Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the effort John, if only this started happening over a year ago.

I’ll be sure to give the game another try once WvW received this level of attention on an implementation level, the stuff being mentioned here would go a long way towards revitalizing the game mode (although there is still that crazy thing called new content that would also help).

Thank you for the interest in evolving WvW. I feel scoring, in itself, simply isn’t a core issue with WvW. You could remove the score all together and we’d still WvW. In fact, without the “server pride” (the exact term get’s kittened) aspect, it would probably be MORE fun! I don’t have the metrics but, I’d say EotM attracts more players than WvW does now. More than likely do to the relaxed nature of not having to care about a score. That carefree fun is far more rewarding and valuable than any Seasons or weekly 1st place rewards.

Meaning is another issue that trumps score. Since the Mega Server, worlds themselves have lost much of their meaning. Players do not have a place of their own, nor do they have a secured way to communicate amongst themselves. These issues are more detrimental to the WvW population than scoring. Honestly, I believe LA should never have been turned into a Mega Server layer.

I’d much rather see threads about new maps with themes, Alliances with back stories and associated themes, than just a new scoring/reward system. For scoring in itself, breaking it down into 3 hrs blocks like EotM might help. Though with Season 3 winding down, I’m certain many players can tell you we all played WAY too much. There simply isn’t enough WvW players left in the game. Thus, we play over time which far exceeds the boundaries of “healthy” game play. I hope Anet considers deeply what behaviors their designs encourage and rewards. This is coming from someone who just played 12 hrs straight against BG and TC.

I’m so glad that this discussion is finally taking place, however I am a little concerned about the idea of splitting the day into chunks with a server being able to “win” a chunk of the day. You can never really predict when certain servers will be active and it just seems like there could be plenty of problems with such a system.

I’m wondering what the result would be if we simply went with this:

1. You get points for taking an objective (more points if it’s upgraded)
2. You get points for defending an objective (less points if it’s upgraded)
3. You DO NOT get points for holding an objective
4. You get points for upgrading an objective

This would result in a servers points only going up when they have people playing and nobody can earn a massive amount of points for passively owning something.

This system would only require a rebalance of the point system. I’m sure Anet could monitor a few server matchups and come up with something.

Thoughts?

DeWolfe.2174:

This is coming from someone who just played 12 hrs straight against BG and TC.

36hrs against SFR/kodash, but i have my free day on friday

my 2 cents to scoring: the tick is the whole problem: you can win huge fights, wipe whole zergs and multiple guildraids and get absolutely nothing from it, because you take the objective (let’s take garri for example. always huge fights if not sneaked) at 12 mins to tick after fighting for 35 minutes and at 3 minutes, a ttm combo take the garri back and you’ve gained absolutely nothing, but wasted 35 minutes on a more than annyoing fight against respawning enemy troops.

my proposal: either reduce global tick time to, let’s say 1 minute or rework the system to a points per minutes held system.
additionally, reward more points per stomp with full bloodlust. do not go for simple points per kill. stomping has to be done!

as for night scoring: analyze server coverage and calculate the percentage of maximum possible players on the border/wvw in general. that’s the percentage of points scored per tick. and since you don’t like to reveal any numbers, make it grouped in quartes.

an example: let’s say Seafarers Black Bay, an EU+NA server with good night coverage, has special night capping guilds or someone who organizes a nightshift for all the abroad people, and they completely reset their enemies home borders +EB, while they are all sleeping, because they have to work or go to school, university, whatever, and this is still just a game, so nobody would mess up their RL because of it (hopefully). at the moment, this would mean clean 600 points, every 15 minutes for, let’s say, 6 hours equalling 14,400 points, let’s say 3 nights a week are 43,2k by night capping alone, with no resistance at all.

while those 54k points were scored, there were 15 people in total, over every border+eb, of a maximum number of, ... let’s say 100 on borders (300) and 200 on EB, for the calc, 500 per server * 3 = 1500 in total. 15 people filling 1500 slots equals a 1% world coverage. that doesn’t seem fair to me.

using my system, 15 of 1500 people, 1% of 1500, gives one quarter (0,25) of the maximum possible score (14,4k), resulting in 3,600 points.
no work, no rewards.

€dit because of math, thx Dayra

Tryxtr.6295:

I’m wondering what the result would be if we simply went with this:

1. You get points for taking an objective (more points if it’s upgraded)
2. You get points for defending an objective (less points if it’s upgraded)
3. You DO NOT get points for holding an objective
4. You get points for upgrading an objective

This would result in a servers points only going up when they have people playing and nobody can earn a massive amount of points for passively owning something.

This system would only require a rebalance of the point system. I’m sure Anet could monitor a few server matchups and come up with something.

Thoughts?

This would actually lead to:
1) fully fortified keeps not touched for week will not grant any points
2) matches will be really close, because most of the points will come from recapturing and stomping
3)small server with skilled players may actually get matched against much larger one
4)that will also mean that complete blowouts

But I think blowouts will be only for few weeks until scoring will be adjusted, for example those defending events should trigger only when gate reach less than 50% of health, to prevent tagging. Or they might be distributed with 1 point to each player for defending event, even now you get some XP it might give you 1 point.

- The keep/tower would grants points when you take it, when you upgrade it, and when you defend it. The only time it wouldn’t grant points is if the other servers left it alone, which I’m not sure would ever happen.
– Close matches are a good thing
– Small server being able to hold their own against a large server would be good for WvW, wouldn’kitten It may help redistribute the population over time and do away with all the lop sided matchups we tend to see.
– It’s hard to predict if there will be blowouts because of this. I think Anet would need to track all captures/defends/upgrades for a few matchups and see what point system would make sense.
– I’m on the fence about whether actual player kills should count, but I think it definitely warrants looking at.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,

So from reading through the posts by far the most common proposal is to create some sort of scoring periods. There are multiple different approaches that have been presented but it’s clear that winning scoring periods and tallying up those wins to determine who wins the match is generally accepted as a good way to improve scoring.

Several people suggested keeping the map state across scoring periods so that the investment you make in upgrades and effort you take in conquering objectives but the scores will have far less of a chance of running away when the victory points come from the scoring period not the PPT.

If the scoring periods are done I do hope it’s the method of simply tallying scores every so often and leaving the map and entire system in play. The idea of interrupting gameplay to me is just wrong. There’s no way to set it up that won’t cause issues for someone’s gameplay. If I can play for 2 hours I don’t want a reset happening right in the middle of it basically. Score reset, sure fine, whatever, but let me keep playing and working towards whatever I’m working towards.

The problem with that system though is that you still have people taking down structures when no one else is playing, and those structures would still carry over into the next scoring bracket, while it wouldl prevent runaway scoring you’d also eventually have a locked in winner at some point.

4 breakdowns per day, 7 days a week, so 28 sections, if all you need to win is the most you’d assure a win at 15 wins which could be basically half way through the week.

Where now you can technically assure a win with enough of a lead, this would lock it in as a complete impossibility possibly half way through the week.

So while it’s not a bad solution there are still pretty decent flaws. A nightcapping team will still be able to set up t3 structures for when their prime time comes back around meaning they don’t have to captures as much but just defend to win their section. And you may not have runaway scoring but you can have guaranteed wins half way through the week.

Tryxtr.6295:

- The keep/tower would grants points when you take it, when you upgrade it, and when you defend it. The only time it wouldn’t grant points is if the other servers left it alone, which I’m not sure would ever happen.
– Close matches are a good thing
– Small server being able to hold their own against a large server would be good for WvW, wouldn’kitten It may help redistribute the population over time and do away with all the lop sided matchups we tend to see.
– It’s hard to predict if there will be blowouts because of this. I think Anet would need to track all captures/defends/upgrades for a few matchups and see what point system would make sense.
– I’m on the fence about whether actual player kills should count, but I think it definitely warrants looking at.

