Changing How Score is awarded - Moving away from passive scoring

Considering now that Siege is being looked at by Anet (and the new world restructuring is coming), I think we now need to look at how scoring is awarded. Currently score is heavily weighted towards passive play, aka PPT structures that tick away completely absent of player engagement.

Now I bring this up because Anet currently takes steps to limit player rewards by adding the participation decay timers; and also by booting people whom are AFK after a period of time. So the question is, if the direction towards players is "you must actively play to maintain rewards", then why doesn't the overall scoring in the game follow the same suit? Having camps, towers, and keeps tick away passively for score seems counter-intuitive, especially if Anet's goal is to increase player engagement and participation in WvW (if that indeed is their overall goal).

So here is my suggestion, remove PPT completely and award scoring this way:

1. Player kills. This really is the ultimate player engagement and thus the scoring should be weighted heavily on this factor. Now there is ways to even this out to make it fair considering larger groups vs smaller groups vs roamers. That is another discussion in itself.

2. Capturing & Defending structures. Again, this involves player engagement. You capture or defend something, you get points, simple as that. The harder the structure is to take, the more points you get; the easier it is to take, the less points you get. On the flip side, the harder it is to defend a structure (T0 to T1), the more points the defenders get. The easier it is to defend a structure (T2-T3), the less points you get. That means the off hours players that flip stuff undefended will still get some manner of points, but that's where it stops. Nothing ticks passively, and they won't get any further points unless a group comes to attack something and they defend it.

3. Maybe Anet could add a pool of random missions or objectives that can be drawn upon that players can complete for points. The type of mission can be dictated given how many players are on the map at the time. For example, capturing a keep shouldn't pop up if at the time they've got the outnumbered buff and capturing the keep is likely impossible.

These are just some ideas, feel free to critique or add your own. The purpose of this thread is to move away from passive scoring and award scoring based on player activity and engagement.

repeatable quest chain in wvw would work =) give us something concrete to do in addition to how things are now.

"Active" scoring doesnt work.

The thing is, you begin rewarding not playing the game. If no one dies, well then no one gets points. The best way not to give the enemy points is not to fight them. If you dont capture a keep, that means the enemy cant recapture it to get points. With your idea it only becomes worse with dominating servers and they can just sit back, let it be T3 and then roflstomp all over it for bonus points on a "hard" cap.

Without PPT, WvW will grind to a halt. It's not counter-intuitive at all, it's perfectly logical.

If you want to argue whether the ratio between PPT and PPK could be better or whether T1-T3 increase passive PPT gains way too much well that's a whole other matter.

If we had the same constant population for all 3 sides all the time all week, it's something you can look at doing.Active scoring only works for short term games, like spvp, battlegrounds, fps shooters, sports game etc, when sides are grouped to have the same amount of players.

Active scoring for kills and capturing stuff will most likely promote hit and run ktraining instead, hit none defended stuff, collect points then move on, defenders get no ppk and no defend events.

There's a fine line between ppt and ppk that anet needs to walk to keep players interested in both.

Can we please get alliances in first.

Can we please stop talking about anything and everything until alliances get in first.

@morrolan.9608 said:Can we please get alliances in first.

@"XenesisII.1540" said:Can we please stop talking about anything and everything until alliances get in first.

Why are people insistent that rushing alliances will solve things while the moment to moment game play suffers? I'd actually rather they fix siege (even if my faith is low in ANET)...before they tackle the hit or miss Alliances. I am not saying this OP is going to help the immediate experiences of players, but attempting to stifle their thread isn't either.

As per OP. You can't really solve scoring easily in games with matchups longer than a hour or two. Coverage is going to dominate regardless if its "active" or "passive." There are considerations to be made for the ratio between PPT/PPK, but @Dawdler.8521 has noted, people would hide and starve the other side of PPK. That is assuming the teams care about the score. Giving points for defending and attacking is a technical nightmare. How do we know people aren't just AFKing? The defend event was up, and they stood on the right objective to get credit after all. As for the third, missions are there already with Guild Missions so there is some foundation for that. In theory (assuming the mission picks the same type of target for the 3 teams), it could bring the teams together for a clash.

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:I'd actually rather they fix siege (even if my faith is low in ANET)...before they tackle the hit or miss Alliances.

I'd rather they fixed pulls first. The fact I can be on an AC on the back of a wall and pulled off and outside the wall is complete crap.

Couple of things to point out here...

First, the scoring system in WvW is a combination of both active (PPK, PPC) and passive (PPT, PPU).

Second, WvW is a 24/7 weeklong matchup, it is not a PvP match. Active scoring systems work better in short pvp matches, not in something like WvW. WvW is more similar to base building and RTS style of gaming where you capture and defend objectives over a long period of time. While there is some passive scoring in PvP, the short duration of matches and smaller team sizes means active scoring will take a more prominent role.

PPK is a type of active scoring, and it is most noticeable during reset night when everything is paper and WvW is most active so sides have more balanced numbers. As the week goes on, there is a drop off in activity meaning you cannot rely on player activity for the bulk of scoring. Basically, objectives are always there but there aren't always people to fight. In PvP it's different because matches dont start until each side has an equal size.

