage spreading out players across the map to get more points, rather than a single 50 man zerg running around getting little to no points because there’s only 5 enemies nearby.

They could also change the map to allow us to see these scoring differences. Did Red presence in the bay area just skyrocket when Green is holding it? Well get your kitten over there and fight, your server gets more points from holding it against them for an hour than the enemy team would have gotten holding it for a night against no one! It would have a similar “limitation” as the swords, except its across a larger area, ie it react only to large numbers and its somewhat delayed. This would allow us to actually follow large zergs. No more invisible armies, when they move you know it. Another reason to scatter… Unless of course you want to trick the enemy.

Tribio.8531:

Off peak hours? In a world-wide MMORPG, I like to think that doesn’t exist..

Yes agreed it must not exist, though when the game bifurcates servers regionally like NA and EU servers, each time zone has its own prime time and off time. Hence the discussion on this issue as no NA guild will ever join EU servers to cover the off time of EU servers as that is NA prime time and vice versa.

Dawdler.8521:

My solution would be this:

Introduce superiority based scoring and visibility system. Solve both zergs and off peak scoring in one blow!

Din wanna quote every bit of what you said but I agree to every bit of it. It brings about interesting changes to the way we see wvw. However just wondering if ever Anet wants to make any changes to the existing setup of wvw how much time will be needed to bring about such degree of changes and the work force.

I think that is one prime reason why Anet is reluctant to any changes in wvw in this regard. though a good solution that will be positively effecting wvw experience is I think welcoming for them as well. Most of it turns out to be like why mess up the currently accepted system by the players to a new one that may or may not work properly and turn of many of the player base off from the game.

Can we nerf the gain when it is MY off-peak hour and YOUR peak time as well since at that time MY SERVER is outmanned.
Oh well that back to square one.

It is naive of you to think that people zerg because of scores charges. It is because of loot , WXP , daily and the BEST/only way to take objective(let just stop kidding ourselves and tell people it is skill and leadership).

KOK.2650:

Can we nerf the gain when it is MY off-peak hour and YOUR peak time as well since at that time MY SERVER is outmanned.

the discussion is not on my or your off peak time. The discussion is on servers off peak time. an Eu server has its own off peak time and so does NA. Anet also promised to launch Asian servers if I am correct. Anyways you went to a completely different angle there as Anet should either dump the association of their servers to a time zone or provide a solution to off peak times. If it is your off peak time and my prime time then I am simply not playing in the right servers and is my choice to do that anyway, no blame on Anet for that since they already distinguished there servers according to time zones.

A possible solution to such an issue is also to remove the association of servers to time zones but again a down side will be that many people may face lag and ping issues. Nothing in this is back to square one I believe.

UnknownRH.4592:

KOK.2650:

Can we nerf the gain when it is MY off-peak hour and YOUR peak time as well since at that time MY SERVER is outmanned.

the discussion is not on my or your off peak time. The discussion is on servers off peak time. an Eu server has its own off peak time and so does NA. Anet also promised to launch Asian servers if I am correct. Anyways you went to a completely different angle there as Anet should either dump the association of their servers to a time zone or provide a solution to off peak times. If it is your off peak time and my prime time then I am simply not playing in the right servers and is my choice to do that anyway, no blame on Anet for that since they already distinguished there servers according to time zones.

A possible solution to such an issue is also to remove the association of servers to time zones but again a down side will be that many people may face lag and ping issues.

I thought it was about enemies in a zone? Ofcourse at offhours there will be less. But on the very lowest tiers this can sometimes even happen in peek hours (enemy 1 and 2 have almost noone in a zone and are all in eb, while server 3 has good coverage over all the zones, for example)

I really agree with OP. Points will mean something. A server in Tier 1 will be the best server. Not a server with best coverage.

And about loot: When you do something hard you should get rewarded more then you do something easy. So pvdooring when there is no opposition should reward less then when you are outnumbered.. I hope everyone agrees with this.

KOK.2650:

Can we nerf the gain when it is MY off-peak hour and YOUR peak time as well since at that time MY SERVER is outmanned.

Hence why superiority based scoring might actually work. What happen during YOUR off peak hours is irrelevant. For this system there is no specific “off-peak hour”. Every hour is off-peak hour until people actually start fighting for objectives. It apply equally for all three servers, no matter the time, no matter the map. It is simply based on who is fighting who where and who brought the most overwhelming force (ie zerg) to a small area. Will the server holding all objectives unopposed during the night still get score? Of course, just not as much as it does now. Not because its nighttime, simply because there are no players near them. Its not about removing the existing system, just slapping area based player count adjustment of score on top of it.

Anet would never do this. I mean they havent even done a tickbox with “private” for the commander tag in a year, this is so much more complicated it would take them at least 200-250 years to do. But still cant hurt to dream of ideas.

I have a solution Come to JQ

Fuzzion.2504:

I have a solution Come to JQ

I agree! We should nerf NA Prime hours since all everyone does in whine about PPT during that zone and we should just take it off the table. Only count 11pm to 1pm server time and the rest is just for giggles.

Seriously, the problem isn’t nightcapping or any other red herrings; it’s the RNG matchup system.

