Guild Wars 2

Magiofdeath.2745:

TheDaiBish.9735:

• Red Hair

Gingers are pretty fantastic.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.

This question has been bothering me so I figured I should raise the issue so that hopefully I can get some sort of answer instead of letting my mind speculate that both were intended to use the sPvP system. If the question has been raised before then please do give me a link.

I understand that the WvW regions themselves are part of ‘the Mists’, but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around for the WvW map. It just serves little to no purpose, though do they have details about skill point locations but still provide no actual WvW information not that it matters to people in sPvP currently anyway.

You’re underrating the Necromancer downedstate in my opinion. Being able to spam attack and recover HP while downed has saved me so many times in both PvE and sPvP, and when that AoE condition attack comes up it can do a reasonable amount of damage to a number of enemies. In addition if you’re AoEing conditions to everyone, you have a reasonable chance of getting rallied. I can’t comment much on WvW usage.

The real reason elementalist is S tier is because you recover 50% of your downed state health as well as being a nuisance, so they either have to get the stomp, stomp after they forced you to burn your mist, or kill you twice over.

That’s all I got for now. I didn’t really think much about the borderlands because I didn’t play there much, but I imagine a similiar process. One gripe I had with the borderlands is that they didn’t feel like YOURS, it still felt like a 3-way battle. Your borderlands should feel like Helms Deep, it should really feel like a 2vs1 in my opinion. On the fly ideas I have – the 2 foreign worlds cannot attack each other (home player cap being twice of each foreign force), or they cannot take each others structures, possibly only that central-southern supply camp?

In the end I think the current system for WvW is pathetic though. People are resistant to any change whether it’s for better or worse, not to say my idea is sheer perfection or even viable, but I think we need to start really thinking of how to make sure WvW is good in the longterm, and currently I think it gets really stale because of the activities the current system encourages.

I thought of the overall idea in a few minutes when I was thinking of the colours that vent out of the home keeps, the giant tower thingy, and it hit me with like “Energy!”, “Star Wars force fields!”. Then I was thinking of a kind of Moba structure, where the structure siege/warfare are the lanes, with your junglers/gankers being the supply camp groups though obviously with a lot more players.

So I tried, and I’m quite happy to have my idea slaughtered because I’m pleased with it.

Side-Topic;
My other remaining gripe – normalise all WvW stats like sPvP, but allow PvE vanity to remain. It was only lately while in mists that I noticed a major detail on the map – WvW appears on the map of the sPvP lobby for no apparant reason, it literally has zero purpose as it stands. Is it possible that the original intention was sPvP characters could take part in WvW similar to PvP in GW1, but they would be closed off from PvE side of the game? Can’t help but speculate about that.

I’ll be expecting a cheque or a job offer anytime soon.

Thanks for reading, and sorry for wasting your time.

At least view the attached image if you don’t like walls of text.

I started thinking about how WvW could improved in order to deal with a major gripe I had with it, and this issue is of course;

WvW encourages you not to fight, and cap structures that have… nobody in them.

Attacking in WvW; Join a zerg, go around flipping structures all day. You get rewarded for fighting nobody, for avoiding confrontation. It creates a dilemna in that you came to WvW to fight, yet you don’t want to fight. Great for boosting your character to 80, bad when you’re geared out and want something more. Alternatively there’s the small group who think they’re too good for the zerg, go around ninja flipping structures all day again hoping that there is nobody there to repel them.

Defending in WvW; You don’t. To say it simply it’s pointless. You stand there and scout, waiting for the attackers to come along. Delay the inevitable possibly, or hope your own zerg decides to waste their time and show up from their structure flipping in some other corner of the map. Basically WvW defending boils down to flipping structures at the same speed as your opponents or hopefully faster, until one side gets bored and gives up.

I could expand on this a lot more, but the horse has been trampled into mush. Basically what I want to do is promote healthy attacking/defensive gameplay and get away from this non-combative rubbish. My current focus only concerns EBG though.

My idea;
You have a protective link starting from your home keep.

After your home keep is in your control, you can only take keeps connected to your keep, and then only keeps connected to that.

