Guild Wars 2

OriOri.8724:

The biggest change I want to see is points for capture that scales inversely off the size of the “blob”. Past a certain size you would get no points for capture as you just facerolled the whole objective, but say you took a tier 3 keep with 5 people total contributing, then you should receive a pretty hefty piece of warscore for your efforts. Probably harder to implement than anything else they are considering, but I think this is the biggest thing that could combat the current “everyone must be in a blob” mentality that so many players seem to have. It also helps the lower population servers more by potentially rewarding their skilled players far more than skilled players in the blobs from the larger servers, which could go some way to balance the warscore even without skirmishes.

I feel like you haven’t met our friends over on Yak’s Bend.

Dhemize.8649:

silverthorn.8415:

screenshot from an old angry joe video, hard to imagine HoD beating BG that hard

I’m certain HoD destroyed them because they were “better organized” and “in it for the fights”. Although HoD is currently hibernating. Lol

I mean, they WERE better organized and better fighters in addition to having huge numbers.

Deli.1302:

Stop blobbing. Oh wait, you’re BG.

If you aren’t experiencing lag, you are not WvWing. I have been getting the worst WvW lag I have ever dealt with lately, and most of that time I was with 10-15 man groups.

It used to be that in 3 way SMC fights, all you could do was auto attack. In the past month I had multiple 3 way SMC fights were even my auto attacks would never go off.

BG didn’t care to push as hard as TC did. TC groups were pulling insanely long shifts, you could see the same massive group floating around for 10 hours at a time. They really wanted the win and they got it, they did good.

BG did not show up nearly as much, and it is really really boring fighting yb and tc. TC’s map blobs were commanded better than our map blobs this week. BG was still ahead going into Friday, but it was not worth putting in any extra time just to attempt to deny TC a win they really wanted, kind of needed, and definitely deserved.

Hopefully TC didn’t burn out and continues to show up and fight.

Artaz.3819:

Snowreap.5174:

the way the linking works, the ‘host’ world gets all of the rating benefit of a win (or the loss from a loss). linked worlds don’t get any rating change at all. EBay for example hasn’t moved from 1528.6343 since 4/22, even though they are ranked #12, because they’ve been a linked world since then.

so a 4-server linking might be very very powerful, but only the host world will see any kind of rating change as a result — the other 3 won’t see any rating improvement at all. and when the links change in the future, we might see CD fall again as rapidly as they’re now rising.

-ken

Ding ding.

You’ll notice that BG is not nearly as effective at beating the other T1 opponents — PPT wise — which also indicates that ET is much much larger and should be much much higher in glicko rating.

Actually, much of the past 2 months TC has not been pushing. TC is pulling crazy overtime this week, their groups seem to be running for 10+ hours at a time. At the same time BG is not showing up in force, probably sick of fighting TC and YB. I doubt anyone enjoys it much because TC get almost all their PPT during EU when BG is dead, and then BG gets almost all their PPT during SEA when TC is dead. Combined with YB actively avoiding fights and half their population wanting to throw so they can drop tiers, this week in t1 is kind of a case study in everything that is wrong in wvw.

It does make me wonder what ANet uses for their metrics to determine WvW population size, though. If it is average number of players on a map across a week, then TC is showing they are just as big as BG (their kills + deaths are higher, actually). If it is the number of player accounts that participate in a week, it seems to me BG is much higher (I see the same TC players / guilds in every day, where as plenty of BG players only seem to go in for their scheduled raids). Considering that BG is currently listed as full with TC very high, I would guess it is the second one.

joneirikb.7506:

The linking system sure doesn’t seem to work very well with Glicko. Uncertain just how fast glicko reacts to changes these days, but it might be unavoidable to have Glicko reset, or at least a partial naturalizing of the glicko scores on new links ?

After all, the Glicko score represents the status the server used to have before linking or the previous link. Each link basically creates an entirely new situation.

I don’t know the number-crunching of Glicko, so don’t know how it would work with the current “faster change in glicko”, it might just end up making the winnder of T4 shoot into t1, get totally smashed, and get sent down to bottom of t4 again etc. So be careful what you wish for. :p

This is very true, and a real concern, but this linking thing is showing us some very surprising numbers. Right now the four-server-alliance is the most active WvW participant – by far. Comparing to BG, which is widely considered the most active server, the Quad server is about 40% more active (using kills + deaths as measure of activity). Part of this may be BG having an off-week and YB being absolute pros at avoiding fights at all costs, but the quad server is keeping a ridiculously high level of activity. It is rolling at a monstrous 1.28 kdr. The only server with a better KDR right now is JQ+AR, and they are not nearly as active.

What I am trying to say is, from the limited info we have, it looks like the quad server could be a real contender in any tier, and maybe even be the best server for the duration of the pairing. It depends 100% on whether or not their activity level stays this high.

But unless we get glicko resets, we may never find out.

