Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the post and being able to go both T1 and T4 is a nice mix.

I think that’s one of the reasons I favor PPT and PPK combos for scoring. Successful higher population servers will gain more from large scale fights and therefore encourage blobbing. More successful lower population servers score more PPT by knowing how to work in smaller groups. Favoring either PPK or PPT more and you start to remove those advantages from one side or the other.

tl; dr version: Allow portions of the EoTM scoring to be added to WvW scoring to help unify WvW into one game mode and allow people that like alternate maps and the server alliance concepts to still aid their servers.

Just to be clear there are other WvW projects in works so this is exploratory theory crafting to consider for future development unless it’s easier than seems.

Notes:

• This isn’t about whether people like the EoTM map, this can be applied to any map that is introduced and is using the Red/Blue/Green mechanism to populate sides. Please keep dislikes/likes of the map for another thread as well as its mechanics. This thread is looking for feedback from the community if score could be shared and in what circumstances.

• This thread may still have value even if EoTM is added as a standard WvW map as long as the color alliance method is being applied along side the traditional server based system.

• If players do not like EoTM they will already not go there and by that act alone can block points from being passed across on their own. Meaning it will self-govern and only be applied if balanced play is occurring.

• Due to out of balance instances some matches would not score to the larger WvW weekly scores at all. Since it based on a per tick basis partial scores would be used.

• This system does rely on ANet continuing to use the beta concept that servers are allied in matches by combing the most & least populated servers from top to bottom to create alliances, else how servers are assigned to a side would need to be adjusted.

• The purpose of this thread is not to address population balances but whether or not there are options to allow scores to be applied from one side to the other.

• This concept would fit into the existing scoring model or the new time sliced model being discussed in the larger scoring thread.

• This thread is separate to not de-rail the predefined scoring concepts being discussed in the larger scoring thread by ANet.

Previously mentioned issues:

• Server stacking – in this model server stacking can already be addressed based on ANets changes to aligning servers. If the population method used today changes then those same changes would be incorporated into EoTM since the end goal of having the best matchups should remain a key target.

• People will stack for rewards – this is a separate issue that will need to be addressed once more information on reward systems is provided by ANet and what safeguards are installed to prevent people from gaming the system for reward alone. As mentioned by ANet they feel they want to address scoring so that they can add rewards that help make scoring matter more, and if they do so this issue will also occur in standard WvW as well. So it is not an EoTM issue by itself.

• EoTM is karma farm only – there are PvD issues in both standard WvW and EoTM. The difference is in standard WvW when people PvD it adds to their sides PPT where as EoTM it does the same but only for that match. By combining them it now servers the same base purpose. The additional purposes of why an empty structure is captured is moot for the purpose of this discussion, be that a strategically sound reason or someone running a daily achievement.

• EoTM and ABL/EBG use different game mechanics – not sure that is a big issue since they still both have rules that guide how the game is played and thereby scored.

• EoTM and ABL/EBG have differing number of points that can be scored – true but so do ABL and EBG. If this is a major issue then a scaling factor can be applied to adjust the total points being passed from EoTM to the weekly server war-scores.

• EoTM has had organized karma farming in the past – true and some players have fought this. If this continues then the score being shared will be balanced among all three sides and result in close to a zero net gain for any given side since a karma farm requires sides to keep trading objectives back and forth to work anyway.

• My server doesn’t like EoTM and we are limited in our battlefield – odds are then that there are out of balance instances in works and these would not impact your score. Only if a match is balanced will the points be applied. This only is applied when people are out there playing the map. If a map is even just 2 sided, it will not impact weekly score.

• All previous weeks winner are green, they will always win – not sure if that holds true without seeing metrics ANet has, and if it is then we should probably reconsider how R/B/G are assigned each week regardless of this change.

So how would this work:

• In order for scoring to be passed there needs to be a balanced population between all three sides during a given tick. Balanced being defined here as the average number of players per side should be within ‘x’% percentage between the top and bottom populations. Without numbers from ANet or exact queue numbers available I would say ‘x’ would be 10-15% considering a queue size of 100 players each side. This would also include a minimum of 30 players per side before a scoring tick would be valid and there would have had to be at least two consecutive ticks that were considered balanced before the system would start applying the scoring to standard WvW. If all the previous criteria were meet then scoring during a balanced 5 minute tick would be applied to both the EoTM match and the weekly server score. If standard WvW and EoTM are using different tick periods (ie 15 vs 5 minute periods) then the score passed would be 1/3 of the points when passing from EoTM to the weekly WvW score else it would a straight exchange.