Only stonemist outer gates should be vulnerable (or maybe also a very small portion of the walls next to the gates – not quite sure). Nobody complains about there being no walls to protect inner SM, plus the outside walls are so numberous that they are only good for a discreet ninja assault, or a constant catapult barrage. Bleh.

Ninja Edit: I was thinking maybe you should need both of your nearest towers in order to be able to damage the nearest Stonemist gate/wall on your side. Not entirely sure.

To start taking structures in your enemy territory, you need to first take Stonemist and you have to take them in reverse order to your progress you took towards Stonemist.

For the typical WvW player this is problem solved in my opinion, you get epic warfare, concentrated battles so you know where you should be, meaningful feeling attack/defence, actual combat is not promoted rather than discouraged.

Now on the other hand we have the player who prefers the smaller battles, running into another small group of players, open ground fights, ganking, strategic positioning on the map. This is what we will use the supply camps for.

Dolyaks will always be killable, this will give importance to a smaller scale group hanging out in certain areas of the map where they could expect confrontation and feel like they’re helping the large warfare battle.

For supply camp capping I am not entirely decided. Would it be healthier if supply camps were dictated by the same rules in that they can’t be captured unless the nearest structure is owned by your team or they are capturable at any time? Personally I don’t want to promote flipping unprotected camps then running off elsewhere, I want them to be fought for when they’re most needed.

Camps should retain ownership by the previous holder even if both of the nearest structures are owned by a different world, but can’t be recaptured again once completely lost until you retake an appropriate structure.

Smaller groups could still be used to assault dolyaks/supply runs and the enemy reinforcement lanes.*

Follidus.8027:

I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do. If someone isn’t in the game they can’t wait until the person may or may not join.

In the case that prompted my issue, only 3 people had accepted to take part in the match when the prompt finally came up (whatever it says), so I was thinking something along the lines of not creating the instance for the round if all 5 members have not declared themselves ready, either forfeiting to the team that is full or disqualifying both teams. You could possibly use a poll like “Your team is blah blah. Do you still wish to proceed?” I don’t like League of Legends, but I did play it lately and noticed how it deals with the issue – queue for a match and the prompt will appear, if all 10 players don’t ‘accept’, then the match does not go ahead and the matchmaking begins all over again until it does find a complete set of 10. On a tangent I think the tournament signup itself is too ‘obscure’, another possible solution being to create a pool of players somehow that could randomly be called upon to help complete teams.

Clearly my ideas for a solution can open other bags of worms in tournaments possibly consisting of a single round, maybe even allow exploitation of forfeits, but my priorities tell me that playing with uneven teams is just a waste of time for both parties involved. While losing to the issue has been an annoyance, and winning against the odds could be an embarassment for the other team, I would rather either win or lose a game with even numbers above all else, or I wouldn’t be playing a tournament in the first place.

:sadface:

Walorx.5129:

I’ve found an exploit to always get 5 decent players on your team every game. All you have to do is join/make a team with 4 others and press “invite party” at the tourney npc. Once you do that, you’ll have 5 people almost garuntee! It’s a pretty sweet exploit

So what’s that, 1 below average with 4 variable players in your case?

The ability to take a premade into a tournament does not mean the issue does not exist that tournaments are populating when teams do not really have the players to compete. We could open up so many other topics, such as premade/pug tournaments. As a casual player my issue arises from the fact that hotjoin players have no incentive to actually play to even attempt to win, and I don’t think I need to provide screenshots of losing teams with maybe 2-4 times the individual player scores of the winning team. Regardless of how reasonable I find your solution (fairly unreasonable), it completely ignores the fact that this issue exists and should not be allowed to even happen in the first place.

EDIT: Screenshot.