This is pretty much how i envision scoring working. I’d add that objectives go neutral which would then have to be capped at lords (or the ring at camps) every couple hours. Imagine the fights over neutral objectives… Especially if all the NPC were hostile. Of course they’d only go neutral if they weren’t refreshed somehow.

Jerus.4350:

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,

So from reading through the posts by far the most common proposal is to create some sort of scoring periods. There are multiple different approaches that have been presented but it’s clear that winning scoring periods and tallying up those wins to determine who wins the match is generally accepted as a good way to improve scoring.

Several people suggested keeping the map state across scoring periods so that the investment you make in upgrades and effort you take in conquering objectives but the scores will have far less of a chance of running away when the victory points come from the scoring period not the PPT.

If the scoring periods are done I do hope it’s the method of simply tallying scores every so often and leaving the map and entire system in play. The idea of interrupting gameplay to me is just wrong. There’s no way to set it up that won’t cause issues for someone’s gameplay. If I can play for 2 hours I don’t want a reset happening right in the middle of it basically. Score reset, sure fine, whatever, but let me keep playing and working towards whatever I’m working towards.

The problem with that system though is that you still have people taking down structures when no one else is playing, and those structures would still carry over into the next scoring bracket, while it wouldl prevent runaway scoring you’d also eventually have a locked in winner at some point.

4 breakdowns per day, 7 days a week, so 28 sections, if all you need to win is the most you’d assure a win at 15 wins which could be basically half way through the week.

Where now you can technically assure a win with enough of a lead, this would lock it in as a complete impossibility possibly half way through the week.

So while it’s not a bad solution there are still pretty decent flaws. A nightcapping team will still be able to set up t3 structures for when their prime time comes back around meaning they don’t have to captures as much but just defend to win their section. And you may not have runaway scoring but you can have guaranteed wins half way through the week.

I’m not particularly found of this idea. There is just no way to match people playtime to a set schedule and for all the reason mentioned prior to why this isn’t the best solution.

John Corpening.9847:

The video from TeamBattleAxe was also brought up by several people. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, it has some great suggestions about how to create teams that share scores across their matches.

I don’t see how this will solve problems without creating new (possibly worse) ones.

For starters, taking the proposal in that video and applying it to Gold League today, SoS, Maguuma and Fort Aspenwood would still get several bad match ups. Because they are being carried by a stronger server their colour’s score at the end of the week might be higher, but the experience that matters most – playing on that server – doesn’t change, you still have bad match ups. Personally I don’t care if my server places 1st over the entire week if it means playing on my server during the week I had close to 0 PPT and my placement was because stronger servers carried me. That’s where guesting comes into it.

WvW guesting sounds like a horrible idea because it is far too easy to exploit (assuming I understand the proposal correctly). Instead of large guilds map hopping, you will see large guilds guesting to lower tiered servers to try and dominate the competition. A T1 zerg guild would actually dominate a lower tier server with numbers alone. Casually allowing mega zerg guilds guesting to several different servers would just throw chaos into WvW. The video suggests that guesting away from their home server leaves it vulnerable, but there are plenty of times when a home server will be guaranteed 3rd place so whether they tick at 200PPT or 0PPT doesn’t matter at all. If they can get better rewards from PPTing in a lower tier where they do stand a chance, they have incentive to do that.

WvW guesting would simply be far too volatile to lower tier servers. Large, casual influxes of players will easily tip the balance and dramatically alter the style of play that currently exists on lower tiers. A lot of players are on lower tier servers because they don’t want to face giant zergs, they prefer smaller scale combat or their computers can’t handle T1 and T2 zergs. WvW guesting will remove this from these people.

Also consider how easy it will be to troll people. Sure your weekly performance will be based on on your possible guesting servers, but that won’t stop some people from exploiting this. There will be cases where servers will be paired up with rival servers or servers they have a bad history with (it won’t happen within the same tier, but because servers rise and fall it will still happen).

Banzie.5248:

Easy

Only player kills count for score.

If you think WvW players hate pugs, “rallybots” and PvE players in their WvW now, I’d hate to see a time where “bad” players become a significant part of the PPT score (assuming people end up caring about score). Suddenly bad players, uplevels, PvE players – they are all actively hindering your server’s WvW performance every time they die. ArenaNet wants players to be happy when they see allies, not matter who it is. If deaths were a significant part of the PPT I can assure you, WvW will become a very hostile place for uplevels, pugs and less experienced players.

Just hide the score/hide the tick.

This will not help with the big coverage/night capping issues, but it will help immensely with the #1 and #3 servers focusing the #2 sever issue.

It will also be better for morale.

The problem with considering different scoring methods based on times is that you’re basically telling people that can only play in “off” times that their time is less valuable than “regular” players. Nothing good can come from that.

I posted this in another forum last week when sharing thoughts on the outmanned buff and will copy it here:

I agree that personal player buffs would ruin the small group / roamer / havoc experience in a PvP sense. I hate to do this as I’m short on time and sure to not convey what I really picture, but here is a really rough example:

• Minor Borderlands Outmanned buff: This buff would be relatively weak, because as I explained in my post it would be easy for servers to manipulate by asymmetrically stacking onto certain maps. Perhaps the current Outmanned buff would be all you get.

• Major Borderlands Outmanned buff: This version would give bonus points for stomps the same way Borderlands Bloodlust would. Perhaps this is also when Borderlands Outmanned buff and Borderlands Bloodlust start synergizing together. Perhaps captured bloodlust has a longer cooldown so the outmanned team can hold it easier. Also maybe siege disabler (my thoughts on this poor mechanic in general are a whole other conversation) duration against them are cut down significantly. And maybe siege get a damage buff at this point?

• Superior Borderlands Outmanned buff: This is where I envision the dynamic scaling of NPCs, gates and walls vs. PvD and night cap karma train behaviors kicks into effect. Generally, make it a real pain in the kitten for blobs to train through empty maps and make everything on all maps 1 color. (Someone mentioned concerns with it affecting small teams if it does not scale back down… But it shouldn’t be a problem as I believe they handle this in PvE? Not sure… ) Also, maybe an additional stomp point could be awarded over what is given with the major outmanned buff (that would mean if a server could hold bloodlust, they would get 3 points per stomp), and I think a big buff to siege damage could possibly be awarded as well, especially in how the fortified walls / gates absorb damage and how defensive siege repels blobs (don’t ask how this would work… It would take a lot of debate to come up with something that makes sense). EDIT: One other idea I just had that may be cool… Maybe with this buff contested waypoints open much faster… So instead of waiting 3 minutes and only getting a couple of seconds to WP into a contested keep, you wait 1 minute and get a 15 second cooldown before it is contested again. That’s just a quick thought that may need deliberation as all my other suggestions would. Also a buff for yaks would be cool… Make them faster, sturdier, and maybe increase supply delivery? When getting into discussing supply and the use of supply in building siege and upgrading capture points, many things could be done here to help low population servers via this buff. Perhaps siege could cost less supply to build or players get a supply capacity buff. And one more thought on siege: if a team has this level of the buff, the Siege Deployment Blocked effect should be imposed on enemies once they breach the inner most area of a castle, keep or tower. Also PPT multipliers could be considered…

I’m also not sure how and when current Outmanned buff procs (if it takes being outmanned by 10 or 20 or whatever that number is), but in a new system, the algorithm would take into account all map populations total as well as player distribution on individual maps to make sure a stacked server isn’t attempting to manipulate the system. For example: If Server A has a population distribution like this: Green BL: 3, Blue BL: 3, Red BL: 60, EB: 60 it should not be able to get the major buff against a Server B with this distribution: Green BL: 10, Blue BL: 10, Red BL: 10, EB: 10

One additional possibility likely mentioned elsewhere here: anchor the highest score in each matchup to the lowest score: Do not allow leads in excess of a certain amount (20,000 points comes to mind, but Im sure a more scientific approach could be taken to determine what number is best). Ticking at 500 and have a 20k lead? Sorry it doesn’t matter at this point.

