Guild Wars 2

I think I can speak, if not for everyone, at least for a vast majority of Desolation’s WvW players, when I say that the objective is to equally stomp every one of our opponents into the ground.

We’re an equal opportunity WvW server.

Syntax.9602:

Since the transfer of hatred is free too, the europeans will just start to hate Deso instead of Vizunah if it climbs up in tiers smashing everything in between during the night.

Except this won’t happen. Wanna know the real numbers behind the new Desolation WvW superpower? This morning I spent 2 hours in Blacktide borderland, for my guild’s WvW event. Went in there at 10:00 AM, zero queue. Crashed lots of times due to the sound bug, every time I logged back in and rejoined the map instantly.

So yeah, the ubermassive Desolation WvW population along with all its fair weather PvE players couldn’t even field 166 players in at least one of the three borderlands for at least 2 hours, and this on a Sunday morning.
Scary, uh?

DavidMonthen.4398:

As one of the guys of IRON that is pulling all-nighters for 14days straight now, here is my stance on RUIN joining Deso:

I kittening love it. Thank god. I can actually go to sleep at normal times without losing all the money I spent on upgrades for keeps and towers. Yes, I still loose about 5g worth of upgrades each day, but I much prefer that to the 10-15g (each day or rather, night) I lost when playing against Arborstone.

Agreed. Anyone who is serious about WvW on Desolation can’t do anything but be glad about the much needed boost to our 24/7 coverage.

The amount of preemptive whining people on other servers are already starting to do to try and have RUIN leave is astounding, to say the least. I also have my doubts about that “Desolation player” complaining about them tbh.

Apparently nightcapping is only good if you’re the one doing it, otherwise “it destroys EU balance”. Heh. Which balance exactly are we talking about? The one seeing VS having 300+ points in the rankings over any other server?

Mind you, I still think the scoring system is one of the worst designs I’ve ever seen; it doesn’t reflect activity, it rewards alarm clocking, it devalues proper in game tactics, and it autoleads to ridiculous snowballs. But reading people start crying even before facing us… Jesus.

Yoke.4671:

Me being bitter maybe, but Im not sure i want them all back clogging up Q times when they will vanish the next time we have a hard fight(which will defo happen soon enough if we start going up the tiers again)

Unfortunately with the way the system is set up right now this is all but impossible to avoid. As soon as you start winning and going up in tiers, you get queues back.
The best hope is to be able to go back to tier 1 and then lose there, but not by too much… so you stay in t1 but the ones only fighting in easy conditions check the score and don’t bother to queue.

Pukknub.7368:

You’re talking about not having enough competition.
So my question to you is if you really get that kind of competition on eu servers when the main core of our players are asleep?

If we go back up in the brackets and end up fighting Arborstone or Vizunah again, they will find plenty of opposition. PLENTY. Trust me on this.

I know this, it gives 30 hp/second and doesn’t scale with healing. I’m just trying to figure out how the hell you find those runes… as far as I know they cannot be crafted.

76 views and no replies? :P

Either it’s pathetically easy, or I just found a way to become rich in GW2…

As for topic… which ways are there to get these runes?

The difference is that you can’t use the dodge roll for every mechanic, and many can be avoided in more ways than just the roll.

But one of the absurdly annoying things about these one shots is that to learn you need to either spoil the dungeon for yourself (watching e.g. a youtube video) or learn by dying.
I really think it’s bad design.

I second the request for some “impending attack” GUI element which doesn’t require me to use a magnifying glass on the monitor.

Checking minute animation differences is hard enough, but when you factor in the total overkill Arenanet pulled off on lights and particle effects for just about any player ability, it becomes nearly impossible to see what the boss is actually doing.

Why don’t we have a (relocable) enemy castbar?

You do not have to learn your part, there is only one part and at best it differs from boss mechanic to boss mechanic (of which there are too few). For example, take Lieutenant Kholer, this is a ranged encounter. You have to pick your ranged weapon, learn how to dodge him if he attacks you, learn how to dodge his AoE pull (group encompassing attack) and that is it. Spam damage, dodge until he looses interest, watch out for his animation. IF your cooldowns were instantaneously, you could play the encouter on your own, but they are now, this is why you need other players. So you can pass aggro and trigger your defensive skills in a giant merry-go.round. Next enemy, same thing, new pattern, if there is a new pattern.

A properly traited guardian can deny 4/5 of Kholer’s pulls using group-wide Aegis and Stability.

This is just one example. There are many specific class effects which are OP in the right fight and can essentially deny 50-75% of the boss mechanics. Not everywhere, I’ll give you that.

Raap.9065:

What is preventing us from playing properly, is not enough people caring to do so.

