Guild Wars 2

Point scaling would just skew the results and you’ll end up matched against tougher servers than you should be.

Here’s the thing. The points don’t matter. All they are for is to help determine which worlds you should be matched against. What does matter is potential points, i.e. how you are doing now, not how you were doing in the past.

There’s a big hint in the interface. Look at the top of your screen in WvW. That bar with 3 colors on it? That’s the potential point distribution, not the overall score. That number? Again potential points. Hover over it? Yup, more potential points.

Now, hit B. Sure, there’s the overall score, but what’s that beneath it? A massive pie chart of what? You guessed it, potential points.

The score is irrelevant. What do you get when the match resets after you’ve got the highest score? Nothing. Well, you might get a tougher fight for the next match, but that’s it. Sure you got some bonuses, maybe +10% gold and the like for a few days, but the 3rd place server still got +6%.

ComeAndSee.1356:

WvW was supposed to be the pinnacle of open world PvP, but after a month it feels more like an endless grind.

• WvW not having a set time makes your hard work seem pointless. Yes, the night people should have something to do, but they shouldn’t erase the hard work of the people from the day. During the day on my server you have to sit for an hour 1/2 just to get in, but at night it’s instant.

The score is irrelevant. It does not matter. Forget about it. The only thing you should be concerned with is … orbs, bonuses, and potential points. Concentrate on those, and all of a sudden so-called “night capping” also becomes irrelevant.

• Entire enemy raids not loading until they’re right on top of you.

It’s a problem. Everybody knows it.

• Badges of Honor and Karma bonuses only reward damage dealing. I play a support Guardian (which has crap range anyway) and 80% of the time I’m sitting in the group healing, putting up reflect barriers, or blocking off choke points with walls of lining. I hardly get any badges of honor.

Badges are account bound. Switch things up and play a damage class occasionally if you need more badges, you can always trade them to your other characters through the bank.

• Siege vehicles not being mobile and putting Catapults behind doors is stupid lame. Catapults completely stop pushes on bases in their tracks and forces the enemy to have to back away and use catapults which puts the defenders at a better advantage.

Well, I believe a-net have stated that splash damage through doors is a difficult problem to tackle, but that at least means they do consider it a problem so it may be fixed one day. But, defense should have an advantage anyway, they are often against superior numbers.

• Spawn points right up the roads. I mean really. You wipe out the enemy team and they’re back 5 minutes later.

So … don’t spawn camp? If the enemy doesn’t have waypoints in keeps there are plenty of long walks, and even if they do it doesn’t take much to make it contested.

• Once we go to two week maps than the battles are going to be won in the first week and there will be no point to even try if you’re losing after.

See above regarding points.

• WvW guilds on Henge of Denravi are packing up and leaving because they effectively beat the game.

shrug

• Did I say grind? Log on every night, run around and capture some objectives. Go to bed and everything you’ve taken is gone and you rinse and repeat again.

Not really my definition of grind. If you don’t like it, maybe it’s not for you.

No, this would skew the rankings and you’d just end up in tougher fights than you should be in.

The score is only relevant for determining which worlds you will be matched against. Ignore it, it means nothing to you.

fivekiller.1432:

as usual.. the culprit here in all of this is the scoreboard. the scoreboard is the reason people login, hit B, and go “well thats never gonna happen” and logout. this is the reason for server hopping, people not showing up for WvW, and the focusing on the little guy in my opinion.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just feel.. personally in my own opinion, that the scoreboard in-game has a much larger impact than the overall world rankings and is the actual source of these problems.

Couldn’t agree more.

Gomly.6128:

There is no “world ranking”.

There is NA ranking and EU ranking.

Until HoD face Viznah they will not be viewed as “world number 1” by folks in the EU.

Points mean sod all when you are putting them ahead of teams they haven’t even faced.

He’s using “world” in the game sense. If you haven’t noticed, servers are officially called “worlds” in GW2.

That’s why it’s called “world vs world” and not “server vs server”.

When you click to join a squad from the map, I guess the commander needs to approve it similar to if you /join somebody for a party? Because it seems to me a lot of them are not doing that.

Some nights I’ll get 10/hour or more. Some nights I’ll only get 1 or 2 total. It’s strange.

Jewel.1457:

You were doing so well during that first weekend and were fighting hard, you were even infront but for some reason most people just stopped.

Same thing happened last week. First week was ok, but we were winning then. My guild has 100+ people online, sort the roster by location and if I’m lucky 5 are in WvW and most of the time they are in different maps or not talking to each other. Somebody comes on our mumble last night “Is there even any point to WvW this week?”. Those of us who are on give a resounding “YES” and explain how the score is meaningless and all winning gets you is a harder fight next week, but it’s impossible to explain that to the entire server … and have them actually believe you.