Shiren.9532:

WvW guesting sounds like a horrible idea because it is far too easy to exploit (assuming I understand the proposal correctly). Instead of large guilds map hopping, you will see large guilds guesting to lower tiered servers to try and dominate the competition. A T1 zerg guild would actually dominate a lower tier server with numbers alone. Casually allowing mega zerg guilds guesting to several different servers would just throw chaos into WvW. The video suggests that guesting away from their home server leaves it vulnerable, but there are plenty of times when a home server will be guaranteed 3rd place so whether they tick at 200PPT or 0PPT doesn’t matter at all. If they can get better rewards from PPTing in a lower tier where they do stand a chance, they have incentive to do that.

Guesting is even worser.

Guesting allows the dominating server, bored by it’s match to escape this boring win and terrorize other servers wherever it has fun. I know that the SFR WvW-TS zerg goes to EotM for some action, only leaving a scout in WvW, after they conquered the map. Guesting would allow them to invade and destroy other matches, horrible idea. It must be never allowed, and that’s why I never commented that video, the proposal is to bad to be taken serious. But it has support by all the people of the overstacked servers, that are overstacked to win and bored in their match because the win is so easy.

I am not a fan of gems for transfers. But at least they hinder that. Better than gems for transfers would be in game penalties for transfers. Lower queue priority if you are newer on a server, commanders are server bound and need to be bought again after a transfer, you have to make 50 level ups with a character on a world before it can enter WvW for that world, …

munkiman.3068:

Tryxtr.6295:

-

This is pretty much how i envision scoring working. I’d add that objectives go neutral which would then have to be capped at lords (or the ring at camps) every couple hours. Imagine the fights over neutral objectives… Especially if all the NPC were hostile. Of course they’d only go neutral if they weren’t refreshed somehow.

I have been kicking around ideas about things going neutral too. The idea would be to have things to do to keep objectives so that there is a minimum pop req to hold all the maps at once.

One idea I came up with would put together several small changes that make it possible to have towers and keeps downgrade and go neutral.

1) Camps that don’t have an upgrade running or not being contested will have a window where it works as normal, 5mins for example. After that it will tier down an upgrade which can be repurchased. If there are no upgrades on the camp at that time it will go neutral.

2) Towers, Keeps, and Stonemist will have a similar system. When there is an upgrade running or it is contested it works as normal. If not the workers will start grabbing supply to rebuild and repair gates, mortars, cannons, and oil. Finally if those conditions aren’t met the objective will tick down supply as a “maintenance” cost. Once the supply reaches 0 there will be a window to have a yak deliver more supply, again 5mins for example. If the supply stays at zero and the objective doesn’t become contested or have an upgrade running the objective will tier down an upgrade. Finally an unupgraded objective will flip neutral.

A system like this would require a minimum amount of people to make sure camps are staying owned so they can send yaks. Opposing servers could also snipe yaks not only to prevent upgrades, but also to remove upgrades if they can’t pull enough people to take it outright.

I still hold that all scoring needs to be tied to concrete actions in WvW and not something that is time based. Taking and holding objectives and definitive kills via spike along with yak/supply denial and defense need to be the way to go with scoring.

A basketball or baseball or football game isn’t won by trying to hold onto the ball for the longest amount of time without doing anything. You have to actually get to some kind of goal to get points. Simply earning points by holding or ninja-ing an objective right before a timed tick is just a broken concept.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

I still hold that all scoring needs to be tied to concrete actions in WvW and not something that is time based. Taking and holding objectives and definitive kills via spike along with yak/supply denial and defense need to be the way to go with scoring.

A basketball or baseball or football game isn’t won by trying to hold onto the ball for the longest amount of time without doing anything. You have to actually get to some kind of goal to get points. Simply earning points by holding or ninja-ing an objective right before a timed tick is just a broken concept.

I get what you’re saying, but I can’t help but point out that time of possession and clock management are absolutely crucial elements of basketball and football. Baseball not so much because that’s a game ended by events not a time (9 innings vs 60 minutes)

I do like the strategy of capping things “for the tick” where you cap it with 4 mins or less on the timer to prevent the possibility of it reflipping befrore the tick. THough overall I’m not a huge fan of PPT however there does need to be a reason to want to hold onto things, without that there’d be no motivation to defending your area, you’d be better off ktraining it through somewhere else, then jumping back to recap and get your points.

I have big issues with WvW being that having suffered the outnumbered buff most of the time I play is just frustrating.
WvW is less about Skill and more about numbers. Numbers aren’t a bad thing until you get to the point where it is just pure numbers.

Let me give you an example. When you have 10 people in WvW without co-ordination you can do a few things and when you encounter an organised guild you will most likely lose. That’s fine. When you are that co-ordinated guild and you have 10-15 people and you encounter the mega blob… I’m talking 30+ you will lose. Regardless. The damage that thing can put out with almost definitely destroy you. Now there are groups out there that will beat them but it’s rare.
That is what needs to be addressed. The score isn’t determined by the skill of the serv but by the blob they carry. Being able to walk to a t3 keep and drop 5 Superior rams and PvD through defences is just a mindless karma train. It also means if you suffer fewer numbers you will not even get a chance to defend. I would like to see a balance against larger numbers.

A buff like over-confidence. It would be a stacking buff that you will receive a 1% increase to damage taken and 1% damage dealt for every player you have with you over the cap of say 10. This means that a 50 man blob would suffer a 40% damage drop and 40% more damage taken. It would give the groups a chance and make it very difficult to troll people. Unless you can get 40+ people together to troll (at which point you need help) it would give the smaller groups a chance and break up the mindless blobbing. This would stop karma trains.

Holding bases should also be easier if you are outnumbered. Siege should be more potent (only in defense) also if you are outnumbered walls and gates should only fall at a % per second (regardless of how much siege or PvD people do) 1% for wood, 0.5% for reinforced, and T3 walls should be 0.25%. this means that it would take at least 100 seconds for the blob to get through wood. 200 seconds for T2 and 400 for T3 obviously gates will only get to t2 so 200 seconds would mean 3mins and 20 seconds to get in. This would allow for people to get a defense ready. and if a sudden influx came into the map. The buff would disappear and boom the blob can smash through.

It will help balance numbers and coverage. because the biggest damage to coverage is the feeling of powerlessness against the huge numbers of another server. School holidays in countries around europe are different so national servers get an advantage gain if they are all off together. If you are a group of 5 with seige you should have a chance to defend your towers (it doesn’t have to be easy, but should be possible) anything 30+ will build enough siege to smash through anything you have regardless of level in a few seconds. You should be able to put more pressure on when defending, it shouldn’t be what has become the norm of “We’ll wait for them to leave and try and recapture.”

xvalkyrie.6742:

I think scoring needs to get rid of ppt. Make capture and defend just gain flat points, but also get rid of defend events for someone beating on a wall, the only defend event that would count is the capping circle with the vet/champ/lord.

I read some good ideas in other posts on the issue about having a scaling factor based on the number of people in wvw at any given time. In a match if server A, B and C all have 50 people playing, there’s no scaling. If server A and B both have 50 people, but server C has 20, then their (server C) captures and kills count for “more” each cap or spike.