• Normal EoTM scoring would appear during play but if at least 60% of the ticks over the 4 hour match were during balanced periods an additional end of match bonus would be passed over based on each side’s final placement. 1st +600 points, 2nd +450, 3rd +300 points.

• All servers associated to a side would gain the bonus’s from their colored side’s performance but would be paid only once considering the current two server linked environment that is in beta today.

• PPK would be included during each 5 minute tick and passed along as well if the scoring tick was in a valid state as stated above.

How to prevent the system from being gamed:

• Limit instance hopping by only allowing people to move instances if the instance being moved to is in balance or the side being moved to is underpopulated and needs numbers to become in balance.

• Ensure new arrivals are passed to instances that need numbers to balance sides.

• Keep the intervals in 5 minute blocks and base the scoring on the population average during that interval. By using an average its doubtful people will be just mass exit every 4 and half minutes to game the score and if they did they may not end up on the same map if balancing rules were applied when returning.

• Current UIs do not show people how many are on a given side, keep that information masked as it is today.

• Whether or not a portion of the score is applied from EoTM to standard WvW should be masked from the EoTM side but may be visible from the standard WvW view. The reason for this is to discouraged people from just trying to imbalance a match to prevent the scoring from being applied if their side is losing.

• Since ticks are in 5 minute intervals if one side is alone on the map until the other two are present for at least 2 straight ticks the score do not count to the weekly score so there is no pre-staging a map without some chance to rebalance the control. And since at least 60% of the time needs to be in balanced play before the end of match is applied there should be more than two hours of balanced play which will not be clear to the user in the match.

Why Now:

• Changes that added Reward tracks and removed XP gain from EoTM altered the environment and further moved it to an environment where fully leveled players are fighting.

• Scoring discussions are occurring and this might be the time to also re-align EoTM into the game mode.

• Removes one of the biggest contentions in the community of is EoTM WvW. Today one of the major reasons people say no is because it does not add to the weekly server scores.

• Allows EoTM to more likely evolve as standard WvW is changed as well since it would be adding to the game mode versus being an addendum.

• Further allows new maps to be tested in an environment where people will care
since outside of the fighting they know they are still aiding a side in the fight. Lot of players will do light beta testing but stop there since they may see that time as lost, where as if it a full production test that affects score they will have more interest and for longer resulting in better tests.

• People in WvW are wondering how many players are in EoTM, this would give them a sense since from within WvW they could see the amount of points earned from EoTM play.

Outside of hate mail about EoTM, thoughts on shared scoring? If you dislike, why outside of disliking a map. Have other ideas on what to consider balanced scoring, please share. Thoughts on how it could be gamed, share as well.

This method could be used to do a month long test of a new map as well, considered it also from that angel please. Appreciate your time.

If, and I say if, the goal is to add a role to the towers so that they are a threat to the keeps then there might be simpler ways to achieve that. Examples, increase elevation of some of the structures that would allow treb or a new type of cannon to reach portions of the outer wall and/or clear some of the line of fire to the keeps.

Additionally maybe add smaller towers between the current ones and the keeps that threaten the keeps and are easily threatened by/are vulnerable from the existing towers. This would require less environment changes and increase the importance of the towers.

I am always a but surprised how many people in this game play for armor skins, but there a lot of them. ANet should design and release more skins over time and add them to the reward tracks. I may not be a fan, but have encounter a much larger number that are, and since it doesn’t add any power creep, why not add them if it brings more people in.

Proof of Heroics were added to assist WvW players address issues that their game mode did not grant them access to points needed to outfit their elite specs and thereby took them out of their game mode to do so. Now granted PvP does not require this but there is a lot of cross over between WvW and PvP and in both cases some players prefer to spend more time in PvP but do play some PvE. In order to balance this I would suggest a PvP reward track that grants access to WvW Proof of Heroics so that when players do cross over into other game modes they have the option to convert some of their PvP time into skill points needed for elite specs.

I spent the time in the new zones to unlock the specifications but know other PvP players that haven’t, this would give them options while still enjoying the game mode they spend most of their time in.

Good hunting in season 3!

There should be a scribing/siege reward track.

Having thought about it, I don’t think that superior siege should be added to the provisioner as something purchasable on the fly. Superior siege should require a bit more effort and makes sense to remain as something rewarded, crafted or purchased.

That said there should be a reward track added where it can be earned on major intervals. So the lower and incremental might be basic siege, mid steps should be materials to upgrade them along with scribing supplies and then the top levels superior siege. That way as people play they can earn the material they need to further the war effort if that is something the focus on.