And you know what? It’s actually fun to come into a map where you own nothing and a few hours later log off with a keep and a tower or two. Heck, even if all you manage to do is use some guerrilla tactics on yaks and supply camps that’s not bad either.

I really think they need to remove the score. It is not relevant. I don’t want to know it. Keep the rest of the scoreboard (potential points, orbs, bonuses), just remove those three numbers. We’ll never have a game where there is true back and forth with those numbers up there because people will come in, look at them and say “Ah well, we’re not coming back from that, I won’t bother.”

Sure, but honestly I’d rather not have to deal with it at all and I’m more concerned about cross-server co-operation anyway.

Kaine.3501:

lol @ because we can whisper

If I cant see who Im fighting how would I know who to whisper?

Really?? I guess I’ll spell it out.

If you could see the enemy name, you would then be able to whisper them. This would allow for easy harassment and cross-server co-operation.

Because you can whisper across servers.

Last night, 11:30 PM Eastern. Getting a bit late for the east coasters, but the west coasters should be in prime time still. No queue in CD border. No queue in EB. Both are pretty much in shambles, though by the time I left a few hours later CD border was starting to get it together.

This morning at 11:00 AM Eastern I decide to log in to check on something (I wanted to look at the karma merchant in WvW). Much to my surprise, queue for CD border and queue for EB. CD border popped a few minutes later. I didn’t stay for long but looked like there was two commanders who knew what they were doing and giving clear concise orders.

What the heck?

Tyrshar.1782:

Badges would be great, if the drop rate wasn’t low and relied on looting bags that are mostly missed because you are forced to constantly move in combat (and have a very small loot range). Also, badges are only rewarded for kills and champion mob loot. If badges were awarded for other WvWvW goals (supply/camp takeover, not just jumping puzzle (which imho is really out of place but does gives badges)), then they would be a reasonable resource.

They do drop from supply camp supervisors, but I agreee, the drop rate needs to be increased and/or a means to get the badges without looting.

Also agree with removing the jumping puzzle.

Swift.3812:

At least my guild (CRS) in HoD isn’t as active as last few days. Tbh, alway winning wvw is kinda boring.

Come to Crystal Desert!

fivekiller.1432:

i understood that.

my main point was, value to me as the customer is – accessibility, fun, and competition.

the scoreboard in general does not add value to the game but rather detracts. his idea isn’t bad, but i don’t see how it adds value either as it doesn’t really make me feel more competitive.. it only serves to bandaid a poor system that is in place with a mechanic that makes the score more meaningless when it needs to be gone or changed completely.

if that clarifies my counterpoint. not trying to say its a bad idea.. i just think the idea doesn’t go far enough.

Agreed.

I wouldn’t say the score is entirely meaningless though, it has meaning to A-net where it’s a useful tool in determining the which worlds should be matched against each other. Actually, now I type that, the above system might actually mess that up with low pop servers getting higher relative scores and thus being matched with high pop servers.

Anyway, the score is meaningless to me as a player. It only tells me how my world has done in the past, it doesn’t tell me how my world is doing now.

fivekiller.1432:

the scoring system is kind of something that, as it is now.. is taking fun from the game and adding very little to none in return.

i’m not sure there is any way to fix it. i certainly am not sure giving people who are doing less more of it is the proper solution as that would take fun from the people doing better but not really add much to those behind.

I think he means that if you would have got 100 points from the current map if it were fully populated by the other two worlds you’d only get 50 points if the other two worlds are only at 50% population. It would have to be based on average population over the 15 minutes or everybody would leave for two minutes when there is one minute to go.

Complicated, but I’m not completely opposed to it.

I still think the best idea is to just to remove the total scores. We don’t need to see that. A-net needs to see it for the next match-up, but we don’t.

Perdan.1045:

1. No. If there is no score, there is no motivation. If you see you are low on the scores, you know you got lots to take over.

2. IDK about jumping puzzles. They get camped at the end of the week.

3. If you are playing wvw right, you gain more money than you spend on repairs. If you are losing money and only paying for repairs, you must not be in your server’s zerg group.

4. I like this.

For #1 I think the potential points serves this purpose well enough. I care about how WvW is doing while I’m playing, not about how it was doing when I was sleeping/working (not as much anyway).

For #2 I mean you can’t get to it to camp it if you don’t own enough of the map. Basically, this would mean if you’ve taken over the map, go jump! If you haven’t, work to take it (and if you’re in a really bad situation you’ll get some more badges and schematics for your work anyway).

For #3, yes you can come out ahead. I don’t dispute this. But it’s not by enough. I come out ahead by maybe 50 silver a night if I’m lucky and that’s with using badges to buy siege and not buying any upgrades. I don’t really do any PvE anymore and I don’t want to be forced to go out and do some just because I’m running out of money.

It’s also a LOT worse if you are vastly outnumbered. This makes people want to just leave, so of course that makes you even more outnumbered.