Tbh, I seriously doubt Desolation is the only server having this problem. This aspect of the game is plainly unfun for the majority of players so it’s not really surprising that after the initial curiosity numbers are already dropping.
At least from a WvW perspective, ArenaNet should start merging servers right away.

While the ridiculous amount of cheating is indeed appalling, Desolation is not losing due to that. Just check the WvW maps and you will see that, at almost every hour of the day (except maybe a couple hours of prime time) we can only fight in EB and one borderland, with the other two having little to no Desolation presence.

We simply don’t have enough WvW players anymore, and this after less than two months from game release.

While I agree with the general feeling, remember there’s only so many players willing to to WvW.
If the servers drops and fails to attract enough of those players, it’s over for good.

Just to give you an idea, right now you can enter SR borderland with zero queue and the outmanned buff. This at Saturday prime time.

Mouse.3271:

MMO tourism is really destructive to the genre, because there is a growing subset of people who claim they are holding games to a higher standard when in fact they aren’t giving a developer time to adapt to the LIVE playing environment, which you CANNOT test for, no matter how many BWE’s you have. There’s no testing how play systems work in live, and they always need to be adjusted 1, 3, 6 months down the line.

I disagree on this. All you need is a 6-months long public beta, and you will have all the testing in the world.
The fact MMO companies don’t want to spend the money to do this is a completely different matter. IMO, a company willing to make this kind of effort would actually be rewarded pretty soon down the line. Nowadays, you don’t get second chances.

This won’t solve any of the massive structural flaws of current WvW design, but will at least slightly improve some of its elements.

Summary:
Conquered enemy supply camps do not generate supplies for nearby friendly-controlled towers and keeps.

Definitions
Friendly supply camp: the two supply camps nearest to your server spawn point on the EB map and on the two enemy borderlands.
The three northern supply camps in your borderland.
Enemy supply camp: any other supply camp.

Proposed change:
you can still conquer enemy supply camps as usual, they will give their usual 5 points per scoring tick and players will still be able to get their 10 supplies from them whenever they are not empty.
However, no matter how long you hold them, they will never generate dolyak caravans for you.
The only way of getting supplies on “conquered” keeps/towers in “enemy land” is to escort the dolyaks from currently held friendly supply camps all the way to the destination tower/keep.
This obviously implies the current dolyak paths have to be changed so that dolyak are “smart” and modify their path depending on how many points you control. To reduce the complexity of implementation, you could further restrict supply routes by e.g. ruling that the “left” friendly supply camp can only supply the left half of the map and the right friendly supply camp can only supply the right half (and both can reach control points situated in the middle i.e. garrisons and Stonemist castle).

Why it slighty improves the situation:
it puts an higher focus on logistics and allows for a server to become overextended, something which is currently impossible simply because the overall map travel time is too short so that 1-2 roaming zergs will defend all your territory pretty effectively, no matter how big it is and how many control points you’re holding.
It also gives a “home turf” advantage to the servers on the zones closest to their spawn points, thus making total map control slightly more difficult.

It won’t do anything for a 30 vs 0 vs 0 nightcap problem, but it could slightly improve the 50 vs 10 vs 10 situation by making it a little more difficult for the 50 to fully upgrade and resupply the keeps and towers farther from their base.

If you’re complaining about a bunch of people capping all the stuff while your server has less people, then there’s another thread for that.

The two things are not independent of each other. Part of the reason why nightcapping is so overpowered is that it’s too easy for a single big zerg to hold the whole map if the enemy has significantly less players. So as soon as the numbers become e.g. 50 vs 10 vs 10 the 50 can just happily zerg their way to 100% map control.

Put in instakill arrow carts, and all of a sudden the 10 can at least slow down the zerg a bit and force them to use trebs to cap the points. Doesn’t solve the problem but slightly improves the situation (not to mention the educational value on puggers whenever their mindless 40-men zerg gets wiped in 3 seconds flat and they start to realize that MAYBE there are other possibilities than just forming a blob and go beat on the closest gate).

Won’t work. It just slows down the inevitable a bit, but if it’s 50 vs 10 you still lose. Also you cannot scale based on local presence, otherwise you deny rightful “local superiority” tactics when maps are full.

Wanna stop brainless zergs dead in their track? Easy peasy: arrow carts hit per 5k/tick and have 0.5 second CD on skill “1”. End of zerg domination, forever.
Would also help a little bit with unopposed capping, since at the very least this way the zerg could be held by 10 people and they’d need (GASP!) actual tactics like “hey instead of getting slaughtered by the gun nests let’s take them out with long range artillery bombardment”.