(Disclaimer, horrible grammar in the title due to character limit)

Decided to give tPvP (free) another try having been owned by premades in my previous attempts. Tournament populates after a very long wait, first round 3v5, I learn you’re forced to return to a tournament as long as it is in progress. People will have their reasons for leaving a tournament, it is a given, my issue resides with the question of why you would even begin the first round of a tournament when a team has not fielded all 5 of their players. Remarks from a not-so-intelligent teammate about my leaving and someone on the opposing team asking me to adhere to the needs of his broken profanity filter when I defend myself has given me an anecdotally dim view of the kinds of people I’m going to be dealing with if I want to play some tPvP as a casual player. So yeah, the thread title, when I say that question to myself I have that Jackie Chan expression with my hands over my head as I do when I think of other issues I have found with sPvP as a whole, just what…….

TLDR; Grotesque design oversights.

Ekove.4586:

gingertree.5062:

Gear Wars 2
Gold sink
Lack of rewards (if you don’t play ‘x’ profession – no badges)
Mesmer/Thief culling
Mind Wrack
PvE/PvD
Gear Wars 2

The EBG jumping puzzle is actually the most fun part. Easily accessible for all 3 teams, small skirmishes, nice choke points. I would play if I had the gear for a desired build, and everyone else had theirs, but of course tryhards need to fill their ego by stomping players that don’t have it and it’s better if we all get gold for the gear through buying gems, thus it continues like so – you can see where I’m going with this. WvW players claiming they are being ignored should try sPvP to see what it’s really like to be neglected, however their complaints are still more than valid on a number of problems. At the end of the day WvW is PvE, I say that sadly. I feel bad for new players who try to take an interest in WvW, because it was a lot different when the game launched and everyone was on more equal terms.

I know this is a topic for personal opinion. And you make a great point about the EB JP…

But about the gear…this is an MMO, it will always be gear dependent, gear will always play it’s role and be one of the main reasons people play. There are many battle games that don’t depend on gear or progression, dota, starcraft, that warhammer game…and honestly it’s what you should try if you don’t want gear differentiation.

Fact of the matter is, many people won’t play this game if it lacked progression since that’s one of the core component of almost every successful (MMO)RPG. Name me one of the big hits that don’t involve gear progression…

I’ve nothing against gear progression in PvE, the issue is when that factors into PvP and I don’t feel all that motivated to play WvW when from a certain perspective I only exist to feed gear egos. I don’t like RTS, I’ve tried MOBA but the PvE element is too much for me, and I don’t give a crap about warhammer – at the end of the day these games aren’t GW2, and that’s why I don’t play them.

As for a big hit with PvP that didn’t involve gear progression, there was Guild Wars, and the reason sPvP in this game exists the way it does AND that was supposed to be a major selling point for this game but of course I now know what I do about WvW. sPvP could trump WvW so easily if they expanded on it with large scale battlegrounds/guild battles but we’re aware that won’t get people buying gems to get geared so there’s little incentive for Anet to do it.

Gear Wars 2
Gold sink
Lack of rewards (if you don’t play ‘x’ profession – no badges)
Mesmer/Thief culling
Mind Wrack
PvE/PvD
Gear Wars 2

The EBG jumping puzzle is actually the most fun part. Easily accessible for all 3 teams, small skirmishes, nice choke points. I would play if I had the gear for a desired build, and everyone else had theirs, but of course tryhards need to fill their ego by stomping players that don’t have it and it’s better if we all get gold for the gear through buying gems, thus it continues like so – you can see where I’m going with this. WvW players claiming they are being ignored should try sPvP to see what it’s really like to be neglected, however their complaints are still more than valid on a number of problems. At the end of the day WvW is PvE, I say that sadly. I feel bad for new players who try to take an interest in WvW, because it was a lot different when the game launched and everyone was on more equal terms.

This happened to me at a tower in eternal after launch. I guess it’s a problem with all towers because they’re copy+pasta’d. Enemy team came to capture quite quickly after I got stuck, and I was able to damage them, not sure if it stopped them capping though. Never ever did try to replicate it but I do have a rough idea of the access point and possibly how it happened.

Zantesuken.5318:

What guilds were they, gingertree? Back when we had 24hr matches, we had a big group with the tag [Boon] running around doing much of the legwork. I’ve not seen them about, but then again, I haven’t been in WvW much given the circumstances.

