Rewards and How To Discourage Night Capping

[Spongewebbs.9816]

I have just listened to the developers on tea time speaking about alliances and discussing population balance and rewards. Another game I am playing at the moment (Planetside 2) has faced similar issued described and their solutions may be of use:

"Alert" System: 

This system involves a bonus event on a certain map where 3 teams are given a certain amount of time (1hr 30m) to control the most bases on the map. This event can be triggered either by a certain team controlling too much of the map or by a certain amount of players being active at a time e.g. prime time. Players are then rewarded for playing during this event based on participation with the winners getting a bonus reward.

Dynamic Rewards:

With dynamic rewards players who are active in a team with lower population are given extra rewards. I guess this is similar to outnumbered which is already implemented. However outnumbered is map based rather than global.

Restricting Play Space During Off-Hours:

This could be freezing the borderlands and the points gained from them when a certain population threshold is met. Forcing people to play on EBG during Off-Hours would funnel people together and allow for more populated fights.

[Chaba.5410]

43 minutes ago, Spongewebbs.9816 said:

With dynamic rewards players who are active in a team with lower population are given extra rewards. I guess this is similar to outnumbered which is already implemented. However outnumbered is map based rather than global.

A similar idea came up years ago.  People were asking for the outnumbered buff to grant higher rewards.  The issue that came up with this is Anet didn't want (at the time) such a thing to be a source of player toxicity.  Imagine going to WvW and other players spam team chat for you to log out out because you're lowering the amount of potential rewards they were getting from being the lower population.

Restricting play space seems interesting.

One idea that Anet came up with was the idea of score multipliers during times of high activity.  Activity would be based on the amount of people playing across all three teams during a skirmish.  Times of low activity would be the baseline score rather than punishing players during those times.  I'm hoping they look into that idea again.

[Sviel.7493]

EBG is not the same game as the borderlands.  People who want an EBG style of play are already going to be there if the borderlands are sparsely populated--anyone who doesn't switch already is probably going to just log off if the borders are shut down.

The Alert system is by far the most viable idea, but I don't think it can be ported over directly.  If one server holds a bunch of stuff, it's probably because they have the most people at the moment.  An event that draws people in will probably just result in that server holding their stuff and getting even more rewards.  It works in Planetside because the sheer size of the map forces players to spread their forces, but WvW has small enough maps that zerging is a popular and effective strategy.  To use the Alert system in WvW, then, you'd want an event that encourages players to spread out.  It should probably be disconnected from walled objectives since it's meant to spread players.  Perhaps something similar in design to the old Oasis event but mapwide and with bonus rewards instead of the sky laser.

Perhaps MacGuffins could appear randomly throughout a map in that can be picked up via a channel that is interrupted by damage.  Once the MacGuffin is grabbed, the player will be marked on everyone's map and cannot waypoint or use their own skills.  They must deposit it at their spawn for 1 point, in an allied objective for 2 points, in the Oasis for 3 points or in a designated objective that they do not own at the start of the event for 5 points.  If an objective is taken, half of the points inside are stolen.  After a couple of waves of MacGuffin drops, all players are awarded based on total points earned by their server with bonuses for personal contributions and large bonuses for placement.  This should spread players out enough that having more people shouldn't be as huge of an advantage as if it was just a zerg fight.  More folks is still better, but the server with fewer players should still be able to have fun.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Sviel.7493

[subversiontwo.7501]

I've said it before, I'll say it again - I think they should implement a more sensitive version of outnumbered and have that affect scoring instead of giving any bonuses. That encourages people to spread thin if they wish to play the score, it encourages people to be competetive under fair circumstances (bridging the PPT and PPK divide) and it preserves the nerve in a matchup for longer in a week since breaking the spirits of your opponents early will not create as wide a gap in score for the rest of the week.

 

If they want to change that stuff, it is the best way to do it (though perhaps not the easiest).

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Spongewebbs.9816 said:

"Alert" System: 

This system involves a bonus event on a certain map where 3 teams are given a certain amount of time (1hr 30m) to control the most bases on the map. This event can be triggered either by a certain team controlling too much of the map or by a certain amount of players being active at a time e.g. prime time. Players are then rewarded for playing during this event based on participation with the winners getting a bonus reward.

Uhm... how is this any different from having 2h to control most of the PPT?

Nightcapping itself and the value of 2h during the night vs 2h during the day was already solved years ago with the skirmish system. Its almost a non-issue today. The only "problem" that remain is the exponential point difference of T0 to T3 and how long during the day it can take to just to retake them once (a problem that isnt unique for the nightcapping aspect, its global).

[azizul.8469]

what nightcapping ? the earth is round.....

[Pacificterror.7805]

2 minutes ago, azizul.8469 said:

what nightcapping ? the earth is round.....

Pretty much what I'm thinking.....this is a global game.

Trying to punish parts of the world for being in vastly different time zones is a hilariously horrible idea...it actually makes me sad knowing at least 1 person thinks it's a good option.

[Zan.7064]

5 minutes ago, Pacificterror.7805 said:

Pretty much what I'm thinking.....this is a global game.

Trying to punish parts of the world for being in vastly different time zones is a hilariously horrible idea...it actually makes me sad knowing at least 1 person thinks it's a good option.

Yup certain countries forget that other countries exist and that when it is night there is is day somewhere else.

[adammantium.8031]

Super-tough problem to solve. I played in asian hours on US servers ("night crew") for several years, and now play EU prime on EU servers. Off-hours players clearly shouldn't have their experience hampered in any way though.

