Guild Wars 2

Rieselle.5079:

WvW should revolve around fights.

- Holding objectives doesn’t award points.
- Instead, holding objectives will grant points and bonuses when your party/squad defeats an enemy.
- So the more objectives you hold, the more points your server gets per kill, and the more personal rewards you get when you or a party member makes a kill.

With this system, holding objectives is still important, but at the same time you’re encouraged to fight, both personally and as a server.

This may sound great if you think about it the honorable way – we are great warriors defending against foes trying to kill us and take our keep!!!

This is not the reality of WvW and its players. If you think a little more, you might realize that what would happen is this:

The guild Ninjabaseballbatmanquaggans take 10 peeps to defend a keep. 5 comes to attack, but low and behold they throw themselves on the guildies swords. Over and over and over again. Why? Because its the same darn guilds free accounts on the other server. And thats how you win a matchup.

Getting points by some fluffy definition of what “defense” is will be so easily abused.

Jana.6831:

I really think having a dynamic “PPT” depending on how many players on each side would be the best idea – with the bigger group still having a slight advantage.

I would worry that servers would play in bursts to gain a lead and then sandbag, intentionally keep the population low, so that other servers couldn’t make a comeback. I think this could easily be manipulated by clever servers or alliances.

Aezyr.5304:

In addition you get points for killing dolyaks and sentries. So there are indeed other sources for the war score. Before PPK enabled it was around 30% points not from tick.
I don’t know the current share but I would guess it will be around 40%.

I have data analysis from before and after the addition of PPK. Prior to PPK about 60% of the points came from PPT. The other 40% was from yak delievers, yak kills, and vets … but the bulk of those points was yaks. I was able to approximate score within a 2% error.
You can see it on the front page of the linked pdf: PPSC is Points Per Supply Caravan. This is passive scoring that occurs from yak supply deliveries. Total is my estimated total and Actual is actual final score.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w27c6nhj4x7rz7t/2016-01-03.report.pdf?dl=0
After the implementation of PPK the error jumped as can be seen on a more recent report:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hn8juejc6kja2zu/2016-03-06_1-1.report.pdf?dl=0

Since the API is currently not reporting Kills and Deaths accurately I cannot at this time incorporate the kills into my calculation. But you can tell by the jump in the error which is between 8% and 11% in some cases that this is likely what the PPK contribution to score is.

EDIT: What I am beginning to think is that something like PPSC could be used to supplant PPT since it essentially just adds on to the territorial score. So Ditching PPT for PPSC + Points per Capture(PPC) + Points for Objective Upgrades(PPU) and PPK might actually be a good system.

If Anet ever fixes the kills in the API I could approximate what the scores would look like under this type of system. It would be nice to have yak delivers and kill in the API.

You’ll never fix PPT so its no use trying. Too many players would have strokes if they were told they actually have to use their weapons instead of siege. The best thing anet could do is create a new “league” that caters to the wants of fight-focused players, and let those players transfer. PPT’ers and fighters are so far apart in terms of wants and needs that it is better to just let them self-segregate.

How you do points is difficult. How do you reward one side for winning a battle? Should you get more points for winning against a larger force? Probably? Should you lose points for running away? It depends. Let’s face it, PPT is a really really easy scoring system for anet. One that rewards actually fighting is difficult. I’d suggest that if anet actually created a fight league, points per side/faction/server would be unnecessary. I would argue that my guild and most of the people I play with could really care less about points, so why do we even need a points system? It would make more sense to instead reward individual players with the kind of loot that is awarded in spvp-style reward tracks.

The way I see it is this: in the opinion of most fighters, points are arbitrary and stupid. I can’t speak for others, but my guild only really ppt’s when there are no fights. We’ll attack a tower out of boredom, or a keep just to make swords on the map to bring the enemy out. As was previously mentioned, a point system that is designed to reward fights is just going to be gamed anyway, so why bother. Reward the player and/or the guild for victories, not the server.

Osu.6307:

You’ll never fix PPT so its no use trying. Too many players would have strokes if they were told they actually have to use their weapons instead of siege. The best thing anet could do is create a new “league” that caters to the wants of fight-focused players, and let those players transfer. PPT’ers and fighters are so far apart in terms of wants and needs that it is better to just let them self-segregate.

How you do points is difficult. How do you reward one side for winning a battle? Should you get more points for winning against a larger force? Probably? Should you lose points for running away? It depends. Let’s face it, PPT is a really really easy scoring system for anet. One that rewards actually fighting is difficult. I’d suggest that if anet actually created a fight league, points per side/faction/server would be unnecessary. I would argue that my guild and most of the people I play with could really care less about points, so why do we even need a points system? It would make more sense to instead reward individual players with the kind of loot that is awarded in spvp-style reward tracks.

I agree they should give fight guilds an arena. However ditching the strategic element of territorial control is a bit narrow minded given that some of us like that sort of game.

Again, this notion of it must be one or the other (Fights vs PPT/territorial control) is not productive.

I don’t think fight guilds want an arena. We already have arenas in our guild halls. Fighting on wvw maps is more fun. We like using terrain, setting up ambushes, coordinating with other guilds, etc. If you think we MUST have some arbitrary point system, one is as good as another. I wouldn’t get rid of EBG or keeps and towers, as long as there is some sort of incentive in place that rewards fighting for the objective, not just sitting on it.