Sylvyn.4750:

Ok, seriously, before we go further, we need to define the variables, starting with the server pairing itself. What should its common or slang name be, so that we don’t have to keep typing cap letters, slashes, etc. to say “CD/BP/ET/Kain”?

Quad?
Quadgate?
Quadmonster?
Fab Four?

Other ideas? (all in jest, of course)

I like Quadgate even though it makes it sound like BG is one of the servers.

Yep, the strength of the four-server-alliance is showing everyone that a glicko reset is necessary to start new linkings. It will have the added bonus of letting servers fight new opponents. If ANet is doing a decent job balancing out the populations then there is no reason not to reset.

X T D.6458:

Gotta love when people want players to stack on their servers but complain when they go somewhere else.

Yeeeeeeeeeep. Then if some guilds ‘destack’ a server to go to a lower pop server, it is ‘bandwagoning.’ All silly.

WvW population is already too low right now, people criticizing players for not spreading it even thinner are a bit too full of themselves.

X T D.6458:

Lol I just have to laugh seeing these scores…Ironically the only tier with a somewhat close match up is Tier 1 rofl. Well you all asked for it now you have 3 unbalanced tiers with blowout scores because anet listened to the whiners and decided pairing 4 servers against 3 paired servers against 2 somehow equated to balance and would help spread the population.

Resetting glicko wont help it, it would just cause more problems and kitten off a lot of people.

The t1 matchup looks close but it is the most boring gameplay ever. Both servers are just capping while the other has nobody playing. There are still yb backcappers, but they avoid enemies like no other. It looks like tc players are pulling long shifts while bg is simultaneously not logging in. Not fun for anybody in t1 atm.

The t4 match looks like a large skill and population gap combined. They look like they are far more active than any of the t1 servers (estimating using kills+deaths to measure activity). They have no business being in t4.

The first linking was fun, but they really dropped the ball on the second. These matchups are showing that there is no need for glicko when worlds are getting linked. If they are getting wvw populations relatively balanced, then who cares about rating? Let us all play against each other.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Xenesis.6389:

I don’t believe any server could be worse than yaksarrowbend when it comes to siege. Dunno the current state of SoS, just know a lot of good people left it like a year ago. Is Rx still around?

SoS is like a mini, less organized YB. I’m pretty sure I snapped a screen shot of 6 of their “roamers” building a bali to hit me because I kept killing them out in the open field in front of bay when they would try to gank me in groups of 2-4. Most of the time you can get a handful of fights and if they can’t take you with shear numbers they will avoid you and back cap.

Honestly their biggest problem is they have lost all their fair weathers and are outnumbered the majority of the day, but they still have this try hard ocx crew that PvD’s everything and won’t let them drop a tier so they can find fights they actually stand a chance in. If they weren’t getting rofl stomped 20 hours out of the day they could rebuild their community.

My advice is they need to stop focusing on PPT and start focusing on fighting and having fun. Other wise they will keep losing guilds and fair weathers won’t be logging on.

Credit where credit is due, YB siege placement is incredibly organized. It annoys me like it annoys everybody else, but they really are good at it. Good at supply traps, too.

You guys are silly.

Arcasura.4167:

Maybe it has something to do with the character Model Quality.
When You force the system to render the Model in front of you, The name plates will immediately switch back to normal, but when its out of range, for example the blue Com Symbol it will stick in the Air again, mostly when you are in fight with heavy Blobs.

It definitely is tied to the character model limit setting in graphics options. It seems to be a bug with how the game is supposed to transition from drawing player models and nameplates to only drawing nameplates. If your settings are high enough that you can draw all player models on the screen, then the bug does not occur.

I do not know if it is bugged or not, but IIRC it took me approx 50 pods to get the equivalent piece for my hammer. Good luck.

This is also happening to me, people in guild, and people in map chat.

When a player model is supposed to disappear and leave just a nameplate, it seems that the nameplate gets stuck where the model was last drawn. The nameplates frequently go into the ground. The players who have had their models removed are effectively invisible, as their nameplates are not over their head. This is especially noticeable with commander tags disappearing and entire groups appearing out of thin air around you.

YB’s kdr looks about 20% better since some people started sitting out.

I have been on a few servers and this type of thing happened to all of them (back before tactivators it was wasting keep supply on useless rams, taking golems out to die, etc). I am certain some of it was not spying, but just ill-meaning trolls. Two of the servers I have been on though definitely seemed to be victims of spies, as enemy groups moved around according to where pins were (and occasionally were misled by fake pins).

I assume it takes too much effort on ANet’s part to investigate something like this, so they do not bother. With the tactivators, though, we have something that should be easier to quickly check. Perhaps ANet can start doing something specifically about those.

Turk.5460:

Complaining about"driver sniping" as if it is unfair or dishonorable is by far the stupidest thing Ive heard anyone complain about in terms of WvW fights.

The enemy commander is an enemy, and if the enemy group is not competent enough to continue fighting once that commanders dies; they deserve their defeat.