@ANet, rotation schedule?

Angelwood.7652:

Pretty sure the OP was having a laugh with this thread, but some idiots took it way to seriously, and now look at this thread…

No, some of us really were bored with ABL prior to HoT.

lil devils x.6071:

Glad I am not the only one who thinks it is awful…

Devil, I am sorry our experiences differed and I want everyone to have fun even if I don’t agree with them, but siding with peeps from your own server does not aid the issue.

Puck.9612:

I see your that your ban has ended. Ready to discuss without attacking people?

It seems people are not looking to compromise so I am sad to see them complain when DBL comes back into play.

@Anet when is the rotation?

I know that this one has been out there forever, and it remains since it is hard to reproduce, but it seems that this is easier to reproduce in the The Floor is Lava adventure. Try it there for discovery. Saw it three times in short order since you are forced into doing so many jumps once collecting the spores from the floor.

Thanks

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The poll on this topic is up: https://feedback.guildwars2.com

Moving forward can we get an option of “Need Another Solution”. This is different than no preference and might change the results or might show that all of the options present were targeted ones.

Substance E.4852:

TallBarr.2184:

Desert border was the superior map for fighting.

I honestly can’t tell if you’re a troll or just have no idea what you are talking about.

Could be they had a different experience on the maps. My havoc found it easier to hit zergs and get away, same while soloing, where as with ABL it was port or get run over. Also was easier to slow a zerg in a choke point to give people ahead time to get into position.

joneirikb.7506:

No idea how this would work or not, but curious what would happen if towers blocked yak’s from reaching keeps. So you had to either baby sit a yak past, or take the tower if you ever wanted to upgrade keeps.

That would make them “tactical”.

Sentries should be strong enough to kill yaks on their own until a camp is T3 or guild upgraded. But then again I want Sentries to have a job role and be upgrade-able. They are at meant to warn and block the flow of supply and should add value in that way.

Don’t mind having different style of maps have differing techniques to them. But each objective on the map should provide a strategical value or have something to it that encourages all sides to want to have it. A tower doesn’t need to be in range of a keep unless its value is to pressure that keep. A great example above is the waypoints. I wouldn’t want an enemy a fast travel deeper into my territory. This doesn’t just apply to DBL, its all maps and any new ones. Sentries for example in the old ABL, if they can’t stop a yak travelling the road, what’s there point. That’s why they were reworked for DBL.

Same thing with map space. It should have a role to it, is it an open space for GvG, are there pathways to bypass main roads, is it an overwatch point. Citadel in ABL, way too big, cut that down to a 3rd of that size and open space between NC and create a new path between NET and NWT, home side still has advantage since they will always have an open waypoint but its more important now to keep NC and NET and NWT.

Map size differences are also ok as long as there are ways to address them. Example, ABL people were saying prior to HoT that they didn’t split up the zerg and biggest side has advantage. DBL people say too far run back, but we don’t want to get back to zerg favor. So WPs may be good middle ground to still slow down map backs and allow for reasons to hold and build.

Gideon.6742:

Making Thursday worth more will cause a lot of resentment from many players.

Yeah I think with last stand comes a move in reset, don’t think this will be a weekday issue.

About siege, no one likes to be killed by it, but it is part of the environment. This is WvW not PvP, meaning there are more weapons out there, siege is one of them. They still require a cost(blueprints/scribing), time to build them, supply and then maintenance. They are also an element that will require people to invade or defend an objective or even open ground to get to them. Not to mention as stated above they are what sometimes allow a much smaller force to hold back a bigger one. It’s just annoying when used by the larger force but that’s part of the warfare. +1 on leaving them alone on this discussion. If you start to restrict people and the tools they use then does that open the door that people that use range weapons only get 50% reward since they had the advantage of range? I don’t think people are going there, but they might if that becomes an option.

Some of the best fights have been assaulting an objective while under siege fire. Some fights have felt like wins when you are able to just breach a wall and clear a keep of siege even if you don’t capture it. And some players really like the game element of the build, defend and hold which siege plays a big role in.

Hesacon.8735:

I’m saying waypoints in all 4 towers at T2. T3 still offers defensive advantages, but it’s straightforward to make a tower T2. The size of the map (a major complaint) becomes a lot smaller if you can bounce around it on waypoints. It also puts a lot of value into holding camps to make sure those towers hit T2 and a sense of urgency to flip them before they get that far.

Is T2 too soon? Do you remember how many supply deliveries that was? I see your point that it would create a serious threat to the back lands if an enemy was able to hold the north towers long enough.

