Weighted Skirmish Scoring Proposal.

I am a big fan of the upcoming Alliances changes. But I also recognize that it will have bugs and flaws, and that it will not cure all issues with WvW. It might even exacerbate existing problems. One of those problems is time-zone stacking. Being in a relatively high position within the informal WvW hierarchy I have started to hear how proto-Alliance leaders are shaping their plans. And they all have one common element(For NA servers that is), they are asking the OCX/SEA/EU guilds first. Everyone recognizes that to win WvW, especially once Alliances go in, you need those off-hour guilds locked in on your side first.

If there were more OCX and SEA players around this would not be a problem. But there are only a limited number of players playing at these hours. If those players get lumped into only a couple Alliances, those worlds will have a huge advantage, and the goal of "balanced and fun matches" will be harder to achieve. So we need to encourage them and all time zones in general to want to split up, and not overly stack certain time zones.

I suggest that we do this via weighted skirmish scoring. Here is what it would look like, keep in mind the numbers are just examples, you can plug in better ones if you like. First for simplicity skirmish scoring would return to 3-2-1 for each place respectively. Second, at the end of every skirmish the game would add together the kill count from all three servers during that specific skirmish as a means of judging player activity. Say Server A has 407 kills, Server B has 689 kills, and Server C has 427 kills. For a total of 1523 kills between all three servers. With weighted skirmish scoring that would determine how many victory points are awarded via the matrix below:

0-1000 total kills in skirmish(KIS), 3-2-1 victory points awarded (typical for lower tiers during OCX and SEA)1000-2000 KIS, 6-4-22000-3000 KIS, 9-6-33000-4000 KIS, 12-8-4 (typically happens during one to three skirmishes a day usually during the middle of US primetime)

Using our example above, that skirmish would fall into the 1000-2000 range, and the servers would be awarded 6-4-2 victory points.

So what would this style of scoring do? First, off-hours scoring would still be a huge advantage to any world, but servers that are active and victorious during NA(or EU) primetime would be much more competitive. Second, because scoring weight is based off killing enemy players, alliance leaders would be de-incentivized from overly stacking any single time zone, because hitting undefended enemy towers/keeps would only give them the base victory points(3-2-1). They would want enemies to fight, and seek them out, not just for the enjoyment of the fights, but also for scoring purposes.

So that is my idea, I think it would require minimal resources to implement and be healthy for the gamemode in terms of nudging positive player behavior. But it might have flaws or be gameable in ways I have not noticed. What do you guys think?

The only major problem I see with this suggestion would be that it could end up dis-incentivizing fights; even during prime time hours. If an alliance knew they were behind during a skirmish it would be more worthwhile for them to avoid fights in order to keep the KIS tier low in case they end up losing that skirmish. While I think basing victory points awarded around kills is one of the most balanced ways to manage the overnight karma trains and stacking of OCX guilds in alliances, I can't help but feel more PPT-focused guilds would only end up fighting or tagging up in skirmishes they are likely to win.

Also there is a possibility for the more... let's say enterprising alliances to game the system by feeding kills. Because activity is based of total kills across all alliances, the winning alliance could just feed kills against groups they shouldn't be losing to (off-hours unorganized pug zerg let's say) it order to reach the next KIS tier and further their lead. But I don't know how many guilds in the game would go so far as to abuse that.

I like the concept. If a server realizes they are ahead in the skirmish encourages them to get out of there keeps in order to get those bonus points. Which gets them away from their siege advantage. Or encourages them to allow there keep to be opened up in order to form a killing zone. Either way more fights.

i like the idea, in fact i proposed nearly the same a while ago tho i said just award the kill sum as points to the winner and respectivly less to the other 2 teams - the thread was closed for being a matchup thread as i gave an example of an actual match :Das arena net seems to collect data of the participation for each server, you could also use a participation sum of all 3 servers to measure activity.the difference would be if one server has a huge zerg in offtime they still wont get kills but they might have higher participation to not land in lowest scoring tier. therefor would depend if you want activity in being online and doing something or in actually facing opposing players to settle the scoring.