Just throwing numbers out there:

Player kill: 25 points
Player stomp: 50 points
Camp capture: 1000 points
Camp defend: 1500 points
Tower capture: 5000 points
Tower defend: 7000 points
Keep capture: 10k points
Keep defend: 15k points
Garrison capture: 25k points
Garrison defend: 30k points
SMC capture: 35k points
SMC defend: 40k points

This would encourage people to fight and take things, and if there’s no tick to wait for, it can’t be abused by someone telling their zerg to log out before it ticks. If you have a team fighting uphill against a force who runs double your number, you get rewarded for what you’re capable of taking by it scaling to be worth more and catch up your score. Also to avoid abuse, maybe the population across all borderlands and ebg are summed up. So the server can’t just send a havok group to one borderland and get a ridiculous amount of points for being outnumbered when all servers have the same number of players just in differing maps. I think if the scores were closer more people would play, more capture and defenses would happen, and more people would fight, not just zerg v zerg, but small roaming groups and soloers, too.

I think xvalkyrie.6742 had the best suggestion when they suggested getting rid of PPT (points per tick). I play on Sea of Sorrows, which consistently gets ranked as number 4 among all servers. When we are put against the lower servers Maguuma and Fort Aspenwood, we always end up overpowering them right away—which gets boring for us and frustrating for them. When we are put against the higher servers, such as Blackgate and Jade Quarry, we become the server with the lowest score and then we consistently struggle just to hold our keep. Points per tick just locks in this dynamic right away from the start of the match and means that after only a day or two, the server with the highest score of the 3 will stay that way, the server with the second highest score will also stay at number 2, and the lowest-scoring server of the three again stays the lowest.

Having a flat score for capturing structures is the best solution. It means the dynamic between the three servers in a match can always change. There should be no points at all just for holding a structure.

As for score scaling based on server population, I’m critical of the idea. It feels like too much of an accommodation and like it would make things too easy for the less-populated servers.

Some other ideas:

You could make it so that when a player kills another player, everyone in their server who is present on the map gains a small amount of world experience or gains a small reward. This surely would help less-populated servers, giving more meaning to individual kills for the whole server. It would also put more importance on open-field skills by individual players.

If you’re concerned about people gaining too much from kills using arrow carts and other siege weapons, you could lower their rewards for kills while using the siege weapons or being inside a structure.

You could also have rewards for cumulative kills. For example: When your server kills 50 people, everyone in your server on the map gets a reward. Then when your server kills 100 people, everyone gets a higher reward.

You could make it so when your server captures 5 structures within an allotted time, everyone gets a reward. When your server kills 30 guards, everyone gets a reward. Et cetera.

Adding some more ideas:

People should get rewarded a small amount just for obtaining an upgrade, as upgrades require time and effort monitoring a structure.

From John’s OP.

This suggestion doesn’t really fall under scoring specifically, but would both affect and be affecting by score.

Add meta events that are directly triggered by a combination of score and population that can affect walls, supply, or anything meaningful to WvW success. GW2 has very heavily used random events in PvE to great success, why not use them to help balance WvW? These events are more likely to occur against a server with a more substantial lead as well as against a server with more players online. This would give the servers ahead something to do and give the servers behind an chance to recover and come back. All said and done, this would likely be a substantial amount of work and could be very difficult to implement and balance, but is also extremely versatile and rewarding to players of all sides that want fun and not just for easy wins. It would help alleviate population imbalance, snowballing, loot rewards, and definitely stagnation.

The downside is that this essentially implements more PvE into WvW, adding NPCs to even out the player difference, BUT there would still be player enemies whereas PvE does not, and this would be another ‘tool’ to consider, use, and leverage for the little guy. Some of these events could be friendly to one or more colors while some could be hostile to all but with a specific goal in mind.

Now, before you go clipping a part of my post to discount the idea, this is meant for balance and improvement. If green is 100k more points (or more) tin the lead, has double the players than the other two servers combined at the time, and has had SMC fully upgraded for three day straight, why couldn’t there be monsters attacking the castle? It would divert their attention and force them to split their forces more and give everyone a better chance to make a difference for their server. If implemented and balanced well, it has huge potential and could easily be changed and flavored for different seasons, holidays, or whatever the devs want!

Here are some examples off the top of my head:

A legendary giant attacks SMC, damaging walls with punches and stomps. It is indiscriminate, also attacking anything nearby, but primarily focusing on the walls. If it manages to cap SMC by itself, it turns neutral again.

Krait emerge from the depths of a borderland center (where they were before bloodlust!) and attack water gate of Bay or Garrison. Once they breach outer, they plunder the supply and leave.

The centaurs and skritt that currently attack the north camps of a borderland now rush in to steal supply, lowering the maximum supply the camp can hold until it is flipped and/or another event is completed to get it back!

The workers rebel! They refuse to continue an upgrade and instead take up arms against the guards! The guards will have difficulty fighting their own and will need help to get them back to work!

A largely undefended keep of a low population server is under siege! Ascalonian ghosts appear to defend their ancestral fort!

For Halloween, the Giant could be replaced by the Mad King himself! Add an aoe fear effect and minions! Add story and background to WvW! Put in whatever would be fun and productive! But whatever you do, don’t get too caught up in the little things, but keep the focus on balance!

I’m just going to quote a suggestion from another thread awhile back that is one of the most thorough and detailed suggestions of scoring changes.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

The solution has already been suggested in other threads.

• Modify PPT such that no points are earned from an un-upgraded objective.

• PPT is then earned along a scale based on the number of upgrades completed at an objective. For example, an un-upgraded supply camp earns zero PPT. Complete one upgrade and it earns 1 PPT, two upgrades 2 PPT, etc. (towers, keeps, and Stonemist Castle would have a greater degree of scaling than supply camps).

• World Score points are earned from capturing objectives actively defended by real players. The larger the structure and more upgrades it has, the more points it will be worth on capture.

• World Score points are earned for each “Defend the X” event concluded at an objective actively under attack and actively defended by real players (no points awarded if no defenders were present during the event). An objective is considered “defended” if a real player was present when the “Defend the X” event is triggered; even if that defender runs away at some point during the siege.

• No “on capture” points are awarded for capturing undefended fortifications.

• One World Score point is awarded for each player kill (with this bonus stripped from Borderlands Bloodlust buff; it’s now awarded for any kill, any time, any where, under any conditions).

• Two World Score points are awarded for each player kill when under the influence of the Outnumbered buff. Armor repair costs are being eliminated with the April 15, 2014 Feature Pack. Having no armor repair costs as a benefit of being Outnumbered then becomes obsolete. That bonus is now replaced with an extra World Score point for each kill in recognition of the fact the outnumbered server is playing against a numerically superior force; to compensate, their kills are now worth more.

The majority of points earned would now come from battles/sieges between real players and upgrades to fortifications rather than playing PvDoor and absentee landlord. The score is a reflection of players actively engaging other players in combat and investing in their holdings rather than passively earning points by doing nothing but PvDoor while avoiding direct confrontation.

Though I’ve been a past advocate of the complete elimination of PPT, I understand its value as a motivator to get the server in the lead to continue to engage in WvW. Otherwise, in a system where points are exclusively earned through direct player interaction, a server could get into the lead then abandon WvW in an effort to deny their opponents fights and points. PPT ticking in the background is what allows the 2nd and 3rd place servers to threaten the 1st place server and keep them fighting to maintain their position.

However, with the modifications above, the 1st place server won’t be able to stay in first exclusively through PvDoor, as that activity – in its purest form – will award zero points (capturing an undefended objective and abandoning it without upgrading will earn no PPT). They will have to fight real players, capture actively defended fortifications, and/or upgrade their fortifications if they want to earn PPT and hold onto their lead.