I see some servers advertising for night teams, saying that their lower ranked, shorter queue servers are ideal for a transfer, but with the influence cost being so high, why would any serious guild consider it? All I really want is to enjoy the same close WvW that the top servers enjoy, because at the moment, the world relegated to our bottom bracket steamroles everyweek.

As someone above has mentioned, I’m speaking about losing BOON & VotF. Even your own experience with WvW shows what a huge loss losing one of these guilds has been. I honestly didn’t know about the other guilds on the server moving as well, it’s quite sad to read that. While the current problem RoS has is now more than just being night capped, it’s safe to see that the population issue you face in WvW are a direct result of it.

I played on a similar lower tier world, and haven’t touched the game since 24 hour matchups came to an end because it was already very clear that continuing to play WvW was an exercise in masochism, difference being it would now pain me for a week and not just a few hours. I wouldn’t be surprised if I returned to find our best guilds had left us too and I couldn’t blame them for it if they were intested in playing the game in the long term.

If you want to enjoy WvW while you still can then you’re going to have to move to a ‘better’ world. I agree you shouldn’t have to, but it doesn’t look like things are going to change anytime soon.

If I’m not misinformed, then the case of RoS is quite a funny one. If you read these forums you would see some pro-night cappers suggest you just “move to a world with better night activity”, which of course anyone wise would realise only worsens the issue. Two very competent guilds from RoS did exactly that, and now the results begin to show. Of course this is far from the only cause of what we see above, but I can’t ignore the fact that it now has population issues in general all round.

Tygra.4570:

I find it kind of weird that OP shows us with red squares two nights when Vizunah had “night capping”, and doesnt mention all the other nights where the populations are more or less equivalent.

Those other nights you speak of? Weekend. Self explanitory.

Any further data we get from this matchup after last week is now completely useless in my opinion. Anyone one with an ounce of sense on FS is going to realise they don’t have a chance in winning with the current issues without something drastic happening, but hey, they could all be masochists, I don’t play there.

SaInT.5274:

another kitten that doesn’t know a world exists outside america… get more “offpeak” countries into your server.

This thread is about EU worlds. Quit embarassing yourself.

The problem with relying on the PvP side of WvW to level your character is that there is no consistency in EXP gains as it all depends on the performance of your world, whether it be killing enemy groups or capturing points. However it can be done very easily under the right conditions. I levelled my character from 25-80 in WvW, and there’s people out there who have done practically the entire process from only playing WvW.

It’s possible, just not reliable, as it depends on the competition trading captures with you constantly, and you having a competent group or you to join in with to take those captures back. On a good day you could expect a level every hour or maybe less.

Lastly there’s also profession to take into consideration. Getting EXP from player kills/NPC involves tagging them with sufficient damage, and certain professions are can tag a lot more enemies than others.

There are vendors in WvW that provide gear for karma, the gear which they have available scales progressively depending on your level. You obtain karma get for captures in WvW (or even events back in PvE), however I would advise saving your karma for level 80 to buy the armour sets as stats vary by gear and you might want them for a build.

PvE’ing in WvW is good if your server is dominated and you have the ‘outmanned buff’ which increases stuff like EXP gain/magic find. At least that’s what I’ve read.

This will probably end up getting buried in the suggestions forum sadly.

My question is how does the system prevent ‘fixing’ such as trading for pride through deliberately prolonging an attack? Would I be right in assuming pride is not obtained for attacking unless it was a success? Or is it; Defence gets more pride for success/Attack gets less for failure and vice versa?

Mara Gossep.2761:

You wrote all that stuff above to dismiss my (unbacked) claim that match-fixing wont fix anything. My point is, you can neither proof or dismiss this claim. It is speculation whether it will fix matchups or not fix it.

Stage ichi! These are possible ideal solutions that will arise with the current system.

These are the options;
a) All the worlds conveniently stop any form of night capping
b) All the worlds suddenly produce 24/7 full 400 man forces
c) All worlds fight with even numbers during the night hours when they can

Do you believe there is any reasonable possibility of any one of these things happening for all 27 EU worlds. No? Good, continue reading.

