Guild Wars 2

Xavi.6591:

The problem with solo roaming though is that you aren’t really helping to do anything constructive for your team on the map.

That’s simply not true. A solo roamer can:

— scout enemy positions to check siege, fortification, # of defenders, and supply
— kill enemy supply yaks
— kill enemy roamers trying to ambush supply yaks
— contest enemy waypoints
— create diversions
— report positions and strength of enemy groups
— spot for team mates firing trebs and mortars
— run supply
— drop/build offensive siege in hidden spots in advance of an attack
— solo dredge, ogre, etc camps

If you think any of those are not constructive you must have a very limited view of WvW tactics.

Straegen.2938:

Cactus.2710:

Nethod.7068:

Sometimes i think que is bugged, both for numbers on my side, as well as numbers on opposition. Somehow it seems like either side is far outnumbering and It doesn’t appear legit. Can we possibly get a numbers in zone query command for all sides?

For that to happen ANet would have to accurately know how many players from each server were on the map. There seems to be considerable evidence that they don’t.

There has to be some numbers otherwise capping and out manned buff wouldn’t be possible.

I didn’t say they didn’t have numbers. I said they weren’t accurate. Go read the several forum threads on broken queues if you don’t agree.

Nethod.7068:

Sometimes i think que is bugged, both for numbers on my side, as well as numbers on opposition. Somehow it seems like either side is far outnumbering and It doesn’t appear legit. Can we possibly get a numbers in zone query command for all sides?

For that to happen ANet would have to accurately know how many players from each server were on the map. There seems to be considerable evidence that they don’t.

Kodiak.3281:

Catisa.6507:

The majority of points don’t come from capping, they come from the potential points that become real points every 15 minutes. So how would your system handle that then?
If a tower is taken A 14 minutes before next tally while defender had out manned buff, what happen if at tally they no longer have out manned?
How about the reverse? Will people just want to log out every 15 minutes until the tally is taken so they can make the most points?

Whatever the status of the map when the objective was taken is what the value is. So if team A takes a tower at 8pm from a faction that has the outmanned buff it’d only be worth 5 until it’s “upgraded” through defense regardless if at a later time (say 10pm) the other side is not outmanned anymore. This means regardless of what time it was capped (night, day, prime time) taking an objective from an outmanned team is worth less than taking an objective from a team with a fighting force on the map.

You sound like the kind of person that writes laws so complicated that they can’t be interpreted, much less enforced.

How do you determine the relative difficulty of defending or taking a tower or camp? Simply the number of people on either side does not determined difficulty. If we have six people sitting on well placed defensive siege we can defend a much larger force of enemies … especially if they are smart enough to use siege well. And how do you determine exactly what constitutes “taking” a tower? If we bomb the crap out of well defended walls with six trebs before waltzing in with a few players does that count more than using lots of players to do the same thing with flame rams at the gate? What if we start out with lots of players to take a tower and then pull most of them away at the last minute? How far away do they need to be not to count? Do players running supplies for siege (defensive or offensive) count? If so, how do you decide whether they are or not? Does taking a tower further away from your spawn or nearest capped structure count more than taking a closer one? If not, why not (since it is generally more difficult)?

You clearly have not thought this through very well. What you propose would require so many purely arbitrary decisions by ANet, with so many opportunities to game it during the match, that there would be no end to the complaints from the user base.

Draygo.9473:

So that would mean you think that they are lying when he posted that?

How about you provide proof that that developer just lied when he posted? Instead of requiring proof from other people because you are just too lazy to back up your own arguements.

I didn’t ask for proof of anything. I asked for evidence or any example that indicated ANet had people working on fixes for anything of significance or that they were spending considerable development money on WVW (his original comment). It’s been six months since the game came out, the same problems exist now that were obvious at launch, and I can’t remember any significant technical problem that has been fixed. If ANet has a development team worthy of the name addressing any of these issues, they are either newly added or they are very slow at what they do.

From my side, however, I can offer the examples of ANet forum promises that they no longer seem willing to stick to. There is the four month old post from Ferguson (I believe it was from him … I’m too lazy to check) saying that they acknowledged the queue problems, planned to fix it, and would keep us regularly posted on their progress. There is the original statement from Habib saying that they had top level commitment to eradicate culling entirely no matter what the cost, yet they are no longer promising that … only that they will do their best to minimize it, whatever that means.