Substance E.4852:

I hear EotM is a great place to pvdoor with no resistance. In fact, I believe that is the primary play mode there.

Will use EoTM while waiting on EBG queue pops. Had a 30 some minute wait the other day. During that time Red was defending their keep between the inner and outer walls in the open fields. It was a massive 3 sided fight with all 3 sides map zergs present and running back. Red finally killed the other 2 sides off and was pushing out when I got my queue pop. Was very similar to three sided fights near Stonemist, but there were more ledges.

People PvD in both standard WvW and EoTM. In standard its for PPT and/or to move to another objective or because they want to feel they are aiding their side and/or for personal gain.

EoTM needs to be adjusted for scoring as well to create more value in the end of game score. But that said, considering it has very little meaning, some people like winning match ups for its own sake. Online shooters have massive amount of players that play micro games that have no meaning on the next game but they still enjoy it. We have people in this game like that too. Its the game mechanics that prevent EoTM from adding into standard WvW.

Supercannons in the North and way points availability in the south are both interesting. Since objective to objective flow is a concern for many potentially some additional smaller towers that inter-link the south towers and threaten a portion of air and fires’ outer walls might also be beneficial. Still favor a conversion to a three sided map but these would be interesting to see draw up. Again the size of the keeps were allowing a lot of opportunity for assault already but this would be creating a situation where the towers are more of staging groups to the next objective.

Will there be any blogs/forum posts about changes to season 3 before next week or will the information not be released until the season starts? A lot of people are excited to see the return of tournament so a tide me over would be nice.

TIA

Xenesis.6389:

I’ve stated before I think they should have designed every map with the ebg concept, that way today we could have had 4 different maps in wvw and everyone would have the maps they preferred (although no one really wants eotm as a main wvw map). Future maps need to be of the ebg design, fortunately you can have multiples of those running without worry about being fair to a home side so it can be run along side ebg.

P.S What they should have done with Desert bl is made it in the ebg format and then run it along with alpine home bls and ebg. Ebg has always been the most popular map so I dunno why they didn’t think to make another one, although being what the population spread was before it would have been pointless to add a 5th map for other than T1/2, different story with the links now though.

Thanks for the reply. I think its important for people to say why they like EBG so that if ANet is thinking about new map designs they can understand why it works. Agree that is the consistent aspect in the whole ABL/DBL, EBG remains to be queued. Side note, I am one of the few vocal that like EoTM’s design. It has that EBG feel but with varied places for fights and some places that positioning is important to consider while fighting. Good hunting!

Diku.2546:

I disagree about giving WvW Rewards to EoTM participants.

EoTM currently encourages Server Stacking.

There are points to your post that I agree with and disagree with, but will leave it out of this thread for now since this one is about reward tracks. But do want to address your points, and since EoTM threads are somewhat common, will catch up with you there.

I will counter some of the above. Unless the EoTM map is brought into line in scoring or rotation with regular WvW it should be part of reward track option. People are fighting, defending, taking objectives in that map as well as in the regular maps. Its the game that prevents these from mixing today. Since the change to XP there are no uplevels, EoTM is full of 80s vs 80s currently. Players complain that its not WvW because it does not aid a server, but it could if coded that way. There are options to roll EoTM scoring into WvW, more so now with the discussion of scoring changes.

Reward tracks were asked for a long time and it is good they are making an appearance. WvWers should be able to acquire things in the game mode they are playing. Voted for it to go live.

That said would like to be able to see a list of activities that add to it. Its harder to do that while active in WvW and it seems like there might be some activities that are missing from contribution. A list would be useful with a simple description so that players could help provide further feedback.

viikatemies.5347:

System seems good to me. Winning the skirmish gives same amount of points if the prime time players win it or if the off time players win it.

I don’t understand why people are complaining that this change makes their gameplay somehow less valuable.

I think its more the action level multiplier. So different time zones are awarded the same points but the prime time one would be X*3 where as the off hours would be X*1 for a victory. To be fair it was stated that this is the secondary system if needed.

I think they are discussing scoring now, but we are months out from it being implemented. But yes considering the world linking is in a beta stage, I am guessing there will be a shuffle at some point.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Yes but it’s a player vs player video game. The challenge comes from your opponents. The map is just the playing field.
A common complaint from the people crying that the dbl was removed is that they can’t cap anything without running into players. That is a ridiculous complaint to make about a pvp game mode.
If people only like the map because it allowed them to explore and fight npc’s then they need to just drop the argument because they have the rest of the game to do that in.

I did like the maps so can say why, which is we both know are going to be counter to your experience was but that is what it is.

• There were more havoc on havoc fights with less one side being run over by a zerg
• When chasing a zerg it had enough twists and turns to be able to attack in and out of it while still having ways of escape, the turns favored smaller groups
• It allowed for tactics that employed jumping down on enemies and using falling traits adding additional dimensions
• It was a longer run back but that meant more people in open field fights
• It was easier to break line of sight when needed
• It had large areas inside keeps for some massive fights
• It had more bottlenecks to hold a larger force back, or to turn and fight if chased
• It had areas where you had to mind your placement or you could be knocked to your death if you opponent timed it right, aka less face rolling of abilities

I know others experiences varied, but you asked why people liked the map. These were things my group were finding when roaming and for soloing.

As far as capping empty structures, if anything ABL’s shorter distance seems to favor that more since you can quickly be at a number of them in no time. But you only need 1 person to take a fully upgraded one on either map if uncontested. Towers close to the same except its easier to hold on ABL since they are smaller and therefore have limited area to defend.

Expand ABL by 25% and shrink DBL by 25% and who knows.

Dawdler.8521:

I use WvW as a metric. Not sure what else there is.

When EoTM came out, we where impressed by its visuals but that was it. We still played WvW. Buisness as usual. Maps still had queues. And we enjoyed it, didnt we? Otherwise we wouldnt be here arguing about it. So that is the metric I used.

But at the same time would not the number of people playing the maps count as the metric? Agree we have queues in EB and BLs, we don’t have any in EoTM because of its ability to just spawn new instances. That also makes it hard to understand exact numbers without ANet providing them. Point is, EoTM is far from unpopulated else no one would argue about it being removed and all would be in agreement.

tl; dr version: Curious how people feel about the idea of strategic decay of PPT for structures.

In this case the less threatened something is the less value it has. The idea again is to create hot spots of activity which may grow into larger conflicts. This might be overkill.

This would work in conjunction with upgraded structures being worth more per tick but would act as a reducing factor if that building was unchallenged or safe. Aka is something standing empty worth as much as something in a conflicted state. This could also work in conjunction with scoring periods.

In this example let’s us the ABL to demonstrate. Going to short hand towers and camps with their map designation such as SET – SouthEast Tower.

Camps feed towers which support keeps. So if you picture the flow of supplies being used to relate structures into a chain or cluster of objectives to understand when something is challenged or safe.

So South/South camp (SSC) supports both SET and SWT. SWT supports Bay and SET supports Hills. SEC supports SET and Hills as SWC support SWT and Bay.

So the Hills cluster would be: Hills, SET, NEC, SEC and SSC as an example.

If all related structures in a cluster are controlled by one side and are unchallenged then that cluster would be considered safe. If any are not controlled by one side or attacked during a tick then they are considered challenged.

In a challenged state the objectives would tick at normal PPT and award attackers and defenders increased PPK around them, defenders granted slightly increased PPK over attackers. Both would receive increased personal reward. The reason defenders are paid slightly more PPK is that if the attackers are successful they should be granted increased capture points (as well as increased personal reward) if taking a defended structure. So defenders are paid more overtime they can defend and kill but attackers are paid after they take as well as paid as they kill.

The capture points should be based on the tier of the objective. A T0 structure should be worth nothing to flip back since it hasn’t gained any value you yet, but be ramped up the higher the tier of the objective.

Since we are looking to still encourage conflict, breaking a cluster should be worth an additional capture value to attackers regardless of defended or not and more personal reward. But all undefended objectives should pay less in personal rewards since they were empty structures. So in this example the first undefended objective in a cluster would pay an attacker more but the second/third undefended one would not.

In a safe state those objectives in a cluster would still create PPT but in a reduced amount since they are unchallenged and not currently in the line of fire. Defenders should be elsewhere and moving the fight to a new location.

Personal rewards should increase based on the tier of the structure and its total value. The reason for this is that you don’t want people trading a T0 tower for a T3 tower. Nor a T2 tower for a T1 Garri. And if you are going to attack, go for the biggest target to get the most out of it.

All personal rewards should stack with the Outnumbered buff.