Stage deux!
1) There are worlds who will have no night presence.
2) There are worlds who will have a night presence.
3) Rankings are not stagnant.
4) Worlds who have a night presence are not immune from being matched against servers who don’t have a night presence.

So you answered yes to all 4 questions. I’m glad we agree.

Where is the speculation, please inform me. If you have a reason to suggest this won’t occur then I’m literally dying to be informed about it. Anything other than that and you’re a troll, or someone who honestly doesn’t understand the difference between a possibility and likelihood.

The second half of your post is complete dribble, feel welcome to help me understand.

tarnin.1690:

gingertree.5062:

Mara Gossep.2761:

gingertree.5062:

Mara Gossep.2761:

Some people say claiming that matchmaking wont fix the population problems is nothing but speculation.

Claiming that it will is exactly the same kind of speculation.

So far matchmaking hasn’t fixed anything. That is my claim. Untill proven otherwise, this is the reality of here and now. Future speculation is just speculation.

Under the current system, as long as there continues to be worlds with a night presence, and worlds without a night presence, this problem will continue to exist and these worlds are going to play each other eventually even if at the very best they miss each other for a single rotation. This is the reality of the situation whether you want to admit or not, of course there are variables within the system that could change this, but none of these would be anything reasonable or even beneficial for players to consider using, like ‘night-cappers decide to NOT play when they only facing empty forts’ etc etc.

It looks like a fish, and until you give me some extremely good reason/evidence to believe otherwise, you’re welcome to go find some as I would be most interested in having nothing to worry about. My evidence? Reading these forums is a good place to start unless they’re all just silly delusional pessimists or something.

Maybe… your entire life is speculation. Maybe it’s not worth believing anything…

Your entire post is speculation TBH. A speculation about the future is not reality. The reality is here and now, and that is it.

Here, I’ll spell it out for you;
Servers in group X exists, these are night cap servers.
Servers in group Y exists, they are not night cap servers.
Server X and Y are inevitably going to play each other because rankings change, and matchups change.
Problem exists

Do you honestly believe this is speculation? This is borderline written in stone, and it blows my mind to think anyone would suggest otherwise. Please tell me why you believe this isn’t going to happen, preferably a reason that actually has some likelihood of occuring, seriously, I really am interested in knowing.

Reality? That reality exists is an assumption that every single person has to make before we can make assertions about absolutely anything, but this is everyday stuff we’re discussing, not kitten quantum physics. My face is buried in my palms. Reality check.

Ill state this again, why is it an issue? Player mentality. Period. If you wake up the next day and everything isnt yours, go get it. All those night guys are now asleep and you are up. Take it back. Don’t look at the score and go “oh screw this” and not queue up.

The issue is not;
Server X caps at night while server Y sleeps
Server Y caps at daytime while server X sleeps

The issue is;
Server X caps at night while Y sleeps
Server Y brings the battle to a even competition at daytime

The effects even a small number of server X can make during the night in turn make that completely full 1200 man battle during the daytime completely redundant, literally meaningless, entirely pointless – do you understand this? Only a single European server – yes that’s 1 out of 27 – can produce a sizeable presence around the clock, and that’s not even taking into account the damage that 50vs10vs10 will do during the night, or any combination of numbers with 1 world having a sizeable force at those hours relative to their enemies. The longer the matchup, the more the issue snowballs until the matchup ends.

Why is this an issue? Because WvW has now became completely redundant for the overhwhelming majority of the playerbase, as the winner is so strongly dictated by the power of players who are willing to capture the map while their opponents sleep, and it’s only a matter of time before more people begin to take notice.

Mara Gossep.2761:

gingertree.5062:

Mara Gossep.2761:

Some people say claiming that matchmaking wont fix the population problems is nothing but speculation.

Claiming that it will is exactly the same kind of speculation.

So far matchmaking hasn’t fixed anything. That is my claim. Untill proven otherwise, this is the reality of here and now. Future speculation is just speculation.

Under the current system, as long as there continues to be worlds with a night presence, and worlds without a night presence, this problem will continue to exist and these worlds are going to play each other eventually even if at the very best they miss each other for a single rotation. This is the reality of the situation whether you want to admit or not, of course there are variables within the system that could change this, but none of these would be anything reasonable or even beneficial for players to consider using, like ‘night-cappers decide to NOT play when they only facing empty forts’ etc etc.

