Guild Wars 2

So, in this stuggle to mitigate coverage issues and population imbalances, it seems to me that one easy fix would be to separate the servers into 3 8 hour time zones, so you’d have DB-NA, DB-OC, and DB-SEA, each timezone would accumulate glicko only during it’s 8 hour block of time. You could let people choose whatever timezone they wanted, and move about as they please within their server and have a lock in/down period for the tournaments. Then have individual scores for each timezone and rewards, and also have a total server score with some additional reward. You could keep the tiers and match-ups based on total server glicko. It would certainly change the dynamic because your server could be in T3 overall, but T1 in your timezone. I know it’s not perfect, but it might be a start…

Current 24/7 long match is meaningless. Who really cares who wins the coverage war outside T1?
I suggest divide things up into 8-hour-long matches. The matchup determination would be like what the OP described, using time-zone dependent glicko.

If I recall, at launch we had 24 hour matches, but people were getting burned out fighting after reset every day.

Previously I suggested that the matches be 3 days + 2 hours long. (ie. 74 hours)
This means “reset time” will change every match, so people in different timezones can enjoy the exciting post-reset gameplay.

3 days also seems like a good middle ground for match length.

I liked them better at 2 weeks, before they were cut down.

Exciton.8942:

Current 24/7 long match is meaningless. Who really cares who wins the coverage war outside T1?
I suggest divide things up into 8-hour-long matches. The matchup determination would be like what the OP described, using time-zone dependent glicko.

Who cares who wins? I would wager the 4 servers battling it out for 3 spots in tier 2 care a great deal.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I liked them better at 2 weeks, before they were cut down.

Exciton.8942:

Current 24/7 long match is meaningless. Who really cares who wins the coverage war outside T1?
I suggest divide things up into 8-hour-long matches. The matchup determination would be like what the OP described, using time-zone dependent glicko.

Who cares who wins? I would wager the 4 servers battling it out for 3 spots in tier 2 care a great deal.

Except rng decides the matchup with 3 of the 4 so close in Glicko…

Are you suggesting they don’t care who wins?

No chance of winning in the fa match. The one in t3 wins pretty handily. So the other 2 try to not lose too much glicko while tryng for 2nd that week….

Been that way for some time, so really it becomes more about having fun (which it should anyway)

Still, the coverage war is meaningless. The only competition between the T2 servers in terms of ppt game is that they each recruit more players. Most of these players are from T3 and below. This destroys lower tiers and is not making T2 any better.

Exciton.8942:

Still, the coverage war is meaningless. The only competition between the T2 servers in terms of ppt game is that they each recruit more players. Most of these players are from T3 and below. This destroys lower tiers and is not making T2 any better.

No, “this” doesn’t destroy anything. The players chose to leave. It is a players choice to do so. Others decided WvW wasn’t for them. Some take breaks. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that these are legitimate player choices. It is the communities doing. And if you were to limited or incapable of changing servers, their would be a massive outcry demanding it. Even games with only 3 realms have this issue. If you believe this is anything less then a problem of the players, by the players, you are wrong.

coglin.1867:

Exciton.8942:

Still, the coverage war is meaningless. The only competition between the T2 servers in terms of ppt game is that they each recruit more players. Most of these players are from T3 and below. This destroys lower tiers and is not making T2 any better.

No, “this” doesn’t destroy anything. The players chose to leave. It is a players choice to do so. Others decided WvW wasn’t for them. Some take breaks. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that these are legitimate player choices. It is the communities doing. And if you were to limited or incapable of changing servers, their would be a massive outcry demanding it. Even games with only 3 realms have this issue. If you believe this is anything less then a problem of the players, by the players, you are wrong.

Coglin,
I am curious what tier you play in, mainly because you are not correct. First of all, the lower tier servers have been gutted by guilds moving up tiers. My original server BP is a perfect example of that. We lost many big guilds, searching for fights or wins in the tournament. We were competitive in T3 but then things just got worse and worse, not just for our server, but also the ones in our tier and near. After a long time hoping things would get better we finally transfered to DB in T2/T3 disasterland. It’s definitely better than BP when we left, but now there are 4 servers for 3 slots. When a server rolls down to T3 its destroys the T3 servers, when you stay in or roll up to T2 it’s all 40-80 person blobs from FA, and they decide who takes second each week. They que every map. Even with FA beating the crap out of everyone, it will take them over 15 weeks to push into T1, because there is over 150K glicko between them and the lowest server, it’s over 300K between the lowest of the 4 “T2” servers and the next T3. OK? we are locked in this situation and it isn’t fun. There are too many players stuffed onto the T1 and T2 servers. It was a massive mistake to allow free (not $$ free) transfers regardless of any complaints from the players. Everyone is going to stack onto the most successful server regardless of the cost. There are 24 NA servers, less than 8 have really good competitive WvW. Allowing transfers was a massive mistake, but that genie is out of the bottle now. You can’t possibly be on a kitten server to make comments like yours, it just doesn’t add up…

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

Shademehr.1397:

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

would love to see something like this done!

coglin.1867:

Exciton.8942:

Still, the coverage war is meaningless. The only competition between the T2 servers in terms of ppt game is that they each recruit more players. Most of these players are from T3 and below. This destroys lower tiers and is not making T2 any better.

No, “this” doesn’t destroy anything. The players chose to leave. It is a players choice to do so. Others decided WvW wasn’t for them. Some take breaks. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that these are legitimate player choices. It is the communities doing. And if you were to limited or incapable of changing servers, their would be a massive outcry demanding it. Even games with only 3 realms have this issue. If you believe this is anything less then a problem of the players, by the players, you are wrong.

I know it’s human nature to crowd onto larger servers. However, the current coverage war only serve to speed up that process and ultimately creates a more undesirable WvW experience.

T2 players didn’t get any happier after this recent recruitment war. Three of the four servers still have to alternate to get the boring T3 week while FA players have to deal with super long NA prime queues. At the end of the day, you still have very unbalanced T2 and T3 matchups.

FA has super long NA primetime queues? That sucks … TC only queues reset. Thats about it. At the same time it must be good to always have a full map ;-)

Exciton.8942:

coglin.1867:

Exciton.8942:

Still, the coverage war is meaningless. The only competition between the T2 servers in terms of ppt game is that they each recruit more players. Most of these players are from T3 and below. This destroys lower tiers and is not making T2 any better.

No, “this” doesn’t destroy anything. The players chose to leave. It is a players choice to do so. Others decided WvW wasn’t for them. Some take breaks. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that these are legitimate player choices. It is the communities doing. And if you were to limited or incapable of changing servers, their would be a massive outcry demanding it. Even games with only 3 realms have this issue. If you believe this is anything less then a problem of the players, by the players, you are wrong.

I know it’s human nature to crowd onto larger servers. However, the current coverage war only serve to speed up that process and ultimately creates a more undesirable WvW experience.

T2 players didn’t get any happier after this recent recruitment war. Three of the four servers still have to alternate to get the boring T3 week while FA players have to deal with super long NA prime queues. At the end of the day, you still have very unbalanced T2 and T3 matchups.

Exactly, no one is happy now in T2/T3

Hexin.5603:

FA has super long NA primetime queues? That sucks … TC only queues reset. Thats about it. At the same time it must be good to always have a full map ;-)

This is what I saw from some website showing FA queue on Tuesday around 10pm EST

Holy crap … 139 man queue?

There have been numerous variations of the time zone based match configuration. Devin even asked in one thread if it was something that would be worth doing; which seemed to me to indicate that it was at least technically possible.

There were some people who didn’t like the idea though. Of course that’s true with any change. (Which is one reason I think Anet has been reluctant to change much in WvW).

But I agree, if it could be done on a test basis like white swords it would be great. More test months!

Let’s see what they will do in tomorrow’s video chat.
I really think at this point, WvW needs more dev attention rather than just let it play out by players.

Exciton.8942:

Let’s see what they will do in tomorrow’s video chat.
I really think at this point, WvW needs more dev attention rather than just let it play out by players.

Ain’t gonna happen. They just officially removed WvW maps from the map completion… That does not equal more WvW focus, just the opposite. WvW is having it’s death rattle… the odds that this new map will change anything, based on how the “adopt a dev” program “opened the dev’s eyes”, are basically nil. Unfortunately, they created this very cool environment called WvW, and then abandoned it… All hail the living story! ZZZzzzzz……..

Shademehr.1397:

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

I’ve seen this suggested a few times and it makes a lot of sense to me. I fully agree with breaking down the scoring to sections per day to help control the run away scoring due to coverage. I would even take it as far as hiding the score until the end of the time period and just announce who came in 1st-3rd. To keep it even closer I would use 3pts for 1st to 1pt for 3rd, and for the love of god put ppk back into the game.

There’s a lot of things they can try to do, what’s frustrating is they haven’t tried anything to change scoring for 2.5 years except the brief period of ppk recently.

Xenesis.6389:

Shademehr.1397:

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

I’ve seen this suggested a few times and it makes a lot of sense to me. I fully agree with breaking down the scoring to sections per day to help control the run away scoring due to coverage. I would even take it as far as hiding the score until the end of the time period and just announce who came in 1st-3rd. To keep it even closer I would use 3pts for 1st to 1pt for 3rd, and for the love of god put ppk back into the game.

There’s a lot of things they can try to do, what’s frustrating is they haven’t tried anything to change scoring for 2.5 years except the brief period of ppk recently.

See I disagree with the “time zone” slots on scoring, due to the variations in time zones, along with the imbalances of many servers during specific times of day. Right now a server who ha a larger OCX/SEA can push and gain high ppt, while that same server may lack NA compared to their opponent which can then make up the PPT lost form OCX/SEA. Same with EU and so on. Breaking it into “time zone” scoring, allows for less chances for the non server prime timezones to gain lead (as they do now) followed by not having the lead caught up by the server’s prime time for wvw’ers.

True OCX might put your server ahead by 3k points, however when your NA logs in they could also make up the points. (As it is currently.)

Though if you change to the specific time zones, you will run into people (lets use NA as an example) who are At work, or off work, and the “slot time” would be a bit off, due to having a hour differences between east and west. Where as now, people do not have to play from work, or rush home to log in by xxx time, they would have a set time limit by the proposed change. (Say 4pm-12am)

The time zone “slotting” really doesn’t work, due to how many time zones there are in the world, and how many time zones would cover each one of the proposed “slotted” times. Granted it would work for the weekend more so, however that is 2 days of 7 in a match.

Shademehr.1397:

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

Every time I mention how coverage works to someone that isn’t familiar with this game, this is the response I get, so I think there might be something to it. I would love to see a test for this.

Mishi.7058:

See I disagree with the “time zone” slots on scoring, due to the variations in time zones, along with the imbalances of many servers during specific times of day. Right now a server who ha a larger OCX/SEA can push and gain high ppt, while that same server may lack NA compared to their opponent which can then make up the PPT lost form OCX/SEA. Same with EU and so on. Breaking it into “time zone” scoring, allows for less chances for the non server prime timezones to gain lead (as they do now) followed by not having the lead caught up by the server’s prime time for wvw’ers.

True OCX might put your server ahead by 3k points, however when your NA logs in they could also make up the points. (As it is currently.)

Though if you change to the specific time zones, you will run into people (lets use NA as an example) who are At work, or off work, and the “slot time” would be a bit off, due to having a hour differences between east and west. Where as now, people do not have to play from work, or rush home to log in by xxx time, they would have a set time limit by the proposed change. (Say 4pm-12am)

The time zone “slotting” really doesn’t work, due to how many time zones there are in the world, and how many time zones would cover each one of the proposed “slotted” times. Granted it would work for the weekend more so, however that is 2 days of 7 in a match.

I don’t know if you’ve fully thought it through on the effects it would have on scoring.

If a server has NA as their strongest zone they will most likely gain 3 points in that slot every night(using the 3-2-1 not the 5-3-1 scoring), while the other servers who may have ocx or sea as their strongest points will make up that 3 points to counter it within that 24hr period. With this system no server gets to absolutely run away with the score because of the smaller numbers you use for the weekly total scoring.

T2 is a good example of this, let’s say FA, SOS and DB.
FA would most likely win during NA time so FA-3 SOS-2 DB-1 (SoS supposedly has more na than db but it could switch easily).
SOS could probably win in ocx time so SOS-5 FA-5 DB-2 (but again a toss up there).
DB who have a strong sea presence could make up the difference here so FA-7 SOS-6 DB-5. (SoS will probably almost always lose this time because of weak EU but their sea could make it interesting).

Unlike the real scoring right now you can end up with FA walking out with a 10-20k lead in 24hrs and the match is done for the week. 10-20k is not that easy to make up let alone 80-100k by the end of the week. Unless servers play overtime and push for it, but that rarely happens anymore because it’s not worth busting your kitten for points that don’t matter.

With the new system a double team would also matter much more, the 2nd and 3rd place servers could actually team up and hit the 1st server harder in certain time zones to deny them points and allow themselves to easily catch up, like it was intended for a three way matchup. Imagine if DB and SOS focused on FA during NA prime, the time zone that’s the hardest but they’re sure to win every night because they can queue 4 maps. Holding the 1 or 2 points from them then you give yourself a huge chance to tie or even take the lead in points in the other zones.

The time zone example given is fine 8am-4pm, 4pm-12am, 12am-8am est, (could consider 6am-12pm, 12pm-6pm, 6pm-12am, 12am-6am as well). But it actually over laps into other prime time zones such as sea into eu, na east to west, pst into ocx, there are many timezones in between that would be even more important to scoring in a smaller bracket than the overall lump total.

You can also hide the points gathering for the time zones as a way to not pressure people to get last minute points, but still keep players competitive by showing the ppt. I know there are many time zones around the world and we don’t exactly know how many people are in each of them, but the system would help minimize the effects okittenward coverage times and how drastic of an affect they have in running up the score. Can you also imagine if this happened to a matchup that had three servers near the same populations and coverage, it could keep the matchup competitive the entire week.

This discussion is strictly for NA servers, and using eastern time zone for the zone section examples since that is the biggest prime time for most NA servers.

Shademehr.1397:

I suggested something similar to this. Probably in one of the many threads about server mergers, etc.

Keep the week long matchup. Divide each day into 3 eight hour scoring periods. For example, 8am-4pm / 4pm – 12am / 12am – 8am. Award points after each of these scoring periods. The highest PPT gets 5 points, the mid gets 3 points, and the lowest gets 1 point. This allows different time periods to essentially compete with each other. A server that is super strong during off-peak times would be on equal footing with a server that is strong during on-peak times.

Heck, let us do it for a week or two as an experiment to see how it works out.

+1

Great idea.

Rieselle.5079:

If I recall, at launch we had 24 hour matches, but people were getting burned out fighting after reset every day.

Previously I suggested that the matches be 3 days + 2 hours long. (ie. 74 hours)
This means “reset time” will change every match, so people in different timezones can enjoy the exciting post-reset gameplay.

3 days also seems like a good middle ground for match length.

I suggested some time ago 48 hours from 7pm Friday to 7PM Sunday, the rest of the week being made up of non-scoring play with the option of one day off.

The problem of breaking it into 8 hour sections and making time zones is firstly some people work non standard hours but still want to participate. Secondly the issue of lag, if the server is far away many people will not like it.

That said something is apparently planned.

coglin.1867:

Exciton.8942:

Still, the coverage war is meaningless. The only competition between the T2 servers in terms of ppt game is that they each recruit more players. Most of these players are from T3 and below. This destroys lower tiers and is not making T2 any better.

No, “this” doesn’t destroy anything. The players chose to leave. It is a players choice to do so. Others decided WvW wasn’t for them. Some take breaks. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that these are legitimate player choices. It is the communities doing. And if you were to limited or incapable of changing servers, their would be a massive outcry demanding it. Even games with only 3 realms have this issue. If you believe this is anything less then a problem of the players, by the players, you are wrong.

Wow. I didn’t think I would ever agree with your take on things, but I do on this. Anet established a game mode where players are free to join whatever server they like, provided it is open, at will. I don’t fault players for wanting the best experience possible and not being someone else’s bag. Anet very foolishly thought that GW2’s game community (which is much better than any other MMO I’ve played) would adhere to some basic principles of community and balance. But this is a game where you can switch sides mid-game and basic game theory holds that if you can switch to a winning team and reap all the rewards, why not? And so it is with guilds and whole swaths of players, on their own accord, grouping together unevenly on the most successful servers for the best chance at success. When the effort invested into WvW exceeds the reward (i.e. being outblobbed), the player community has no shame in discarding the weaker server for another one where the cycle can be repeated. If Anet wanted to have cohesive server communities whose ideas and experiences bond them together, this is a failure by any measure. There is no incentive to stay on an outblobbed server unless your goal is to find out if you really have a brain aneurysm.

At present there is no player driven intervention that can stop this as it now is the norm and the ~300G to transfer isn’t exactly hard to come by either if you farm certain locations in PvE. So, to steal a line from the iconic 1983 movie Wargames; this is a strange game, the only winning move is not to play (and I’m not anymore).

Not all player want to go to T1 or T2 just for win…. I play off peak, and I need a server with big population, just to have 5 to 10 people during the day on home borderland !
I have play on T3 server, and in T5…. It’s just dead during the day, totally dead ! It’s not only the prime time, the MU is going all the day and the night…
It’s interesting to fight 24H/24. I like this. And one full week is interesting too… I don’t want any change about this….
I like my community on my server, I’m not just here to follow a big blob… I’m here to fight with good player on a good community. How do you want to do something when during the day you have 2 player on BL ? Maybe 6 on EB ? It’s impossible… Just close this dead server and give free transfer for the player…. Maintain maximum 12 or 15 server, it’s enough…
And with HOT the new map will be very big… We will need people to play on this map… Even on T2 server we don’t have enough people during the day to play on this big map…

In T1/T2 all the player are not only making blob for ktrain… Lot of people really love their server community… If you have not enough people on end server, just change… Farming gold is not really difficult…

OP, You can already see the ratings of server by timezone.

Check over here : http://coveragewars2.com/timezone/

It splits the day in 8 period of 3 hours and calculate the rating for each period, just like you want to do.

It might not be official but if you just want to care about the timezone in which you play and see how good you are then everything is already there

For example, DB is ranked 13 overall (top of tier 5) but are ranked 10 in SEA timezone (top of tier 4).