Every server T3 and up has significant off-hours presence. The only exceptions (SBI and IoJ) are already moving up the ranks and should be in T4 and higher within a month or so.

I feel bad for the pure NA server that puts up a good fight against SoS or DB and then sees their gains vanished in the morning; but this has been a thing since day one.

People are just griping about it again because servers that never had to face significant off-hours servers are now getting exposure and are heavy with QQ.

I say stop making these servers have to face servers that out-coverage them.

Wait what? When did SBI get off-hours coverage? Did you see what BP did to our BL today during the off-hours?

And if you thought the RNG matchups were bad, get ready to face SoR, JQ and BG too!

My solution is for people to stop caring about PPT and stop treating it like its actually a metric to measure anything other than coverage/population.

I definitely disagree with punishing anyone off-peak. I do however think that across the board, points should be awarded based on # of people on the map. That would also allow the league to be more competitive as a T1 server is matched against T3.

Only problem with off-peak hours is the off-peak hour threads. I think we can solve that though.

I don’t understand why they don’t just remove the PPT system all together. Taking a keep gives points. Defending a keep gives more. No players around to take the keep? No one gets points. No players around to defend the keep? The attackers don’t get much. A team holding their frontier could potentially have more points than the opposing team that had the rest of the world simply because they defended what they had from attackers.

Would this encourage tower flipping? Maybe. More than the current ascended mats do? I doubt it.

I think that the idea with splitting the score into 3 timezones would be better. When a server is dominating by more than 20K in a timezone it starts getting less points for uncontested objectives and capturing objectives on maps where they have higher than 100 percent pop. If the gap goes to lower than 20K it resets to regular. Its still worth it to control the map as all your structures and upgrades transfer to the next timezone. But this way the effect of night/day cap will be lower and guilds will want to spread out a bit more.

Atherakhia.4086:

I don’t understand why they don’t just remove the PPT system all together. Taking a keep gives points. Defending a keep gives more. No players around to take the keep? No one gets points. No players around to defend the keep? The attackers don’t get much. A team holding their frontier could potentially have more points than the opposing team that had the rest of the world simply because they defended what they had from attackers.

Would this encourage tower flipping? Maybe. More than the current ascended mats do? I doubt it.

I suggested a while back a system of capped points, in lieu of the current PPT system.

Like I have been saying, and it is my opinion but I think its valid:

ANET gave little thought to WvW in terms of realistic scoring issues. So essentially you got a week-long PVP match with with siege to use on the walls/gates protecting the circles.

Seriously, if you have every played PVP in this game the most successful groups (points wise) are those that make a conscientious effort to hold as many caps as they can for as long as they can. The problem I have with it, is that it starts to be more about “objective capping/holding” and less about PVP.

Likewise WvW suffers from the same issue(s), with the biggest difference being that the match last for much longer (1-week vs 500pts), therefore the population/participation differences are much greater.

Dream In A Dream.7213:

I think that the idea with splitting the score into 3 timezones would be better. When a server is dominating by more than 20K in a timezone it starts getting less points for uncontested objectives and capturing objectives on maps where they have higher than 100 percent pop. If the gap goes to lower than 20K it resets to regular. Its still worth it to control the map as all your structures and upgrades transfer to the next timezone. But this way the effect of night/day cap will be lower and guilds will want to spread out a bit more.

With that first sentence I thought you had something. But they have repeatedly said they are not going to modiy the points that people can get based on time zone or map population.

What I thought you were going to say is what would be awesome. That is to split the matches into 3 timezones. Three different matches within a match.

Or even better three entirely different matches based on timezone. Each timezone has its own rating and is matched up accordingly.

So for North America, matches run from:

4pm ServerTime – midnight ServerTime
Midnight ServerTime – 8am ServerTime
8am ServerTime – 4pm ServerTime
(These are just an example off the top of my head, there may be a better time split but you get the idea.)

Presto, no more nightcapping, daycapping, workcapping, schoolcapping, whatevercapping.

I understand and I can see you have good intention.

Don’t take my opinion as flaming or trolling but these type of threads never goes any where mainly because as long as players are free to join NA or EU servers as they’re please,there is really no off peak hour. Your off peak hour is prime time some where else, and Anet should continue to encourage that choice to keep WvWvW running the way as it was intended.

In addition, most ideas are based around PPT. It’s not healthy for WvW. I’m not saying it’s not important or it’s not a main objective but for some (or a lot), it is not. It’s the feeling you get when you run out of your spawn to kick some other server’s kitten any time of day, whether it’s solo, part of small havoc, or in zerg WHILE assisting in gaining overall.

For me, WvWvW’s charisma comes from it’s equivalents to War. You fight to conquer, you defend to survive. You do whatever it takes(within Rules of Conduct, of course) anytime of the day, to win a fight for your group, your guild, or for your server.

Imagine Anet implement such thing as “time out” or “you get 1/3 of this or 2/3 of that if you want to come out and fight around this time of day”. Anet might as well tell the rest of the World or even NA that can only plays late night or early morning to screw themselves and only allow WvW from 9-10PM.

If that happens, Anet will lose a lot of people, if not most. Then there won’t be night capping, day capping, or any capping at all.