Just some ideas. Some may be bad.

1. Remove the scores. Particularly the scores of the other worlds. Those should be of no concern. Overall scores and rankings should be internal to a-net. All they do is discourage the losing worlds. Yes, it would be fairly easy to determine a rough idea of what the score is, but most players are not like us and they don’t read forums all day long.

We should still see who has orbs, potential points, and current bonuses.

2. Lock out the jumping puzzle until your world owns a certain percentage of structures on the map. Maybe something like in borders it’s 2 keeps and 3 towers. To compensate, increase drop rate of schematics and badges from players and allied NPCs (keep lords and such, anything that can drop a badge) for the worlds below a certain number of structures (for example if you have no keeps and maybe 1 or less towers).

3. Remove or greatly reduce WvW repair costs. If not out-right remove, have them scale to the number of structures you own, so if you own the whole map it costs a lot (perhaps even more than it does now), if you have nothing but a supply camp it barely costs anything. Repair costs are another thing that discourage the losing side, which is much more likely to incur them.

4. Put the maps online. Have an API we can use to query for data on who owns what.

JiaYow.9327:

Idgarad.6105:

How about the ability to toggle it off so I don’t have people following me all the kitten time? Nothing like a cross-realm spy knowing EXACTLY where the commanders are on the battlefield…

I’m sorry this is off topic, but are you seriously saying that commanders can’t toggle their icon off? I mean, really?

I think I saw somebody who has a commander icon without it turned on last night. I could be mistaken though.

The past few days I’ve seemed to get a really low number of badges (sometimes playing for hours without getting any!), but last night it seemed to get better.

If 1 badge is supposed to be roughly equivalent to 1s, the drop rate needs to be drastically improved. It doesn’t help that bags can often be left behind, sometimes accidentally and sometimes because you died before you could pick it up.

Perhaps the drop rate could scale up based on how far behind the top score you are?

Vacks.6459:

The highest-ranking server does get green, and the lowest-ranking server gets red. Supposedly there are also slight disadvantages in terrain that come with being green, while red supposedly gets slight advantages.

It is interesting that green seems to most often be on top. I’d like to postulate that maybe instead of being on top because they are green, maybe they are green because they have the greatest potential to begin with during these matches.

Either that, or maybe there’s an overlooked benefit of being green, or maybe it is sheer coincidence.

If there is an advantage to being green, it could only be in EB as the other 3 maps are identical. I don’t think a small advantage in one map would account for this, so it’s just that green is the highest ranked of the three servers at the beginning of the match.

Imix.6152:

Not meaningless, Crystal Desert was our 3rd party and won purely on night capping, every single day Crystal Desert would be reduced down to 3rd place fielding an extremely weak U.S primetime team ( as evident by them losing miserably against their current match up with other servers that have active A.M players). It was mostly a battle between Blackgate and GoM during P.M hours where we mostly broke even. Until the end of the week started nearing and again people jumped onto the winning team, cementing Crystal Deserts win.

Wow, that’s just not true at all. I’ll grant you CD won mostly due to AM players, but I dispute that we were 3rd place all the time during prime time. Of course, we may have been playing different maps (I was mostly in CD borderland), but it looked pretty even at prime time to me.

Losing miserably in the current match? Yes, we’re far behind JQ, but DB isn’t that far ahead of us, and over the weekend we were a solid second (first at some points).

Oh, and if you think CD had a lot of AM players, wait until you play JQ.

urzen.7096:

The problem with 1 week matches if the rolling score of course. Once a team builds a lead, theres no way for other worlds to come back, making WvW less popular till the reset. Something needs to change to encourage playing till the end. Theres all sort of solutions to this that have been posted. The match time is moot.

I agree. For me personally, the score isn’t that important, I’ll play even if we’re 300k behind. But a lot of people look at the score on a Monday and won’t even log in again until the next match.

I’d like to see some kind of reward for having the highest score over a 24 hour period. Something that would make people want to play, even when they are far behind. I’m not sure what that reward would be though? Perhaps something like for the next day you get a non-stacking orb buff? That is, if your world has no orbs, you still get the bonuses as if you had one, but if you do have an orb it does not stack with it. Or … maybe a new jumping puzzle with nice rewards that can only be accessed if your world had the highest score the previous day (this could be outside the WvW area, but should probably give badges and blueprints as part of the reward)?

It could instead be done over a 12 or even 8 hour period which could help negate the effects of “night capping”.

Lock out WvW for the duration of the current match on all transfers. I’m fairly sure it was supposed to work this way? Let’s put it in action!

The performance of a server can vary greatly depending on if it’s a weekend or weekday, for that reason I think it has to be a week.

I guess it might just be me, but seems pretty obvious when this topic comes up they are talking about guild alliances (which would be great), not world alliances (which would be stupid).