Your turn.

ANet has been saying for months that all siege despawns after 30 minutes of inactivity, but we all know that isn’t the case with the exception of trebs. Everything else varies tremendously, with much of it not despawning after several hours and probably days. The only logical conclusion I can think of is that siege despawns don’t follow any rules at all because Anet doesn’t really have them under control, which would fit the pattern of other things like map population and queues.

Straegen.2938:

Cactus.2710:

Straegen.2938:

ANet has a team dedicated to the development of WvWvW so they care enough to spend a significant amount of money to develop content for this part of the game.

Please provide the slightest shred of evidence to back up any portion of that statement. Seriously … I want to see some examples.

k

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Upcoming-WvW-Updates/1392118

I’m pretty sure I asked for examples and actual evidence.

Diashame.6328:

Actually a dragon event to soak up players focus when one team has an extremely larger force would be cool. The dragon would burn structures down make the walls and doors open of the opposite team until the unmanned buff came off. Then all 3 teams work together to bring it down.

You need to be playing dungeons instead of thinking up ways to make WvW look like a dungeon.

Dragoon.9536:

I propose that All aoe skills cannot effect outer edge defender such as walls and siege that are carefully placed in turn the attacker can only be hit by PvP player on ground or by siege on wall

Again this effect outer wall edge ish.

Oh and Another option would be that when ever siegerazer cap a tower or what ever he does he stays there for 4 hrs to defend that one cap. Additionally you are unable to place siege in that cap. Siegerazor give you five to defend with last four hrs and 30 min superior of course to help defender to get some upgrade and such so it does not get recap just because of weak walls.

Oh and can we get dragons event to razed keep n such like a dynamic event This would be awsome plus the dragon give 20 wvw badge to all that made an effort to kill him or her Or how about randomly attack borderland or home portal. So that when the server is fightning him other server will backdoor capping tower n keep such.

Mainly this is to keep server zerg from zerging 100%. of course the dragon is gonna award awsome stuff.

I can just picture the dazed stupor you were in when you wrote that post. Scary stuff …

Straegen.2938:

ANet has a team dedicated to the development of WvWvW so they care enough to spend a significant amount of money to develop content for this part of the game.

Please provide the slightest shred of evidence to back up any portion of that statement. Seriously … I want to see some examples.

Vol.5241:

Cactus.2710:

Not only did they push out the supposedly big WvW patch, they also toned down the expectations for it. I’m not expecting to be overwhelmed by it. The best case for me is that ANet makes the game tolerable enough to stick with until TESO comes out, but ANet’s lack of responsiveness on key issues doesn’t make that very likely.

So you’d prefer Arenanet to make a big fuss on a huge patch and then subsequently release it full of bugs resulting in a terrible experience.

Gotcha.

Nope. I would have preferred that they didn’t short sheet the game by buying an outdated game engine and scrimping on the bandwidth they purchased. I would have preferred that they had the smarts to code the game so that more of the rendering was handled locally instead of having to be sent each time another player came into view. I would have preferred that that they gave players options for how much of the ability effects were displayed so that there was some control over how much extraneous garbage needed to be processed at both ends. I would have preferred that they were more communicative with the WvW player base to acknowledge key problems, explain what needed to be done, provide some sort of expectation on when they might be fixed, and then actually follow through.

What we’ve gotten instead, six months after the fact, is a promise for a fix that has been watered down and pushed out. That “big fuss” already happened (the Habib Loew post), and the patch is supposed to fix the bugs and terrible experience that already exist …. or have you somehow not noticed all the threads complaining about culls and lags?

Zephyranthes.2715:

Imo, some system that reduces point worth based on the overall population currently playing. If every place is 100% packed, you get full points. If there’s only 10% in the zone because it’s super late at night, you get… some amount less. There would be need to be some balance there to keep the overall point score the same as now, since it does affect the bonuses and such. Basically if all your points come from capping while you have no opposition, you get a good deal less points than you would if you had to actively push and defend during more active times.

-1. For that to happen, Anet would have to know pretty accurately the actual number of players active on the map. The available evidence suggests that they don’t.

-2. The player count would have to include the aggregate of all four maps. Otherwise the strategy of trying to pull enemies from one map to another would go away.

-3. Your suggestion would have the negative effect of discouraging participation at certain hours because point contribution would be significantly reduced. There’s no guarantee at all that they would migrate to different hours, and anything that reduces demand to play the game is ultimately a bad idea.

-4. Your “solution” opens up lots of opportunity for abuse. Let’s say my server has a large population advantage at some point in time. We run around capping and defending supply camps, and we set up lots of siege outside various keeps and towers that we don’t currently own. All of a sudden we have a bunch of server mates log out of WvW and let the remaining few quickly cap the objectives for more points than we would have gotten otherwise. And once we take those objectives, we have even more players log out so that we get the next several point ticks with almost nobody on the map. Where do you draw the line between the contribution of the many versus the contribution of the few?

tl;dr I don’t see anything “easy” about your proposal at all.

Not only did they push out the supposedly big WvW patch, they also toned down the expectations for it. I’m not expecting to be overwhelmed by it. The best case for me is that ANet makes the game tolerable enough to stick with until TESO comes out, but ANet’s lack of responsiveness on key issues doesn’t make that very likely.

Braxxus.2904:

If ‘pvp’ players want to partake in W3 they should put in the same effort and work that W3 players have had to with their characters.

As for bringing them closer together I see that as an issue with the players, after all they sure do like to keep making the distinction that wuvwuv ISN’T PvP, and that THEY are PvPers while putting down wuvwuvers at every opportunity.

TLDR: No free rides for the elitists.

I think it’s pretty hilarious how elitist you sound making that comment.

Mehrdad.9074:

Phatal One.8069 ! it’s for u LOL

So funny Comments i c , can u please vizunah drop discussion u are not smart u are not good no game play nothing especail .
550 + Incom 7 Am !! whole map = Green , it shows u are not from EU 100% many canadian or na players u have arena should change WvW ranking .

U are cowards during guild events you didnt wipe us !! EVEN !! once we killed all of u even we were outmanned) =)) Come on u are not good even So stop it !! dont proud :O

The way u are playing it’s like Hi VIZ ! VIZ ! we are playing in different time zone we have high Pt :O high income :O I saw 40 vizu tried to kill 1 guy in WvW at 7 Am U captured tower oh u guys are really cowards dont say anything about ninja stuff because u cant play even against Any server

It’s unfortunate that there isn’t some minimum age for playing this game …

Culling and lag are different effects, but they are caused by the same issue … lack of server-side ability to process and handle data quickly. I’m not sure how much of that is due to the slowness of the server/engine itself versus the in/out bandwidth that ANet buys, but the root issue is that ANet undersized their system relative to the demands being placed on it.

Ariel Cor Leonis Inferi.2894:

They rarely respond on the suggestion forums also :’(

The suggestion forum is where Anet moves posts they don’t want anyone else (including their own devs) to read.

OutspokenAardvark.9781:

I wonder if we keep this on the front page if ANet will eventually respond.

How many other threads have you seen ANet ever respond to? If ANet planned to salvage WvW before TESO comes out I think we would have seen some evidence of that by now.

Elochai.1280:

The current system is much better than moving servers around based on what position they come in within their current tier. The correct way would be to keep the current system, but have tweaks or changes performed by several humans. They would analyze and look at the data. They would also collect more data based on their own observations and by adding more features to the current system to collect data that may not be being collected. This means they would have all the data needed plus observations of the matchup. They could even run simulations between servers to give the best possible predicted outcome before they make their finale decision as to where every server could go.

Not gonna happen … because it would require somebody at ANet to actually give a kitten and pay attention.

Offski.4897:

Before I begin, I must admit that we have used this to our benefit as a guild on numerous occasions. Not sure if this has been covered before.

I feel there should be a timer upon entering a border or EB which stops you from joining another border for a period of time say 15-30 minutes. This timer would have to restrict you even if you relog or switch characters.

I feel that having the ability to switch borders instantly, benefits the server which has the greater number of players at that time. This is most noticable at night or in the mornings. Where the dominant server can keep eyes on all borders and concentrate on one whilst still being able to hop between the others to defend where necessary.

If a timer was introduced the dominant server would have to be more careful about allocating its resources, therefore giving the servers with fewer numbers the ability to actually defend.

Now the adverse argument to this is that an outmanned server could in fact hop borders to defend a tier 3 keep/tower etc. Therefore benefitting also.

Anyway just wanted to hear other peoples thoughts on this.

That’s a really, really bad idea. WvW takes place on different maps only because ANet’s engine is too crippled to make one large map out of it. WvW is not four independently instanced matches … it is a single large event.

stereoblind.4736:

Improvements will be made and people that keep GW2 installed and keep coming back to play will be the ones who’ve won in this situation.

{citation needed}

I’ve seen no evidence at all to support your comment.

rahuri.7048:

1. What does that even mean? Skip queues? No, that’s not fair and will overload the server.

Like it’s so unrealistic to expect the game to actually have the capability to handle the number of players who want to play it.

2. What does this mean? Culling is constantly being fixed, and you’re never going to see the enemies location on your map. That’d ruin the game.

Culling has NEVER been fixed at all, and by some accounts is worse than ever. And if you couldn’t figure out that he wasn’t talking about seeing enemies on the map you have some sort of comprehension disorder.

Also, use this forum next time: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions

He clearly was not making a suggestion … he was airing a gripe. See #2 above.

muylaetrix.2096:

i think Habib said that if there is a queue, from his position he sees 166 players on the map, where loads of players claim that at times there are nowhere near that number on the map and queues are there. then someone sugested that maybe the server reports wrong numbers that include people who logged and disconnected after which Habib went sillent.

at the moment, it seems anet can’t tell how many players are effectively on a map.

so, there might be 40 players ‘effectively’ on the map and 126 players that have been there, are no longer there, but the server still counts as there. i think everyone has seen people still in group after they logged and i think everyone has seen blue dots on the map, of players that are no longer ingame.

^this^

… and especially this:

“Then someone sugested that maybe the server reports wrong numbers that include people who logged and disconnected after which Habib went silent.”

We haven’t heard a thing back on any portion of this issue. I’d say I was disappointed with the lack of feedback, but by now I don’t really expect any anymore.

Israel.7056:

If Anet’s goal is to make their WvW player base happy then hopefully they’ll read these sorts of posts and perhaps try to communicate with the player base about what is and is not possible.

Good luck with that. Browse through the last few months posts on any key issue you can think of and lets us know how many responses, or even acknowledgements, you can find.

I agree with virtually all of the OP, although I’m not in favor of prioritizing guild over server. #5 is particularly on target, though … the lack of commitment and follow through on fixing critical bugs and adding promised content in WvW is simply appalling. There really is no excuse for it if they have any interest at all in retaining their player base. There were a lot of bad decisions (not enough server-side bandwidth, poor choice of game engine, some really bad coding, etc) made when this game rolled out, but six months has been plenty of time to fix everything except the engine if the devs actually cared. I also am strongly looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online, and unless Zenimax is blind they will treat GW2’s WvW as a template for how a decent concept can be ruined with bad execution.

Knighthonor.4061:

Please improve Level Scaling in WvW.

Thiefs can do too much damage to plated armor classes coming out of Stealth.

its crazy too much.

please do something to improve scaling for low levels.

If you can’t comprehend that those are two entirely different and unrelated issues it’s pretty difficult to take you very seriously.

sceptus.9415:

Hello,

I’m not sure what changes you have made, but it is near impossible to fight in these situations with zerg vs. zerg combat. I’m pressing skills for ten seconds straight with no activation.

This has reached a point for me that I’m just going to vote with my presence and leave the game. We have three people who have the best computers money can buy right now (for gaming) who are all experiencing the same issue.

If anyone has any idea how to work around this issue, there are quite a few of us who would be happy for some help. If we can’t improve it, there is no reason to even play the game.

Everybody I play with is experiencing the same thing. I can be running (i.e., not stunned) while spamming my heal key and not have it even start to fire off for seconds. Personally, I think it’s ANet’s way of minimizing culling … more dead players means fewer players to render (only slightly tongue in cheek).

First of all, the OP does seem to understand why the Glicko-2 system is a poor choice for something like WvW. It has exactly the problems he describes for the reasons he describes, and why ANet can’t seem to grasp that is beyond me.

That being said, the alternative described by the OP has been suggested many times here before and will result in more unbalanced matches. There is simply too much disparity in WvW player populations from top to bottom servers within GW2. You can’t have balance and variety from the same system. It will definitely change the matchups more often, but they won’t necessarily be more fair ones.

If you look at the current rankings, there are maybe two or three (maximum four) NA servers that would not be a certain blowout for your server … no matter which server you are on. No matter which side of the blowout you are on, they aren’t much fun. Your proposal means that about 85% of the time the matches will suck.

For that not to happen, the outmanned buff would have to scale variably to the number of players from all three servers and it would have to apply to most siege as well as players. It would probably also have to apply to both protection and damage abilities. I think you grossly underestimate how complicated (and arbitrary) all of this becomes.

fivekiller.1432:

i think its a fair point.

Siege is often more useful in a tower than outside and players are often safer outside a tower attacking than inside defending.

No way. I’ve done a lot of attacking and I’ve done a lot of defending. Unless the defenders were too stupid to deploy any siege, anything even close to equal numbers gives a huge advantage to the defenders.

It’s simple. Botting costs ANet money … exploits don’t.

Standing on the outer edge of a wall to defend is no different than standing out in front of the wall to defend … both will get you quickly killed, as they should. Merely standing on a wall should not give you any particular protection. Walls are there for you to stand BEHIND if you want to be protected, and siege is available if you actually want to defend.

Regarding defensive siege itself, most of it gets dropped in really stupid places so of course it gets wiped out easily by AoE. People put arrow carts in the middle of the wall, or even on the outer lip, because they don’t know how to twist the camera view for targeting. How stupid is that? Most siege also gets dropped independently instead of placed to protect each other. Many times towers in particular simply don’t have enough siege to properly defend because there aren’t enough players willing to stick around to properly build it, and many times siege gets easily taken out because there weren’t enough players there to use it quickly enough when the attack started.

The system isn’t broken … players are just too dumb to use it right.

Bannok.3152:

I guess the purpose of the cap limit cant seem to sink in. JQ/SoS/SoR is a prime example. Comparable size. They would have the same numbers, the better coordinated server would win. Thats what they would want, and I think thats what we would want. Go to say Kaening. Huge off peak US advantage. Huge numbers over all. Steamrolled a few match ups now. For those weeks, enemy had no reason to log in. SBI, good server, lost a lot of people. 75% jumped to higher population server. Old points mean probably 7 to 8 weeks of landslide. That means 7 to 8 weeks of not WvWvW’ing. If they had cap limits to keep everyone in relative check, say for instance no more then 10 above what one server had, would lead to a more competitive match up over all. Thats all I was trying to say. From what I gather, all anyone is concerned about is zerging and the fear that they wont be able to zerg to get wins for kittens.

I like WvWvW. We run around with less numbers daily, and havent stopped. However, more and more people leave and those 10×30′s become 10×60′s. Its going to spread to other servers eventually. Im not even saying one for one, but limiting the number others have to keep it competitive.

I think it is you that cannot comprehend things here. What we both want is balanced matches, but capping map populations at the level of the lowest population server is the very worst way to accomplish that BECAUSE IT PREVENTS LOTS OF PEOPLE FROM PLAYING. The proper way to achieve balanced matches is to fix the ranking system so that servers in any matchup have more or less equivalent populations.

RyuDragnier.9476:

You don’t AoE a downed player to kill them…you AoE them to down the people trying to heal them.

Pretty sure that’s the point I was trying to make. As soon as a player goes down the AoE comes out to counter the folks trying to rez him.

Acelerion.6820:

In antiquity most mmos were based on some kind of resource system. Resurrection was not only limited by class but it also required a large expenditure of these resources to perform a rez. The reasoning was simple, bringing a person back from death is a very powerful ability with corresponding large cost.

In GW2 there is no cost at all meaning rezzing can reset a fight, wiping out nearly all progress made by one side or even putting them at a disadvantage if they spent costly cool downs to down the player.

There needs to be a cost.

Without a resource system this becomes a bit more challenging. One idea Im fond of is that players should have to “spend” a portion of their hit points to perform a rez. Enough for them to feel some pain but not enough to automatically doom them.

With this system players would still fell like they are making progress if a target gets revived while giving the other side a chance to get back in the fight.

In most situations that matter (i.e., a battle is still in progress), reviving an ally is almost always guaranteed to cause you to lose points … lots of them. You’re a sitting duck. An enemy has probably already dropped an AoE on the downed player, and since the downed player was most likely near the front of the battle you’re also a prime target for ranged enemy just looking for meat like you.

Sokar Rostau.7316:

Cactus.2710:

I don’t know why suggestions like this keep popping up. The surest way to kill a game is to prevent the ones who really want to play it from being able to play it. In your example, roughly 15 players from each side get to play for a total of 30 players, while 65 players are totally shut out of the game. That’s just ridiculous.

I agree that that’s a bad solution, but how about a compromise? Leave EB as is and add three more BL each with only half the possible population. As much as I do enjoy the very large battles, there’s nothing worse than going out to a BL only to find the odds are 10-1 (regardless of which side you’re on… outnumbering is just as bad as being outnumbered in terms of fun).

It truly sucks (for both servers) when the average population of one server over the course of the week is significantly different than the average population of another server, but if the player imbalance is caused by time zone differences or map dynamics, that’s all part of the game and trying to “fix” it merely would turn WvW into large scale sPvP.

Okaishi.8320:

Game balancing shouldn’t be related to bug/lag fixing.

I’ve never understood why so many players don’t get that. The game has a bug someplace so their response is to cry for buffs/nerfs elsewhere. It makes no sense to me and typically creates a cascading flow of undesirable secondary effects. If a street has potholes you don’t require all cars to be retrofitted with bigger wheels.

Redscope.6215:

Logically this makes sense, but technically I don’t think anyone outside Anet has any idea how their systems handle latency internally.

I’m not certain that anyone inside Anet has any idea how their systems actually handle latency internally …

Dr Acula.3496:

This match up is poopy and stale. WTB new opponents. No offense to IoJ or DR but I’m sure you can agree that fighting the same people over and over again isn’t enjoyable.

It would help if ANet’s ranking system was more responsive, but in general I will take balanced matches over new opponents any day. The bottom line, though, is that if server populations are reasonably stable and if by some miracle the ranking system was accurate, we will always be playing pretty much the same enemies over and over again. You can’t have stability, accuracy, parity, and variety all in the same package of ranked matches.

Plus this Forum lacks necessary trollish drama to be interesting on any level. Too much good sportsmanship and back patting.

Well, I didn’t want to say anything but I have noticed that Ehmry Bay pets seem to leave more poop behind on the battlefield. At least I think it comes from the pets ….

I don’t know why suggestions like this keep popping up. The surest way to kill a game is to prevent the ones who really want to play it from being able to play it. In your example, roughly 15 players from each side get to play for a total of 30 players, while 65 players are totally shut out of the game. That’s just ridiculous.

Lodovicus.1562:

No skill involved. No hard work to be rewarded. Just dumb blind luck. Sort it out.

Quite the contrary. It requires TONS of skill, TONS of hard work, and very little dumb blind luck. It’s just that it requires those things from more than just you. What did you expect from an MMO called “Guild Wars”? What part of “Massively Multiplayer” passed over your head? Read the game description next time before you buy it and all will be better.

You guys need to go play sPvP or arenas … you don’t belong in a team oriented activity. The whole idea of WvW is for all players to have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the overall server score without encouraging them to prioritize individual glory over group objectives. There are other venues that do pretty much exactly what you want … quit trying to ruin this one.

Enenion.8127:

Look, clearly the best reward system to break up zergs is to assign a pool of rank points to each objective and split them up based on the number of people who participated in taking the objective. Here’s a practical example. If killing an enemy player is worth 10 point and taking a supply camp is worth 100 points, if 10 people take a supply camp each person gets 10 points (the same as a solo kill). Then if 20 people zerg the supply camp half of them get no reward at all. That would certainly break up zergs since having an overly large amount of players take an objective would hurt your increase in rank.