Arrow carts were stronger (though nowhere near as much as they should be) in BWE, they were nerfed due to people whining, was pointed out it was a mistake, mistake is still here. Don’t hold your breath.

Queue times as of this evening (landslide loss : Arborstone 187K, Augury Rock 79K, Desolation 73k):

Arborstone bl: 0 mins (20:20 instant enter, outmanned debuff, disappeared after a while)
Desolation bl: 17 mins (20:20 – 20:37)
Augury Rock bl: 7 mins (20:37 – 20:44)
EB: 0 mins (20:44 entered instantly)
Arborstone bl: still 0 mins (20:45 reentered instantly)

lollie.5816:

Three group pvp is supposed to produce cooperation. If that fails then nothing will work.

Wanna bet?

“whoever caps a control point in the last hour of the match gains 1 million on the score”.
There. 2 weeks matches completely balanced and fully exciting until the last hour, no dependence on player behavior.

(Now before anyone points out: yes I fully understand this design is lousy as well; it’s just an extremely heavy-handed example of system-enforced balance who doesn’t depend in the slightest on player behavior).

lollie.5816:

Don’t need to add more, same as above – they should be directing their efforts better, and that’s what WvW is supposed to be about .

Any pvp design pinning its hope of balance on player behavior is doomed to an utter, miserable failure.
This is not any news; any game designer worth of the title knows this and has known this for at least the last 15 years. There is really no excuse anymore.

Also, as to the general situation: if we win, we nightcap the enemy servers and win due to this. If we lose, we get nightcapped and lose due to this. Most of the time, in a losing situation, we hold our own most of the time in eb and whichever bl IRON is on, and we fail hard in the other 2 bls.

Last week(winning): long queue times on eb during weekend. Average queue times on bls. Queue times sharply diminishing with the week as the advantage snowballed.

This week(losing): long queue time on eb on saturday. Average queue times on bls.
Queue times went down on sunday already, and are now essentially non existent on all maps.

IRON is the stongest wvw guild on desolation at the moment. They can single handedly hold a bl in a decent state (“our” 33% of the map or more) approx. 18 hours out of 24.

Region locking does not solve anything. All it does is change the problem from “whoever has most oceanics/asians/EU/NA/martians wins” to " whoever has more players willing to stay awake the longer time wins".

A PvP system in which scoring is not linked to actual PvP activity is botched. End of. Just ask Funcom and Bioware, they learned this the hard way.

Gibbonici.9437:

I wonder if Oceanic players feel the same way?

Think about it.

What has this to do with the problems I’m describing (we’re discussing about EU servers btw)?

If you mean “do the people playing with light or no opposition think their actions are worthless” then I’d say obviously not, since their actions at the moment are the sole determinant of the final score.
I’d not have any fun with the game even if I was in such a condition anyway, though, as I’d simply be zerging everything due to superior numbers. The problem would switch from “my actions are worthless” to “my brain is worthless as I auto-win by banging against doors, killing NPCs, and outzerging 5:1 or more the few enemies I can find here or there”. Not exactly an engaging PvP experience either.

Wothan.4673:

What the problem ? In the end nightcapping serv fight together on the 1 tier and you can have very good fight vs serv with schedule like yours in tier 2/3. ( Augury Rock <3 by example ). It’s only a bad week to past.

It won’t work. When we went against weaker servers, we nightcapped them. Same c..p, except we were on the winning side. Doesn’t change anything to me.

Unless you have full numbers 24/7, the matchmaking system is never going to work. There are simply too few servers to hope to find 2 others which are so close to your numbers to result in a balanced fight. Chances are, the one above you will always be far too strong, and the one below you will always be far too weak.

DavidMonthen.4398:

Magnus, what you fail to understand is this:

1. We will not win this weeks WvWvW

I can assure you I have a perfect understanding of this. In fact, I already pointed out (several times) that one of the biggest failings of the current scoring system is that it intrinsically amplifies small population differences allowing those to snowball into huge point differences. As a result, the winner of nearly every single matchup is painfully obvious right after the first 24 hours with a few exceptions needing 72 (i.e. the first work day) for the final picture. Thus, 7-day games make no sense as the last 4 days are completely useless in determining the winner.

DavidMonthen.4398:

2. it doesn’t matter a single bit if we win or not as long as it is fun to play and it is, because it is challenging and rewarding at the same time (at least if you play in an organized group, if you are not, well … you are making a mistake…)

That’s the whole point, to me it’s not fun and this is directly linked to your next point:

DavidMonthen.4398:

3. Stop blaming “nightcapping” – again: it’s a valid tactic, it’s not worth any less than playing during the day — so if arbor can keep this up they deserve to win.