So, the big question is why is this worth the headache:

• This reduces the PPT impact if one side is dominating a map over a period of time unchallenged.
• It encourages people to still defend since if they do they will gain more PPK and personal reward, and even though reduced, a controlled structure still generates PPT for a side which is increased based on its tier versus none if its captured.
• It gives attackers a reason to do breakout events even if they don’t own anything since they will earn additional score for disrupting a cluster and more if its defended, as well as increased PPK for fighting around the objectives.
• Attackers are further encouraged to take higher level objectives to reduce that impact on PPT against them and increase their own personal reward and capture points.
• It slightly discourages the K-Train since if they cap everything they will only get the cluster breakup points on the first objective in a cluster and if they cap everything they will not be gaining as much PPT until those objectives are upgraded. Note no one was paid to control a cluster because the PPT of those individual objectives are payment by themselves.
• There is still a reason to defend when needed but doesn’t pay the server as much if not challenged.

Cons to this:

• Complicated
• Does it add server latency
• Does it add confusion on when personal rewards are increased or decreased
• Is the reward incentive enough to encourage breakouts, people fighting against the odds
• May reduce the value in the “knock on the gates” tactic since it would increase a PPT value of a cluster during that tick until it flips back to safe

Issues in it being gamed:

• How do you handle people with 2 accounts leaving one in a structure they know will be attacked, does there need to be minimum coverage before its considered defended while still paying increased PPK.

As I said might be overkill and too complicated, but thoughts? Sorry for the ramble but wanted to see if this added any value to people.

Artaz.3819:

This might sound really strange by why are personal rewards (WXP) so disconnected from PPT ?

Why not simply make the increments of scoring based on average WXP gain per player?

Scenario, 5 players kill a soloer. PPK handles the scoring today and rewards points because they killed just 1 player. Under your concept it would pay them 5 times as much. Unless you are also saying pay them WxP based on the value of the player divided by 5, then that might be a different story.

But also if WxP replaced PPT then we are back to holding things have no value and flipping would be preferred, so that’s dicey since we are back to PvD and K-trains.

Zok.4956:

Hecatonchir.9326:

In my personal opinion scoring should be based on proportional wvw population during each tick. If each team has, say a minimum of ~30% of the total wvw population then each tick should be full, if one server has 50% and the other two have 25%, ticks should not be as high, as the one server has a clear advantage over the other two, and continue decreasing to say one server having =<90% of the wvw population during the tick.

I think you are right and made a good point.

This is interesting, but does it create elitism as well? Everyone except my guild leave WvW so that we can get more points. Have to be careful not to create negative incentive if we are also trying to get as many people in WvW as possible. Now once again, maybe something with rewarding the underdog versus a penalty to the side that can muster people.

Chaba.5410:

Reverence.6915:

and even KN

Remember that one time when Kaineng was carried from T8 all the way to T2 primarily on their SEA alone? Then they fell apart when they hit a tier where servers actually had some coverage.

Been on servers like that, using people off hours to fully control all the maps. Its raised the server into tiers that it couldn’t manage which resulted in weeks of dead WvW since they were being spawn camped during all the other time zones. The glicko system is meant to try and create closer match ups and if gamed can create some unfortunate results.

Xenesis.6389:

Funny how people call abl boring and old and a reason to why wvw was dying, yet ebg is just as old, and it still carries a queue every night.

Honest question, why do you queue EBG. To me its the equal footing. What’s your number one? This will help ANet when designing new maps.

Teraphas.6210:

see i just find alpine agonizingly small. I love fights, but on alpine i feel like i am constantly tripping over everyone because the effective area of the map is such a small portion of the map. draw a circle with the 3 keeps along the edge and that is pretty much were everything happens. anything north of that and you almost never stumble into an enemy.

it was so bad that even when we didn’t have tag watchers it still felt that way. desert may have been a bit too big but i enjoyed actually hunting our foes vs just waling for a minute and stumbling into someones side or them into us. only downside is it was designed to keep you out of the middle most of the time making it a giant ring with a dead zone in the middle.

we need a goldielocks map with a bigger effective play area than alpine but smaller than desert with little to no central deadzone.

Well said.

On a side note, map space should not be wasted, every bit of it should have value. Now when I say that it could have value, it might be for GvG space or other reasons but have meaning.

To me a waste of space on ABL would be Citadel in general, crafting areas, Centaur, Skrit, Spiders, Ruins. Each area should have value to encourage fights in versus be some where for people to just afk in in safety.

sPvP is the place for completely balanced playing fields. WvW is for what can you do to max your toon to your playstyle and gain as much edge for yourself as you can. sPvP is for 5 v 5. WvW is anything goes.

SkyShroud.2865:

People need to keep this is mind, the changes will continue to keep WvW score as coverage war. That did not change. What they did is merely reducing the overall victory score down by giving them a “fixed victory score”. So, if you win that time slice, it will add a “victory score” of let say 1000 to the total victory score. This will put all time slice into a equal contribution.

