Guild Wars 2

Let me preface by saying that yes, I agree that night-capping is fair and the server with a better around-the-clock coverage deserves to win.

What I don’t agree, however, is that the current WvWvW implementation is fine as it is. Seriously, when you have people hotly debating night-capping from day one till one month post-launch, it is a sign that there are serious issues here.

Many people have already pointed out the core issues and I’ll just summarize the key points.

Night-capping is not fun
It is not fun if you have no hopes of winning for reasons outside of your control (recruiting players from other time zones? Yea, right, as though one could force players to join your server).

It is not fun to see your effort rendered worthless overnight.

It is not fun that leaving the spawn point is a huge pain at the start of single day.

Night-capping requires no tactics or coordination
Two of the biggest draws of WvWvW are its tactical and teamwork aspect. Many players have been drawn in under the impression that the server with the best tactics and coordination should win. Even when outnumbered, a well coordinated server with superior tactics should come out ahead.

But instead having better coverage becomes the sole determinant for the outcome of most WvWvW. Tactics? Coordination? Who cares when all those don’t matter.

Night-capping is not fun, and requires neither tactics nor coordination. It’s the complete opposite of what WvWvW should be.

And now I’m going to propose a way to fix this. The new implementation is still going to be fair, and there will be no discrimination against players from other time zones in any form. WvWvW is still going to be 24/7 (almost). Because similar ideas have appeared before, do read the whole idea instead of reading the first sentence and immediately jumped to the conclusion that this is not a fair solution.

The Fix
Divide 24 hours into say, 4 time slots of 6 hours each. Each time slot is going to run a separate instance of WvWvW.

Let me elaborate this further from the perspective of a server, say server A.

On day 1 hour 0 of WvWvW, server A gets paired up with server B and server C according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The WvWvW is initialized with the same territorial control as is currently implemented. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 6th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 1 hour 6, WvWvW reinitializes and server A gets paired up with server D and server E (D and E could be B and C, but it could also be some other different servers) according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 12th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 1 hour 12, WvWvW reinitializes and server A gets paired up with server F and server G (could be B, C, D, E or other servers, you get the point now) according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 18th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 1 hour 18, WvWvW reinitializes and server A gets paired up with server H and server I according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 24th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 2 hour 0, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 6th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

On day 2 hour 6, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 12th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

On day 2 hour 12, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 18th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

On day 2 hour 18, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 24th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

Repeat till the WvWvW cycle is over.

Pros

• No more night-capping
• WvWvW is still fair. Players from all time zone could experience and contribute in a similar fashion to WvWvW.
• WvWvW is more balance as during each time slot, servers should be matched with other servers of equal strength.

Cons

• WvWvW is no longer permanent and persistent (well, in a sense, it could be argued that it is actually more persistent for the players who only play during a particular time of the day).
• Some downtime in between time slots as server needs to record the current status and then load the status for the next time slot.
• Recording and resuming the WvWvW status is likely to be a huge resource drain on the physical servers (need comments from people with experience in managing servers).

That’s it. Comments and corrections are welcome.

Where do you get these kind of ideas when simply modifying the score board would address 80% of the complaints?

It strikes me as a very convoluted idea and far too complex for the nature of WvW.

I think it is a little early to talking about limiting wvwvw to time slots since there has only been 2 1-week matches. I know on my server we got rocked the first week, but now we have found 2 other servers that compete with us. I don’t like rotating servers every 6 hrs since upgrades and defense would be worthless as we will spend 30 min attacking npcs to capture towers and keeps instead of spending time to attack the other servers. Also this is a greater disadvantage to the lower ranked servers than the top ranked server. I’m pretty sure the top tier of servers can demolish the lower ranked servers in 1hr allowing them to push those servers to the spawn for the next 5 hrs. Also the weak servers will be pushed to the spawn by some of the mid tier servers and the only time that they can be competitive is when they are facing the 2 other lowest ranked servers.

Another issue I see is that you will be paired with servers that have different peak times. If one server can’t field a large population during the 6 hours then that match will be won by the other server by default.

Mira.4906:

I think it is a little early to talking about limiting wvwvw to time slots since there has only been 2 1-week matches. I know on my server we got rocked the first week, but now we have found 2 other servers that compete with us. I don’t like rotating servers every 6 hrs since upgrades and defense would be worthless as we will spend 30 min attacking npcs to capture towers and keeps instead of spending time to attack the other servers. Also this is a greater disadvantage to the lower ranked servers than the top ranked server. I’m pretty sure the top tier of servers can demolish the lower ranked servers in 1hr allowing them to push those servers to the spawn for the next 5 hrs. Also the weak servers will be pushed to the spawn by some of the mid tier servers and the only time that they can be competitive is when they are facing the 2 other lowest ranked servers.

Another issue I see is that you will be paired with servers that have different peak times. If one server can’t field a large population during the 6 hours then that match will be won by the other server by default.

Nope, two of the issues that you pointed out are not going to happen.

Upgrades and siege are part of what gets recorded at the end of the time slot. They will still be there the next day.

As for servers getting paired with servers with different peak times, nope, that doesn’t happen either. Each time slot has its own elo ranking. So as time progresses, the server should be facing server with about equal strength during the time slot. Just to reiterate, a server could be paired with different servers for different time slots, and the pairing is decided by the elo ratings for that particular time slots.