The people who don’t want any sort of ppt basically just want PvP.

Osu.6307:

I don’t think fight guilds want an arena. We already have arenas in our guild halls. Fighting on wvw maps is more fun. We like using terrain, setting up ambushes, coordinating with other guilds, etc. If you think we MUST have some arbitrary point system, one is as good as another. I wouldn’t get rid of EBG or keeps and towers, as long as there is some sort of incentive in place that rewards fighting for the objective, not just sitting on it.

Fight guilds can already fight on the map. So what is the problem? That fights alone don’t win the week?

If I were a fight guild, I would encourage all fight guilds to move to the lower tiers so that they can control and regulate the PPT and have their fights and set their siege ground rules and GvG to their hearts content. Let the PPT players hold the upper tiers and backcap each other ad nauseam.

Link.1049:

The people who don’t want any sort of ppt basically just want PvP.

They want sGvG … structured Guild vs Guild.

And Anet should give it to them.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Link.1049:

The people who don’t want any sort of ppt basically just want PvP.

They want sGvG … structured Guild vs Guild.
And Anet should give it to them.

Should just send them all a copy of guild wars 1 and be done with it, because they will most likely never get that game mode catered to just them in gw2, Anet has a lot of broken stuff to worry about fixing right now than adding more new stuff. They added obsidian sanctum, they added an arena to guildhalls, (mind you should be bigger and I don’t know who’s boneheaded idea that was when they already had OS as a template to follow and guildhalls certainly are big enough to hold a bigger arena), they have huge maps to roam around looking for fights.

TorquedSoul.8097:

If I were a fight guild, I would encourage all fight guilds to move to the lower tiers so that they can control and regulate the PPT and have their fights and set their siege ground rules and GvG to their hearts content. Let the PPT players hold the upper tiers and backcap each other ad nauseam.

Hello Tier 3 Mags/CD/SBI last year before it fell apart, they won’t go lower as they get less guilds and pugs to fight on the days they’re not gvging.

As for structures taking them out would be a mistake, they provide points and also serve as a place to promote fights, right down to the towers on the alpine and ebg maps which you can use to take other structures, new map not so much. With or without point scoring structures can always be made useful for a place to promote fights.

TorquedSoul.8097:

I personally don’t think that eliminating all forms of territorial scoring in WvW is possible.

But I have heard quite a few comments about ditching it and I’m curious what you would replace it with.

Points per Cap may eliminate the disproportionate advantage of off hours capping, but doesn’t change the fact that those that like to PvD will still have the advantage. The score difference may not be as pronounce but the advantage would be.

Dumping for PPK doesn’t work as PPK is a function of activity not skill. So the more active servers will simply have more kills.

Using KDR doesn’t work either as it really doesn’t scale and will generally encourage score oriented forces to take positions where they can get the most defensive advantage (i.e bunker/siege up.)

Those are the three that I have considered, what are your thoughts?

It needs to be a combination of things, entire systems, not just focusing on one aspect.

Points Per Capture (or Points Per Defense), Points Per Kill are just starters and need to be in, while PPT needs to be eliminated.

PPK needs to be adjusted, so that the scoring reflects harder win conditions for outnumbered groups etc. For example if a group of 20 players wipes a group of 50, their personal rewards as well as the score should reflect the additional challenge, whereas if a group of 60 wipes a group of 15, then it needs to be reversed.

TorquedSoul.8097:

I would worry that servers would play in bursts to gain a lead and then sandbag, intentionally keep the population low, so that other servers couldn’t make a comeback. I think this could easily be manipulated by clever servers or alliances.

One more reason to have a fight league with substantial guild and individual rewards, and only minimal server rewards. No points means no gaming the system. Let us play with like-minded players rather than deal with this cancerous ppt mentality.

Osu.6307:

TorquedSoul.8097:

I would worry that servers would play in bursts to gain a lead and then sandbag, intentionally keep the population low, so that other servers couldn’t make a comeback. I think this could easily be manipulated by clever servers or alliances.

One more reason to have a fight league with substantial guild and individual rewards, and only minimal server rewards. No points means no gaming the system. Let us play with like-minded players rather than deal with this cancerous ppt mentality.

There is nothing cancerous about PPT. Maybe you don’t like the play style but it is not fundamentally bad. All you do by saying such things is illustrate how strong your bias is.

PPT leads to more fights, whether you like it or not.

And I still agree that Anet should give the GvG crowd and arena to have their fair fights. But that does not mean that capture oriented play/scoring should be eliminated.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Osu.6307:

TorquedSoul.8097:

I would worry that servers would play in bursts to gain a lead and then sandbag, intentionally keep the population low, so that other servers couldn’t make a comeback. I think this could easily be manipulated by clever servers or alliances.

One more reason to have a fight league with substantial guild and individual rewards, and only minimal server rewards. No points means no gaming the system. Let us play with like-minded players rather than deal with this cancerous ppt mentality.

There is nothing cancerous about PPT. Maybe you don’t like the play style but it is not fundamentally bad. All you do by saying such things is illustrate how strong your bias is.

PPT leads to more fights, whether you like it or not.

And I still agree that Anet should give the GvG crowd and arena to have their fair fights. But that does not mean that capture oriented play/scoring should be eliminated.

You are incorrect.

The fundimental flaw of PPT is that empty unattended structures / objectives continue to reward for absolute zero effort, zero activity, zero player involvement. And that needs to be fixed, it is a huge flaw.

You are correct that objectives draw fights and provide most interesting ones, far moreso then GVG. There is just simply nothing better in WVW then an underdog group taking out a much bigger group via use of tactics and coordination. Having done my share of GVGs, I can say GVGs and their “fair” approach can’t even remotely hold a candle to this. They’re not even in the same league.

Personally, I found GVGs to be extremely boring and the GVG playerbase at least in part hostile to other players in WVW as well as being extremely hypocritical and often unable to perform on levels of more straight out WVW oriented or zerg busting guilds. While not all of them fit this, many do.

To keep players drawn objectives for fights, I would use a PPC rather then PPT system, where both points per capture and points per defense provide multitudes greater rewards then they do currently, both in terms of score for the server as well as personal rewards.

In fact, in addition I would tie personal rewards into the server score. For example, if player X completes a reward track which includes both objective and player kills, then that completion could also award X number of points for the server. If enough players on a server complete such, then it can alter the total outcome, and add to that I would give scoring bonuses if the track / achievement / event or whatever is completed in large part while under the effect of outmanned buff.

In this way, people would have a great positive incentive to congregate and fight over objectives, as well as being rewarded for actual participation instead of “just being present”.

Tongku.5326:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Osu.6307:

TorquedSoul.8097:

I would worry that servers would play in bursts to gain a lead and then sandbag, intentionally keep the population low, so that other servers couldn’t make a comeback. I think this could easily be manipulated by clever servers or alliances.

One more reason to have a fight league with substantial guild and individual rewards, and only minimal server rewards. No points means no gaming the system. Let us play with like-minded players rather than deal with this cancerous ppt mentality.

There is nothing cancerous about PPT. Maybe you don’t like the play style but it is not fundamentally bad. All you do by saying such things is illustrate how strong your bias is.

PPT leads to more fights, whether you like it or not.

And I still agree that Anet should give the GvG crowd and arena to have their fair fights. But that does not mean that capture oriented play/scoring should be eliminated.

You are incorrect.

The fundimental flaw of PPT is that empty unattended structures / objectives continue to reward for absolute zero effort, zero activity, zero player involvement. And that needs to be fixed, it is a huge flaw.

You are correct that objectives draw fights and provide most interesting ones, far moreso then GVG. There is just simply nothing better in WVW then an underdog group taking out a much bigger group via use of tactics and coordination. Having done my share of GVGs, I can say GVGs and their “fair” approach can’t even remotely hold a candle to this. They’re not even in the same league.

Personally, I found GVGs to be extremely boring and the GVG playerbase at least in part hostile to other players in WVW as well as being extremely hypocritical and often unable to perform on levels of more straight out WVW oriented or zerg busting guilds. While not all of them fit this, many do.

To keep players drawn objectives for fights, I would use a PPC rather then PPT system, where both points per capture and points per defense provide multitudes greater rewards then they do currently, both in terms of score for the server as well as personal rewards.

In fact, in addition I would tie personal rewards into the server score. For example, if player X completes a reward track which includes both objective and player kills, then that completion could also award X number of points for the server. If enough players on a server complete such, then it can alter the total outcome, and add to that I would give scoring bonuses if the track / achievement / event or whatever is completed in large part while under the effect of outmanned buff.

In this way, people would have a great positive incentive to congregate and fight over objectives, as well as being rewarded for actual participation instead of “just being present”.

We have discussed the notion of PPC earlier in the thread and I think it is a pretty good idea particularly when scaled to tier. And having points for upgrades achieved while keeping the points from yak deliveries as a milder form of PPT that can be contested by killing yaks and taking camps.

When I say PPT I generally mean capture activity. I will be more careful with my use of the term.

joneirikb.7506:

Serious.7083:

Each group has issues with the other’s mode of play, you will not find a simple option that allows both groups to always play harmoniously together.

One way to solve this could be to give different maps different scoring systems. And have on map that encourages fighting and gaining points through fighting.

Combined with the existing EBG for PPT etc.

Instead of trying to make one system to fit everyone, give everyone a “play ground” they like to play in. The total points can be given for different things, and added together to see how the server does as a total.

There is a WvW map with no PPT at all: Obsidian Sanctum. It is not very popular.

psizone.8437:

I’d make the following changes:
-PPT is only active in EB, make it tick over every hour instead of every 15 minutes and make it so upgraded Towers and Keeps are worth more to encourage holding things.
-Buff PPK a bit to make fighting servers more viable for scoring.
-Make it so that losing your Towers and Keeps in your Borderlands removes points from your server (more points per tier) to encourage defending your home Border and attacking enemy ones to lower their score. Recapping adds points back but only the equivalent of a paper Tower or Keep so losing a T2 or T3 position hurts a lot more (say you lose 10 points for a T1 Tower and 30 points for a T3 Tower, recapping would add 10 points regardless of what Tier it was when you lost it).

With fewer points from PPT with the removal of Borderlands PPT means losing a zerg fight or a Tower or Keep on your home border actually has consequences.

This also means servers that are great at defense would be able to keep their scores from dropping and servers with fighting guilds can gain points through killing enemy zergs and pug zergs can contribute by lowering the enemy score by capping their Borderlands or any mix of the three.

You’d sometimes need to make a choice of defending your Borderland and prevent points from dropping at the risk of losing your EB area and your PPT dropping.

this is a pretty well balanced approach, one that i can agree with. however, population must be fixed first cuz if there arent any people or there are gross imbalances then scoring doesnt matter. a possible fix to population is dynamic map capacity, or basically megaserver for wvw. it ruins server pride, but like i said about scoring pride doesnt matter if there arent any people to be proud lol.

also pvd should not be allowed. doors should be immune to player damage like everything else. pvd has been a problem for as long as i can remember, and its crazy that it hasnt been fixed yet. this is one of the reasons that makes me think anet has completely lost touch with wvw.

I think that if I were to remove PPT, I would replace it with Points Per Defense/Assault. Now defended or assaulted objectives yield points when completed successfully.

1. If one server is dominating the other 2, it will promote the dominating server to push to defense (multiple defend events) for points.

2. It makes multiple attack forces a better strategy to earn points, hopefully breaking up blobs.

3. Kills when assaulting give points, but kills when defending grant better points/xp/loot.

I personally think it would be a good change. A successful defend tick would offset a good amount of points gained from an assaulting force. So even if it is a failed defense, it isn’t a complete waste of time.

Likewise assaulting forces would want to try to quickly take objectives and keep them soft to prevent prolonged defensive engagements.

Gaz.1320:

I think that if I were to remove PPT, I would replace it with Points Per Defense/Assault. Now defended or assaulted objectives yield points when completed successfully.

I would then have entire server bunkering in the spawn, preferably with golems, capturing and losing the keep over and over again.

You can’t do wvw here without a point system.

Scoring is like CTF but CTF on a 24 hours scale does seem a bit hard to relate.

Instead of scoring concept, I would suggest a more aggressive yet rewarding system. A system that is more war like than the current. Also, seeing that the overhaul is around the corner, in april or something, I do not know what the overhaul will bring. Some spectacle that server will no longer exist and replace by fraction like system. If that is so, what I suggest is instead of PPT, any fraction that lost their stronghold will be penalized such that they have significant negative buffs for few hours in their pve activities (less gold earn from dungeons, less drops, less xp earn, less karma, less everything) while the invaders that successfully taken the stronghold will gain golds, items and etc.

Then again, I doubt it will happen.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Serious.7083:

Problem starts with there being two radically different groups of people mixed in the same area.

PPK/GvG people don’t want to defend locations like keeps and towers, they just want to generally ‘have good fights’ and preferably beat the enemy into the ground. Often you will find guild groups just running around ignoring any call to defend or help capture anything. Most have no real interest in points or scoring or WvW in it’s present form.

PPT people take over keeps and towers then place siege, their aim is to keep the enemy out and keep the points rolling in. They will immediately go to a tower that’s under attack and defend it. WvW was seemingly designed for PPT people.

Each group has issues with the other’s mode of play, you will not find a simple option that allows both groups to always play harmoniously together.

What is needed is another large scale PvP game mode that is purely for GvG/PPK people. WvW is not really suitable for them and a different option would be preferred.

This is why I bring this up. WvW is PPT. There is no escaping that fact.

The bulk of the complaints about the game mode come from fight guilds who are looking for some sort of structure in WvW to have a ‘fair’ fight which is never going to happen.

The point of PPT is to generate territorial disputes that lead to fun fights. However the problems with balancing server populations and timezone populations makes this unlikely in the games current state.

Anet should give the fight guilds a structured arena. I think they will still participate in WvW but will be more accepting of what WvW is and not try to turn it into something it is not.

I still believe the problem with PPT is population balance both across servers and timezones. And no amount of fixing fight mechanics is going to fix WvW current problems. It may make fight guilds happy because they are not actually playing the game of WvW … they are just looking for fights.

But my experience has shown that just about every time a fight commander loses a fight it is somehow Anet’s fault. And every now and again a fight commander will win in spite of Anet.

Short of giving every fight commander a “me win” button, they will always claim that more balancing is required to make the game exactly they way it needs to be for them personally to win. Essentially the are asking Anet to adjust the game to their style of tactics.

The futility of the situation grows daily.

+1

I agree with much of what you’ve said here. Personally I don’t know how they could get around a point system. WvW and GvG both like good fights from what I’ve experienced, but to determine a winner for 24/7 WvW play there is more to it than just trading punches and holding an objective like in the pvp arena. WvW is a grand battle scheme with many diverse factors. Its not just a slug-fest.

Anet should update Obsidian Sanctum.
It’s the perfect place for GvG (pre-arranged), and could be reorganized to make it a good battlefield for fight guilds.

Stand The Wall.6987:

this is a pretty well balanced approach, one that i can agree with. however, population must be fixed first cuz if there arent any people or there are gross imbalances then scoring doesnt matter. a possible fix to population is dynamic map capacity, or basically megaserver for wvw. it ruins server pride, but like i said about scoring pride doesnt matter if there arent any people to be proud lol.

Population definitely needs to be fixed before any large changes like this.

Instead of making a megaserver WvW I’d prefer them to attempt a merger of some of the lower populated servers into some of the higher populated ones (to get them all in line with the top 3 servers) which would lower the amount of servers we have but allow all the servers to be able to compete with each other. That way, once we get past the disruption of moving communities, we can integrate and forge new ones instead of losing them altogether by creating a megaserver system.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Link.1049:

The people who don’t want any sort of ppt basically just want PvP.

They want sGvG … structured Guild vs Guild.

And Anet should give it to them.

No, no they shouldn’t – it’s called WVW and not GVG for a reason…

If players want PVP, go to, what’s that game mode called again, oh yea, PVP .

nativity.3057:

Anet should update Obsidian Sanctum.
It’s the perfect place for GvG (pre-arranged), and could be reorganized to make it a good battlefield for fight guilds.

^this^

If you want to have PvP w/ more people than are allowed in PvP (“large scale PvP”), then go into O/S; there’s a pretty little arena in there just for you all!

Nothing short of having a competitive gvg mode with all the bells and whistles and rewards and ladders and tournaments… will do anything to inspire guilds.

No PPT will mean the side with the bigger Zerg will just camp the side with the smaller Zerg, and the outmanned side will have no incentive to risk coming out.

It would be the final straw for WvW.

sparc.3649:

nativity.3057:

Anet should update Obsidian Sanctum.
It’s the perfect place for GvG (pre-arranged), and could be reorganized to make it a good battlefield for fight guilds.

^this^

If you want to have PvP w/ more people than are allowed in PvP (“large scale PvP”), then go into O/S; there’s a pretty little arena in there just for you all!

… which is exactly what they did. On popular demand, they changed OS from a jumping puzzle only map to have the huge dueling/GvG arena as well.

What, people forgot about that? O.o

From reddit, someone told me to post it here. My thoughts:

This is not yet another post of complaining about WvW, I know it is being rebuilt (some of the features). It is instead to emphasize the problem of the WvW in the scoring system and propose some ways to improve it.
I may start this post sayign that I don’t know how Anet is going to change this when it comes, this ideas might be in their minds already or around on other posts. Decided to make this post when taking a look into the API.
Basically, was making some statistics on servers and trying to get some graphs to myself. Since today is reset day is the day when I take a look on the matchup that is ending and taking a look on what happened.
I am talking in this case of a specific Matchup (2-3 in EU)(might be another as well, just this one since this is the most remarcable one). This matchup faces Piken Square (Blue) vs Elona Reach (Green) vs Far Shiverpeaks (Red)
First of all. Taking a look at score it currently says (409.863 for Piken, 153.580 for Far Shiverpeaks and 287.635 for Elona Reach). There is obviously a big difference in points, and having a little knowleadge about the Matchup you will see that FSP had few people during the week, while Piken and Elona Reach had way more.
Until now everything seems normal right? A server gets beaten by another one (or by other two).
Well, now let’s check at leaderboard. FSP lost 30k points in overall leaderboard while Piken won 40k. How is this possible? In a single week? Well in this case FSP lost a lot of commanders and players so it might be normal that Piken took this advantage,a s well as ER.
Finally checking at Kills and Deaths from API tells:
….
“deaths”: {
“red”: 15532,
“blue”: 20691,
“green”: 18054
},

“kills”: {
“red”: 15091,
“blue”: 25482,
“green”: 11509
},
….
What we can see here is that red server (FSP) killed more than Green one (ER) and died less than them. This means that even with PPK they are 150k behind the second server, having played better than them during the week fight wise.
What this exposes is that PPK means nothing (which we knew) and after talking with many people, from many servers and mentalities in WvW, I will expose what I think.
Scoring system is broken. Something we already knew. Night crews will break the Matchup since some servers will have players from antoher timezones (for the case of EU, might have oceanic/American players that might have a group at night). This makes night cap (understanding night cap as night for EU in this case) count much more than daily points. Let’s say having a good tick (for example 300 tick against 180 and 170) for 4 hours when it’s prime time, which should be hard to achieve, means nothing when other server can have a 50 man group during night and yours have 15 overall. Why playing and making an effort during day when you know other server will have more people and PPT more during night? Lost effort
PPT is the only way to score. System encourages servers to avoid fighting and go free PPT everywhere. If you fight, you are not taking points from structures. Taking a look at scores and knowing 1 kill = 1 point, PPK system means in a 340k average matchup roughly a 2-5% of the final score. Avoiding fights and go spamming 1 on structures to take them is better for winning the matchup. This makes some servers avoid any kind of fight and leave a map if they know another blob is in the same map.
So with previous premises, what I would suggest to balance scoring is the following (I don’t know how to solve population imbalance tho, maybe 1 day matchups or merge some severs, no idea really on this)
Make the score be calculated not only for pure PPT points. Add some variables to the thing. For example (will need some changes to balance them):
Server gets points for position in killing people from other servers. In this case I exposed before server Blue will have more than Red, which will have more than Green
Server that dies the less gets more points. Red gets more points than Green that will take more points than Blue.
Server that gets a better Kill/Death ratio gets more points: Blue (25482/20691=1.23) gets more points than Red (15091/15532=0.97) that gets more than Green (11509/18054=0.64).
Server that gets mroe PPT points gets more points. In this case Blue > Green > Red
Add some more things to the formula. This way, it encourages all kind of game styles, makes better for servers with less population (which probbably will die less for example) and makes the thing a bit more balanced, even in a Matchup where 1 server scores 250k more points than last server in the matchup.

psizone.8437:

Population definitely needs to be fixed before any large changes like this.

Instead of making a megaserver WvW I’d prefer them to attempt a merger of some of the lower populated servers into some of the higher populated ones (to get them all in line with the top 3 servers) which would lower the amount of servers we have but allow all the servers to be able to compete with each other. That way, once we get past the disruption of moving communities, we can integrate and forge new ones instead of losing them altogether by creating a megaserver system.

population does yes.

so you want to merge only some of the servers? that doesnt make sense, population imbalance is not a lower tier only thing. it also wouldnt be fair to only merge some servers while leaving others untouched.

i agree that megaserver wvw would be a huge mistake, but only because of its current problems (maps constantly closing, high pop maps make if impossible for groups to play together). i think if these were addressed then it could work, and like i said in a previous post, i think most people would prioritize population over server pride. why should people worry about server pride when they have no one to fight?

sparc.3649:

nativity.3057:

Anet should update Obsidian Sanctum.
It’s the perfect place for GvG (pre-arranged), and could be reorganized to make it a good battlefield for fight guilds.

^this^

If you want to have PvP w/ more people than are allowed in PvP (“large scale PvP”), then go into O/S; there’s a pretty little arena in there just for you all!

im pretty sure gvg guilds represent a significant portion of the wvw community, or at least they did before they all left due to no official support for their game mode (which many actually bought the game for).

in case you hadnt noticed, os was used for gvgs. for a long time. then anet made some horrible decisions for pvp that impacted everything in wvw the wrong way. you also said go pvp if you want to gvg in a previous post?
my god the ignorance.

Assuming PPT is not going away (I think that’s a fair assumption), I think the best way to tweak it is to introduce scaling to PPT to take into account relative populations. For example, when wvw populations are the at the highest point for the day (like NA primetime for NA servers), PPT is at 100%. However, when population levels drop to 50% of peak, PPT also drops to 50%. Nightcappers can still cap at night, and they still get the same individual rewards for flipping keeps, but since holding territory when there is no one around to take it back is not much of an accomplishment, the points drop accordingly. Further, when the BLs are completely empty, PPT drops to zero. Each side still retains its keeps and towers, and they upgrade normally, but the servers don’t get points for doing nothing.

Osu.6307:

Assuming PPT is not going away (I think that’s a fair assumption), I think the best way to tweak it is to introduce scaling to PPT to take into account relative populations. For example, when wvw populations are the at the highest point for the day (like NA primetime for NA servers), PPT is at 100%. However, when population levels drop to 50% of peak, PPT also drops to 50%. Nightcappers can still cap at night, and they still get the same individual rewards for flipping keeps, but since holding territory when there is no one around to take it back is not much of an accomplishment, the points drop accordingly. Further, when the BLs are completely empty, PPT drops to zero. Each side still retains its keeps and towers, and they upgrade normally, but the servers don’t get points for doing nothing.

its funny this is how i imagined wvw was (well not really but i certainly didnt imagine what we have had for so long) when i first started playing. oh how i was wrong…..

anyway 10/10 would elect

Osu.6307:

Assuming PPT is not going away (I think that’s a fair assumption), I think the best way to tweak it is to introduce scaling to PPT to take into account relative populations. For example, when wvw populations are the at the highest point for the day (like NA primetime for NA servers), PPT is at 100%. However, when population levels drop to 50% of peak, PPT also drops to 50%. Nightcappers can still cap at night, and they still get the same individual rewards for flipping keeps, but since holding territory when there is no one around to take it back is not much of an accomplishment, the points drop accordingly. Further, when the BLs are completely empty, PPT drops to zero. Each side still retains its keeps and towers, and they upgrade normally, but the servers don’t get points for doing nothing.

Forbid anyone from your server entering WvW when your team has less than 1/3rd of objectives?
Force players to idle in WvW to maximize PPT when your team has more than 1/3rd of objectives?
That does not sound right.

Yeah sorry ppt scaling according to population doesn’t work, the imbalance is still there even through the “peak” times. I assume peak times are determined when the greatest amount of players are on for all 3 servers, When are you determining this peak time? can’t exactly be determined right before the start of a new matchup when ppt begins.

Not to mention it will fluctuate, not every guild raids every night, not every server has their greatest amount of players logging on from 8-11pm. do you expect them to check every hour of every day? What happens when a server has enough off coverage to not bring the population lower than 50% of peak during their time? Same ole story? It would be a mess for them to try and determine peak populations for every matchup and then have to keep checking on server population constantly to determine the scoring “penalty”.

P.S Time Slice Scoring.

antonbalboa.7280:

First of all. Taking a look at score it currently says (409.863 for Piken, 153.580 for Far Shiverpeaks and 287.635 for Elona Reach). There is obviously a big difference in points, and having a little knowleadge about the Matchup you will see that FSP had few people during the week, while Piken and Elona Reach had way more.
Until now everything seems normal right? A server gets beaten by another one (or by other two).
Well, now let’s check at leaderboard. FSP lost 30k points in overall leaderboard while Piken won 40k. How is this possible? In a single week? Well in this case FSP lost a lot of commanders and players so it might be normal that Piken took this advantage,a s well as ER.