The point of a group fight is to win. The “call target” function is designed for your team to strategically pick a target to focus down.

Nobody is asking for the commander to be made immune to damage, just for it to not be made mind-numbingly easy to tab target and pin snipe. Do you want the commander buff visible to enemies again? They fixed that, they should fix this.

If the pinsniper is not competent enough to continue to identify commanders without this crutch; they deserve their defeat.

I would also like to see the current pairings remain, though all servers outside of BG and ET could probably use an additional linked server.

The problem is not that BG can play more, it is that other servers can’t. The best part of WvW is being able to log in at any time and have epic battles. Want to play before work? There is a three way SMC battle that needs your help. Up late and not ready for bed? The other servers are attacking your garrison, get in there. This constant WvW gameplay is long gone, and could come back with further consolidation of players.

I’d also like to see rank and titles removed for enemies. It simplifies pin-sniping to tab targeting until you recognize the rank/title. Most groups you would still be able to identify from their movement, but staying tight would start to be a better defense against pin snipers.

Jayne.9251:

The sole purpose of being able to link and unlink servers is to thwart stacking.

What? The purpose was to consolidate the spread thin WvW population into half as many matches.

People need to bugger off with the anti WvW population stuff. It is not fair when one server has more population when the other, but the solution isn’t to ruin WvW by spreading it back out again. The solution is to condense the remaining population into better matches.

Which was the goal of linking.

I also have noticed this issue, and I was able to replicate it outside of WvW by applying fields on inclines.

On inclines I could place a field and blast that field just fine. When I put another field on top of it and then blasted, I would sometimes get the second field. I am not sure what exactly caused it to select one field over the other.

No more siege. Cannons and mortars are strong enough already, they take forever to kill when buffed and deal significant damage. No repair hammers, whittling away at siege HP is already difficult enough.

Mixed borderlands is a great idea, though.

What is good about linking is that it maintains each server community and reminds players that the people they are fighting could end up being their teammates in a few matchups.

What is bad about linking is the un-linking. You already recognized the major issues with this in your cons list.

I think the whole WvW community appreciates that you recognize the issues and are working on them.

Thank you.

I am really happy you are thinking about this issue Tyler, but this solution would not be something I would want. I play WvW because I like the large scale fights and that I can login at any time on any day to participate in them. This suggested change seems to me like it is directly opposed to these features.

Most (if not all) of the recent suggested changes to WvW focus around eliminating the impact of around-the-clock play that some servers can pull off. I am worried that this proposal is part of that focus. By shuffling the population around you may succeed at balancing the tiers better, but the only way that could happen is by draining players out of the top two tiers.

The top two tiers are already fielding far less players than they did in their prime, and there are already times of the day at which there is a minimal force to fight with. There is only one truly healthy server that fields all day, and even that server has a gap during EU hours. The things I enjoy most about WvW are already fading fast, and this will only accelerate the process.

I think that this is an interesting way to deal with the upcoming issue of WvW guilds being split up, but I am not sure it is the right one. I would rather see the tiers further consolidated, not have the already dwindling population spread out.

Thank you for realizing that WvW tournaments hurt the WvW population. They are fun for 1 week, but end up resulting in the absolute worst experience WvW has to offer. Every day being a push sucks, and combined with loads of new players that need to be taught about the game mode it leads to a frustrating experience.

It also brings out the absolute worst from every server, as any glitches, tricks, or in the worst case hacks come out. In the first wvw tournament I saw a guild repeatedly have their mesmer hack under hills walls and port their 40 man zerg in. In the second we saw two servers win trade to guarantee the outcome. Server spying jumped to new heights during the tournaments, with every servers spawn being littered with afk uplevels.

The WvW game mode just cannot survive when pushed to be a serious commitment. It really makes me happy that you are aware of the problem and want to avoid it.

Grim West.3194:

Ok…. BlobGate is all about skill. Being stacked with the highest amount of WvW players in all time zones… has NOTHING to do with anything at all in WvW. And before BlobGate had the numbers and was in lower tiers it was because everyone on the server was asleep for those months. And when BlobGate stacked the server and started winning, it was ALL JUST A COINCIDENCE.

/rolls eyes

Are you a ANET dev? It sure sounds like it.

Those stats don’t lie dude. You are just angry at the messenger.

Grim West.3194:

Lol, you proved nothing except that you have never played anywhere except on a zerg server. When has a low pop server (or even medium pop) EVER won T1?

Come on.. it must have happened at least once to prove that your links matter… just once…..

Game, Set, Match.

Stacking wins, that is all.

You can try to reframe your argument however you like, but those links definitively showed that you were wrong. It looks like you did not realize that those numbers were available, and tried to bluster your way through an argument here.

Better luck next time, I guess.

Grim West.3194:

Prove me wrong. Transfer to a low pop server and win..

Yep. You won’t and we all know it.

I already proved you embarrassingly wrong with those links. You can resort to personal attacks if you need to. The numbers on those sites speak for themselves.

Grim West.3194:

Lol. Really? You actually think that KDR matters when you have overwhelming numbers?

Tell me oh wise one, how does a group of 6 kill anyone in a zerg before they die?

Nothing has changed in this game since launch. Numbers win… that is all. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

Transfer to a low pop server and prove me wrong….. HAHAHAHAH…. yeah right.

Zerg players always hide behind their numbers and they never win on a low pop server. Why is that?

You just ran out of excuses bud. It is okay to be wrong, but good form to accept it.

Grim West.3194:

Mezmere.3241:

Dhemize.8649:

Ven Zehn.6573:

Pretty sure everyone complained about JQ having the biggest population for a while, long long ago. Every server has the potential to pull those numbers into WvW (key word “potential”), but if their communities don’t care for WvW, and they don’t have guilds/players that promote WvW on their servers, then yea, it won’t be likely for the servers to get the same numbers showing consistently.

Do you think, maybe, just maybe, the people in Blackgate WvW because they like it, and those who join the server, do so because they see it as something they want? People were transferring to Blackgate even when we were getting 3rd place, even when we dropped to t2 randomly, and even after we got 3rd place in season 2 (and yes, I’m sure some came due to the war council, but I don’t think any of those guilds stayed long, could be wrong, but who knows, I’m just another random player).

How bout trying to create a welcoming and happy place in your own servers, where people would want to join you.

Maybe a real life example could help: Company A smiles at all their employees, gives them donuts, and asks them about their lives, Company B asks that you put in overtime without extra pay, and doesn’t even know you just got married. Which company would you want to work for, which would you want to stay with?

This isn’t something Anet can fix alone, this is something that each community has to do themselves.

BG is known to buy coverage (thank the super serious war council that treats it like a full time job lol) and PvD at off hours while humping siege at all other times. If the people on their server liked WvW so much why was it dead for the longest time? “Hibernation” is another way of saying “not overly stacked so not going to try”. Oddly, a lot of the forum warriors feel they’re proving something when the time for measuring individual server strength has long passed. Either way, that pedestal they think they’re standing on is now being shared. Lol

It would be nice to see a decent fight when I return but I get the impression that it’ll be the same old blob or hide tactics BG uses. I hear ET is at least willing to split into smaller groups/roam for actual fun.

Ignorance at its finest. I’ve seen you post a lot, and from the biased of your posts I can only assume you’re from YB. and all yb does is what? Back cap, pvd dead timezones and run from fights.

more salt please

Ignorance at it’s finest.

All that matters in this game is stacking all time zones. Skill need not apply. Zerg on BlobGate…. Zerg on.

If ANET ever gets a clue.. (not gonna happen).. then they will penalize players that stack to win. Until then, WvW isn’t any different than it was 3 years ago when it failed HARD. It’s a numbers game, that’s all. These bandaid changes they put in place are just smoke puffs blowing up your you know where so they can steal our transfer money.

Skill just doesn’t matter because ANET refuses to do what is truly necessary. And what really sux is it’s not the tech that is a problem but the lack of creativity and foresight from the designers.

WvW….. still boring, still useless…, and only for mindless zerglings.

If you were right, then BG must have a poor KDR and a weak NA.

Here are some links for you to check up on that:

http://wvwintel.com/#1019
http://www.gw2score.com/server/Blackgate
http://coveragewars2.com/timezone/?tab=rating

insanemaniac.2456:

Asator.3065:

• Give players a real opportunity to make a comeback
  Matches are often decided in the first few days, making playing in the final days feel pointless

• In conjunction with population rebalancing, updating Scoring allows us to decide a winner of a match more fairly, and thus reward players more fairly

These points directly contradict each other. A catch up mechanic is the very opposite of deciding a winner of a match fairly. No server should ever get free points for whatever reason.

Your focus should be on population balancing to prevent 100,000 point leads, not on taking away a server’s points once they’ve been made.

the match being decided early does not imply the match is decided fairly.
the match being decided fairly does not imply the match is decided early.

neither bullet point contradicts the other. comeback mechanics are unfair by design, but as long as they dont allow rubberbanding to the extent that for example mario kart wii did, it keeps things interesting for the losing team(s). in a match long enough and big enough for morale to matter, keeping interest levels high is extremely important. when players dont feel like they have a chance, theyll simply go do something that feels more worth the effort.

Though the idea of a comeback is not unfair, the suggested implementation certainly is. Their current idea is making the last day of a matchup have multiplied points. The suggested number I saw was 3, as in the last day of a matchup will be worth as many points as the three prior days combined.

Though I am glad to see them putting so much effort into WvW, I think that this is not a good idea.

Dawdler.8521:

BAITness.1083:

I can’t express how awful ideas like a forced primetime and a 3x scoring day are.

There is no such thing as a “forced primetime and daytime” multiplier. Stop making things up and read what it actually says instead.

The activity multiplier would scale on population and activity. If all three servers can gather 800+ players at 03:00 in the night then congrats, you just got high activity and thus a high multiplier. The time is irrelevant. Daytime is irrelevant. Primetime is irrelevant. Whether daytime or primetime naturally has more players on and thus higher activity is a whole other matter. Nightcappers always argue that boho it’s not their fault they play at night. Well its not primetime players fault you have low activity and population by the very definition of what nightcapping is either.

You are wrong.

The first post says verbatim:

“During prime time hours, the multiplier would always be at it’s maximum of 3.”

It does not say “during high activity the multiplier would always be at it’s maximum of 3.”

After that it also says:

“its important to include time-of-day as a factor to prevent a winning team from trying to keep the score muliplier low by exiting WvW”

Which seems to once again directly imply that preset times will always be at maximum multiplier.

In his next post he says:

“Prime Time would be universal per datacenter. For example, all worlds in NA would have the same 6 hour period (of highest activity) as their Prime Time hours. All EU woulds would have a different 6 hour range for their Prime Time.”

It literally says that they are setting one, then defends the decision to set one, then explains that it will be set based on where the datacenters are located. You need to reread it.

It sounds from your description of the action meter that you plan on having a pre-set primetime. Right after that you talk about having a multiplied scoring day. Both these ideas are drastically disconnected with what the game needs.

If you insist on doing an action meter, let it decide every timezone. Don’t force a primetime during specific hours, you will end up screwing up the times and giving a huge boost to some of the off hours players you are trying to stop.

Don’t give us a score multiplier day because that gives us two forced pushes every week. Reset day is already a push day, and how many servers do you see pushing for 24 hours even then? If you need a comeback mechanic, adjust your skirmish points to allow for it.

I can see the reasons behind your other suggestions, but these two are inconsistent with what you are aiming for and with what wvwers want.

lil devils x.6071:

BAITness.1083:

These suggestions are getting so bad that I struggle to tell who is being sarcastic and who honestly thinks that only their kills/ppt should count.

I don’t understand why treating all players equally is such a difficult concept. I am sure the East coast would not be happy if they just catered to California or Hawaii and ignored them, what many are essentially asking them to do to California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii as well as the international community which is a pretty messed up thing to do.

Everyone’s PvP should matter, it is only the passive scoring that is actually causing the problem here rather than basing the score on PvP in a PvP game mode and treat everyone the same.

Just want to point out again that the servers winning the fights and getting the most kills are winning their matches. The servers winning ppt do it by winning their fights. Even with maguuma in a match pitting “prime time” vs “off time” in the most extreme fashion, maguuma is winning. They are winning because of their crazy high 2+ kills/death. The server that wins the fights wins the match in the current system.

These suggestions are getting so bad that I struggle to tell who is being sarcastic and who honestly thinks that only their kills/ppt should count.

Let me explain better.

Say server A is winning at 300 ppt, server B is second at 200, and server C is third at 100 – just example numbers. At the end of the tick they get their assigned points for first second and third place.

In this scenario, server C has no chance of coming in first. They can only come in second. If they want to come in second they can take either 100+ points from server A, or they can take just 50+ points from server B. Either will get them second place for the tick.

It basically forces the third place server to full time focus on the second place server. Attacking the first place server would be very inefficient and likely lead to losing.

In the current set up, this is not at all the case. Map politics dictate who you should be attacking – server C would be smart to help server B take a fully upgraded keep from server A – it benefits both of them to make it paper. In the current system, this happens all the time. In this proposed system that would be very unlikely, as a strong keep for server A is helping to keep server B’s ppt within striking distance of server C.

lil devils x.6071:

If you could see any two/ 3 servers merged which would they be?

Mine would be :

Maguma, IOJ, and JQ Merger.

Maguma has excellent fighters and good NA coverage but lack OCX and Sea, JQ has excellent OCX and Sea and Lacks NA , and IOJ is just my all time favorite people so I would have to have them there as well for it to be complete.

That would be an absolute beast of a server. Hopefully ANet continues to look into server pairings rather than scoring bandaids.

Weli.4568:

BAITness.1083:

Balancing population is the only reasonable option. Every other suggestion has glaring, obvious issues. This server pairing is a good step, and I hope ANet continues to look at ways to balance population rather than ways to punish servers and players that organize themselves better than their opponents.

People can’t be just moved around freely and when anet merges servers or links servers people complain either about Q’s or not having their own server names. I agree it’s a step to better direction but still doesn’t solve the issue of off time capping on EU side.

What is this organization people keep talking about? Spreading people more evenly to match the hours? If that is the case you should get a reality check. Most people simply can’t play when ever they want. Simply not possible due to real life commitments. Do you mean buying people outside of your servers prime time to play on the off hours? Yeah cause that helps, making the situation worse. Stacking people on servers shouldn’t be the solution to this. But do tell me what is this organization you are talking about, I’m interested.

In every tier I ever played in, servers worked together by having guilds plan their raid times and locations. If your server still is not doing that, they should start.

