Guild Wars 2

Carthias.7486:

nysta.6713:

Conner.4702:

Konrad Curze.5130:

Sky.9347:

The root of this problem is thus:
WvWvW is and should be a 24/7 game mode; servers are not designed for 24/7 player loads.

wholeheartly agree with the philosophy

Sky.9347:

I think the best possible solution to this problem is threefold:
1) Eliminate NA and EU designations. (language designations would be fine)
2) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)
3) Continue focusing developer attention on bugs/exploits/hacks.

disagree
that wouldnt solve much, if anything. I think that is impossible to achieve balance just by letting the playerbase self control itself, it will never work. human nature, specially on the internet, equals egoism.

24/7 balanced servers is an utopia. it will never happen. lets come into terms with that.

my solution is simple.
abandon the idea of 24/7

1) IP Ban/ Lock NA and EU regions
2) create new Asian/SEA region
3) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)

anyone that doesnt take advantage of that free transfers to go to a region that fits him will see that chars locked.

These two while seeming similar are light years apart. One is about opening things up and the other about closing things off. The latter is counter to what Anet has been trying to do. That is create a game where it doesn’t matter where you live.

and good on them for doing so, too.

i fight as hard as any of you on your own timezone. i don’t see why my “efforts” should be considered less than “yours”. we’re all even, despite the zone shifts. and it’s kind of amusing that only one “shift” is actually complaining. everyone else in the world is okay.

Because the problem is this
Server A has 100 NA players who play from let’s say 12-8 pm
Server B has 100 NA players who play from 12-8 pm
Server A has 20 players who play from 9pm-11 am
Server B has 100 oceanic/EU players who play from 9pm-11am
The problem is that YOUR efforts are now being defended by an equal number of players in the day-time as the other server has which makes it almost impossible to deal with because thanks to your superior night numbers, guess what, you took every fort+keep+orb and everything is fortified and already defended with tons of siege weapons.

Everyone’s’ contribution in WvWvW is currently NOT equal as a result. That’s what is so hilarious about A-net’s response “well you all be good community members and make sure to spread your population out evenly ok? We’re gonna be over here making sure people are buying gems. Oh, P.S. we’re gonna leave server transfers free and open so you know, if you’re getting crushed feel free to transfer to a winning server.” absolutely NO ONE is going to say to their guild “hey guys I know we’re winning and currently enjoying tons of bonuses to our server and we’re 150k points ahead of the enemy team but let’s go ahead and transfer to that other server.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m done, hopefuly Anet wakes up out of their dream world where the player population magically balances itself out.

So a thought having looked at the way rankings are calculated and thinking the way scores are decided is more applicable to say the football league (US or EU) with maybe 20 teams in a league. rather than chess or some other game with say 100,000 players in a league. statistically small numbers give very large error ranges.

In those big professional leagues people talk about team pride and yet the star players switch teams based on who is paying the most money. Some russian guy comes in with billions and suddenly chelsea can play football Or in my era Newcastle and Sir John Hall. I wont deny the skill of the players but i wont deny that money talks.

The idea simple, Mercenary guilds. A list of guilds who are willing to switch server for in game gold. Like a star player in a professional team.

If the other server has the best nightteam, your server makes them an offer they cant refuse, next match up they fight for you.

I know you can transfer for free now, the long term intention is that you pay to transfer in gems. Much simpler, your destination server pays for you to come to them in gems because your that good. Currently the idea is people will balance the servers themselves for the pleasure of playing the game. I’d suggest for most players given the choice of quitting or switching servers they will quit. It those who want to fight who give you the memorable battles, its those who just like playing who give you the numbers.

Some will transfer for gold, some for honour, some for victory, some for simple fairplay.

Perhaps you limit it a bit. Maybe only 50 players can be hired each week, as a guild or individuals ( i expect as a guild, its where i would go ). Maybe those 50 are part of a larger guild raising funds for their home server. Maybe they are truly mercenary pirates fighting where fate takes them.

I guess the question with this idea is if your server lost the last match maybe the one before and the one before that would all the players on your server combine their resources to try and hire some peope who can help swing the match their way ?

History is littered with mercenarys where civilisation fought civilisation. If this is WvW perhaps history can show a simple solution to its problems

Ive got nothing against night capping but theres a huge flaw to this.

For some reason there is a spanish server that has a predominantly South american population.

This server (Baruch Bay {SP}) Caps everything at night with a full battleground of people while losing everything again during the day as the main population on this server is South America.

Please move Baruch Bay [SP] To the american wvwvw rankins.

Simplest solution to help with the problem (but not eliminate it) is to score player kills using a coefficient to modify the base awarded points based on the map population difference at the time of the kill. This should help close the disparity of off-peak scoring impact by bolstering peak-time contributions.

Server time: 7:10 pm- FA- 2864, MAG- 2194, SOS-1818

Server time: 11:48 am- FA- 9125, SOS-7722, MAG- 7514

Server time: 2:37 am- SOS- 13059, FA- 12221, MAG- 9481

FA starts with a 1046 point lead over SOS, 4 hours and 38 minutes later and the lead is 1403, that is 357 points for 4 and a half hours of play or 1.28 points a minute.

2 hours and 49 minutes later SOS lead by 838 points, a turn around of 2241 points or 13.2 points a minute ( and of course the lead is only going to get bigger)

This is why every player is not worth the same, having offpeak players is worth so much more because the potential for gaining points by outnumbering your opponent is so much greater. By trying to make sure every player is worth the same ANET has made it so a majority of players do not matter at all, the only players that matter are those in the offpeak period when borderlands are not filled.