Or just split scoring into NA, OCX, SEA, EU periods (these 4 aren't exactly equal but could be adjusted), and calculate a total of those at the end of the week (OCX total score, NA total score, aso), these could be our "skirmish" periods, adjusted and modified. Then further adjust the total value in points of each of these four periods, based on number of participants and activity. This would be fair to everyone.

wasnt this idea already proposed by anet when they first introduced skirmishes/victory points but then didnt get added because a lot of people didnt like it?

@henchmen.1856 said:wasnt this idea already proposed by anet when they first introduced skirmishes/victory points but then didnt get added because a lot of people didnt like it?

Was something similar, too lazy to search now (lots to read), but I remember that was something unfair towards non-NA timezones. The rules must be something that is the same for every timezone.

@Tiawal.2351 said:

@henchmen.1856 said:wasnt this idea already proposed by anet when they first introduced skirmishes/victory points but then didnt get added because a lot of people didnt like it?

it was that the victory points would have a multiplier based on the activity in that particular skirmish (so na prime gets bigger multiplier than non na prime etc). which is basically the same as this suggestion.

@Tiawal.2351 said:

@"henchmen.1856" said:wasnt this idea already proposed by anet when they first introduced skirmishes/victory points but then didnt get added because a lot of people didnt like it?

You are correct. NA prime time skirmish was going to always be marked at "high" activity level on NA servers (EU prime for EU servers). Any other skirmishes would be marked high only if the actual activity level for the match during that skirmish was high. Anet never tested that out. It certainly wasn't popular due to the idea that NA prime would get automatically set to high.

I think we need to realize that there just isn't enough non-NA prime players to effectively balance a 24 hour game mode, especially when those players and guilds aren't tied to a world and can join any alliance. Same goes for non-EU prime players on EU servers. Scoring should center on the dominant timezone for both NA and EU. Make the gamemode reward skill rather than coverage. Whether that's a skirmish multiplier or making the NA (or EU in EU matchups) skirmish period the longest in terms of time (extending from NA PST to early OCX) and largest in terms of scoring.

Wow that's pretty racist. you're saying ocx/sea players are only worth only 25% of an NA player. It's already bad enough they get the limited fights and now you're asking them to quit their jobs, their school to raid in prime time. Same thing is gonna happen in every matchup regardless of time zones anyways. The dominant alliance/guild will farm off the less than adequate ones into ninja ppting in their respective time zones.

You have to remember this is a 24-hour game mode. At the moment lower population time zones like OCX/SEA are already suffering from a shortage of activity on many days and it sometimes leads to those players playing NA hours instead. What we need are proposals and decisions that make it more attractive to play at non-peak hours and weighted scoring would seem to have the opposite effect.

Right now most server leaders types rate OCX/SEA players at around 5-10x times the worth of an NA player, hence the constant buying and moving of many of those guilds. As well as Alliance leaders looking to get those players first.

If that sort of worth and value can't get people to play in those timezones, then it is unlikely that weighted scoring is going to substantially change how many players play during those periods either positively or negatively

What weighted scoring will do is encourage play/activity, ie going out and killing the enemy and taking their stuff, during all timezones. Especially for the jaded WvW community who discovered five years ago the oppressive nature of overnight PPT.

I think it is worth revisiting this idea once the new alliance/world system in place -- I'd like to see how the non-primetime numbers turn out when the timezones are more balanced between servers (theoretically).

@shiri.4257 said:Wow that's pretty racist.:#

@shiri.4257 said:Wow that's pretty racist. you're saying ocx/sea players are only worth only 25% of an NA player. It's already bad enough they get the limited fights and now you're asking them to quit their jobs, their school to raid in prime time. Same thing is gonna happen in every matchup regardless of time zones anyways. The dominant alliance/guild will farm off the less than adequate ones into ninja ppting in their respective time zones.

no currently in primetime there are lot more people making the same amount of points as a handfull at offhours therefor the value of every offhour player is alot higher. a weighted system based on activity will actually value everyones playtime equal.

How is that equal? Because you on the eastern seaboard of the Americas? Is your 1hr of playtime somehow more than 1 hour in somalia? last i c hecked 60mins is still 60mins.