With regards to the OP, this addresses the coverage wars to the extent that is possible in an unbalanced 24/7 arena. The suggestions above won’t stop a server from “night capping” all of an opponent’s fortifications. It will, however, slow down the PPT that server earns from such activity as no points are earned until those captured objectives are upgraded.

The server which is outnumbered at this point in the cycle then has a fighting chance. They can engage in supply denial by flipping camps and killing Dolyaks, slowing or even preventing the upgrades from completing along with the PPT that comes from those upgrades.

It’s all about rewarding player action while punishing inaction in the context of a PvP arena. PvDoor as a result of lopsided coverage doesn’t count as an “action” under this definition; thus it’s not rewarded. The server that PvDoors can still earn PPT if they upgrade their fortifications, recognizing they’ve made at least some marginal effort. But karma trains flipping empty towers and keeps without upgrading them will no longer be rewarded with PPT (and in other posts I’ve even gone so far as to suggest no loot or coin rewards, either).

I don’t agree with getting points for capturing structures and not holding them (though giving less points for unupgraded does make sense). If there is no incentive to hold things you will have less fights. Nobody will rush to tier 2 NW tower to defend it, because you are not creating any incentive to hold them. You will end up with the ultimate PvDoor with BG taking TC’s stuff, TC taking JQ’s and JQ taking BG’s.

This is because there are 3 servers not 2 – so defending to deny another server points ends up benefiting the 3rd server.

Slicing things into time periods reduces the cohesion of the community. We don’t need to upgrade or capture stuff to help the players following us, especially if you want to do full BL resets every 8 hours.

The problem is uneven numbers which is a very tough one to surmount without destroying the current communities.

I also don’t get why some are opposed reduced scoring during non-peak periods. An off-hours player could argue that their contribution is diminished if scoring is reduced, but they are essentially advocating in favor of a disproportionate affect on the scoring.

Be very careful in doing anything that would weaken current communities. This game’s mechanics does less to strengthen community compared to Everquest, WoW or Archeage and the megaserver weakened player ties further. Now I keep hearing suggestions about multi-server alliances and full resets every 8 hours.

Who will escort yaks if the upgrades are gone in 4 hours? If you want to do full resets, you need to change things to make it easier to build stuff, reducing the amount of supply required for and cost of all upgrades and possibly increasing the strength of yaks and the power of their guards . (You might even have to weaken stealth and certain immunities so thieves and warriors cannot take out yaks so easily but that is entirely a different topic).

You can’t make these changes willy-nilly without a serious analysis as to how this well affect player behavior.

(continued)

And later a modification:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

In previous threads I’ve been an advocate of eliminating PPT altogether. However, I’ve come to the realization that a purely merit-based points system (points are only awarded for capturing, defending, and sending enemy players to defeat) would be very easy to exploit. Before explaining why, I’ll first state the limiters I believe would be needed to counter the potential for exploitation:

• Capturing undefended fortifications awards no points. If it did award points, then the server with the greater coverage would still dominate. Instead of obtaining a runaway score from sweeping the map, capturing everything, and earning points from PPT ticking in the background, they would obtain a runaway score from sweeping the map, capturing everything, and be awarded for each capture; even when they’re just PvDooring down all those capture points.

• PPT would still be earned, but only by upgrading fortifications. The more upgrades completed (not merely ordered), the more PPT generated by a fortification. An un-upgraded fortification earns zero PPT.

To read the full transcript: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage/3895192

Remove scoring and redesign the game mode around fights

New score system, you get points depending on lvl and how many defenders:
T0 (Paper) you get 0points for all buildings
T1 Camp 3 Tower 5 Keep 10 SM 15 points for buildings
T2 Camp 6 Tower 10 Keep 20 SM 25 points for buildings
T3 Camp 10 Tower 15 Keep 30 SM 40 points for buildings
1 Tear is Reinforced gate and walls, 1tear Fortify, 1tear (Mortar tower) (Waypoint Keep/SM). (for supply camp T1 2 first upgrades and then 1 T ever on secund row.
And you only get points when it get attacked.

Then 2 part is how many defend, camp 10players then max point, tower 20players, keep/SM 30players, how much points it should give maybe as many as players so if you attack a camp that have no upgraded and 2 defenders the winning side get 2points, attack a tower that have 2 upgrades 5 players defending 15points to winning side, points only give when fight over, attackers capped or sword ended.

Defender is players that do damage, so you cant just stand watch and that way get points, like 10 stand next to camp let other take then change spot.

This way you have to think if you really should upgrade bay/hill on home map, you will give enemy points even if you dont defend it.

Johje Holan.4607:

(continued)

And later a modification:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

In previous threads I’ve been an advocate of eliminating PPT altogether. However, I’ve come to the realization that a purely merit-based points system (points are only awarded for capturing, defending, and sending enemy players to defeat) would be very easy to exploit. Before explaining why, I’ll first state the limiters I believe would be needed to counter the potential for exploitation:

• Capturing undefended fortifications awards no points. If it did award points, then the server with the greater coverage would still dominate. Instead of obtaining a runaway score from sweeping the map, capturing everything, and earning points from PPT ticking in the background, they would obtain a runaway score from sweeping the map, capturing everything, and be awarded for each capture; even when they’re just PvDooring down all those capture points.

• PPT would still be earned, but only by upgrading fortifications. The more upgrades completed (not merely ordered), the more PPT generated by a fortification. An un-upgraded fortification earns zero PPT.

To read the full transcript: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage/3895192

So basically, no need to really defend or upgrade anything…. Talk about trying to fix a broken thumb with a hammer….

Edit: nevermind i see. you don’t tick till it’s upgraded.

Is it worth noting that fixing the population imbalances would negate many of the existing score problems? 2 birds with 1 stone?

Ragnar.4257:

Is it worth noting that fixing the population imbalances would negate many of the existing score problems? 2 birds with 1 stone?

Didn’t we discuss that enough to show that there wasn’t really an agreed upon definition of “fixing”?

Do we make the populations smaller so people are forced to spread out more? Do we Merge things? Even if that stuff is done would that address coverage gaps? etc.

Not such a cut and dry solution, and while I don’t think the scoring is all that simple either I think the varied opinions aren’t as contradictory as the population issues were.

Ragnar.4257:

Is it worth noting that fixing the population imbalances would negate many of the existing score problems? 2 birds with 1 stone?

But it is also worth noting that a scoring-function favoring man-power superiority is always sensitive to man-power imbalances, that will always occur at least temporarily, if you do not shrink the match-capacity enough to have queue 24/7 on all server. And who wants queue for 24/7?

The efficiency scores I proposed in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/4474205 would be more suitable to balance that.

There are two main issues with WvW right now:

1. The scoring

2. The reward for winning

Fix the first one and you can start implementing better rewards for WvW.
I have mentioned several times already how I would fix the scoring/coverage issue. If you care about it, search my posts.
Right now I’d like to comment on the rewards.
Personally I think everyone on the leading server should get a chest at the end of the day. Be generous with the rewards because if the matches are balanced it will give servers an incentive to go the extra mile and make their server win.
They should be somewhat like world boss chests. A couple of rares, some gold, a respectable amount of badges, etc.

But don’t deal with this before fixing the coverage issue.

Tryxtr.6295:

I’m so glad that this discussion is finally taking place, however I am a little concerned about the idea of splitting the day into chunks with a server being able to “win” a chunk of the day. You can never really predict when certain servers will be active and it just seems like there could be plenty of problems with such a system.

I’m wondering what the result would be if we simply went with this:

1. You get points for taking an objective (more points if it’s upgraded)
2. You get points for defending an objective (less points if it’s upgraded)
3. You DO NOT get points for holding an objective
4. You get points for upgrading an objective

This would result in a servers points only going up when they have people playing and nobody can earn a massive amount of points for passively owning something.