The huge design problem, as I already said, it’s that nightcapping is not simply a valid tactic or a strong tactic; it’s THE ONLY tactic. Nothing else you do, in or out of the game, will result in the same point swing as a few hours of unopposed capping.

Brilliant pincer movements to wipe out enemy zergs? Useless.
Perfect choice and positioning of siege weapons? Useless.
High coordination and continuous inter-team and inter-guild communication? Useless.

Drop your Ventrilo/TS server, delete your guild forums, stop theorizing about the best defending and attacking strategies, heck, even stop logging into the game at all. You want to win? Just hire a 500-strong night capping team, and let the brainless puggers carry you through peak time. Their mere numbers alone will be enough to not let the enemy gain too much of an advantage (just check the Eternal Battlegrounds map, whenever there’s full numbers nothing significant ever changes, there’s just one of the 3 servers holding Stonemist and that’s it), and whatever small gains the enemy will have achieved against your puggers through their superior tactics will be completely nullified by your night team unopposed capping. Best thing about it? You don’t even need to play the actual game. Just set the schedule up outside of it, and you’re done.

I don’t know about you, but when I play a game, I want my actions (i.e. my input into the game state) to have a significant outcome on the final result. Right now this isn’t the case. I could be a better general than Alexander the Great, coordinating with utter genius 666 players on all 4 maps for 12 hours a day, and whatever results I achieved would be completely undone by a zerg of 50 braindead m.r.ns playing at 4:00 AM and recapping everything not because they outsmart me but simply because they play PvDoors.

If you like this game, hey, I’m happy for you; but you can’t really be surprised if people don’t like playing a game in which their actions do not have any significant consequence. It’s not about winning or losing; it’s about me being inconsequential either way. If we lose, it’s not (also) my fault, and if we win, it’s not (also) thanks to my actions. What’s the point?

Let me ask you a simple question: do you honestly see yourself still playing this game in 6 months time, if the matchups keep being so ridiculously lopsided and the winner being determined by something done out of game (alarm clock scheduling) rather than in game (fighting the actual battles)?

DavidMonthen.4398:

Yup, thats EXACTLY what we need the other kittens to do and it will increase the overall performance of desolation drastically! So if you want to whine, just leave Deso. We do not like your whining.

- Bloodsteel

David, I’ve a lot of respect for you IRON guys, you’re certainly the best WvW guild on Desolation right now, but I don’t think you’re getting the full picture here. Most of the players on Desolation have already taken your advice, so to speak; they didn’t leave the server but they simply didn’t queue for WvW anymore past Sunday morning. I could enter EB with zero queue Sunday at 10:00AM, and with less then a 10-minute queue at 11:00AM. And this was on the most populated map, and on a weekend day.

Having even LESS players is not going to do Desolation any favor in gaining points.

[EDIT] also stop the macho-man “do not whine” posturing please, if there’s something childish is exactly that. I’m providing data points here. Truth is: AS gained 18k during night capping first night, then less than 2k in the next 10 hours; they are dominating NOW, even during prime time, simply because no one is queueing up anymore in Desolation.
On the one time during the game when we had equal numbers they did gain a slight advantage but calling that “total domination” is beyond ridiculous. As I said, they’d be winning anyway, but with a much smaller advantage.

In fact, let me show who is talking b.ll…t here.

AS advantage at 12:00 saturday, after first night-capping (18045 points on Deso):

http://imageshack.us/a/img145/6407/gwscreen2.jpg

AS advantage at 20:49 same day (18592):

http://imageshack.us/a/img17/7239/gwscreen.jpg

AS advantage at 22:52 (19157):

http://imageshack.us/a/img600/3635/gwscreen3.jpg

AS advantage at 2:06 AM Sunday, nightcapping phenomen restarted (20411):

http://imageshack.us/a/img528/5773/gwscreen4.jpg

From that point onward, Desolation numbers in WvW steeply declined and the game snowballed as usual.

Make no mistake, AS would be winning this match even without night capping, but the difference would be very, very small. Certainly nothing like “total domination”.

Completely false.

Arborstone gained 17.5k advantage in the night between friday and saturday. That advantage was kept more or less at that same level for the rest of saturday, then saturday night AS night-recapped everything and on sunday morning they held an advantage >30K. At that point, for obvious reasons, overall WvW participation in Desolation declined sharply.

Saros.4968:

Well, try first not to get totally dominated during prime time before talking about Canadian players etc…

That would be a good start.

Screenshot taken at 20:49 saturday, when Arborstone had already a ridiculous advantage due to friday night capping but it was not yet unrecoverable:

http://imageshack.us/a/img17/7239/gwscreen.jpg

Doesn’t look like Desolation is exactly being “totally dominated” here.

nidwin.6731:

Are you peeps aware that?