While you are right that moving people or guilds around would be an issue, I do not really see it as a problem when servers are moved around. In fact, I really like the idea. It gives servers the chance to learn from each other’s commanding style, and reminds everybody that the people on the other server, no matter how much annoying underhanded stuff they try, and still just gamers that want to have fun. If servers can be teamed up to fill their coverage gaps, I think it would be an ideal situation for everybody.

You mention the long dispelled myth of servers ‘buying’ guilds. I would like you to try to do the math to determine how much gold it takes to move 40 people. Personally, I would be surprised if any server could cover that, but this idea does not stop there. The server would have to be able to fully fund the transfers, and then have enough left over to pay the guild to pick their server over another. Now imagine that times 30, since you need 400 players in each non NA timezone. It is far too much money for even one guild, and the cost to cover all hours is so ridiculous that nobody would even attempt it.

You seem to be suggesting that the server winning a matchup is not winning the majority of their fights, just capping things when you are not on. I cannot recall ever being in a match where the winning server did not win the majority of fights.

You can see the kill counts here:
http://wvwintel.com/

and the % of score not coming from PPT here:
http://www.gw2score.com/currentscore/total_score/desc

Chaba.5410:

This isn’t difficult. If you guys read the leaked patch notes, you’ll notice that the scoring change being talked about is 24/7, so an OCX server would not be at a disadvantage. Those notes are basically ideas generated from the old CDI from a long time ago and much care was given to at-the-moment scoring balance, not favoring one timezone over another. I feel like too many comments on this forum about night-capping since the poll was put up is from people who have either not been paying attention or were not around to participate in the CDI or simply forgot.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/first

The leak I saw had a permanent prime time set on them, unless I misunderstood them. They were also a combination of flawed ideas (score servers based on 1st,2nd,3rd, multiply by current players). The flawed ideas do not support each other, but actively make their flaws worse – in the leak I saw having no players was drastically preferable to having a full map of unorganized players.

The worst part of the leak was the triple points day. Really not sure why anybody thinks 6 days of strong WvW play should be overshadowed by one day of chaos.

Stand The Wall.6987:

the only other solution would be to force even populations through out the servers, which would hurt gem sales quite a bit and kitten plenty of people off. i think most will agree this is a problem that needs to be addressed in some way.

personally i dont care much for the score, but it matters when a server moves up a tier or two with no real primetime presence. then the primetime from the other server has no one to really fight and cant win the matchup due to the other server nightcapping. so basically theyre both nightcapping and have no one to fight (other then chasing a force that is twice as small as them).

Balancing population is the only reasonable option. Every other suggestion has glaring, obvious issues. This server pairing is a good step, and I hope ANet continues to look at ways to balance population rather than ways to punish servers and players that organize themselves better than their opponents.

The problem with this proposal is it creates a double team against the second place server. First place server is only capable of being threatened by second place, so they focus them. Last place server is only capable of threatening second place, so they focus them.

The problem with all the proposals is they are just trying to slow down the winning team. It is this weird concept where the most organized international community should be punished and brought back down to the level of the others. The thing is, you can’t stop there – every server currently winning their matchup is absolutely dominating in kills. Changing the scoring system won’t change that. You need to handicap the winning server, make it so their players only deal 50% damage and have a max health of 10k.

After seeing the leaked proposal, I have to say I think a majority of players would straight out quit WvW if those changes were implemented

I hope it is faked, because the people that wrote that have no understanding of the gamemode they are considering changing.

I have been on two t1 servers, one t2, and one t3 server. There were enormous international communities on each one. People around the world organizing together to play the game was always one of my favorite aspects of GW2.

But apparently there are many people that think only NA should be allowed to play WvW. If those fools got what they wanted, what would they go after next? “Only EST scoring, it is unfair that after I go to bed PST still plays.”

I find it especially frustrating that with WvW numbers so low that we have paired servers, we are considering eliminating a huge chunk of the WvW community. We cannot afford to make such egregious mistakes.

Drew.7192:

This argument sounds so Trump. Build a firewall for OCX/SEA players, I don’t want them playing when I’m not. And have the OCX/SEA community pay for it.

I like your perspective on this.

Back on topic, it seems the players in favor of scoring changes cannot wrap their head around the idea that everybody is playing during another players off-hours. A person above argued that eking out a small lead during NA prime should be more important than the subsequent 18 hours that they got stomped, as if the server that basically tied them during one time zone and then continued to do well around the clock should not be rewarded.

Almost all the proposals I have seen suffer from the major flaw of making a lack of players more valuable than having inferior players.

I did see a proposal that does not have this issue, the proposal to not count total points but just reward points for 1st/2nd/3rd place during the tick. IE server A has all the keeps and SMC, they get 5 points, server B has a few towers, they get 3 points, server C has a camp and a sentry, they get 1 point. I don’t think i have seen it in this thread, which is good, because this is another seriously flawed idea – it makes server A and server C focus on server B at all times, a forced double team as a result of the crappy scoring system.