Carthias.7486

Because the problem is this
Server A has 100 NA players who play from let’s say 12-8 pm
Server B has 100 NA players who play from 12-8 pm
Server A has 20 players who play from 9pm-11 am
Server B has 100 oceanic/EU players who play from 9pm-11am
The problem is that YOUR efforts are now being defended by an equal number of players in the day-time as the other server has which makes it almost impossible to deal with because thanks to your superior night numbers, guess what, you took every fort+keep+orb and everything is fortified and already defended with tons of siege weapons.

Everyone’s’ contribution in WvWvW is currently NOT equal as a result. That’s what is so hilarious about A-net’s response “well you all be good community members and make sure to spread your population out evenly ok? We’re gonna be over here making sure people are buying gems. Oh, P.S. we’re gonna leave server transfers free and open so you know, if you’re getting crushed feel free to transfer to a winning server.” absolutely NO ONE is going to say to their guild “hey guys I know we’re winning and currently enjoying tons of bonuses to our server and we’re 150k points ahead of the enemy team but let’s go ahead and transfer to that other server.”

This is so true.

What’s the point of capping and spending tons of money to upgrade a point if you know it will be lost anyway despite your contribution and efforts.

Another pointless week again for WvWvW then. Doesnt seem like many on my server are even bothering trying again until this night capping is fixed. What is the point in wasting time and money in the day to just lose everything at night. This needs sorting quickly before players start leaving this game. WvWvW is what this game is mainly about and now we got another week of none !

This is the current score my server match-up has after just under 12 hours of the new match.

Please tell me this isn’t intented, that one server can get such a huge lead just because they had a force present in each map where the other two did not. I hardly played the last match we had because over one night we went from 10k points from first to 20k. To have such a huge point disadvantage has taken out what little motivation I had to play this broken mess.

Please, to keep WvW enjoyable for all, make point gain scale depending on the population of each server throughout the WvW maps. If server A has 20+ people on each map taking everything and the other two have no presence, server A should gain a tiny amount of points to reflect that.

This is getting ridiculous as I’m sure like in our last match up we will do great during prime time, yet lose overall because the top server takes everything at night with no opposition.

I really, really want to enjoy myself in WvW and while the large scale fights are fun, seeing this when you log in after just 12!!! hours is a huge disincentive to play.

Our match result has all ready been decided and nothing we can do will change that. Any effort we make during the day/evening will be erased by a night zerg taking everything back, leaving them with a nice +20 points overnight.

Grevane.6570:

This is the current score my server match-up has after just under 12 hours of the new match.

Please tell me this isn’t intented, that one server can get such a huge lead just because they had a force present in each map where the other two did not. I hardly played the last match we had because over one night we went from 10k points from first to 20k. To have such a huge point disadvantage has taken out what little motivation I had to play this broken mess.

Please, to keep WvW enjoyable for all, make point gain scale depending on the population of each server throughout the WvW maps. If server A has 20+ people on each map taking everything and the other two have no presence, server A should gain a tiny amount of points to reflect that.

This is getting ridiculous as I’m sure like in our last match up we will do great during prime time, yet lose overall because the top server takes everything at night with no opposition.

I really, really want to enjoy myself in WvW and while the large scale fights are fun, seeing this when you log in after just 12!!! hours is a huge disincentive to play.

Our match result has all ready been decided and nothing we can do will change that. Any effort we make during the day/evening will be erased by a night zerg taking everything back, leaving them with a nice +20 points overnight.

Sorry, Anet can’t help you. They want it to be fair for everybody /sarcasm

Carthias.7486:

nysta.6713:

Conner.4702:

Konrad Curze.5130:

Sky.9347:

The root of this problem is thus:
WvWvW is and should be a 24/7 game mode; servers are not designed for 24/7 player loads.

wholeheartly agree with the philosophy

Sky.9347:

I think the best possible solution to this problem is threefold:
1) Eliminate NA and EU designations. (language designations would be fine)
2) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)
3) Continue focusing developer attention on bugs/exploits/hacks.

disagree
that wouldnt solve much, if anything. I think that is impossible to achieve balance just by letting the playerbase self control itself, it will never work. human nature, specially on the internet, equals egoism.

24/7 balanced servers is an utopia. it will never happen. lets come into terms with that.

my solution is simple.
abandon the idea of 24/7

1) IP Ban/ Lock NA and EU regions
2) create new Asian/SEA region
3) Announce a finite time remaining for free transfers. (at least 2 full matches)

anyone that doesnt take advantage of that free transfers to go to a region that fits him will see that chars locked.

These two while seeming similar are light years apart. One is about opening things up and the other about closing things off. The latter is counter to what Anet has been trying to do. That is create a game where it doesn’t matter where you live.

and good on them for doing so, too.

i fight as hard as any of you on your own timezone. i don’t see why my “efforts” should be considered less than “yours”. we’re all even, despite the zone shifts. and it’s kind of amusing that only one “shift” is actually complaining. everyone else in the world is okay.

Because the problem is this
Server A has 100 NA players who play from let’s say 12-8 pm
Server B has 100 NA players who play from 12-8 pm
Server A has 20 players who play from 9pm-11 am
Server B has 100 oceanic/EU players who play from 9pm-11am
The problem is that YOUR efforts are now being defended by an equal number of players in the day-time as the other server has which makes it almost impossible to deal with because thanks to your superior night numbers, guess what, you took every fort+keep+orb and everything is fortified and already defended with tons of siege weapons.

Everyone’s’ contribution in WvWvW is currently NOT equal as a result. That’s what is so hilarious about A-net’s response “well you all be good community members and make sure to spread your population out evenly ok? We’re gonna be over here making sure people are buying gems. Oh, P.S. we’re gonna leave server transfers free and open so you know, if you’re getting crushed feel free to transfer to a winning server.” absolutely NO ONE is going to say to their guild “hey guys I know we’re winning and currently enjoying tons of bonuses to our server and we’re 150k points ahead of the enemy team but let’s go ahead and transfer to that other server.”

Pretty much sums up the thread. I don’t see anyone seriously debating this.

It can’t be debated, it is fact.

The simple fix to this is make the buffs more contingent on what is currently capped instead of the overall points from the week. People don’t want to wvwvw and spend money on siege after a few nights of being night capped and being an insurmountable amount of points behind with the other team being buffed even more.

Currently WvWvW dies if even after a day or two of getting night capped, we were winning all night with good fights all around, get back on today 8 hours later and Sea of Sorrows has twice the points we do even though we have already recapped everything.

Or Anet could factor in the night cap servers, should be a fairly easy metric to measure based on server pop and wvwvw pop at varying times, and balance them against each other. In theory that should make the wvwvw better for everyone since the night pop servers will be playing each other and the day pop servers will be playing each other.

I would like to see a reply from Anet.
Clearly a large population isn’t happy about this and a small population enjoy the advantages from it but many agree a contribution based system makes more sense.

So can we get response?

Epoch.5396:

I would like to see a reply from Anet.
Clearly a large population isn’t happy about this and a small population enjoy the advantages from it but many agree a contribution based system makes more sense.

So can we get response?

Yeah, even a “work in progress” one would be better than nothing.

Clearly WvW has a lot of flaws which must be addressed altogether (simply removing rewards for dolyaks isn’t enough).
For me, the issues are:

• Rank and point calculation (the system is now broken, not using time-specific condition and population)
• Commander system lacks a lot of features and the acquiring system is dumb (I can see in 6+ months at least 20-30 commander per server)
• Orbs spawns and Garrison (I must lose my orb in order to protect it better?)
• Outmanned buff.

EDIT:
On smaller issues they should address:

• Phantom zergs
• Ping on small map the point of impact of the trebuchet and catapult
• Higher level NPC (currently there is no strategy in killing a keep lord).

just ban all non-europeans from eu servers. is not just about the final result, but the impossibility of playing.

how is the situation now at the second last tier matchup ? I’m guessing that if Drakkar is first, us (last tier) will finally have a non german server to fight again next matchup!
Something to look forward to!

Ilesyt, at the moment Drakkar are 50 or 60k ahead of Whiteside Ridge and Whiteside is about 1k ahead of Vabbi. It’s far too early to call 3rd place yet but unless something surreal happens you guys should be clear of German servers next week.

Love to play WwW, but when the nigh comes the game gets ruin by unbalanced teams.

The SP team are more then 100-200 ppl agains 20-30 ppl. Theres no tactics or talent behinde the game at this point. Just rusch and take everything in 30 min.
We have strugled to take 1/3 of the map on daytime when the game was fun and balanced….

Cant servers be merged? Or close servers that are unbalanced like this?

The ppl that plays at night will que to get in to the servers (if full like we do in daytime) that are open and the other will get suggestions of servers to join.
When more ppl coming online and que up more servers will open… Something must be done just to get the game even.

This is what we have infront of us at Gandara server at Nights… (Gandara green, French red and Spanish ppl purple)…

Destroing the game.

Regards Nico

Sounds like it’s time to merge some servers so everyone can have a queue and be happy. Then they can all complain about having a queue for WvW.

Grevane.6570:

This is the current score my server match-up has after just under 12 hours of the new match.

Please tell me this isn’t intented, that one server can get such a huge lead just because they had a force present in each map where the other two did not. I hardly played the last match we had because over one night we went from 10k points from first to 20k. To have such a huge point disadvantage has taken out what little motivation I had to play this broken mess.

Please, to keep WvW enjoyable for all, make point gain scale depending on the population of each server throughout the WvW maps. If server A has 20+ people on each map taking everything and the other two have no presence, server A should gain a tiny amount of points to reflect that.

This is getting ridiculous as I’m sure like in our last match up we will do great during prime time, yet lose overall because the top server takes everything at night with no opposition.

I really, really want to enjoy myself in WvW and while the large scale fights are fun, seeing this when you log in after just 12!!! hours is a huge disincentive to play.

Our match result has all ready been decided and nothing we can do will change that. Any effort we make during the day/evening will be erased by a night zerg taking everything back, leaving them with a nice +20 points overnight.

Remark the guilds of FS and déso are going to say that the Germans have Canadian guilds…

French server are already congregating towards the top of the ladder while German servers are congregating towards the bottom (there are a few exceptions).

If only everyone could afford to have a huge overseas player base…

The current system is broken because you can see who is going to win in the first 12h on NA servers and in the first 30 min on EU servers, because of the reset timing. Having an unbalanced match is good, not having the possibility to catch up is not. How many people do you think are there in EU servers without overseas players at 2:00 AM (Italy), 1:00 AM (UK), or 5:00 AM(Russia)? I’ll tell you: no one. I went to black tide borderland (I play in Aurora glade now) , we were 3 of my guild, and…. No one else.
And that’s ok, IF we can catch during the day, but right now, it’s not possible, because during the day the match is almost even. So we keep losing at night and tying during the day. Not fun.

in europe we have at present 5 of the top 6 servers as french or germans, the exception being far shiverpeaks. no idea why they are holding out. doesnt that tell you that the servers with specific language designations who will attract a global community of said language are clearly getting an advantage.

make all the servers GLOBAL let us fight it out even. global english speaking servers would be fine , I’d happily play on a global server and let my american cousins carry the torch while i slept and vice versa.

end this idiocy before it’s too late.