Arborstone >>>>>>>>>>>>>> VS

Because if you’re crying about VS I’m wondering what’s going to happen when Arborstone’s going to take their rightfull place. And read well, I didn’t wrote claim but take.

If that is true (and I believe it is after having faced both), it’s simply because a sizable part of VS WvW population (including several guilds playing during the night) has moved to Arborstone after getting fed up with the queues.

So we’re simply facing [some of] the same peeps, except they switched servers.
But it gives an idea about the size of the numerical advantage initially held by VS, the fact that they can split in two and both halves can still completely outman any other server.

The matching system isn’t working yet then.

The current matching system won’t work EVER. If you seriously think the matchmaking will somehow magically make the problems disappear you’re deluded.

The game doesn’t have a simple binary state where your server either has “night presence” or it doesn’t and you can just match servers of the same type together. The scoring system will ensure that even if populations match 23 hours out of 24, that single hour in which one server has a significantly bigger population gives that server an autowin.
So unless you can miraculously come up with a group of 3 servers whose numerical total presence in all 4 WvW maps is nearly identical throughout the whole week, most of the games will keep being washouts decided during the first 24-36 hours.

The only situation in which these matches can ever be balanced is if all 3 servers have 666 (i.e. maximum) people 24/7, which is what will happen anyway, for the top bracket at least, as people interested in WvW (what will be left of them anyway) will concentrate on those few megaservers to have a fighting chance.

Of course that leaves 90% of the servers out in the cold with totally lopsided matches but hey… not my problem anymore.

Namu.5712:

If you haven’t noticed the community is pretty much 50/50 on this issue… just pointing it out.

I somehow suspect the relative numbers are a bit different, seeing as the current system penalizes those who play at peak times who are by definition the majority (otherwise it wouldn’t be called “peak time” in the first place).
Either way, it’s unfortunate for them, as they will need to choose one way or the other.

My contribution to their game has already been done the moment I forked the money to buy the box.

I’m not paid to fix their game. If they cannot provide me a fun experience, I stop playing their game and find a better one. Simple as that.

Antiriad.7160:

MagnusLL:

Do you have any sources you can link? I’d like to read up on it, like, what was suggested and what was criticised.

Unfortunately not, as the BWE forum posts were always deleted after the BWE ended.

But I can guarantee you that the problem of “nightcapping” (or whatever you want to call it) was pointed out at them for one simple reason: I was one of the people who posted about it.
I made a thread (after first or second BWE, cannot remember anymore) where I explained what to me were structural game design flaws, and one of those was indeed the fact that whoever had more people at 3:00 AM would automatically win the game with this scoring system. And I wasn’t the only one to point this out, trust me.

But as usual, the devs always think they know more, or that player behavior will fix their mess by itself (it never does, instead it always makes things worse), or that somehow their magical matchmaking system would have created server with identical populations, at every hour, and in groups of 3, to make for balanced, funny games.

Wafflesomg.4820:

If by winning you mean having the highest score, yes you’re quite right. However, the term winning means something else for me. I feel that I (or we, as a server rather) have won when we continiously throughout the week each day pushed back the night-capping advantage and equalized, or surpassed the opposing side(s) territory. That to me is WINNING. There’s obviously much resolve, and I think too many put too much stock in the EU rankings.

If I got into the olympics and tripped and fell on the finish line, placing last, I for sure would’ve won regardless. I got to the kitten olympics!

Here’s the thing.

It wasn’t me to put weight on those scores. It was Arenanet.
Those scores show on your WvW panel. They determine server rankings. They determine a winner and two losers. They also determine the bonuses you’re getting for all players on your server, which let’s not forget are the only “game-mechanical” consequences of the whole system.

If those scores were only meant as a way of ranking servers and get balanced matches (which they cannot provide btw – there’s too few servers for an ELO-like system to work), they should have been kept hidden and the bonuses should have been given with a different system. You cannot really fault me (or anyone else) for taking the obvious hint Arenanet put in there.

In the end, the bottom line is: no matter what I do, I do not feel I’m making any difference whatsoever. This to me makes the game unfun. And what’s the point of playing a game which isn’t fun?

Unfortunately the problem is a bit bigger than “sense of entitlement”.
As things currently stand, unopposed capping is not a viable tactic or even the strongest tactic.

It’s the ONLY tactic.

This means my actions (and those of thousands of other players) have no discernible impact on the final outcome. It also means all those awesome coordinated attacks, mesmer portal bombings, communication, flankings etc. etc. etc. are all ultimately futile. If my server has more people online during the hours of minimal presence, we win. If another server has more, they win. What I, my group, my guild, or my whole server did or didn’t do while I was playing never enters the equation.