Of course the system can’t be as easy as “a supply camp is worth 100 points”. For instance, the number of points given needs to scale with the level of upgrades on the objective and the amount of enemy siege inside it. Taking a fully upgraded tower is a lot harder than taking a brand new tower obviously so you’d need more people for that. Still, the principle of splitting the rewards based on the number of people participating is surely the fastest way to discourage zerging through rewards and is also part of the “reward people by damage done” suggestion above.

Well, it is extremely unlikely that such a system will ever be implemented in GW2. Even a cursory examination of GW2’s mechanics reveals that GW2 is designed to allow large numbers of players to play together with little to no downsides. Take for instance the fact that everyone gets full exp and their own loot roll from defeating mobs. Or the fact that events scale so that more players will yield more loot. Or even that the gathering nodes are not shared between players. Well, having a system where the rewards are limited by the number of player present flies in the face of all of that. Going back to that previous example, if I’m about to get 10 points for killing an enemy player and an ally joins in I only get 5. That’s not going to make me very happy to see that player is it? Well, the same applies to a system where I need to share my rewards based on damage done as is being discussed above. As long as the rewards I’m getting for whatever I’m doing are less than what I’d get if I had the same thing with less people it directly contradicts the design of GW2.

tldr: if you’re looking for the new reward system to discourage zerging, don’t get your hopes up. At it’s core GW2’s design enables large groups of players to play together with little to no downside and it is extremely unlikely that this new reward system will directly contradict that.

I agree that it is unlikely that Anet will install such a system even though aspects of it might have a generally positive effect on the game, but such a system would also have some major drawbacks. Aside from the fact that it is a departure from the normal way Anet does things, it would also be difficult to define how many players were involved in any particular event. Does a player who draws a few enemies off to the side while the group attacks a camp count? How do you score a player who joins a battle midway … by time, by damage, by number of buttons pushed? Does taking an unattended tower count as much as a fully defended one? Does trebbing a wall to pieces from the relative safety of a nearby keep count the same as taking it down with open field catas? There are so many shades of gray in such a scoring system that I simply don’t see it being feasible.

It would also cause LOTS of friction between players on the same team if the point system discouraged players from joining groups. You’d have small groups of elite players roaming around doing their best to exclude lesser geared or lesser leveled players entirely. You’d have small groups competing with each other for taking camps and arguments over who actually took it. I don’t see any of that as being positive for the game at all.

Emerge.9640:

Cactus.2710:

Besides, as Conquest proved in Rift, adding individual rewards for kills does the exact opposite of what you say. It strongly ENCOURAGES zergs because players can get kills much faster that way. How can you not see that? Why would you run with a small team looking for kills when the likelihood is that the enemy will be running around in a zerg looking for easy meat like you? The ONLY people actually pursuing map objectives will be the ones who either prefer that style of play no matter what or who already have max’d out whatever individual rewards ANet may have added. That’s exactly what happened in Conquest and that’s what will happen here unless ANet is extremely careful.

I see far more downside to the proposed changes than upside.

I’m sorry, but Rift’s godawful PvP system(s) shouldn’t be compared to anything.

Which is why I would truly hate to see ANet duplicate Rift’s mistakes.

Sartori.1960:

Okay, heres little old me running around trying to get map completion done in WvW. I think its hilarious that I get zerged by 10-20 people that chase me down and kill me.

Would some explain why I matter that much?

I think it’s hilarious that you think the enemy would have the slightest clue what your actual intention is. You could be scouting, you could be on your way to kill a yak, you could be headed somewhere with supplies to build siege (offensive or defensive), you could be on your way to tap a keep gate to make the waypoint contested, you could be on your way to operate defensive siege at a tower that was shorthanded and under attack … or you could be doing any number of other things that I wouldn’t want to just let you do if you were on the other team. You merely being alone does not make you a probable non-combatant. What part of any of this is so difficult for you to understand?

insanemaniac.2456:

Blaming so called tiers for a lack of competitors is whats wrong.

That’s simply semantics. Call them tiers, call them brackets, call them divisions, call them whatever you want … the root flaw is having so few participants in any one bracket.