Your points are valid. What we don’t know is if you remove run-away score how does that impact the final score. If the concept is that controlling off time is worth 4 other periods of scoring and now reduces that to 2 is that worth it. Is that recoverable via other means like PPK then it might be balanced.

street.2176:

The people actively playing in these timezones for months/years obviously dont want a more active environment, or else they wouldnt pvdoor for months/years. If they wanted it they would transfer to other Servers so each Server has an equal amount of Players during night providing “Action”.
But they dont and thus prefer PvDoor.

If I worked a night shift and only could play during the day, why wouldn’t I want to play and fight? Would it be my fault that I didn’t have a 9 to 5 job? Why would I want to join a server that had massive lag because my time zone matched a different timezone that was outside of my part of the globe? No I would aid the server I liked and fought the fights that were there since it is a 24 hour war. System needs to balance these out.

lil devils x.6071:

PPT isn’t necessary at all for Objective based PPK.
In objective based PPK:

• Owning the objective ( tower, keep, camp, ect) does not give score by itself, however it gives higher chance of rare LOOT to the individual and increase PPK for fighting over it. This makes the objectives MORE valuable than they currently are so you still want to own them but they do not do anything by themselves to affect the score. Their value is based on players fighting over them instead. Owning them ensures you have the best loot drops in the game mode when you fight over them. You create the conflict over who gets the most loot, and owning the objectives you are fighting over are how you do so. Currently players do not care about the score and there is less conflict due to that and the lack of personal rewards involved. This corrects that.

• You only get loot or PPK from fighting other players without the use of siege over objectives under attack. Defending team gets slightly higher loot and PPK than attacking team. This encourages players to own the objectives because they get the bets loot and pPK for doing so as well as blocking the K train by rewarding those for defending. This encourages players to fight over the objectives rather than run around in the field instead by personally rewarding them for doing so.

• The score is only increased by fighting other players rather than a tower just sitting there doing nothing, ye they will e fighting over the tower instead.

• The score cannot be run up if there is no one to fight.

It is pretty easy to understand and it no longer rewards afk, PvD or siege humping and yet makes the objectives more valuable and will have more players willing to fight over them than the current system. If players only get loot and PPK from killing other players while fighting over objectives, they will fight over the objectives to get the most loot and PPK.

If the population issues are worked out, you will not have empty maps and will always have people available to fight over objectives to be able to score.

Thanks for more details to clarify what you mean.

Question, is this system not easily gamed? This come down to, I have less people then the other side, so don’t fight. Only fight if I can win. What prevents a side that has won the fights on day one to now no longer log on since if the other side takes it while I am offline I still win. It creates an environment to not to fight. We don’t want that.

What’s the point in defending at all in this system if there is no reason to do so? Camps also become meaningless and blocking yaks have no value so you also remove the reason to fight in the open since yaks create a mobile combat objective?

Or are you saying create a passive loot bonus to the side controlling items that are fought over?

This just leaves fight because of fight, which has merits but will not be interesting to everyone else we would all just sPvP in courtyards, which was cycled out becuase of lack of interest.

I appreciate the incentive for loot, but, what does loot do today? Loot pays for upgrades to gear making a player strong and it pays for WvW upgrades, which have less value if taking and holding have less value. Which does in this scenario.

You want people to fight even if outnumbered and I don’t see how this doesn’t favor the side with the most numbers.

Dawdler.8521:

Imagine bay as a desert oasis or a huge jungle tree. Hills similar to the palace on DBL or all golden like Tarir city. They could also have taken things from EoTM and applied to Alpine, there is tons of new and cool designs. That’s what we needed all along. Variation. Not “new” maps.

Side note, the same map reskinned wouldn’t have changed game play. That would have been considered a waste of time by many. In order to keep things fresh you need to have something that creates a change in behavior which creates changes in tactics. Add another wall to bay, add another tower, add more camps. Something that alters tactics and gives people options over, “the best way is…”.

Don’t get me wrong, why is WvW and PvP a longer lasting game mode then PvE and why should ANet invest in it? Because people are unpredictable and keep things fresh because they are that way. If the environment encourages them to be predictable then that edge is gone.

Dawdler.8521:

I disagree. EoTM showed that we did not need new maps.

Not sure what metric you use here. EoTM is quite populated. I don’t know how many instances still spawn in a given period, but when checking, its never empty, quite the opposite over the years its been out. Now its hard to tell if that was because of other various reasons or the map, but considering how many threads we have had on the forums saying EoTM is killing WvW I wouldn’t say its not been populated.