Finally, I have seen a few people proposing a removal of PPT completely. Aside from how the lack of meaningful objectives would hurt the game, I want to share something I think these people are not aware of: the majority of every server’s score is already not from the tick.

http://www.gw2score.com/currentscore/total_score/desc

This topic keeps coming up because people want to have more individual influence on the score, while forgetting that it is a massive 400v400v400 24/7 game mode. If you want to personally affect the outcome, work better with your server. The game mode already offers ways for skilled small groups with coordination to have a large impact.

I think another contributing factor is how unaware players are of how much PPT contributes vs all other sources of points. If you made WvW all about kills and nothing else, the same servers would be winning, likely by larger margins: http://wvwintel.com/

All these proposed changes are people trying to think of a way to make winning servers be scored lower. Look at these links here. The servers that are winning have the most kills, the best kills/deaths, and the best ppt. They tend to go together. There are some servers that are still competitive in matchups where they have been getting destroyed in kills – because they backcap, because they flip for tick. The current scoring system is excellent in that it rewards teamwork and strategy heavily, those matches would be blowouts without this.

I am really not sure what ANet thinks would be a good idea for changing WvW scoring. They created a game mode where coverage is important, and now they are considering punishing that coverage.

They also want more ways for servers to catch up? That sounds an awful lot like punishing the server in first place. I have played during pushes where my server has narrowly lost or even won from behind. Neither are particularly enjoyable, as you end up playing hard throughout the entire week.

It seems like there are a lot of individuals frustrated with the current scoring system not giving them an opportunity to affect the result. The problem is that WvW is not about individual skill, but large scale teamwork. Changing the scoring system is not going to make these people happy, the only thing that will help them is having someone team up with them and show them how to be an effective part of the whole.

All this complaining about night-capping is just about people valuing their own contribution over the contribution of every other player.

On top of it all, to humor the people that really think they alone should determine the outcome of a 24/7 400v400v400 match, I wonder what they would change?

I assume everybody realizes how crazy it would be to ‘close’ WvW during certain hours of the day, so that leaves only one other potential solution to me – scaling score based on the number of players.

I imagine the idea goes like this: if across all 4 maps the combined number of players from all servers is 100, then make the PPT at that time worth only a fraction (100/1600 for example) of what it is worth when the maps are full. The problem being that having no players would then be more valuable than having bad players. Some of the servers I have been on were mean enough without having this kind of incentive to harass other people. I think a lot of the players in favor of this type of change would only be in favor of it until they were the ones their server was trying to get to log off.

If JQ does fall in rankings, they may end up paired with a strong NA server. It could end up working out well for both them and the lucky server they end up with.

killtl.9703:

The funny thing about 2 vs 1 is that it should be a standard practice if you think about it. The smart strategy is when the 2 losing servers gang up on the winning one to even out the match. Then when another server is coming out on top, the other two should focus on that one. That way you have much more competitive matches.

The big complaint from BG in Season 2 was that 2 vs 1 was used to fix the match against a single server regardless of if they were ahead. It led to very lopsided losses and took away strategy. If TC and JQ had teamed up to even out the matches and then play balanced I don’t think there would have been much complaining.

Remember – close competitive matches are where the fun is, not lopsided victories. that goes both for the winners and the losers

The win trading that kept TC and jq from ever getting split up was a major issue as well. Each week one server would give the other their towers/keeps, until they fought it out for real in the final week.

A real shame because there were some really good fights back then. I am just coming back now and it seems like the new BL is not good for open fights, and the new meta seems to be to sit tight and build arrow carts. There seem to be a lot of extra ledges that are meant to be used exclusively for defensive arrow carts.

morrolan.9608:

BAITness.1083:

I was on JQ when they first started doing it and the paltry sums we managed to raise were an insignificant amount compared to the total cost. I was on Blackgate when they were accused of it and they had even less gold. I did not play on TC or SoR but had many friends that did and they did not get much gold either. I played on lower tier servers that were also generous but unable to raise that much. Gems are expensive and transferring to the top few servers makes it even worse. Getting 5000 gold together just cover the cost of a guild so tiny they would struggle to play havok. For the guild sizes that people were claiming were bought, you were looking at claims of 30k and over – for one guild.

If you were just a player on a server how would you know for sure?

Because I was donating gold, I was leader of a small guild for awhile, and was friends with other guild leaders. When a guild requested help you of course ask them how many people they are trying to move. The most I saw raised was around 4k iirc, nowhere near the amounts required for a single guild.

I see someone above says they know 55k was raised at one point, which to me is an insane amount. I have not been playing recently as I had given up on GW2, but I thought I would come back because I was excited about the expansion. I do not know how much inflation has occurred but 55k is an amount far far far beyond the most concentrated efforts I ever saw (4k as I said above).

Edit: I reread that carefully, I got ahead of myself. The 55k was not the one they were sure about, the 55k was what they had heard about a different move.