What’s the point of playing a game in which your actions do not ever matter?

There are no queues anymore on Desolation at almost every time of the day now. Maybe small ones for EB but that’s all.

This morning I instantly entered EB at 10:00 AM, at 11:00 or so I crashed and I reentered after less than 10 minutes.

Sad truth is: WvW population is already sharply dropping on all servers except the top 2 ones or so in each region. Awful design is awful, and nowadays there are simply too many games around to hope people is going to wait months for you to fix your design mistakes.

Especially if they were properly pointed out 3 months before during the first public BWE, and those reports were ignored…

So instead of fixing your own problem as a server (field people during NA sleepytime/daytime in other parts of world and become 24/7) or as a guild (move guild to a server that either doesn’t care about fronting 24/7 and be happy that way, or to a server that already fronts 24/7) you’d rather threaten the game devs.

Are you for real?

Here’s a newsflash: I paid Arenanet to play this game.
If they want me to fix their development blunders, they need to pay me instead.

Tried to make a funny post earlier about this, but ran into some robotic moderator desperately needing an humor transplant so I’ll get straight to the point this time.

Desolation is currently the 4th ranked server in EU and at prime time can hold its own against anyone and anything. What we seriously lack right now to rise to the top is a big numerical presence from 1-2AM till 12AM or so, especially during weekdays.

If you’re an NA-based guild interested in WvW you could do a lot worse than to think about a transfer. Consider this:

A) queues will be either short or non-existent. If you’re east coast based your 20:00 prime time translates to 2:00 AM here. West coast is even better, turning into 5:00 AM. You can be pretty sure there’s at least one of the 4 maps (and quite often several) who won’t have any queue at those times.
B) your contribution will be quite significant but OTOH you’re not going to be reduced to PvDoor because, quite frankly, the massive amount of people the french servers (don’t ask me why but, at least currently, it’s them) can field 24/7 borders on the ludicrous. You will have your work cut out for you.

You don’t even have to believe me… just send an observer and have him watch the situation for 3-4 days and then report it.

Sky.9347:

The point scaling may even be unnecessary (because I think in any case it would be sloppy) if there is another way to get back into the game.

Scrapping the point system entirely and just turning specific objectives into specific bonuses (or bonus accumulation) would be great, but then a second or sub system would have to be designed to figure “rank”.

If they follow your idea (which I find a nice alternative), they wouldn’t even need a second system. Keep the current one, except all scores are hidden from players and used only for matchmaking purposes.

Matt Witter.6982:

How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.

That’s the worst problem right now. The contribution of players playing at prime time is currently worthless. OTOH, the contribution of players playing with the minimum amount of opposition (at whatever time that might happen) is THE ONLY factor determining the matchup results as things stand right now.

This is because whenever you go against an enemy at full strength (166 on all maps) even an extremely strong showing will never reduce them to having zero control points on the map, so even if you play much better than the opponents, at peak time you might be able to grab a 50-100 points advantage (total, on all 4 maps) per tick versus the second server (350-250 or something like that) and even that advantage needs to be maintained with extremely frequent hard fights; on the other hand, whenever the enemy maps are empty, all you need is 30 or so people per map and you will nearly instantly cause a 500+ point swing and easily keep it for several hours.

The end result of all this is that the major battles fought at prime time by 2000 players end up being completely irrelevant to the end score, while the trivially easy capping of players assaulting empty enemy control points is the factor contributing 70%+ of the total score of the winning server. This is completely opposite to your stated goal of “no player’s time is more valuable than another”.

One possible solution is to link scoring to the amount of enemies present in a map and the ratio of enemies/allies on that map. I will repeat a simple proposal I made on the other huge thread:

A) Base scoring if you are playing in a map with 0-50 enemies AND you have at least a 1.5:1 numerical advantage is 1/3 of normal points. The “number of enemies” is computed as the average of the enemies of both servers (i.e. if one enemy server has 20 players on the map and the other 0, you’re facing 10 enemies for the purposes of the formula).
B) For every enemy beyond 50 you gain 0.574% on the scoring (this is 66.666% / 116, thus at 166 enemies you gain 100% scoring). E.g.: if you face 100 enemies and you’re at least 150 (to trigger the 1.5:1 ratio) you will gain (33.33% + 0.574%*50) = 62.03% of the normal points.
C) If your ratio falls below 1.5:1 you restart gaining points at 100% normal points (since you don’t have a significant numerical advantage anymore).