Meh – we’ve already had a response from Anet – there is no problem, right? After all, the wvw-focused guilds that don’t care about things like latency, etc. are jumping to any server they think will give them a 24/7 presence – effectively doing Anet’s job for them by consolidating server populations.

Why would Anet get in the way of that? After all….consolidated servers means they need less hardware, which means less overhead, etc.

At this point, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop when they start informing Guilds that we’re going to be forcibly consolidated to “X” server, and lose our (almost completed) level 5 guild research and have to start over.

WvW is a great concept with a horribly broken implementation. If Anet actually wants this game mode to be more about time zones than actual strategy and tactics – then mission accomplished, I suppose….but spending 4-5 hours duking it out to control territory just to have it effortlessly taken by a team that encounters little to no resistance due to timezone differences in the player base has already killed my enthusiasm for the game mode.

Despite all the suggestions put forward, there really is only ONE true fix for the problem:

Do away with the current “ranking” system (which is meaningless anyway, since it has nothing to do with skill, strategy, or tactics), and match servers against each other based on nothing more than their matching population patterns.

Servers that are full 24/7 should be matched against servers that are full 24/7 – which is also something every player that actually wants a challenge should be demanding.

Anything less, and we’re all just wasting our time (Planetside 2’s looking really good, though).

Savage Deathknell.2036:

Despite all the suggestions put forward, there really is only ONE true fix for the problem:

Do away with the current “ranking” system (which is meaningless anyway, since it has nothing to do with skill, strategy, or tactics), and match servers against each other based on nothing more than their matching population patterns.

Servers that are full 24/7 should be matched against servers that are full 24/7 – which is also something every player that actually wants a challenge should be demanding.

OR
get rid of NA and EU servers altogether. Just one global ladder and that’s it.

“Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.”

You just made OUR (the nightcapping “whiners”) point for us. Every morning I wake up feeling punished because I didn’t pull an all-nighter. At this point I’m unable to experience and enjoy the very little wvw still has to offer. Because I don’t stay up all night, I’m getting punished.

ANET, if you really want a good 24/7 experience, as you say, you need to disable the 150-200 man zerg advantage, you don’t do this the way everyone else has been saying with Que timers and current pop size limitations. The problem is that you decided to have 4 maps.

(sorry for mentioning DAoC) the reason it worked was because it was ONE GIANT map that was in constant flux. The vast size gave it so much appeal and variation that the 150-200 man zerg became a disadvantage, worthless because they couldn’t be everywhere at once with a map that size. Frankly, these maps are too small, its far too easy to just sit in a 150-200 man group and travel around zerging every keep and tower withing a 30 minuet period.

Anet, I find your response to the communities outcry for change disgusting.

Shepperd.2178:

“Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.”

You just made OUR (the nightcapping “whiners”) point for us. Every morning I wake up feeling punished because I didn’t pull an all-nighter. At this point I’m unable to experience and enjoy the very little wvw still has to offer. Because I don’t stay up all night, I’m getting punished.

ANET, if you really want a good 24/7 experience, as you say, you need to disable the 150-200 man zerg advantage, you don’t do this the way everyone else has been saying with Que timers and current pop size limitations. The problem is that you decided to have 4 maps.

(sorry for mentioning DAoC) the reason it worked was because it was ONE GIANT map that was in constant flux. The vast size gave it so much appeal and variation that the 150-200 man zerg became a disadvantage, worthless because they couldn’t be everywhere at once with a map that size. Frankly, these maps are too small, its far too easy to just sit in a 150-200 man group and travel around zerging every keep and tower withing a 30 minuet period.

Anet, I find your response to the communities outcry for change disgusting.

1 big map would be fantastic! I tend to be an anti-zerg fanatic myself and feel that zergs are too powerful (if not a necessity) atm. And as mentioned, the small maps are boring as sin.

It would also be nice not to have peoples name tags show up so readily. Too easy to spot people who are hidden behind things and yet I can still see their tags (especially the world explorer star!). And this discourages the guerrilla style hit-and-run tactics quite a lot too (which are a lot of fun).

To the comments about merging servers…meh….I’ll grant, there is a slim possibilty it might work….sounds like @Tum and @nico were volunteering their server closure at least.

Perhaps ANet could reduce the number of players allowed in Wv3 to the lowest common denominator so there is no night-capping. How about..3 or 4….that should cater to everyone right?

OR, ANet could start selling GW2 alarm clocks, so that when your server gets out of ratio with another one, you get woken up and auto-logged in etc.

On a more serious note tho. There are definitely issues at the moment. And its good to highlight them. But as many other posters have mentioned. It is too early to make a decision as to whether it is going to work or not. Already we have guilds starting the re-balancing process by moving to other servers.

If you are a dedicated Wv3’er and want balance, you will either move, or get people to move. Painful as that process may be.

Its each persons choice to stay on a server with no night presence or to move, or to stay on a low-pop-Wv3 server.

If it is so important to you, that you feel the need to complain/suggest about it, perhaps it is time to review just how important the balance is to you and whether you should do something more directly proactive about it.

I play on SoS and sometimes the q at NA night time, is a real pain. 2 hours last night to get in to EB. Very unusual, but q’s do happen. If it keeps being that way, I may be tempted to move (I’ve thought about it previously due to our lack of night presence – but decided to give it a reasonable amount of time).

If it is so important to you, that you feel the need to complain/suggest about it, perhaps it is time to review just how important the balance is to you and whether you should do something more directly proactive about it.