Disagree on the mobs …

1. It’s the same for everybody.
2. I need them for my kill variety daily. You don’t want to force me to do PvE do you? This way I can kill a few mobs as I move around.
3. I need to sell their drops to make money! Granted, this may be lessened if WvW repair costs are removed/reduced, but it’s not like I’m going to stop needing money even if that happens.

Auto-loot: Badges of Honor should drop in your inventory or be a true currency like gold and karma. If it’s made a true currency it should remain account-wide, or at least we could still trade it among characters through the bank (like gold). Other loot should remain in bags.

Just lock out WvW after a transfer for the remainder of the match.

Finishers: It doesn’t matter if you get the “killing blow”. That’s meaningless in GW2. If you did damage you get credit and a chance at loot. Also, don’t finish if there’s more than a handful of people attacking, just auto attacking them down is faster.

WvW does have in-game consequences. Hover over the WvW button at the top left. See all those bonuses? They really start to become substantial at higher scores.

The simple answer to running with more than 5 people (which I assume is a guild rather than a zerg?) is voice comms.

Server queues are of course highly dependent on your server, time of day, and even how well your side is doing. Generally foreign border maps have the shortest queues, hit those first and then queue for your preferred map from inside.

Xilodon.5031:

Agree completely with the main issue being the fact that servers without a constant WvW presence are always going to be at a significant disadvantage in a 24-hour format. I still haven’t seen a game pull off large scale pvp with the same level of effectiveness as the War of Emperium in Ragnarok Online. Those battles only lasted 2 hours at a time and always had maximum participation. It would have been a completely pointless event if everything was available to be captured all day.

I’d almost like to see something like an 8-12 hour window each day where objectives can be captured, and during non-prime hours it would just be an open pvp environment where you can still have huge pvp battles but without the possibility of major objectives being taken unopposed because it’s an odd time of day. Perhaps allow small objectives like camps and scouts to be taken, but make the major forts off limits until the designated time period.

Don’t really like this idea as prime time is nebulous and it would be changing game play based on when you can play.

What we could do is change the way the winner is determined. Divide each day into three 8 hour blocks. The team who scores the most points within that 8 hour block gets 3 points, the next team gets 2 and the last team gets 1. World ranking is determined by those points, ties broken by overall score.

Myrkur.7049:

I merged the graphs of the servers in my matchup, Blackgate vs Crystal Desert vs Gates of Madness. I changed the Hue/Color of each graph to match the color the server represented during the matchup, Blue for GoM, Red for Blackgate and Green for Crystal Desert.

The merged Graph is attached. Notice that Queue times were pretty even that first day or 2, with GoM logging off a little earlier than BG and CD those first 2 nights. Then the start of the Third day, CD has more people waiting in queue earlier than the other 2 servers. Coincidentally, that Monday morning Blackgate and Gates of Madness woke up to Crystal Desert owning EVERY holding, and had upgraded them fully. You can see that participation was alright in that third day(monday), but it was much lower than the previous two days (saturday and sunday). This could be attributed to the work day and not everyone being able to play as much. But you can see Crystal Desert had a nice population during the weekdays and into the nights, with it not ever dropping below map capacity between the third and fourth day.

You can really see BG and GoM pretty much give up that fourth day, as their queue length peak drops considerably, and the queue starts later and ends earlier for the servers than the previous 3 days.

I think this really shows the detrimental effect Night Capping has on WvWvW in week+ long matches. BG and GoM were eager to fight, BG was even winning over the weekend in our matchup. Then that first day CD was able to get on early and get a lead on the other 2 servers. When it happened again the next day, GoM and BG gave up and didn’t care anymore with 3 more days still to play. 2 Week long matchups will be even worse when half way through the first week 2 servers just give up trying, all thanks to one server being able to take every holding while the other two are unable to log on for various reasons.

Link to the merged Graph – http://i.imgur.com/ZozlP.png

Your graph makes my head hurt.

I wouldn’t say blackgate and gom gave up entirely. The graphs do show there were certainly less of them queuing later in the week, but I played CD border last night and it certainly didn’t feel like they had given up.

People are putting too much emphasis on scores relative to the other two servers.

Remember, all the winning server gets is a harder fight next time around.

The reward for WvW participation is the bonuses the entire world gets based on your score. Just because one of your opponents has more doesn’t mean you can’t go in and get more for your own world. Conversely, just because we have more than the other two worlds doesn’t mean we should stop trying to increase what we already have.

I say remove the scores. You can still show who is first, second and third, but take the scores off.

Friendly fire siege damage to gates is a good idea, but impractical until they lock out WvW after a server transfer (which should have been done the moment the 1 week match started).

They don’t need to remove the free server transfers, but they do need to lock out WvW for the remainder of the current match after a transfer. I’m surprised this hasn’t been done already.