It looks like a fish, and until you give me some extremely good reason/evidence to believe otherwise, you’re welcome to go find some as I would be most interested in having nothing to worry about. My evidence? Reading these forums is a good place to start unless they’re all just silly delusional pessimists or something.

Maybe… your entire life is speculation. Maybe it’s not worth believing anything…

Your entire post is speculation TBH. A speculation about the future is not reality. The reality is here and now, and that is it.

Here, I’ll spell it out for you;
Servers in group X exists, these are night cap servers.
Servers in group Y exists, they are not night cap servers.
Server X and Y are inevitably going to play each other because rankings change, and matchups change.
Problem exists

Do you honestly believe this is speculation? This is borderline written in stone, and it blows my mind to think anyone would suggest otherwise. Please tell me why you believe this isn’t going to happen, preferably a reason that actually has some likelihood of occuring, seriously, I really am interested in knowing.

Reality? That reality exists is an assumption that every single person has to make before we can make assertions about absolutely anything, but this is everyday stuff we’re discussing, not kitten quantum physics. My face is buried in my palms. Reality check.

Wouldn’t displaying their own name provide too much text for the enemy? There are times when you actually need to see what world the enemy is from when there’s multiple world groups in close proximity. Playing on EU servers, the text is already annoying enough when enemies are from [FR] and [DE] worlds because it displays those tags in their invader names.

Mara Gossep.2761:

Some people say claiming that matchmaking wont fix the population problems is nothing but speculation.

Claiming that it will is exactly the same kind of speculation.

So far matchmaking hasn’t fixed anything. That is my claim. Untill proven otherwise, this is the reality of here and now. Future speculation is just speculation.

Under the current system, as long as there continues to be worlds with a night presence, and worlds without a night presence, this problem will continue to exist and these worlds are going to play each other eventually even if at the very best they miss each other for a single rotation. This is the reality of the situation whether you want to admit or not, of course there are variables within the system that could change this, but none of these would be anything reasonable or even beneficial for players to consider using, like ‘night-cappers decide to NOT play when they only facing empty forts’ etc etc.

It looks like a fish, and until you give me some extremely good reason/evidence to believe otherwise, you’re welcome to go find some as I would be most interested in having nothing to worry about. My evidence? Reading these forums is a good place to start unless they’re all just silly delusional pessimists or something.

Maybe… your entire life is speculation. Maybe it’s not worth believing anything…

It’s certainly an idea, but how do you deal with a world deemed to have low night time activity who suddenly produce a night time force to take the win. Personal experience has shown me that even the lower population servers are capable of producing very small night time forces in WvW. They stick around and see what the other world populations are like after the reset (For EU this is 00:15 GMT) and they will give up and go to bed when they get wiped enough times or face enough resistance, and it becomes a game of “who’s going to bed first” before leaving the ‘victor’ of these to cap everything.

Hissatsu.3174:

Its obvious, if two other servers do not ally and beat them, then they keep winning. Its three sided pvp, and not two sided pvp, for a reason.

So we team up to artificially derank a server with night cappers leaving even lesser worlds to tackle the problem. Meanwhile hoping the winning world doesn’t go up rank to face a different night cap server or even 2 at the same time. Sounds about right.

The night capping world could possibly still win even if 2 worlds team up. Give them just 4 hours of 100% map control and they just amassed the same amount of points you would otherwise acquire in a more or less even 3-way split over 12 hours. That’s how powerful it is.

Kingface.9781:

Yes, we understood obviously but I assume you are not reading the entire threads of people not going your way when people tell you to be patient because things will be balanced by themself and servers A, C and X will fight together because of the average of night people and server B, F and G will fight because of their 400 people by night.

And then next rotation;
A vs C vs B
X vs F vs G

Problem persists, GG for the 3 servers playing with absolutely nothing to play for.

Servers with night capping do not play in a ladder of their own – I keep seeing this heavily implied over and over and I’m getting very tired reading it.