Question on last stand, assuming that the time zone for this would cross a period on Friday to Saturday that allowed all time zones some “weekend” time game play versus a straight its Friday thru reset. Aka you wouldn’t want to favor a time zone even in the same cluster of servers. So resets would be going back to Saturday night? Or is that a kittenumption.

PPT creates the environment for PPK.

How do you create an area for conflict. You need to have something in that area for someone to control and it needs to have value else why control it. That’s PPT. Why do I want to fight you for it, because if I don’t you win. Therefore I need to take it. We need incentive to want to hold and upgrade these objectives and that’s what the increased PPT for upgraded structures means. This is also what gives yak kills and escorting more meaning, as well as scouting, sieging, scribing and guild upgrades. Those all tie together. If a structure has no value then all of that is moot and a waste of time.

Now PPK should score as well since the point of having something someone wants is to create a reason to fight. PPK needs to be rewarded and probably adjusted for other reasons. Such as fighting on objectives and in cases of being outnumbered. Not having PPK makes fights have less value and favors PvD which is bad. The idea that level 0 structures have very little value also makes sense since you don’t want to favor K-trains.
So fights, attacking and defending at objectives needs to score well for both types of actions and be rewarding to encourage that.

You can’t just have an empty map and expect people to find and engage in the fight, they need to have that sense of ownership and something to fight over. There are people that enjoy the fight for the fight, people that enjoy the capture, people that enjoy the support, people that enjoy the build and defend. Scoring needs to be address all of them and work for the 24 hour clock.

Not everyone can be on at the same time. The fight is interesting since it is 24 hours. So you don’t want to remove that but you can’t let that decide the match. That’s why the slices make sense. Again I am cautious of the action level and would want to see some weeks without that. A compromise might be that PPK should be worth more during times when there is more of a balance of players on all sides to offset empty captures. At the same time if a side can muster people off hours to take and control they shouldn’t be penalized for it either. People need to adapt to the fights. ANet has already said we can not mix EU/OCX/SEA/NA severs but that would have been the best solution here. Maybe there are still options of combing score at least across servers in different server farms. Have server alliances across these server groups that combine score to help offset off times but still allow people to add value in off peak times.

Other aspect is that if a scoring element creates an environment that does not generate “fun”, it needs to be adjusted sooner rather than later if the point of scoring changes is to create an environment that retains players, brings back older ones and creates a desire for new ones to start to WvW.

style.6173:

Ever since alpine came back, we see a good balance across all maps. That’s the important thing. DBL was a nice try but it failed. Do not bring it back.

We needed new maps before DBL, we still do. Agree that we need things to keep people interested and engaged. For some that is having different battlefields to play on so that people can have new and interesting strategies to create/try and experience. New areas to fight over, new tactics to use. You never want your WvW to become like dungeons. Ok, stack here, press 1 4 times, 3 steps to right, deploy 2 catas, 2 steps to the right…

There needs to be all scales of combat from zerg to roamer and it needs to be fun and interesting as well as rewarding in entertainment to loot to scoring. I get that maps may take a while, but its been a while. So if DBL was not for many, then where is FBL, SBL, MBL…..for people to try. Again, admit, biased, last WvW/RvR MMO 5+ years of nightly WvW and wasn’t stale yet because there were 30+ maps to choose from that had fights going on to choose from. So expectations are set a bit high.

Good hunting!

Like/dislike, would be fun to see the numbers from ANet on each map the two weeks before and two weeks after, including EoTM. Still short term numbers but would be interesting from a geeky perspective.

Still favor the idea of the time slices since it doesn’t mean people’s efforts are wasted and allows people to micro “win” and know they aided their server without creating a landslide that can’t be recovered from.

The upgraded structures having more value is an important feature in this plan and is nice to see included. Its helps in creating values to defend.

Increased PPK is a good thing. There still might be some tie-ins to increasing that value if a side if outnumbered as well to encourage people to keep coming back, but it would need to be if a number is percentage higher than the bottom force versus just a 1 player difference.

As far as the action level. Assume it’s possible to run a few weeks with this on and off to see how the numbers were impacted or even off and calculated on the side? That said anyway to have both of these calculated while the existing scoring it in place to see how that would translated?

Just as a reference, this is close to a previous discussion a year ago so this might be of interest to the topic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/first

+1 here. Since guild missions can be reactivate multiple times to support all guild members this makes since. Agree please remove the 3 person requirement.