If the OCX, EU, and SEA guilds are smart and want balanced fights they'll stay away from Alliances altogether so the system can naturally sort them in to a balanced match up. :trollface:

@shiri.4257 said:How is that equal? Because you on the eastern seaboard of the Americas? Is your 1hr of playtime somehow more than 1 hour in somalia? last i c hecked 60mins is still 60mins.

Is it fair that a skirmish where 200 unique individual players interact is worth the same victory points as a skirmish where 2000 unique individual players interact? We can argue this logic in circles.

But the real point shouldn't be if it is fair or not. The real question should be if it is good for the WvW gamemode. And I think weighted scoring would help bring back countless people who quit playing WvW when they realized that WvW success was determined by who had people still playing when the other servers were sleeping.

@Caliburn.1845 said:

@shiri.4257 said:How is that equal? Because you on the eastern seaboard of the Americas? Is your 1hr of playtime somehow more than 1 hour in somalia? last i c hecked 60mins is still 60mins.

I would suggest those 2000 unique individuals to quit their jobs, dump their wives, and drop out of college and spread out to play in the other wee hours with the 200 less than unique individuals. #wallabylivesmatter

@Caliburn.1845 said:

@shiri.4257 said:How is that equal? Because you on the eastern seaboard of the Americas? Is your 1hr of playtime somehow more than 1 hour in somalia? last i c hecked 60mins is still 60mins.

I don't think a lot of people quit over scoring issues. Maybe transferred, but probably not quit. I doubt fixing scoring will have much effect on the number of people who return to this game, not nearly as much of an effect as creating balanced match-ups is going to have. :+1:

It is not that I don't understand why you made such suggestions, it is human nature to stack, regardless of where you are. However, it isn't right as the golden rule dictate.

Base on logic, it isn't right either. Since your prime time already has a long established history of stacking, moving, destroying every population balance quite frequently as to SEA/OCX where history of such occurrence is puny in comparison. Prime time should be heavily penalized instead.

@obastable.5231 said:

I don't think a lot of people quit over scoring issues. Maybe transferred, but probably not quit. I doubt fixing scoring will have much effect on the number of people who return to this game, not nearly as much of an effect as creating balanced match-ups is going to have. :+1:

Balanced match-ups is the ideal. But how do you get those match-ups when we only have a small population of OCX/SEA players, and they have a history of only stacking 3-4 servers at a time. And whoever gets those players wins their match-ups?

@SkyShroud.2865 said:

Base on logic, it isn't right either. Since your prime time already has a long established history of stacking, moving, destroying every population balance quite frequently as to SEA/OCX where history of such occurrence is puny in comparison. Prime time should be heavily penalized instead.

Your logic is extremely questionable. I think a strong case can be made that the fundamental difference between the health of EU servers v. NA servers is that OCX/SEA guilds primarily play on NA servers and have over the course of more than five years propped up specific servers to the point where SoS was known as an OCX server and Dragonbrand is still known as a SEA server. Those stacked off-hour servers have had a more negative effect on population than any stacked NA server. And I am not talking about just negative effects to NA population, I am talking about many SEA/OCX guilds quitting because they either have a stacked server to fight, or just undefended doors to hit.

This happens in NA time as well when enemy server has no Na guilds running, our server is reduced to banging on doors as well.

Great concept!

I don't know about the NA-league, but off-hour scoring-discrepancies are basically defining the outcome of all EU MUs. There are servers here well known for their recurrent activity during certain non-prime-time-hours. Consequently in terms of victory points gained, an off-hour player is much more "worth" than his prime-time pendant.To make matters worse, those servers seem to even attract more players wishing to play (and "win") in these off-hours, reinforcing the effect.

I have doubts that Anet is weighting off-hour playtime to prime time playtime when they link or close/open servers. Thus servers who have a lot of people during prime time and few during the rest of the day/night are disadvantaged in contrast to servers which might have less overall playtime but can concentrate on the off-hours, where few people and few playhours make a large VP-difference.

With the alliance system Anet has already stated that they may be looking at different factors than just plain playtime so why not also implement a change to the way victory points are calculated? I think that organization, tactics and fighting prowess should be a bit more relevant to the outcome of a WvW-match up - not simply who can muster the most people at off-time.