Guild Wars 2

This is what Far Shiverpeaks wakes up to every day: Canadians at 650+ points, Riverside or Deso with the rest of the points, FS with 0 points. Every day at prime time we reclaim all 3 orbs and the French barely hold on to 1/4 of what their Canadian friends capped the night before. Riverside/Deso usually occupy the jumping puzzles with some siege equipment to get some kills.

I can’t say for sure that we are the strongest server, because we have only fought 3 different servers for the last month: French-Canadian Vizunah Square, German Riverside and Desolution. Obviously we decimate all of them when it comes to prime time fights, but there might be stronger opponents that are below the top 4 on the rankings simply because of night capping. We will never know because of the extremely flawed matchmaking system.

Alright, I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while now so this seems like a good time to do it. First of all, it’s amusing to see the official position on this:

(2)We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. (1)Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. (2)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.
(3)This is not saying that we are against any adjustment to scoring, or against developing another mechanic to improve the capping system. (1)This is simply saying that we will not be changing WvW based on some players’ idea of off time hours.

(1) What exactly is your definition of “off peak” hours? Most people who have been discussing this has defined it by the traditional meaning of off peak and prime time: namely the hours of the day where few people can play is called the off peak hours. Prime time on the other hand is the time where most people will play because it makes the most sense in most people’s lives. Between work and sleep is obviously the prime time, while off peak hours are the hours when most people work or sleep.

We really need to know how you define this if we are going to have a meaningful conversation.

(2) The way you have designed the game, the way your mechanics work, you are severely punishing players who play at a certain time of day. You have literally made it impossible for people to experience WvW at certain times of day. Claiming that you care the same for all customers is obviously not true if we look at how the game is designed, and by earlier statements we have to assume that this is deliberate in order to manage server load. I know tons of people who simply gave up on this game because it is impossible to play the endgame (which WvW inescapably is) when they have time for it.

What good is a game that you cannot play?

(3) Adjustment to scoring or making it harder to cap stuff will not improve the game. At all. The problem is not that people PvE doors for some karma, the problem is that there is no meaningful fights at certain times of the day. Add PvE content to WvW that motivates people more than whatever points they could scrape together from bashing on a door. What people fail to understand is that night capping isn’t fun for the night cappers either. It’s simply the game design that forces them to play like that. Even if they WANTED fair fights, it wouldn’t happen due to how the game works.

The ridiculously severe diminishing returns as punishment for playing with your friends that you have in this game is just embarrassing and as a game developer you should really reconsider every choice you’ve made when it comes to designing WvW and the server structure in general. The name of the game is Guild Wars. People assume that you want them to band together in these social structures called guilds and play with each other.

Telling us to stand in neverending lines (which the 6-8 hour lines at certain servers absolutely are) because we want to play with our guild or with a community that is larger than the game itself is simply outrageous for us as customers. Telling us to move away from our friends and our communities is even more outrageous. You can’t put the responsibility of server balance on the shoulders of players, especially since you don’t even give us the data and tools we would need to make it happen.

TL;DR night capping isn’t fun for anyone, queues can never be blamed on customers and you need to thoroughly review the choices you’ve made that has resulted in this mess.

Please fix the game before everyone I know has stopped logging in because there’s nothing to do in the game but sit in endless queues.

sarmatiko.2843:

Looking at how forcefully Troma and other people from VS hardcore PVP guilds justifying their wins in Players vs Gates it’s clear enough that they just tired from normal PVP and want to dominate trough PVE. I wonder if they will honorably hold their already earned badge “Night shift PVE conquerors” in future PVP games? Did they want to be remembered as “those guys with canadians, doing all work while enemies are sleeping”?

GW2 is a status game. And alliances here gain respect and disrespect according to their wins and actions. ATM VS alliances gaining negative karma just as fast as they gain their nightshift points.

Funny thing is, if you go and talk to them on IRC they start complaining about how boring WvW is. They really don’t seem to understand that it would be more fun if they moved to North American servers and play against people who are awake at the same time as they are.

The sad part is that due to this Canadian night team, all players on VS has to suffer from the poor reputation they cause and have to play against the top EU servers during daytime. VS is by far not a top daytime server, which is why this matchmaking is so flawed and punishes casuals. A few Canadians have fun at the expense of all French people, basically.

Please don’t tell him that he needs a guild when there’s literally no way to join WvW in an organized fashion. Unless you’re in a guild with 100+ players, the chances that you will meet a guildie inside WvW is extremely low. Even when we all queue up at once, rarely does it let more than a handful of players inside in the span of most people’s gaming hours.

Talel.2879:

We, Far Shiverpeaks, are indeed better WvWvW players than both Vizunah and Desolation but with the late-night capping I don’t think we will ever stand a chance against Vizunah.. When I logged on this morning (~2 hours ago) Vizunah had control of everything but two supply camps.

I’m going to contact Konsumentverket and ask if they can make ArenaNET put this screenshot on the back of the box. Seriously.

The biggest joke in all of this is the fact that this isn’t even considered a problem. Unbelievable.

DKP.4196:

No doubt the French ARE good, especially in peak times for all the other servers. They arent loosing everything and then win during 3am-6am.

Actually, they lose most of the map during the times that matter and the only reason they have any score at all is because of their “nighttime” raiding (which is daytime raiding for the players doing it). This whole night they’ve had 600+ points and they are still only leading by about 10k points.

They got almost annihilated this weekend.

It’s the same deal as DAoC where the French would lose badly only to do things like relic raids on New Years Eve to try and feel as they are part of the game and a factor to be considered in PvP. Of course every Scandinavian and German player will be drunk off theirkitten at that time of day on that day of the year.

Riverside and Desolation, the only two other servers that FS has faced in the last couple of weeks, have put up much harder fights during prime time, but sadly the scores aren’t weighed based on activity. The rankings would look much different if any thought was put into the scoring system instead of blaming us players for the current situation.

The way killing works in this game means that even the slightest advantage in numbers will snowball quickly and there’s not really room for skilled defenders keeping a larger group at bay. If there was a higher skill ceiling or scoring was improved or server populations better balanced then VS would definitely be a bottom tier server.