This system would only require a rebalance of the point system. I’m sure Anet could monitor a few server matchups and come up with something.

Thoughts?

Tryxtr.6295, I agree with all those ideas except getting less points for defending a structure because of its upgrades.

Again while I support some version of breaking a day into segments there has to be other changes as well.

Assuming as example 7 days of 3 8 hour segments.

This will not stop the snowball effect. This will not encourage all week long fights. Since those segments will be FINITE and predicated ahead of time as in “There will be 21 segments” It all too easy to calculate well ahead of time which server will win a given match.

We all know friday night is one of the better nights as all the people try and see how their server will do and feels “maybe we have a chance” We also all know that by Monday the winner usually determined and borderlands go empty.

This will not change if there JUST predictable segments.

The scoring block system makes the coverage problem worse, not better!

First, it tells players that if their server doesn’t come close to winning during a block, to not even bother because their effort doesn’t matter. That directs more people to edge of the mists or other parts of the game. The goal is to make WvW more enticing.

Second, it doesn’t fix the coverage problem. Outside of tier1, the problem with coverage gaps isn’t because one server caps the map; coverage is a problem because the other servers have no one to recover their losses quickly. The forts sit there, owned by the dominant server for hours on end until the next surge in coverage or the server’s primetime. If a server loses primetime but wins the block following primetime, then they’ll most likely win the third block too from residual PPT. It potentially makes their coverage advantage even stronger. Breaking it into shorter blocks doesn’t address this.

John, would it be possible to open up a neighboring instance of WvW, maybe 1 map perhaps (like EBG), where some of these ideas can be put to the test?

This being to see what type of impact they have on scoring and how players react to it? Possibly call it “Test EBG” or something?

Test out the popular ideas given in this thread where they won’t have an impact on WvW unless the players collectively agree it’s a good change? I mean the only real way to see how these ideas work is to see them in action.

Here’s my suggestions.

1. Outmanned Buff, the PPT value for held structures is doubled, for individual stomps it’s 3 pts without bloodlust, 4 pts with bloodlust. There is an immediate point gain equal to triple the PPT, based on the level of upgrades, for capturing a Keep.

2. The PPT value of structures goes UP the longer you hold/upgrade them.

3. Those who remain in the vicinity of a tower (3000 meters) for a full hour or more, start receiving a champ bag, every half hour. There is a 5 minute forgiveness timer in the event they need to jump out to protect a supply camp of something.

4. Basic Arrow Carts are so weak, commanders get angry when someone places one. Fix this, give them a 33% dmg boost.

5. Commander Tags: More colors, different icons. Take out red, it’s hard to see.

6. Redesign the towers to have MORE then 1 door. I don’t care if it looks pretty, just give defenders an alternate way to get IN.

7. Siege Disabler: Player movement speed reduced by 50% when held, and for 5 seconds after thrown, Cool-down on successful use of 20s, effect time reduced to 30 seconds, maintain radius and throw distance, can not be thrown through gates, reduce supply cost to 5.

8. Stealth trap, worthless, remove it. I think I’ve only ever seen it used once, ever.

9. Supply Trap, change the contact radius to a circle, radius of 1200, triggers ONLY when 5+ people enter the radius. Destroys 50% of carried supply, prevents the taking of more for 30 seconds.

10. New Buff: Defiance, Activates after 1 full hour of Outmanned, deactivates 1 full hour after Outmanned drops.

-100% MF
-75% WXP
-100% EXP
-50% Gold Drop
-50% Capture Point Contribution
-Immediate PPT score gain worth double the value of any tower, and five times any Keep, based on upgrades; upon capture.
-+The PPT value of held structures is worth x3, killing an enemy with out stomping applies 2 pts to score, stomping grants 5 pts. These, with or without bloodlust.

Do these suggestions seem heavily skewed towards helping defenders on lower population servers? Why yes, yes they are, because those are the people who need help. Who feel betrayed most by the current state of things. But if the defenders rally over and over and over, the bigger players can’t just bank 100k points and sleep for the rest of the week. Because that lead can be chipped away over the week.

KDXX.9520:

Here’s my suggestions.

1. Outmanned Buff, the PPT value for held structures is doubled, for individual stomps it’s 3 pts without bloodlust, 4 pts with bloodlust. There is an immediate point gain equal to triple the PPT, based on the level of upgrades, for capturing a Keep.

2. The PPT value of structures goes UP the longer you hold/upgrade them.

3. Those who remain in the vicinity of a tower (3000 meters) for a full hour or more, start receiving a champ bag, every half hour. There is a 5 minute forgiveness timer in the event they need to jump out to protect a supply camp of something.

4. Basic Arrow Carts are so weak, commanders get angry when someone places one. Fix this, give them a 33% dmg boost.

5. Commander Tags: More colors, different icons. Take out red, it’s hard to see.

6. Redesign the towers to have MORE then 1 door. I don’t care if it looks pretty, just give defenders an alternate way to get IN.

7. Siege Disabler: Player movement speed reduced by 50% when held, and for 5 seconds after thrown, Cool-down on successful use of 20s, effect time reduced to 30 seconds, maintain radius and throw distance, can not be thrown through gates, reduce supply cost to 5.

8. Stealth trap, worthless, remove it. I think I’ve only ever seen it used once, ever.

9. Supply Trap, change the contact radius to a circle, radius of 1200, triggers ONLY when 5+ people enter the radius. Destroys 50% of carried supply, prevents the taking of more for 30 seconds.

10. New Buff: Defiance, Activates after 1 full hour of Outmanned, deactivates 1 full hour after Outmanned drops.

-100% MF
-75% WXP
-100% EXP
-50% Gold Drop
-50% Capture Point Contribution
-Immediate PPT score gain worth double the value of any tower, and five times any Keep, based on upgrades; upon capture.
-+The PPT value of held structures is worth x3, killing an enemy with out stomping applies 2 pts to score, stomping grants 5 pts. These, with or without bloodlust.

Do these suggestions seem heavily skewed towards helping defenders on lower population servers? Why yes, yes they are, because those are the people who need help. Who feel betrayed most by the current state of things. But if the defenders rally over and over and over, the bigger players can’t just bank 100k points and sleep for the rest of the week. Because that lead can be chipped away over the week.

scrap the AC buff. The game needs to encourage active defense over passive defense.

AC buffs turn WvW into this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4zF790DzyQ

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

If a scoring system must be maintained for 24/7, then active scoring would need to be more valuable than passive scoring.

Example situation worst case:
Take a current extreme mis-match of server A dominating server B & C where everything is owned by server A. Passive scoring is to valuable, and the undermanned servers B & C stop playing, since they only ever had enough active players to fill 1 map, and now can’t beat the passive scoring deficit from the extra unmanned maps. Server B & C have no reason to participate in the match.

Solution:
Switch scoring where active is more valuable, and lower passive scoring to a trickle no more than 15 -20% of the total by match end. The undermanned servers now have a chance to gain critical pop mass on a single map to fight, and gain enough points from active kills to stay competitive. During off hours the passive scoring isn’t enough to create huge point deficits, and overnight blobs k-training over a few roamers aren’t able to kill enough to skew overnight scores. Server stacking becomes far less advantageous as well.

• Stagnation
  Resolved with more rotations of servers, and reward economics being competitive with PvE content.

• How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  Resolved with scoring system change. Blowouts shouldn’t be a thing ever.

There’s probably many ways that may improve WvW. One easy way will be to make some kind of Alliance as was mentioned before where you paired the most populated WvW server with the least populated WvW server. It’ll help balance things out a bit.