It is not, and should not be the job of the players to balance this (or any) game mode, period. If victory in ANY game relies not on strategy or tactics, but pure differences in time zone(s) of a server’s population, that game mode is BROKEN, period.

There are a plethora of MMO’s that have dealt with the issue of players being able to run ramshod over other’s territory unopposed due to time zone differences EVE Online in particular makes it difficult (but not impossible) to simply wait until your opponent goes to bed to capture their territory.

…and let’s face it – the servers that are “dominating” (if you want to call any server that captures ANYTHING without any resistance as “dominant”) are only doing so because they’ve been allowed to play a game mode that SHOULD be a 24/7 struggle back and forth as essentially a PVE game mode in the “off hours” of that server’s time zone.

Your next argument will be to “change servers if you don’t like it”. To which I reply yet again – why the hell should I have to? I’ve joined an officially sanctioned US server in good faith, built a large Guild filled with our community members, and maxxed out our guild research to level 5. If the only response to my request for a level playing field is that I’ll need to jump ship to a server filled with European players to get it, then ANet has FAILED to deliver a game mode that they can provide a level playing field for.

..and no….I’m not “whining”, bud. Frankly, I don’t need to – we are in a bit of a “golden age” for PC gaming now, and it’s only going to get better over the next 18 months or so. Anet can accept responsibility and fix the multiplayer aspect of the game or large (6000 players+) communities like ours will simply move on to the next game that tries to (which is looking more and more like PS2 at the moment).

I have high hopes for GW2, but Anet has alot of work to do, and putting the ball in the player’s court to balance a broken game mode is a bad start. If they want an “anything goes” player-driven environment, that’s exactly what they’ll get – but they ARE NOT Eve online, and they are not equipped to be.

At any rate – it seems this debate has broken down into two camps – the “it’s not broken because we’re winning” group, and those who can see the potential being wasted due to the time zone issue being abused unabated (and, apparently, endorsed by ANet).

I suspect in the end, only one party will get exactly what they want – aNet. By convincing players that if they want a truly competitive experience that it’s their responsibility to move to a server outside their time zone, Anet is compelling server consolidation, which in the end will greatly reduce their hardware costs/overhead. If that’s their goal – then more power to them….but don;t smile and tell me “there’s no problem here” when your true motives to not taking any action are profit-driven.

In reality – from a business standpoint it’s kind of a brilliant move – get the players to consolidate servers by introducing an imbalanced element to a game mode that can only be fixed by them doing so.

It appears that servers are separating into the haves and the have-nots. And the dividing factor is not money but Oceanic guilds.

On the NA side, it is Oceanic players who are the rare good, with not enough to go around.

If ArenaNet wanted to run its WvW population in a socialistic fashion (like it does its economy) it could forcibly redistribute these Oceanic players so every server gets an equal amount.

That obviously won’t happen though, so redistribution will have to happen eventually through score adjustment or anti-snowball measures.

Thrumdi.9216:

If ArenaNet wanted to run its WvW population in a socialistic fashion (like it does its economy) it could forcibly redistribute these Oceanic players so every server gets an equal amount.

Err…you realise we’re actual real live people and not siege weaponry or anything, right?

lollie.5816:

Thrumdi.9216:

If ArenaNet wanted to run its WvW population in a socialistic fashion (like it does its economy) it could forcibly redistribute these Oceanic players so every server gets an equal amount.

Err…you realise we’re actual real live people and not siege weaponry or anything, right?

Talking siege weapons? There’s an idea.

Just entertaining a thought, feel free to discuss.
What if different servers were assigned different 12 hour periods to battle in WvW? And that this happened at launch? Players would’ve likely chosen servers that suited their peak hour play time, and this could effectively match servers together properly to reduce the effects of night capping. This would’ve ‘spread the players out’ just like how Arenanet wanted them to.
The thing is, are different servers matchups really that important? WvW is comprised of hundreds of players, not only do the majority of people zerg anyways, what actually gives a server identity? Certainly not their tactics, WvW is as chaotic as they come. You could be versing the same server over and over again with different players playing and it would feel like a different server playing anyways.
With this idea, you might vs about 2-3 different servers in rotation, all with the same time slot.

Savage Deathknell.2036:

It is not, and should not be the job of the players to balance this (or any) game mode, period. If victory in ANY game relies not on strategy or tactics, but pure differences in time zone(s) of a server’s population, that game mode is BROKEN, period.

very hard to disagree with that argument the issue I see, is that ANet is trying to achieve something with Wv3 which I admire. They want a pvp arena that lasts days instead of hours or minutes. As such, the game is open 24×7. If I want to play in a game like this, I need to be realistic about what I need to do.

I can just turn up for my 3-6 hours every night along with the other Oceanics and live with being night-capped by the NA crowd everyday. Or I could move to an NA centric server or recruit for my server. OR I could give up and quit and play another game (aka whine about how broken the game is until it is changed and BECOMES another game).

Savage Deathknell.2036:

There are a plethora of MMO’s that have dealt with the issue…

Thats one of the issues right there…the ‘opponent goes to bed’ to me is MY teams problem…not the other server who does maintain people online, and not ANet’s.

Savage Deathknell.2036:

…and let’s face it – the servers that are “dominating” are only doing so because they’ve been allowed to play a game mode that SHOULD be a 24/7 struggle back and forth as essentially a PVE game mode in the “off hours” of that server’s time zone.

again, no one is allowing them to play, they are choosing to play at that time because it is convenient for them. And yes, it should be a 24/7 struggle, which again, is the opposing servers’ players’ choice.