Firefly.4165:

" for most people completely unrealistic times of the day"

should read:

" for Americans completely unrealistic times of the day"

Currently (Oceanic Prime Time)… All servers except 3 have either a high population or is Full. Your thoughts?

Ironically.. one of the least populated servers is Escalon Terrace.

“For most people (who happen to play in NA based timezones) are completely unrealistic times of the day.”

Would be most accurate, unless you’re willing to suggest that the majority of the playerbase in the NA worlds do not reside in these timezones. Even as a rebuttal, people within these timezones who do play at unrealistic hours are still going to be part of a minority.

I mentioned a few posts before that I’m an EU player. I’ll add that I am someone who can and has played at those unrealistic hours on EU worlds, and I’m still going to tell you it’s a problem.

Tzash.5748:

gingertree.5062:

Unless of course they’re French Canadians who want to play with other French speaking players.

And guess what? They are French Canadians wanting to play on French servers! I mean how rude can that be? Just like a lot of the people “night capping” on US servers are Oceanic/Asian/etc and are simply playing in their own primetime.

As has been said a few times in other threads, its a real wakeup call for a lot of people to realise that there is a whole world out there that also likes to play games. And the alliances that have broadened their horizons are the ones reaping the benefits while the rest come to the forums and complain.

Also, I’ll spare you the ad-hominems when you spare me the gross generalisations. Deal?

I don’t want to get into a personal tirade against anyone based on their geographical location. This is not about getting personal. I appreciate the fact there’s a world of people out there, having played with a number in other games, most recently one where the Oceanic players had issues with playing on NA servers and so ended up on the EU servers.

However it remains whether you and I like it that players playing inside the primetime (primetime players being the majority of the playerbase, we don’t even need to bring server location into the equation) who happen to be EU/NA based playing on servers also in those regions have zero reason to play WvW whenever they face a matchup with a world that is willing to field a significant force at what is for most people completely unrealistic times of the day because it is futile.

Night-capping is a symptom of what in the best interests of the whole playerbase is a flawed system. I’m not asking for punishment, but that might be inevitable in finding a solution. Desirable? No.

Tzash.5748:

Your belief that night capping servers are “always going to be matched up against worlds who don’t have this ability” is subjective, you lack any real proof at this stage of the game. Is this going to happen? Yes. Will it always happen? Depends on how many servers are capable of it.

Also, your tone implies that people are deliberately flaunting a broken mechanic. I understand EU is a little bit different, but I’m Oceanic and on the US servers I’m not night capping or alarm clocking, I’m playing in my prime time. The top guild alliances in the US adapted to 24×7 battles even before the game was released. Why are the EU alliances so different?

Please spare me the ad-hominem.

Proof?
BEST CASE SCENARIO top 3 worlds (multiples of 3 are best case) have night-cappers/alarm cappers. Rotation ends, 1 team goes down to rank 4, so now we just killed WvW for an entire 2 weeks for 3 teams, 1 being the team that has went up to face 2 worlds of night-cappers, and the other 2 being the worlds that are now facing the night-capping world that has came down in rank. That’s best case concerning the issue without Anet intervening, assuming things such as night-capping worlds reaching top ranks and staying there together. Now what do the other worlds have to aim for knowing they’re inevitably going to hit this road block even if they do climb the ranks? I don’t know how to make it anymore clear than that.

Your ideal solution;
All worlds field a full around the clock presence. Both you and I wish. Likely? Not a chance in kitten.

Why do the EU worlds not deal with this like the NA worlds? Night capping is a result of either people behind prime-time for said region, or alarm clockers within it. The people behind EU timezones ARE the NA players, who already have their own servers, so why would would they want to come to ours and play with high latency? Unless of course they’re French Canadians who want to play with other French speaking players.

Tzash.5748:

gingertree.5062:

Tzash.5748:

Blrrgh.6908:

Tzash.5748:

Blrrgh.6908:

Tzash.5748:

The “night capping” situation keeps being presented as a problem because “there is nothing the prime time players can do about their gains being lost”. But the people pushing this side of the argument totally ignore the other side of the coin. What about the servers with relatively strong off peak teams who lose all their gains during prime time? Is it their fault that the prime time players aren’t organised or just plain not interested?