You do realize that in a twisted sort of way both of us are identifying the same flaw in ANet’s use of the Glicko-2 system, right? I say it’s flawed for them to be using it to rank only three teams playing against each other versus other teams playing elsewhere, and you say that the system would work fine if there were more teams playing each other. We’re both looking through the same telescope … just from different ends.

insanemaniac.2456:

Cactus.2710:

-1. The Glicko-2 system was never meant to be used for tiered competition. It was intended to be applied to competitions where every participant plays a continuum of opponents in the general vicinity of his own rank. A tiered system locks opponents into a bracket from which they cannot escape if they are evenly matched … even though they may be better or worse than the participants in adjacent tiers.

i see this problem cited constantly any time there is discussion about glicko flaws.

and every time i see it, its wrong. we just call our matches tiers. tiering hardly applies at all, as the definition here is vague and mutable. what makes a tier? well the 3 servers in the match of course. we dont define it based on ranking, which is what we actually should do. like 1001-1200 is tier 7. 1201-1400 = tier 6. etc.

because of this, the actual issue of having a low population of possible competitors gets confused with whatever youre saying. matchmaking repeatedly creates matches based on the most even matches, always resulting in little change in opponents, because there are so few opponents to choose from. a server doesnt get stuck with bad matches because of the tiers, it gets stuck because there are 0, 1, 3, or not 3N-1 equal opponents. and the system requires 3N-1 equal opponents for such a low competitor population.

It isn’t wrong at all. Picture a Tier 6 matchup where the three servers are equally matched and battle to essentially the same score. Unless one of the servers in Tier 5 loses by a large enough amount to drop down to Tier 6, or one of the serves in Tier 7 wins by a large enough amount to climb up into Tier 6, those three servers in Tier 5 will be playing each other week after week. It’s entirely possible for the servers in Tier 5 to be losing proficiency (population, coverage, key commanders) to the point that they are actually weaker than the servers in Tier 6, but if they do so collectively the Glicko-2 system won’t drop one of them down to Tier 6 unless a blowout happens.

The Glicko-2 system was designed to be used in situations where, for example, the player or team ranked #12 played #‘s 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15 … and where #13 played #’s 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16 … etc That creates a constantly overlapping reference for every team that more or less properly assesses their relative proficiency. You don’t get that when you lock teams into tiers … you lose the reference to teams above and below you unless there is lots of disparity in proficiency (i.e., blowouts happen) or unless something happens beyond your control above or below you. That’s a fundamental flaw any way you look at it.

Furgerat.7842:

God i hope ANET reads this…..
ZERGING CANNOT be the best way to rank up or get points. It needs to be based on points per kill etc.. A smaller group gets more points for kills etc…

Also taking keeps/towers/camps should give little or NO points.. There is already alot empty keep/tower/camp taking last thing we want is WARHAMMER 2.0.

I hope Anet totally ignores you. Granting points purely for kills undermines all of the strategic intent in the match and is a great way to pit players on the same team against each other. If you don’t like objective-based PvP, why the hell are you in WvW in the first place?

I actually much prefer small team play over zergs, but everything should be focused on maximizing points for the server, not giving players incentives to “fight on the road” (WoW term) for individual rewards. Have you ever noticed how much ridicule and resentment is showered on players who insist on fighting at spawn points instead of trying to contribute more effectively to map capture? Now picture what it will do to team cohesiveness if half the players are trying to get kill points and half the players are trying to win the match. If you can’t imagine what that will look like, just take out a free trial subscription to Rift and play Conquest (their version of large scale three faction PvP) for a while. You will come back here with a totally different perspective. Trust me … it’s very ugly.

willwill.9318:

I haven’t played since august, honestly. No progression in WvW = i quit

Good decision … thank you. I’m firmly in the camp that prefers as little progression in WvW as possible, and I want content and good strategic play instead. I play basketball for the enjoyment of the competition and pursuit of being better at it, not because it’s going to earn me a better jersey or a new basketball. Same with WvW.

Bailey.6892:

be after reset today?

Looked at http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA although hoping it is wrong. Will mean that this the 3rd week we have had one of the same enemys.

I’ve never understood comments like this. If server populations are reasonably stable and if by some miracle the ranking system was accurate, you will always be playing pretty much the same enemies over and over again. You can’t have stability, accuracy, parity, and variety all in the same package.