Another option or in addition to pairing would be that the servers/alliances the scoring methods needs some mods. The lowest population of the 3 will determine how the scaling of points be. Example: Server A has 100, Server B has 95, Server C has 25, then the cap points for server C should get a bonus boost. Meaning their caps and kills should be worth 4x the points of server A and server B. For overpopulated servers, it means their advantage of covering all the maps 24/7 aren’t going to create huge scoring differences. What if Server C has 2 people while Server A & B fielding 50? Well… Server C is in luck because their kills and caps are now 25x that of Server A & B. This should be based on total numbers on all maps not single map. If the low population server can manage their people right and take camps here and there, they might even have a chance to lead in the tick…

I’m sure people are noticing that as each WvW season goes into play, you get less and less players returning for WvW in general. It’s reminding me of the death of Alliance Battles in Guild Wars 1. It started out being very popular with hours of waits to being completely dead. The path of WvW is heading that direction without changes.

Problems of the current scoring

• PvD is more rewarding then fights for an objective (as the objective worth the same and PvD is faster)
• the fewer people are in WvW the more objective points every player is fighting for (coverage), from 0.7 when all maps have queue to 695 when there is just 1 person in WvW.
• global population imbalance
• temporary population imbalance (coverage)
• more man-power is the one and only method to increase your score.
• early decided matches
• fighting the weakest server is easier but equally rewarding than fighting the strongest.
• many important activities (upgrading, dolly escort, battles, …) aren’t respected in scoring
• staleness, we have the current scoring function now for 2 years, we know exactly how to win and who will win ahead of time, time for a new scoring that really changes the game.

Block scoring helps only a bit against coverage and early decided matches, but does not even solve these 2 problems. I think we need a more radical change of scoring to reanimate WvW

Some ideas for a radical change

• score isn’t automatically added, but must be transported from the objective that generates it to a collector place, e.g. you have to escort a caravan that transports your score to spawn and which could be reduced by hitting it, or it’s transported by a human like the old orbs or a human has to enter and direct the caravan (like a golem, but it cannot port)
• an objective only generates such local score if human actions (e.g. killing an enemy, escorting supplies (dollies could be like golems as well, you have to ride and direct them) to it, repairing something, placing a siege, upgrading it, delivery of tokens acquired from plundering dead enemies, ….) are performed in its area.
• when an objective with untransportet score is captured the score is lost.

does this help?

• PvD does not generate score, you have to do something with the objective to get score and you have to bring it home.
• coverage, if you do not have enough people to bring the score home! extending possessions doesn’t have any effect.
• if you do not have enemies, you run out of the actions that generate score.
• it breaks staleness by adding a new game element
• the further away an objective is from your collectors place the more difficult is it to bring the score home
• the effort to grow your score is growing, so it’s more difficult to run away.

Here’s my two cents on the three issues.

24 HOUR COVERAGE: splitting the day in X slots won’t change anything. The stacked servers win specifically because they have more people in off-peak hours. They will simply keep winning the off-peak timeslots and nothing is going to change.

If you want to solve this, modify the scoring by using a function of current population ratios, with a minimum cap to avoid the “let’s leave the map empty to nullify enemy point gain” tactic.
A basic example:

- if ratios are between 1:1 and 1.25:1 point scoring is normal
- between 1.25:1 and 1.5:1 the advantaged server gains only 3/4 of the points, the outnumbered one gains 1.25X
- between 1.5:1 and 2:1, bigger server gains X0.5 points, outnumbered one gains X2
- etc.
- in any case bigger server gains at least 0.3X the normal amount of points, no matter by how much they outnumber others

Note that in my example I used fixed thresholds but the best implementation would actually be a continuous function (to avoid the “don’t come inside the map or we trigger the next threshold” phenomenon) of at least 3 variables (the 3 servers’ relative population ratios) on each given map (or maybe the total on all 4 maps is better, given the prevalence of map-hopping off-peak tactics).

If anyone whines about “but this way my playing time is worth less”, point them to the fact they’re not being “punished” because they play at 4:00AM (or whenever) but because they’re playing 50 vs 10. Easier fights = less points. Can’t see how can anyone complain about this.

In fact, a truly optimal function would also increase the points gain for those times when the maps are full for all servers, as when the population is capped gaining points over the enemy servers becomes exponentially harder (since all 3 servers can immediately respond to any threat on their side of the map with a huge zerg) and should be rewarded more.

SNOWBALLING AND STAGNATION: you’ve an incredibly easy way out of this: make it so the system has a tendency toward rebalance, with the tendency getting stronger and stronger the bigger the score and map situation disparity is.

You already have one such mechanism in place (the NPC commanders to help players recap the starting tower) but it’s ridiculously weak. It should start at at least thrice the current strength and scale all the way up to 50X if needed. Things like hordes of superbuffed NPCs recapping tower+keep on the borderlands, blocking the runaway server from ever upgrading structures in the “enemy” parts of the map, blocking it from deploying siege at all… seriously, the sky’s the limit as far as “let’s make the system cheat and ENFORCE balance no matter what” is concerned.

You need to ask yourselves what’s the underlying design philosophy of WvW. So far, the party line from Arenanet has been that WvW is supposed to be a casual-friendly game mode but the actual implementation caters to the ultra-hardcore. If you want it to be REALLY casual friendly, well… casuals want to have a fighting chance and they don’t care whether it’s their skills or the system “cheating” the element which is providing that chance to them. If you want to have matches which always stay balanced on a razor’s edge and get decided in the last 30 minutes, the only way to be sure is to make it so the system itself enforces it, no matter what the actual play situation is.

Whilst scoring is important, I think it’s a secondary issue because it doesnt change the gameplay experience. Being unable to leave your spawn because your server is completely overwhelmed, feeling like PvDoor is the most incentivised play style, etc, etc, these are problems that will occur regardless of the scoring system. Whereas fixing these sorts of gameplay problems will make any scoring system more meaningful.

Here’s some ideas:

Fixing coverage & population:

• Remove server choice from PvE. There’s no concept of servers outside of WvW.

• Give some sort of formal support for WvW server advertising and information. Each server has an ingame page that has links to TS, community websites, etc. ANet moderates this page to keep it current and legit.

• Players can choose to join a WvW server (first time is free, transfers cost gems.)

• If players do not join a WvW server, then they are part of the “Mercenary” system:
  —> A Mercenary will enter WvW and be kicked off after an hour. If they play the entire hour, they will receive a modest gold, XP, item & karma reward at the end. They can then rejoin WvW for another hour, etc.
  —> A Mercenary will be automatically allocated to the most outnumbered server at the moment they enter a WvW map.
  —> A Mercenary does not receive rewards during normal gameplay. No bags, drops, karma etc. The final reward at the end of the hour is scaled by their participation. (ie. how many objectives captured/defended, how many player kills, etc.)

These changes will cause WvW coverage and population to be partially autobalancing. Servers will have better tools to recruit players who care about server pride. Players who don’t care about server pride are modestly rewarded to participate in the Mercenary auto-balancing system.

Fixing PvDoor, karma trains and rewards

• The rewards for Siege and Defense events are SCALED according to the number of enemy players KILLED in the area during the event. (By any player)
  —> Defense events last for a fixed period of time, grant their reward, and then restarts (as long as the objective is still under attack.)
  —> Siege events begin when your server attacks an objective. They succeed when you take the objective, and fail after a time out if no players from the server are attacking.

• All rewards related to objectives are tied to Siege/Defense events, and affected by scaling. This includes the champ bag and chest from killing the keep lord, etc.

• Taking an undefended objective will still be important for PPT, but it does not give any personal rewards. This removes the incentive to karma train.