This is just an example, numbers can be different, also you can use several thresholds instead of just one both for the “minimum numbers of enemies”, “minimum percent”, and for “minimum numerical advantage ratio”. The main factors which should be preserved IMO are:

1) whenever someone is capping a map with little to no opposition (relative to his own current faction strength) the amount of points/tick should be decreased
2) there has to be a minimum threshold of points which the most numerous faction is gaining in any case, otherwise a server could stop the enemy servers from gaining any more points simply by leaving the maps

As long as these two conditions are met, any revision of the scoring system which makes the (comparatively) small differences you can gain at peak times relevant again to the final score will meet the goal of making all players equal. Also, note that this system is not based on any specific time of day but only on the relative strengths of enemy populations at any given time.

Namu.5712:

I see it as the same.

Primary complaint is…. at night we have hardly anyone on compared to xxx server that has 2x more people.

DT is 2x people vs the server being double teamed is it not?

Same concept in my eyes.

The difference in the double teaming scenario is that it’s an intrinsically unstable situation. Double teaming against the third server only makes sense up until the point where you’re hurting your own chance to win by not attacking the “allied” server. It’s a completely fair assessment to expect double teaming to not last a whole matchup, at least if people on the two allied servers have any brain.

The population and scoring unbalance, on the other hand, is hardly going to undergo any significant change during a matchup.

Also, there are proposed solutions out there who do not depend upon time of the day but upon numbers of enemies present. If you want a very simple example:

- scoring is 1/3 of normal scoring if the enemy population on the map is between 0-50 and you have at least 1.5x their numbers.
- for every enemy over 50 scoring increases until reaching 100% if you have full (166 players) enemy presence.
- as soon as your numbers are below 1.5X the enemy numbers, your scoring goes back to 100%.

These are just random numbers I’ve tossed out but it’s an example of how you can reduce the strength of the “alarm-clock” strategy while still allowing for it to have an impact on the final outcome.

Also, regarding the “it’s not fair to oceanic/asian/martian players”: how is the current system fair to the peak time players, considering their impact on the game is essentially non-existent? And does it really make sense to make the game unfair to the majority to protect the minority?

Not that talking over this will change anything since the design decision has already been taken obviously. It just amazes me how all the recent attempts at mass pvp which I’ve witnessed (AoC Shrines of Bori, SWTOR Ilum, and now GW2 WvW) have all failed miserably for the exact same reason: none of the designers stopped to consider implementing a reward system taking into account actual pvp activity into it, resulting in the system rapidly devolving into something which had nothing to do with pvp (PvNodes for AoC, PvNoone with cap switching for Ilum, and now PvDoor for GW2).

Diabolos.5493:

Maybe someone will read it and sit back for a second, take a deep breathe and realize that people like me are having no problem being on a losing server. Got to keep in mind, WvW doesn’t really give much of anything extra to the “Winning” side.

Nothing to do with winning or losing. It has more to do with my actions being useless toward the final outcome. Our server won this week’s matchup, but it wasn’t due to anything I did (or did not), it was our night crew who gifted the game to us. Next week we’re back up in first bracket and will lose to VS’ night crew regardless of whatever I do.

I honestly cannot understand how anyone can defend a game design which results in:

A) 7(14) days matches whose final result everyone knows before they are even started
B) the in-game actions of the overwhelming majority of the players being completely irrelevant to the final outcome

I don’t like the current design for all the personal reasons I described in my previous posts, but to me, the two above design points are, objectively, major flaws and would be flaws in whatever game I considered.

Ignicity.7938:

@MagnusLL

Sorry mate. I didn’t mean to come off sounding like I was hating on you. I fully appreciate where you’re coming from.

I was just attempting to playfully show you that there is some light at the end of the tunnel

No problems. However, I’d say there isn’t any light anyway. My personal likes/dislikes aside, this setup doesn’t work from a technical and metagame perspective either; all Anet is doing is to push all serious WvWers to concentrate on a very small number of servers, since as soon as your own server cannot guarantee at least 500 WvW players 24/7 it automatically guarantees a loss; and we can see right now that this bar is set extremely high, so much so that at the moment only the top server in NA (HoD) and EU (VS) can meet it.
So the likely metagame evolution is the emergence of a few megaservers (at least in WvW terms) while everywhere else WvW zones go deserted. Except that once this happens, those megaservers’ queues will be ludicrous. And you have to pray they come in multiples of 3 on every region, too…

Ignicity.7938:

@MagnusLL

I understand that you don’t want to use your oversized behemoth monstrosity of a brain for international diplomacy.

But just think if you did; after all of the initial diplomacy, recruiting and arranging 24 hour competitive coverage was done, you could sit back and let your extraordinary pink matter work on the things that you think matter to it, like strategy and tactics.