Savage Deathknell.2036:

Your next argument will be to “change servers if you don’t like it”. To which I reply yet again – why the hell should I have to? I’ve joined an officially sanctioned US server in good faith, built a large Guild filled with our community members, and maxxed out our guild research to level 5…

Yes, I see that you see the obvious solution too. And, no, you don’t have to…but…er….thats your choice isn’t it? I too have joined an officially sanctioned server in good faith, built up friendships and continue to contribute to guild influence and all that entails. I am cursed with living in a timezone that is not always conducive to equal match ups. Its unfair on me, for sure…capping against a sub-par enemy is not as rewarding or fun. Luckily for me, the server I am on is getting more an more NA guilds and as such we tend to fight more servers with more of a presence in my timezone.

It is unfortunate that night-capping is an issue….and maybe we do have too many servers for the number of players that we have….or maybe Wv3 is too fast and the maps too small and the whole idea was that there should be a lot more standoff conflict so capping went slowly…with more tactics etc…In fact, maybe they are grooming us all to a EU vs NA mega WvW in which all US servers team up against the EU servers 24×7 for massive wars on huge maps

It would be nice if Anet would let guilds move AND keep their upgrades etc.

Savage Deathknell.2036:

…we are in a bit of a “golden age” for PC gaming now, and it’s only going to get better over the next 18 months or so. Anet can accept responsibility and fix the multiplayer aspect of the game or large (6000 players+) communities like ours will simply move on to the next game that tries to (which is looking more and more like PS2 at the moment).

this too is true…it will be interesting either way, to see what ANet does.

Savage Deathknell.2036:

I have high hopes for GW2, but Anet has alot of work to do, and putting the ball in the player’s court to balance a broken game mode is a bad start. If they want an “anything goes” player-driven environment, that’s exactly what they’ll get – but they ARE NOT Eve online, and they are not equipped to be.

to me, what ANet have done is say: “hey look! we have this concept called WvWvW where battles last 7 days, server vs server vs server. You field the best team(s) you can and whoever leads at the end wins. Its not perfect, but we thought you might like it.”

Savage Deathknell.2036:

At any rate – it seems this debate has broken down into two camps – the “it’s not broken because we’re winning” group, and those who can see the potential being wasted due to the time zone issue being abused unabated (and, apparently, endorsed by ANet).

there is no ‘it aint broke because we’re winning’ – at least not that I’m a member of…where do I sign up!!! oh…hold on, we’re not winning

ANet have given us an Arena in which to compete 24×7. Thats it. It IS up to the players to balance it – if the players in question want to compete seriously.

Guild Wars Fan.3249:

there is no ‘it aint broke because we’re winning’ – at least not that I’m a member of…where do I sign up!!! oh…hold on, we’re not winning

ANet have given us an Arena in which to compete 24×7. Thats it. It IS up to the players to balance it – if the players in question want to compete seriously.

Just because it sounded good in their minds doesn’t make the concept any less ridiculous. Did they REALLY think players will settle themselves out to fight over imaginary wars? Do you know why I went to Sea of Sorrows? I heard all the other Aussies are going there. I’m not the only one who did this either. There goes a good deal of the Oceanic players spreading out.

Grevane.6570:

This is the current score my server match-up has after just under 12 hours of the new match.

Please tell me this isn’t intented, that one server can get such a huge lead just because they had a force present in each map where the other two did not. I hardly played the last match we had because over one night we went from 10k points from first to 20k. To have such a huge point disadvantage has taken out what little motivation I had to play this broken mess.

Please, to keep WvW enjoyable for all, make point gain scale depending on the population of each server throughout the WvW maps. If server A has 20+ people on each map taking everything and the other two have no presence, server A should gain a tiny amount of points to reflect that.

This is getting ridiculous as I’m sure like in our last match up we will do great during prime time, yet lose overall because the top server takes everything at night with no opposition.

I really, really want to enjoy myself in WvW and while the large scale fights are fun, seeing this when you log in after just 12!!! hours is a huge disincentive to play.

Our match result has all ready been decided and nothing we can do will change that. Any effort we make during the day/evening will be erased by a night zerg taking everything back, leaving them with a nice +20 points overnight.

Well un update on this matchup. Seems we are a little better at holding our own in the night then Vabbi is. This is going to be an “interesting” week. Anyone wanna lay down some bets on the standings on friday?

So an other evening/night in disaster on the Gandara (green team) server…player are getting frustrated. Many incl me have spendt alot of gold to uppgrade things just to se them getting overrunned in a sec by spanish speeking players (purple team) from outside EU. Hope ANet fix this asap befor ppl are getting bored. Even the SP ppl will be bored without any competition..

Limli.9501:

Grevane.6570:

This is the current score my server match-up has after just under 12 hours of the new match.

Please tell me this isn’t intented, that one server can get such a huge lead just because they had a force present in each map where the other two did not. I hardly played the last match we had because over one night we went from 10k points from first to 20k. To have such a huge point disadvantage has taken out what little motivation I had to play this broken mess.

Please, to keep WvW enjoyable for all, make point gain scale depending on the population of each server throughout the WvW maps. If server A has 20+ people on each map taking everything and the other two have no presence, server A should gain a tiny amount of points to reflect that.

This is getting ridiculous as I’m sure like in our last match up we will do great during prime time, yet lose overall because the top server takes everything at night with no opposition.

I really, really want to enjoy myself in WvW and while the large scale fights are fun, seeing this when you log in after just 12!!! hours is a huge disincentive to play.

Our match result has all ready been decided and nothing we can do will change that. Any effort we make during the day/evening will be erased by a night zerg taking everything back, leaving them with a nice +20 points overnight.