That weeks FSP vs Piken vs Elona matchup was a special case – several FSP guilds and some of its most prominent commanders left for Piken a day into the matchup. They exploited this by going full on blobbing PPT server and focused FSP with groups twice FSP size. On a nice note, FSP no longer queue EB in primetime, lol.

WvW without PPT? How would you do it?

A new game with Megaserverwith no shard/distric system :O :

-Continent with several maps, each map is unique.

-Capping spaces would be, supply camps for resources controlling, city(capital) divided in wall and interior map, more castles and less towers.

- Castles would be an extension of the GH with treasure room where every friday the guild who owns it will receive a good chest, longer time better loot, if guild manages to hold castle for several days and survives on Friday, a very very good chest will be rewarded.

-Add a system where guilds could declare war to others to take their stuff or form an alliance if choosen ally, being the game more based on guild/alliance fight than blob everything.

-better castle design more medieval design and less confuse, interior towers for rangers(players) when full updagraded.

-More tactical game, more thinking.

-More rewarding, guild that own camps would define supply paths, what resources to explore(depending what is avaliable on map or place) etc.

-more mechanics (non gimmick)

-ÑO treb wars.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Points per Capture + Points per Upgrade + Points per Kill would probably be a good system. The differences in capture rates are generally pretty small but having scaled rewards for reaching different tiers creates the need to attack and defend.

This would only encourage the EoTM mentality of doing the map in circles — blobbing and nothing but blobbing.

Stand The Wall.6987:

so you want to merge only some of the servers? that doesnt make sense, population imbalance is not a lower tier only thing. it also wouldnt be fair to only merge some servers while leaving others untouched.

i agree that megaserver wvw would be a huge mistake, but only because of its current problems (maps constantly closing, high pop maps make if impossible for groups to play together). i think if these were addressed then it could work, and like i said in a previous post, i think most people would prioritize population over server pride. why should people worry about server pride when they have no one to fight?

I’d say leaving the top populated servers and merging the others to keep them in line with them is pretty fair. If the number 1 server is substantially higher populated than the 2nd and 3rd then yes, merge some with them and work from there. The idea is to find a server (or a few) and use it as a “cap” to aim for and fill other servers to get them more in line with that.

It’s not only a lower tier problem but there is a huge gap in population between the higher and lower population servers. What should it matter if some server gets left untouched if it means that all of the servers end up on roughly equal footing?

Yes, people will prioritise population fixes over server pride as a whole but that doesn’t mean that server pride should be removed, it’s one of the biggest joys of the game mode and going the megaserver route may remove that community pride that most servers currently have. Merging would at least allow deleted servers to integrate and build up a new community and a new home to be proud of.

Jayne.9251:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Points per Capture + Points per Upgrade + Points per Kill would probably be a good system. The differences in capture rates are generally pretty small but having scaled rewards for reaching different tiers creates the need to attack and defend.

This would only encourage the EoTM mentality of doing the map in circles — blobbing and nothing but blobbing.

Well that already happens with the current setup. The concern that most have with PPT is that PPT allows massive passive scoring during the off hours. Killing the PPT passive scoring and using only yaks for passive scoring will dramatically reduce the impact of timezone population imbalances.

Backcapping will always happen during high activity periods. Its the nature of the game. Allowing points for upgrades would encourage servers to defend more often and scaling capture points by objective tier would encourage servers to attack higher tier objectives.

Given that yaks are now the deciding factor in upgrades, you could tie points to population by tying the yak spawn rate to relative population.

Of course merging NA and EU will resolved eliminate most of the problems with timezone imbalances but that is another discussion.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Of course merging NA and EU will resolved eliminate most of the problems with timezone imbalances but that is another discussion.

BITE YOUR TONGUE!

Leave EU alone!

Now shoo!

Then let’s not do PP Capture, but increase PP uprade, and make it so upgraded structures have some buff or special points gain mechanic other than PPT (maybe an upgraded structure gives extra PPK nearby?)

Jayne.9251:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Points per Capture + Points per Upgrade + Points per Kill would probably be a good system. The differences in capture rates are generally pretty small but having scaled rewards for reaching different tiers creates the need to attack and defend.

This would only encourage the EoTM mentality of doing the map in circles — blobbing and nothing but blobbing.

Jayne.9251:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Of course merging NA and EU will resolved eliminate most of the problems with timezone imbalances but that is another discussion.

BITE YOUR TONGUE!

Leave EU alone!

Now shoo!

Seconded – Don’t want to have a 200 ping again and also think that not locked tiers are a lot more fun. Solve your problems yourselves or come up with something different than “Let’s destroy Europe” tisk!

ETA: I feel I have to say something on topic:
I think PPT is neccessary – I think the PPK “buff” was a nice add and maybe we should have more of that, but if we scrap PPT completely it wouldn’t be a strategic game mode anymore – and upgraded structures still are important, even if you get waypoints in paper (except SM). When I started to bicker on my former servers because the commander had way more important things to do (chasing a solo roamer f.e.) than defending one of our T3 structures, it was usually: "If you don’t care for your T3 towers, people will stop upgrading. If they stop upgrading the best supply you can get is 500 and with that you can’t “feed” your zerg (for long) and attack anything". If there were no PPT there’d be absolutely no reason to come back from chasing solo roamers, so you’d have much less supply – unfortunately it takes a while until people get all the coherencies.