Or, I can just look for a better game.
Guess which choice has more likelyhood to get better results?

Also, I don’t understand the hate. Never said this game design is “bad”, in fact I stated the contrary. It’s simply not fun to me. I do not WANT to start doing all the “UN meeting” stuff. I come from other MMOs where I’m guild and raid leader and it’s plenty enough for me; I’ve had enough drama to last 10 lifetimes, I don’t want to bother about that s..t anymore.
I thought (and I was led to believe) I could avoid that c..p in here, turns out it’s even more critical than in your usual raid-gear-threadmill MMO; now you can’t even stop at “just” having a guild, you actually need a huge alliance with thousands of players around the world logging in 24/7… It’s just not my thing anymore. I want to login, have some fun, and for once… just for once… play a game in which the winner isn’t whoever brought most friends or grinded longer or has the fastest twitch skills. Guess I’m in a tiny minority and no one will ever bother building an MMO for the likes of me… ah well, there’s always single player games I guess.

Ignicity.7938:

I still believe the winner could be the one with the best brain. That is if you use that brain to organize a “UN”.

Who here thinks WWII was just between the USA and Germany? Pretty sure allies were involved.

Oh wait, this is a game and I shouldn’t compare PvP to RL, my bad. It isn’t about server dominance, it’s about having fun with rainbows and unicorns

Right, but I was looking for a game where my brain was supposed to be used for things like strategy and tactics, not international diplomacy. Also a game in which I could have fun while actually playing it instead of winning/losing it due to out-of-game metagame events like intercontinental guild alliances. Not to mention how boring it is to have a 7 (or 14) days matchup whose winner is painfully obvious after 48 hours at most, and often you know who’s going to win 1 second after matchup starts just by reading server names.

Like I said, nothing inherently bad about this design, but they should have sold it for what it was, not a “casual mass pvp game mode”.

bluescape.9176:

You know that nothing happens when you lose, right? You constantly earn your rewards every time the timer flips. Holding more territory just makes it so you earn rewards faster. You are constantly in a state of winning. That’s about as casual as it gets.

Nothing to do with consequences (hell if there were consequences for something totally out of my control I’d not even be bothering to post about such a ridiculous game design).

Problem is, all my work is useless. My brain is useless. My tactics are useless. My efforts are useless. Everything I do is going to be made utterly inconsequential by 50 or so people who cap all 4 maps as soon as the other servers are not there anymore.

Doesn’t really matter for whom that period is “day time” or “night time”; the critical flaw is that whenever you’ve full maps (and thus the maximum amount of players) you can only gain a small fraction of the points that the people without opposition can gain. Hence the maximum amount of actual PvP activity (and maybe the brilliant use of tactics, of strategies, of coordination etc. etc.) has the least impact on the scoring, while the maximum impact is achieved whenever there’s the least amount of players going on, and most of that impact is achieved by doing PvDoor instead of PvP.

This game feature was sold to me as having two major characteristics which made it appealing to me:

A) the winner is the one with the best brain, not the biggest zerg
B) WvW game mode is casual so you don’t need to waste ungodly amounts of effort just to play a successful game

The end result of their design (which we now know is fully intended) is the exact opposite of this. Whoever has the biggest zerg at the time when online population is minimal auto-wins the match. This implies:

A) I need to put ridiculous amounts of efforts either in amount of hours logged in, in setting up UN-like intercontinental guild meetings just to have a chance, or both
B) stupidity is not punished. Just make sure you have the biggest zerg at those times, and even if that zerg is composed of braindead m.ro.s you will still win.

This setup is simply not any fun to me. And hey, it’s ok, no one says Anet needs to design games to cather to my tastes. I just wish they’d been a bit more honest about it.

Oh well. I should have learned the lesson with Funcom and EAware, but I kept hearing nice things about Anet and their good work on GW1 so I took the bait. Lesson conclusively learned the hard way: there are simply no honest MMO companies in the world (“we don’t want you to grind”… yeah right), and joining an MMO before at the very least 6-12 months have passed is an utter waste of time and money.

RamonDomke.9638:

War is not fair, war is not pretty, war gets out the worst in us

That’s why I don’t join wars and I spend my free time playing games.
You should look up in a dictionary and check the difference between the two.

Your “war” is unfun for most of the people playing it. Your MMO is not the only one on the market. Not by a long shot. Try to guess what these two facts imply.

Also, good job on designing pvp “for casuals” like you told you were doing. I guess staying up at 4:00 AM and/or setting up intercontinental guild alliances is classified as “casual” by Anet employees.

Anyway, thanks for what is up to now the most honest explanation about the situation. At least now I know I can simply stop wasting my time with this.