Well un update on this matchup. Seems we are a little better at holding our own in the night then Vabbi is. This is going to be an “interesting” week. Anyone wanna lay down some bets on the standings on friday?

Yeah, meet the new week. Same as the old week.

I don’t doubt that we’ll fight on though. Drakkar really aren’t that good in a straight fight. We can fight them at 2-1 in their favour and we’ll win most of the time. It’s their mass zergs and night capping that’s winning it for them, especially the latter.

Aim

-To come up with a system to balance and reinforce enjoyment of WvWvW
-Do it so that everyone’s efforts are Equal and Contributing at any time without any form of punishment/disadvantage

Analysis

-Current problem creating issue of night capping arises from the PPT system, or the potential for it to “Run Away” with itself if a server can get a +600 PPT for a certain particular amount of time if no resistance is met. If said situation occurs over a 8 hour period, 19200 points is awarded, If it repeats over consecutive days demoralization occurs as other servers in match up fall away in point score and unofficially declare the “Match Over”

Proposed solution

Combination of the old system with emphasis on 12 hour periods where the scoring system remains equal regardless of opposition met, population of other servers, Timezones.

Except you now Get Victory points

Victory Points are to be awarded after every 12 hours [(Set) Yes I’m stealing a idea from Tennis here, bear with me its 0040 in the morning for me and for lack of a better word] Who ever has the highest score with the current system wins the set with the points system being

Winner = 3 Point
2nd Place = 2 Point
Last Place = 1 Point

PPT accumulated scores reset back to 0 and the next set begins.

At the end of the 2 Weeks the Victory Points are added up with the winner being the one with the most points

Now

Server A has Good Daytime / Ok Night time
Server B has Good Daytime / Good Night time
Server C has Ok Daytime / Good Night time

So looking at this setup its fair to say

Servers A B will do well during the day, C might struggle
Server B and C will do Well during the Night, A Might Struggle

Match Plays out over 12 Sets (6 Days) with the following

Set 1 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 2 A 1 B 3 C 2
Set 3 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 4 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 5 A 2 B 3 C 1
Set 6 A 1 B 3 C 2
Set 7 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 8 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 9 A 2 B 3 C 1
Set 10 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 11 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 12 A 1 B 2 C 3

Server A 22
Server B 28
Server C 22

So in this outcome as Team B has the Balanced Day/Night Ration compared to the other 2 servers after 12 Sets it would be declared the Winner right

But this is half the change

Look at it again

Set 1 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 2 A 2 B 3 C 2
Set 3 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 4 A 1 B 2 C 4
Set 5 A 2 B 3 C 1
Set 6 A 1 B 3 C 3
Set 7 A 4 B 2 C 2
Set 8 A 1 B 2 C 3
Set 9 A 3 B 3 C 1
Set 10 A 2 B 2 C 5
Set 11 A 3 B 2 C 1
Set 12 A 1 B 2 C 3

Server A 26
Server B 28
Server C 27

What the hell happened in this match up

Stone Mist Castle

Currently worth 35 + on its own

will now be worth 100 Points (Debatable)

Now your thinking Moose WTF Man??

here’s where it gets interesting

The emphasis is now on SM to attack it because its worth so many points, come on its a Awesome castle deserving to be God Like

At a Price

Notice how in some of the Match the loosing servers gained extra points? This is a result of a new Condition

“When 1st Ranked server holds SM and looses it to either 2nd or 3rd place server, these servers gain a bonus Victory Point as a “Humiliation” factor to the best server loosing to a lower ranked server"

“If first place re-captures Stone mist, off one of the other 2 servers, it is awarded no bonus, other than being able to have another chance at solidifying their lead”

“However a new Bonus Points is up for grabs it the other servers can take it”

“In case of two Drawing servers for first , the bonus point system is NOT awarded”

- In Summary

This scoring system in regards to the one week or 2 week matches that ANET will end up deciding on, emphasizes that each set is as important as the first ones, right down to the last one, with the Stone Mist Wild card, able to allow lower ranked servers the chance to claw back, should the leading server allow the to,

Ensuring

Everyone’s Efforts, regardless of timezone, location, “Primetime” matters to the final outcome

Just who is the Best server?

Sooo after reading up on I don’t know how many posts about this I have come to a single conclusions. Even though there has been a lot of effort by the playerbase to somehow negate the effectiveness of nightcapping, Anet already said they are not going to do anything about it.

I play on Far Shiverpeaks and we have been getting nightcapped for aslong as I play WvWvW by Vizu[FR]. Be that by Canadians or by the French who decide to have time to play GW2 during the night. During the day we would claw our way back into the map(s) and dig in as well as we could. However the gap would become increasingly bigger over the night as time came to pass.
I don’t blame anyone on the FR server for nightcapping, they are allowed to do so, hell I don’t even care if they boast about being the best EU server because of it. The single thing I don’t understand is how they can still enjoy WvWvW after capping every map every single night for atleast 3 weeks in a row. I would be just as unattracted by WvWvW if I logged on to see my server getting 550+ points per tick as I am unattracted by logging on and seeing my server has absolutely nothing and we are greeted by Ballistas and Arrow carts near our spawn. Now I realize that winning is a lot more fun than losing and appearantly Vizunah hasn’t lost their appetite for winning even though I hardly think it can be satisfying anymore.

I’m not here to propose any ideas on fixing it cause, like I said, I doubt Anet will do anything with it. What I really would like to know from one of the “hardcore” nightcappers (a person that systematically is online when most others are asleep, I would prefer a person playing on Vizunah cause I know a lot more about the situation here than anywhere else) what they find fun in WvWvW? Especially considering that if you play during the night there is little to no competition, atleast there isn’t any in our current matchup (Vizunah[FR], Riverside[DE], Far Shiverpeaks).