The simple fact is that the ranking system will fix most of the balance issues given time.

I think prime time is best defined by the servers most populated and active time period. If you are losing all of your gains during prime time then then the server is relatively healthily balanced as there is a tug of war occurring, which I think is the intended mechanic for WvWvW.

Not quite my point. I was trying to point out that the “night capping” perspective is very one sided. Which is why the vast majority of “solutions” put forward in this forum all suggest punishing off peak players in some way.

I actually agree with you, the solution is in server balance. The only problem is that it is ultimately the choice of the players and guilds to balance the servers, and that is unrealistic for several reasons. Some people want to stay where they are because they are established, fair enough. Others want to be carried or to play on “elite” servers. Some people just want easy points. Some people don’t care about WvW at all. The ultimate result is going to be failure of WvW if the issue is not resolved in a way that makes sense for all. This has happened before in numerous games and it would be a shame if it happened to GW2.

Again, that is what the ranking system will do. Hardcore WvWvW servers will move up the ranks and ultimately compete against other like minded servers while casual servers will move down and compete against other casuals.

The thing is that a ranking system doesn’t fix things overnight, you actually have to get a ranking before you can be matched against servers with similar ranks. A lot of people are just getting uptight over losing a single 7 day match, they refuse to look ahead to the next one.

The ranking system is not going to fix the issue of night capping/alarm clocking. Please stop saying it.

If the servers that are capable of night capping all rise and the servers that aren’t all fall then how does the ranking system not solve it?

Night-capping/alarm clocking worlds are not immune to climbing/falling rank. They are always going to be matched up against worlds who don’t have this ability. There’s also the assumption that these worlds will only rise in the rankings, which is false. Worlds who don’t have night-cappers/alarm clockers are not going to want to win if it means moving up the ranks to be pitted against a team that does, and thus WvW would be completely pointless, other than to serve as a treadmill for some EXP/karma.

I could write walls of text looking at all the possible outcomes, and even with the best case scenario with the current state of things, the problem will persist. Without intervention to tackle the issue, a significant number who should have an active interest are eventually going to stop playing.

Yours sincerely
Bottom tier EU player

Tzash.5748:

Blrrgh.6908:

Tzash.5748:

Blrrgh.6908:

Tzash.5748:

The “night capping” situation keeps being presented as a problem because “there is nothing the prime time players can do about their gains being lost”. But the people pushing this side of the argument totally ignore the other side of the coin. What about the servers with relatively strong off peak teams who lose all their gains during prime time? Is it their fault that the prime time players aren’t organised or just plain not interested?

The simple fact is that the ranking system will fix most of the balance issues given time.

I think prime time is best defined by the servers most populated and active time period. If you are losing all of your gains during prime time then then the server is relatively healthily balanced as there is a tug of war occurring, which I think is the intended mechanic for WvWvW.

Not quite my point. I was trying to point out that the “night capping” perspective is very one sided. Which is why the vast majority of “solutions” put forward in this forum all suggest punishing off peak players in some way.

I actually agree with you, the solution is in server balance. The only problem is that it is ultimately the choice of the players and guilds to balance the servers, and that is unrealistic for several reasons. Some people want to stay where they are because they are established, fair enough. Others want to be carried or to play on “elite” servers. Some people just want easy points. Some people don’t care about WvW at all. The ultimate result is going to be failure of WvW if the issue is not resolved in a way that makes sense for all. This has happened before in numerous games and it would be a shame if it happened to GW2.

Again, that is what the ranking system will do. Hardcore WvWvW servers will move up the ranks and ultimately compete against other like minded servers while casual servers will move down and compete against other casuals.

The thing is that a ranking system doesn’t fix things overnight, you actually have to get a ranking before you can be matched against servers with similar ranks. A lot of people are just getting uptight over losing a single 7 day match, they refuse to look ahead to the next one.

The ranking system is not going to fix the issue of night capping/alarm clocking. Please stop saying it.