My idea would be to lessen the impact on scoring that holding structures provides on maps with low playercounts. For example,  tir 3 SMC only gives the full 30 points per tick if both enemy servers have full maps. If both enemies are half-full, give 15 points. Bottom out at 10 points per tick. 

There's still value in owning a t3 SMC, there's still a waypoint, but you get fewer rewards if you're not actually doing anything with SMC.

As has been said elsewhere, that an empty map can tier up itself and gain increased PPT is also problematic. Auto-upgrades should not be a thing.

[zamt.5871]

No. 

11 hours ago, Spongewebbs.9816 said:

 

Restricting Play Space During Off-Hours:

This could be freezing the borderlands and the points gained from them when a certain population threshold is met. Forcing people to play on EBG during Off-Hours would funnel people together and allow for more populated fights.

I live in Australia and this will not work. 

There are people that play this game outside of the US. 

[DemonSeed.3528]

One person's off hour is another person's on hour - any system implemented has to work for everyone and not just a single regions timezone.

[gloflop.3510]

We had the discussion before. The biggest problem is that you don't want to devalue a certain player just because he is playing at a certain time of the day. Other games solved it e.g. by allowing players from different time zones to guest at servers in other time zones. A Chinese player could play at 3 am his time in Europe and a European player at 3 am on a US-Server. This idea would be a total shift in gw2. So, it is a tiny bit unrealistic.

 

I am honestly out of good ideas for how to solve the night-capping problem without devaluing certain players.

[Hotride.2187]

My only problem with night ppt is that it can keep a mostly dead (wvw-wise) world in high tiers. Not fun, neither for that world nor for the other worlds in the match-up.

If that gets resolved in some way I'd be fine with it.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Hotride.2187

[SweetPotato.7456]

You forget this is a 24/7 game mode.  What is night to you, is day to others.

[StrangerDanger.3496]

The only way I've ever seen a realistic counter to off hours sieging and capping in other games was for the guild to ally with one EU guild and one SEA/Oceanic guild to cover all time zones.  IMO it really added to the fun of alliances having to do that, and then having ally buddies from all over.

 

Im not sure are they planning to merge ALL the servers with this change or will there still be geographic separations between the servers after the WvW goes GvG?  Because if they are going to have one game world, this is a non issue as you just cover all the time zones with guilds from other areas.

 

 

[gloflop.3510]

5 hours ago, StrangerDanger.3496 said:

Im not sure are they planning to merge ALL the servers with this change or will there still be geographic separations between the servers after the WvW goes GvG?  Because if they are going to have one game world, this is a non issue as you just cover all the time zones with guilds from other areas.

They still plan to keep the EU and NA server separated. It would cause too high pings if they merge EU and NA.

[kafka.1657]

Regarding night capping...  What if the 8 hours between midnight and 8am only had two 4-hour skirmishes instead of four 2-hour skirmishes?

[Abyssisis.3971]

Peak time is a matter of perspective.  My peak time is Aussie prime time, so why should we be restricted to 1 map when we are playing during our peak time?

[Sarrs.4831]

Honestly I want to see how Alliances shake out and whether that 'fixes' the problem rather than try to add hard limitations to how much your play is worth and when you can and can't play. I think it's entirely a matchmaking problem and that Australian players should be matched against Australian players.

It's probably why we shouldn't be seeing mega-alliances with >1k people so that the game can actually effectively match Australians against Australians. Also personally I think it's a thing for the community to go out of its way to not try to build these mega-alliances and let the game do what it needs to do to create balanced matchups.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Sarrs.4831

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, kafka.1657 said:

Regarding night capping...  What if the 8 hours between midnight and 8am only had two 4-hour skirmishes instead of four 2-hour skirmishes?

Uh... how do you work that in with timezones?

[Zyreva.1078]

Players should not get punished or put at a disadvantage just because they play at a certan time. There are other ways to reduce the negative impact of low population time imbalance.

The changes to the scoring system (skirmish system/ppk) already alleviate some problems with "night" capping.

Another option would be reducing the passive score income/things that increase score gain without players having to do anything, making them especially impactful when nobody is playing. I'm looking at things such as speedy and packed dolyaks, or even general upgrade speed, which is imo too high. Bringing back manual upgrading (without the gold cost) instead of automatic upgrades might also be a good idea. All this would result in less T3 objectives, which allows servers to recover faster from outnumbered time periods. It would also make T3 more meaningful and maybe increase the likelyhood of players fighting for/defending those objectives.

But ultimatively WvW is never going to be truly fair and balanced, no matter what (no, alliances won't change that). And that's ok. It is the cost for the freedom this game mode offers.

Edited September 18, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Dean Calaway.9718]

[This message is unwelcomed and was removed.]

Edited September 30, 2021 by Dean Calaway.9718

[Zyreva.1078]

10 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Back to the topic, the only way you can make sure you have a balanced population is to have a dynamic cap that works off the side with the least amount of players. For example, Limit = Lowest + 5. [...]

So players get kicked as soon the opposition logs off? Wouldn't be a very pleasant experience, right?

And even if all sides have exactly equal numbers, the 3-way nature of WvW will still result in uneven situations, because worlds will never focus both enemies equally. In fact, double-teaming is one of the most efficient strategies in a format like this.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

[This message is unwelcomed and was removed.]

Edited September 30, 2021 by Dean Calaway.9718

[phokus.8934]

There are a lot of bad ideas and suggestions here.