With my solution i would play a lot more because then it would be worth my time to defend a building, if you only get points when upgraded is done or when you defend / take a building. And then the main Points would come from kills, if it is to defend, to cap or open field combat.

Jana.6831:

Jayne.9251:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Of course merging NA and EU will resolved eliminate most of the problems with timezone imbalances but that is another discussion.

BITE YOUR TONGUE!

Leave EU alone!

Now shoo!

Seconded – Don’t want to have a 200 ping again and also think that not locked tiers are a lot more fun. Solve your problems yourselves or come up with something different than “Let’s destroy Europe” tisk!

ETA: I feel I have to say something on topic:
I think PPT is neccessary – I think the PPK “buff” was a nice add and maybe we should have more of that, but if we scrap PPT completely it wouldn’t be a strategic game mode anymore – and upgraded structures still are important, even if you get waypoints in paper (except SM). When I started to bicker on my former servers because the commander had way more important things to do (chasing a solo roamer f.e.) than defending one of our T3 structures, it was usually: "If you don’t care for your T3 towers, people will stop upgrading. If they stop upgrading the best supply you can get is 500 and with that you can’t “feed” your zerg (for long) and attack anything". If there were no PPT there’d be absolutely no reason to come back from chasing solo roamers, so you’d have much less supply – unfortunately it takes a while until people get all the coherencies.

The ping doesn’t have to be a problem. If Anet used the EU servers during and around EU prime and NA servers during and around NA prime there would be no ping issue except for those late night players.

This would require a short reset and synchronization a couple times a day but should be doable.

TorquedSoul.8097:

The ping doesn’t have to be a problem. If Anet used the EU servers during and around EU prime and NA servers during and around NA prime there would be no ping issue except for those late night players.

This would require a short reset and synchronization a couple times a day but should be doable.

I don’t want the reset every time I’m in wvw (it takes a few minutes) – and I don’t want to be the dog of NA just because they think they can’t play without having a 24/7 coverage – we’re pretty fine without it on EU (although I’d still like a PPT adjustment that depends on how many of each server are currently online).

Jana.6831:

TorquedSoul.8097:

The ping doesn’t have to be a problem. If Anet used the EU servers during and around EU prime and NA servers during and around NA prime there would be no ping issue except for those late night players.

This would require a short reset and synchronization a couple times a day but should be doable.

I don’t want the reset every time I’m in wvw (it takes a few minutes) – and I don’t want to be the dog of NA just because they think they can’t play without having a 24/7 coverage – we’re pretty fine without it on EU (although I’d still like a PPT adjustment that depends on how many of each server are currently online).

A daily reset wouldn’t take as long as a weekly reset because no MMR would be taking place. And if if they did merge you could continue to show your EU pride by simply building an all EU alliance.

More likely what would happen is the bracketing of times for For NA and EU if they don’t merge the systems. That is, no 24/7 … it would be more like 12/7.

Calibrating scoring to map population might create too much overhead and is unnecessarily complicated.

TorquedSoul.8097:

A daily reset wouldn’t take as long as a weekly reset because no MMR would be taking place. And if if they did merge you could continue to show your EU pride by simply building an all EU alliance.

More likely what would happen is the bracketing of times for For NA and EU if they don’t merge the systems. That is, no 24/7 … it would be more like 12/7.

Calibrating scoring to map population might create too much overhead and is unnecessarily complicated.

I have no idea what MMR is, actually, I just know that it took ~10 mins each time I changed to NA/EU – and I don’t want that on a daily basis.

It’s simple: a 24/7 coverage will never happen. What brought you guys to wanting a 24/7 coverage is oceanic players – EU players won’t save you.
I don’t think calibrating PPT is harder than trying to get 200 players who are used to play at the same time onto a map (NA and EU prime partly overlap as far as I remember). You can however force the merge and see the population drop by 50% because they don’t like it.

I want to keep my server, I want to play on EU, I’m sure those who speak German, French or Spanish would like to keep their servers as well.

Jana.6831:

TorquedSoul.8097:

A daily reset wouldn’t take as long as a weekly reset because no MMR would be taking place. And if if they did merge you could continue to show your EU pride by simply building an all EU alliance.

More likely what would happen is the bracketing of times for For NA and EU if they don’t merge the systems. That is, no 24/7 … it would be more like 12/7.

Calibrating scoring to map population might create too much overhead and is unnecessarily complicated.

I have no idea what MMR is, actually, I just know that it took ~10 mins each time I changed to NA/EU – and I don’t want that on a daily basis.

It’s simple: a 24/7 coverage will never happen. What brought you guys to wanting a 24/7 coverage is oceanic players – EU players won’t save you.
I don’t think calibrating PPT is harder than trying to get 200 players who are used to play at the same time onto a map (NA and EU prime partly overlap as far as I remember). You can however force the merge and see the population drop by 50% because they don’t like it.

I want to keep my server, I want to play on EU, I’m sure those who speak German, French or Spanish would like to keep their servers as well.

I see the potential global team community as a plus not a minus.

But to each their own suppose. :P

Yeah and I guess most EU players think like me; we don’t care about 24/7 coverage, that’s an NA fetish – so we wouldn’t take all kind of hurdles to play on but simply leave – and there goes your dream of EU coverage.