With this system, defending players are rewarded with a steady supply of rewards, as long as enemy players are being killed during the defense.
On the other hand, attacking players are rewarded in an exciting way, where the longest and bloodiest battles will result in the greatest rewards, as long as you manage to take the objective in the end.
By setting up the incentives in this way, you encourage players to flock to the site of a siege, and participate in real combat. Rather than the current system of incentivising players to avoid combat.

Whatever route you take, please consider your OCX/SEA/MIDDLE-EAST/EU players that play in NA servers

So there is finally a thread on Guild Halls, a thread on Raids and a thread on finally fixing the WvW Scoring system.

When will we get any of those things? We can talk all day long but the truth is that’s we’ve been talking about all these things for 2 years already. I mean from everything that has been said already you should be able to come up with something.

There were previous CDI feedback threads, one on EotM that had about 50 pages of suggestions. NOTHING was implemented.

I love this game but honestly: The only thing we finally got was the 3 tags colours and a siege disabler.. That’s not a lot for one year of development.

KDXX.9520:

8. Stealth trap, worthless, remove it. I think I’ve only ever seen it used once, ever.

I’ve used quite a few of these. They are good for tenacious thieves that won’t go away, work pretty well in supply camps that get targeted by thieves, and can be used to find and remove thieves that hide in objectives after they’ve been flipped. The behavior of thieves, once they realize that they can’t stealth for 30 seconds, is usually pretty hilarious, too, because that’s often all they seem to know how to do.

Here’s my list of the key underlying problems with current WvW mechanics:

1. Dominance of an entire map without much incursion is extremely valuable and easy to achieve during off-hours.
2. Score is unaffected by difficulty in taking or holding a structure.
3. Rewards in WvW are greatest for quickly flipping undefended structures (karma train) compared with defending or capturing defended structures.
4. Increased numbers in battle is far more influential than increased skill.
5. No incentive to fight the strongest server. Instead the weaker two fight each other and the strongest reaps the benefits.

Here’s what I would change to address those:

• Bloodlust affects all kills, not just kills with a finisher. Outmanned players are worth less (or nothing) and obviously include a timer before you can get points from the same enemy again to prevent abuse. Doing this would make prime time more valuable (larger population) and would make organized groups more important. Tying it to bloodlust allows for some counter-play.
• Max 2 or 3 people rally from one enemy death I think the current cap is 5. Lowering the number that can rally off any one death allows more skilled groups to take on larger groups and not suddenly lose because one of their players died. It decreases the power of sheer numbers in battle.
• Dolyaks no longer award points for completed deliveries They will still award points if killed while on a route. When a server is dominating, especially in off-hours, the yaks are running routes largely unhindered. That adds up to almost 300 points per hour for a borderland (for reference, the points from ticks for a BL add up to 580 per hour). This would cut a significant chunk of the coverage advantage.
• Capturing a fort awards bonus score and WXP for each structural upgrade This would be walls, gates, oil, cannon, mortar, waypoint. Personnel upgrades (guards, merchants) don’t count. The bonus could scale with the tier of the upgrade. This encourages assaults on upgraded structures instead of just constantly flipping un-upgraded structures.
• Players and Objectives of the first place server are worth bonus WXP or loot If the first place server’s score is larger than a certain percentage of the combined second and third place servers, then their players and objectives award significant bonus WXP or bonus champion bags. They won’t be worth bonus WvW score. This encourages fighting the strongest server, but doesn’t make being the strongest server a liability.
• Increase WvW rewards in general Compared to sPvP or PvE, WvW rewards are relatively lackluster. Consider something like every 10th WvW rank chest has a guaranteed rare or better item (like a world boss chest) in addition to the current loot.
• Change WvW bonuses to be worthwhile and non-combat You know those small bonuses like gathering effectiveness, gold, increased HP, etc. Get rid of the combat ones (increased health, energy regeneration, healing), since they only make the strongest server stronger. Change and increase the non-combat ones (extra gold, experience, karma, gathering, and add a WXP one). Give them double effect in WvW (but no double bonus in EotM). This entices players to participate in WvW later in the week.

• 24 hour coverage.
  I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but wouldn’t a good idea for time-slicing be to have one long time-slice for overnight (1am-7am, for example), compared with smaller slices for daytime (e.g. 1 slice every hour in primetime, 1 slice every 2 hours the rest of the time)?
  Whoever has best score in a time-slice wins that time-slice: the winner is the team with the most slices at the end of the week.

John Corpening.9847:

Here is a summary of what you guys have brought up in our previous discussions:

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

24 hour coverage – Get. More. People. To. Play. WvW. In. All. Timezones. Anet increased/improved spvp rewards to get more pve people playing so why not in WvW. People play mmo’s way into the night for lamer stuff like pve farming and stuff so why not WvW.

Snowballing – OK. So in NA tier 1 there are things called an all-call, or whatever the respective servers refer to it. Basically if they want to win, they rally their forces to do coordinated and sustained attacks on maps. BG JQ TC have pulled off from behind wins without Anet holding their hands.

Stagnation – see above.
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No I have not read all posts, just the summary the dev posted. So about the scoring periods.. I think that it will simply highlight the coverage imbalances in WvW if things are the same as now.

- A system with scoring periods will force guilds and players in specific timezones to really lock their timezones EVERYTIME to win.

- It may burn out WvW focused players since they will be expected to show up regularly to win those scoring periods.

- Internal server drama. Really depends on the people in respective servers but not unlikely to happen.

+ It makes it easier for guilds and WvW groups to know which timezone will have more fights.

Just the stuff that crossed my thoughts after browsing the thread.

But please, try to encourage more people in playing WvW FIRST, BEFORE doing massive changes. I tried playing in IoJ’s tier and yeah WvW there is so different from T1, a lot more dead actually, so I can only imagine in lower tiers.

Quite disappointing really, since not a lot of T1 players complain here, probably because WvW in our tier is in a relatively healthier state. Most of the radical posters I see here with ideas that want to really change the nature of WvW are from servers with lackluster WvW, and I don’t blame them because everyone wants to have fun.

So yeah, Anet should get more people out of dungeons, mats farming areas, and bring those to WvW. Changing scoring whatever, sure servers will have improve(?) chances of winning, but winning the match-up is not fun if there are no fun engagements during the week. Majority of players in WvW just wants to have fun by playing “World vs World”

I think there is a simple solution that will solve all of the problems you listed in the original post.

EOTM style, having 3 hour matches.

Then your total weekly tick is only ticking up by say 5 for taking 1st, 3 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd(as an example). This would drastically slow down running up the score during off times, and keep the scoring close thought the week. 3 hours is a nice amount of time, because it’s a typical guild push. I think it would create great fights, because it would be like reset night every night.

All 3 servers would be determined to win their prime time match. They can log in for their scheduled match time, and put up a great fight, not jus wait till next week cause they down 50k already. They know when they are coming it’s going to start out even, only got 3 hours to get ahead. I think it would be really intense. They would form around the 3 hr matchs, and even if they start getting their butt kicked, okay they can wait for the next one and have another shot, and if they win that next match their total weekly score is tied back up. If you do 3 hour matchs, the megazerg benefit only lasts for 3 hours, then they got to bring it back the zerg. Often even the big servers do not have enough to field a huge blob every 3 hours.

Other option too is putting the weekly tick amount tied to population, so if more people playing, the tick is worth more, as a way to even further reduce off time scoring.

another option is do away with the 7 day format, and shorten it up.

It will shock me if they even do anything about it. See lots of complicated ideas. IMHO, The only viable solution is turn off scoring during prime time hours, and instead of score, offer drops, or silver. At the same time it would help with balance issues. People will be more willing to stay on there server. Thats why I don’t think anything will be done about it. ANET makes money with transfers.