On a sidenote, is there a place where us players can check out server activity? I.e. a place that shows how many people are online on a server during which times and so on?

I find this whole nightcapping ordeal extremely hilarious. People seem to only care about nightcapping when it happens to them. Anyone ever think that the way one server comes to own everything when WvW resets (new match) is due to nightcapping? Winning server isn’t complaining then. When have u ever heard someone say, “wow, all this dominating sure sux!”

Nightcapping needs to remain as is. It should even stop being given the title nightcapping. It’s like people sit and complain about it because they need a reason for why they cant capture all points and then hold them forever. How is that even fair?

We on Riverside are constantly being overrun by the French speaking Canadian community playing at what we consider the middle of the night.
I´m playing at this time too, and its just pain trying to group ore then 20 people to sneak kill a few of theyre supply camps while a 300 man Zerg is taking all our stronger positions.
How about spwaning defending NPCs on the keeps etc if a server gets outmanned?
It would give the off-time players a little more competition and slow down the night-capping process so servers with a low population on those times have a chance to compete.
Those NPCs wont take any offensive actions, but they will defend objectives.

Spicyhash:
Well like I said at some point beating mostly AI during a “nightcap” run will most likely become boring.
And no matter how you look at it, nightcapping is called nightcapping cause it happens at night (albeit night for the majority of the servers inhabitants) and they “cap” points.. But we can call it the “AWSD vertical ninja dance” if you want to make it sound flashier.

Two-thirds of the customers are unhappy. How many businesses stay in business that way?

You can use what ever kitten scoring system you want, but until servers with an active off-peak population are matched up against each other, two-thirds of the customers will remain unhappy, or perhaps go find something else to do.

Piano lessons are looking good.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Two-thirds of the customers are unhappy. How many businesses stay in business that way?

You can use what ever kitten scoring system you want, but until servers with an active off-peak population are matched up against each other, two-thirds of the customers will remain unhappy, or perhaps go find something else to do.

Piano lessons are looking good.

which 2 thirds of people in the world are you talking about sorry?

don’t forget that this is a thread about night-capping, and funnily enough, the posts from people who have issues with it, will generally outweigh the people who don’t (and can’t be bothered responding).

Well, Drakkar – Whiteside – Vabbi is now at 670/15/+10, and the totals are 135k/51.5k/35k.

Two servers have simply given up, and it’s only Monday. But hey, you just keep on being the Fan Boy.

heheh….telling comeback that!…but simply translates to “I don’t like what you said but can’t think of anything constructive/meaningful to add”

as I mentioned, 2 servers out of 3 is not 2 thirds of the world GW2 population. If you wish to discuss why / how things should work etc, then please use relevant information or at least state it clearly.

We all get very passionate about this issue it seems, or just fed up with it

If people want to come up with alternatives / solutions, then they actually need to think beyond their own circumstances and consider the global impact. I’m quite happy with how things are, it works for me how it is, but I do recognise that I am only 1 person and that it doesn’t work for everyone. Haven’t seen particularly viable alternatives to it. The closest to fair I’ve seen to date, is the concept of scaling scores to the number of active participants. And that is a LOT of work to implement once you start considering the exceptions – idlers, disconnected users, pve’ers, bots, puzzle jumpers who are not ever participating (vs ones that do participate)….theres prolly plenty more of those exceptions that make it very very difficult to measure/code.

Guild Wars Fan.3249:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Two-thirds of the customers are unhappy. How many businesses stay in business that way?

You can use what ever kitten scoring system you want, but until servers with an active off-peak population are matched up against each other, two-thirds of the customers will remain unhappy, or perhaps go find something else to do.

Piano lessons are looking good.

which 2 thirds of people in the world are you talking about sorry?

don’t forget that this is a thread about night-capping, and funnily enough, the posts from people who have issues with it, will generally outweigh the people who don’t (and can’t be bothered responding).

The two thirds estimate would be the two servers in each match that are wildly outscored and outcapped at night. To be fair I think the estimate is way over the real number but I would say there’s a significant minority who are increasingly unhappy with the way things are.

You should pop over to Whiteside sometime this week. You sound just like the stoic unflappable kinda guy who could help make the difference here.

imho the solution is faily simple.
Scale the tally according to population that is live on that server (either the whole server or wvw zone).
That way when its “quiet” times the bonus is still there but less significant.

I’d then suggest that if you do lose a tower/keep whatever. Some of the “payed for” upgrades remain and you lose some at random. Part of the issue for me is going in with my guild, paying 4 gold upgrading a keep all day defending it (if we don’t defend no-one does). Coming back the next morning and someone circle capped while there were less defenders and took all those upgrades away.

To be honest, this feels like walking into any sportgame, computergame, boardgame, you name it and the referee is telling you the other team already won because thats the rules and you cant do anything about it. the score is 50.000 against you and the game started 2 days ago.
Now you can try all day long to do your very best and you might even gonna make a diference when you play, but it wont matter in the end because the game have been decided by something you have absolutly no effect on. (We all have to sleep)

Question is: Do i wanna bother playing such a game?

Im still playing but im getting closer and closer to a bad conclusion

I agree in general with ANet’s postion on nightcapping – doesnt really make sense. However and to be true to that you can’t have 2 leagues of servers based on time zone.
I don’t know if it is technically possible at this time, but all servers should play against all servers this is what makes it true for ANet’s concept. With this on there is no night cap issue. (this and ending the free server transfers…)