Could you say how much you know was spent? I know you won’t have screenshots or anything but if it was anything more than a tiny guild the amount of gold would be so significant that I would think it would be impossible to hide.

Once again, going off my own experience, I never donated more than 15g that I can remember. Assuming people are twice as generous as I am, that would be 30g for a donation. Then assuming 2000 people that are active and care about WvW enough to donate… that gets you to 60k gold, which could cover that rumored donation above.

Still, those numbers are crazy to me. I do not see any amount of organization pulling that off. Maybe people have a lot more gold now, or maybe there are large numbers of players that want to donate to WvW but not play, but neither of those seem likely to me. I do not see how a server could be capable of raising that kind of money but not capable of fielding around 240 players full time.

Like I said above though, I am not expecting people to produce screenshots of the thousands of gold changing hands. If they say they know it for certain, you can just take that at face value. I just know how little truth there was in the original few accusations of buying guilds, I do not know for a fact that it has not happened more recently.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

BAITness.1083:

snip

It isn’t possible no matter how small the guild is. Every server I have ever been on has helped new guilds move in by donating what small amount they can, but it is never enough for more than a handful of players. It is just the server trying to help their new guild, and I have both donated to and been the benefactor of it on various server moves going between multiple tier 1 servers, and t2 and t3 as well. Every server does this (or at least every server I have been on, played against, or had friends on), and I am glad they do.

snip

lol? I think you misunderstand some things. I know of, for a fact, that some servers have in fact bought entire guilds, paid for each member to move, and paid for those guilds to recoup the influence they need to redo all the build queues etc they need (of course the need for the influence was before the guild ‘chapters’ were merged). Some on a server decide they need more coverage in a different time zone, and they pay for that entire guild to move.

As well as ~10 guilds can move as an entire unit, to a new server, with a few footing a lot of the cost. Don’t think it happens? It does whether you choose to believe or not.

Edit: Crazy though. And to respond to a part I snipped out, I hate neighbors that move in and demand the entire neighborhood changes how they do things, and forces it upon them when they don’t want to.

No need to be rude, I was just speaking from experience of playing on many different servers that were accused of it, and have never seen funds even close to covering a 20 man guild move – even with the entire server on board to help.

I was on JQ when they first started doing it and the paltry sums we managed to raise were an insignificant amount compared to the total cost. I was on Blackgate when they were accused of it and they had even less gold. I did not play on TC or SoR but had many friends that did and they did not get much gold either. I played on lower tier servers that were also generous but unable to raise that much. Gems are expensive and transferring to the top few servers makes it even worse. Getting 5000 gold together just cover the cost of a guild so tiny they would struggle to play havok. For the guild sizes that people were claiming were bought, you were looking at claims of 30k and over – for one guild.

When servers were offering to help it wasn’t at the demand of the guild mind you. It always would end up that a guild would transfer but some of the members were unable to afford it at the time. One time that was me and I was the benefactor of it (part of my cost was donated).

Through playing Tier1, T2, and T3 servers no server I was ever on nor any server I ever had friends on came close to footing the cost for an entire guild. Adding more on top of that was absolutely out of the question.

It did not stop people accusing each other of it though. A lot of times it seemed that people just didn’t believe that guilds would transfer looking for fights in their timezone, but it happened a lot for Asian prime time and I know several guilds transferred looking to fight IRON when they were at their peak.

If you have evidence that someone is actually raising enough to supply the full transfer, and bribes on top of that, you really should bring it forward. That would in fact be very messed up, and another reason to add to the list for WvW’s slow demise.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

If a merger turns it into the likes of t1/2/3, then as said many times and will keep saying nty nty nty. Part of the very reason the upper tiers have issues is because of the way business as usual has been done. The very thing that certain people are continuing to try to do. The consolidation of people through ‘buying guilds’ etc., has directly and indirectly led to the current situation. Of course there’s a myriad other factors, but regardless, this is just sealing it’s fate, likely going to lead to a loss of servers eventually in a new system. Won’t that be fun? (insert lots of sarcasm in prior statement, but then again, the current system is so messed up, what will it matter?)

I think you misunderstand the idea of “buying guilds.” The term was made up as propaganda to try and convince the members of two T1 servers to stop fighting and win-trade.

Look at the gold -> gems rate, now imagine doing that for enough transfers for 20 people. Maybe 40 people. Maybe more.

It isn’t possible no matter how small the guild is. Every server I have ever been on has helped new guilds move in by donating what small amount they can, but it is never enough for more than a handful of players. It is just the server trying to help their new guild, and I have both donated to and been the benefactor of it on various server moves going between multiple tier 1 servers, and t2 and t3 as well. Every server does this (or at least every server I have been on, played against, or had friends on), and I am glad they do.

If a neighbor moves in next door, comes over and asks for a hand, you help. Unless you hate neighbors.

Not that there isn’t a problem here – there are not enough people playing WvW to populate the gametype. ANet needs to take action.