@Odinens.5920 said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:I'd actually rather they fix siege (even if my faith is low in ANET)...before they tackle the hit or miss Alliances.

I'd rather they fixed pulls first. The fact I can be on an AC on the back of a wall and pulled off and outside the wall is complete crap.

Exactly. Lesser of two evils considering the WvW team doesn't do the balance so asking for pulls will be a fruitless pursuit here anyway.

D:

This is a terrible idea and here’s why.

PPK: This pushes players to never engage in a fight where they do not outnumber the enemy. You think ganking is bad at the moment? This change (where no passive point income is generated) only pushes this further where you will see groups of 30-70 chasing down and killing any group or number of players smaller than itself and waypoint from anything that resembles a close fight. If you want to encourage people to fight that already don’t do it for PPT reasons the way to do it is to make it have no consequences on the score, even then there’s no guarantee they won’t just /sit and let you kill them so they can get back to their bigger group or inside a tower.

Capturing structures: Karma train. Why attack something someone is defending when you can spike out a T3 where no one is at and get loads of points. Better yet why go for T3 at all when you can keep flipping T1 to maintain participation and generate points and take no risk. Everything will devolve to the highest reward for the lowest risk, even more so if point generation was weighted towards PPK as you mentioned above. That’s without going into double team strategy where the weakest server will spend a weak being at the mercy of the 2 stronger servers who will generally avoid fighting each other.

Missions: Hey remember when you needed that vista in veloka for map completion and no commander would touch it with a barge pole because it was like banging your head against a brick wall for 8 hours? That was fun right?.....Right guys?......Huh, I guess not.

When thinking of ideas you always have to assume players will be the scummiest lowlife people that humanity is capable of. They will exploit it to its absolute maximum and will do whatever gives the highest reward for the lowest risk.

At the moment a server cannot live on PPK alone but it can do enough to make PPT less of a concern especially if they’re fighting servers they are vastly superior to, a good example is current Vabbi where they do next to no PPT and only chase fights. On the other hand you have some servers that mostly PPT, they’re not fun to fight because once the siege is gone they might as well roll over and show their belly however they tend to suffer likewise as they can be farmed by servers as they will literally keep feeding on PPK to defend a place. In my opinion point generation is actually fairly balanced at the moment.

@morrolan.9608 said:Can we please get alliances in first.

@XenesisII.1540 said:Can we please stop talking about anything and everything until alliances get in first.

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:Why are people insistent that rushing alliances will solve things while the moment to moment game play suffers? I'd actually rather they fix siege (even if my faith is low in ANET)...before they tackle the hit or miss Alliances. I am not saying this OP is going to help the immediate experiences of players, but attempting to stifle their thread isn't either.

I guess people don't realize that the alliance project is their main development right now, the QoL is all side projects when they have downtime from the alliance project.

Imo capping Tower/keep should award points according to how many Enemy players are on map. Make it have some timegate how long player counts as a point. Also you would get something like half of the third teams numbers towards the capped objective.Hide how points are given or calculated. I think it would be better if you get to know your worlds score after the week.Reward players/commanders/guilds with something like MVP title with small benefits for next week. Just something small to show off and make servers/alliances/Guild compete each other. Title for most kills, cool Guild banner for most objectives defended, statue in middle of SM to one with most solokills. Keep The reward rotating, every week.

There is few suggestions to improve wvw

PPK is a horrible idea and it should be removed. The problem with it is that it encourages only fighting when you have the numbers advantage. I like seeing the results, but it shouldn't impact the score.

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:Why are people insistent that rushing alliances will solve things while the moment to moment game play suffers? I'd actually rather they fix siege (even if my faith is low in ANET)...before they tackle the hit or miss Alliances. I am not saying this OP is going to help the immediate experiences of players, but attempting to stifle their thread isn't either.

I'm not saying alliances should be rushed I'm saying they should be the focus of the WvW team. If a team member is working on siege or changing scoring again, when he could be working on alliances then that is wrong headed IMO. The mode is declining badly, fiddling around the edges will do nothing, alliances need to be the focus, plus they need to look at other mitigating actions to stem the loss of players like reducing the tiers again.

@morrolan.9608 said:

@"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:Why are people insistent that

rushing

alliances will solve things while the moment to moment game play suffers? I'd actually rather they fix siege (even if my faith is low in ANET)...before they tackle the hit or miss Alliances. I am not saying this OP is going to help the immediate experiences of players, but attempting to stifle their thread isn't either.

I agree Scoring falls under your edge analogy. It's less tangible, which makes it hard for me to fully support the OP (and similar requests). I disagree siege is in the same boat since it plays a role in the active game play. Alliances are, sadly-so-far, still theory. So to me they're far less of a change to the immediate game play that is suffering from various balance issues in skills and siege. Furthermore, I'm fairly certain Alliances require even more help/manhours outside of the WvW team (like from "The Server Guys"). 5 years in, I'm okay if ANET gets siege done first then the maybe-alliances (it's probably how it is going to be anyway). Of course, ANET is its own entity that set their own priorities. Maybe they'll surprise me soon!

Or not. D: