Ideas to Disincentivize Pip Farming Without Disincentivizing Repair

[Sviel.7493]

Quote

We’ll be making some quality-of-life changes to World vs World in the November 9 release. Your feedback is clear: skirmish reward tracks take entirely too long to complete, especially for new players or players who are playing on the third-place team in a match up. To address this, we’ll be increasing the number of skirmish pips earned for match placement from 3/4/5 to 4/5/6. We’ll also be adding a new +1 bonus skirmish pip for players with a WvW rank between 1-149. Existing rank-based pip bonuses will also increase by +1 (so a total of +2 for Bronze, +3 for silver, and so on).

We’ve also been taking a look at components of the skirmish track and participation system that aren’t achieving their intended design goals. In the short term, we will be experimenting with removing incentives from some unintended gameplay, and we’ll be removing the “participation grace time” granted by repairing structures in WvW.

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/inside-arenanet-world-restructuring-beta-1-recap-and-next-steps/

It's not clear if the "removing incentives from unintended gameplay" is directly related to "removing the “participation grace time” granted by repairing structures," but it seems so given the context.  Some people have been, presumably, afking next to damaged walls and intermittently repairing them to maintain participation. I haven't witnessed this myself as I generally do not leave walls unrepaired and thus this isn't possible on maps I'm playing on, but other players have mentioned this behavior in response to this change.  Removing this unintended gameplay makes sense.  However, the method of doing so has also disincentivized gameplay I think is legitimate.  It is possible, but not probable, that Anet does not consider repairing walls legitimate gameplay.  If we assume that isn't the case, what are some ways that we can maintain an incentive to repair that cannot be abused by afk farmers?

The problem created by removing repair participation is that a few players (or one) doing repairs over a long period will now be functionally considered afk.  In many cases, a defender will leave the supply in the objective alone (assuming it wasn't drained by a defending zerg) and capture a nearby camp.  They'll run back and forth between the camp and the objective to ferry supply from the camp into repairing the wall.  This allows them to open supply lines, keep an eye on the objective and potentially defend the camp/yaks from enemy roamers all while doing repairs.  This can take an extremely long time--1 supply repairs 1,750 damage which means each trip with 20 supply repairs 35,000 siege damage.  Each superior catapult shot from someone with max mastery deals 26,928 siege damage to T0 walls (as measured in July 2021).  It takes ~32 shots to take down a T0 wall so we can estimate they have about 864,000 health. [This is somewhat off/outdated, but is close enough to illustrate the point].   For one person, that's about 25 trips.  Given that it takes ~40 seconds on average to run from a camp to an objective, that's over 15 minutes with no distractions.  If you have to defend the camp, but the invader escapes, you spend even more time without gaining participation.  If the camp flips and you have to run further, that's even more time.  If you spot an enemy group in the area and need to track them, more time ticks down.  If enemies return to the main objective and you have to stall them, you once again are doing nothing that counts for participation (unless you manage to secure a kill while outnumbered).

In order to solve multiple problems at once, I think players should have active methods to repair more quickly that do grant participation.

Consider if players were allowed to exchange 20 supply for a Repair Bundle at a camp.  They would lose access to skills (like being in a golem), but could use the Repair Bundle to repair 80 supply worth of damage while gaining participation.  If they drop it, it breaks.  This would expedite the repair process while creating a high impact zone for enemy roamers (who want to destroy the bundles) and allies (who want to protect/portal them).  This doesn't solve every issue, but it allows people who are repairing in good faith a chance to do so without sacrificing participation and can't be abused by people who just want to click once every couple of ticks.
 

[Terrier.8732]

Or, like back in the day, commanders who come to defend a structure could stay for 1 minute and get the zerg to repair before moving on. The unrepaired wall issue is a player issue that allows afk'ers to exploit it.

[gloflop.3510]

Your idea with a "repair-golem" could work. However, I doubt that anet has currently the resources to look into the idea.

 

I got 2 comments:

1) in your explanation "defending a camp" occurs. Killing a player gives 10 min. participation.

2) A solution could be to ask a commander for participation. that way you can repair without any worries about a decay

 

As a side-note: I am myself a roamer and I looked the last days on my participation. It is pretty often going down. If I kill someone, I am 10 min. safe but I also need to find someone to fight and kill the other one. If I get killed, I lose several minutes due to the fight and since I have to respawn. For a blob-player, it is much easier since first of all such a player would get more participation through large fights and second because such a player would get also participation from a fight if they lose it as long as he kills 1 player.

[Terrier.8732]

3 minutes ago, gloflop.3510 said:

2) A solution could be to ask a commander for participation. that way you can repair without any worries about a decay

 

And this ^^

[Sviel.7493]

If you kill a player while defending a camp, you've basically hit the jackpot.

What usually happens, for me, is that there are multiple players taking the camp and I can't finish any of them or they run away and mount up.  If I'm trying to make repairs, I won't chase quite as hard as getting those defenses back up ASAP comes first. 

I'm often playing where no commanders are present, but even if they were, I don't think I should have to beg for scraps from them just to be recognized as not afk.  It is a solution that sometimes works, but we can definitely do better.

[Dawdler.8521]

People read way too much into the simple fact of not getting participation from repairing. We dont get participation from running past an objective and checking for enemies either. Yet people still constantly do it for some reason.

This change wont make an iota of difference as to whats incentivized or not.

[Metzie.3451]

7 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Consider if players were allowed to exchange 20 supply for a Repair Bundle at a camp.  They would lose access to skills (like being in a golem), but could use the Repair Bundle to repair 80 supply worth of damage while gaining participation.  If they drop it, it breaks.  This would expedite the repair process while creating a high impact zone for enemy roamers (who want to destroy the bundles) and allies (who want to protect/portal them).  This doesn't solve every issue, but it allows people who are repairing in good faith a chance to do so without sacrificing participation and can't be abused by people who just want to click once every couple of ticks.

I like the basic idea. In any case, the "future and/or reworked" WvW game system should require more activity from the player (solo and up) than just standing "afk" against a wall - as has already been read as an example - to counteract the decay of participation by repairing. It would also presumably reduce excessive "wasting" of supplies. 

And maybe it's not so "unrealistic" (in the case of repairing walls) to implement, especially since - as I remembered while reading - one could make use of the (secondary) mechanic from the sPvP mode, the map "Battle of Kyhlo", which looks like this: If your trebuchet is destroyed, bring a repair kit to it to make it functional again.

In WvW, for example, it could read as follows: If walls of objectives are damaged or destroyed, bring a repair kit (from the camp) to repair it faster and earn "participation".

Edited October 23, 2021 by Metzie.3451

[Sviel.7493]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

People read way too much into the simple fact of not getting participation from repairing. We dont get participation from running past an objective and checking for enemies either. Yet people still constantly do it for some reason.

This change wont make an iota of difference as to whats incentivized or not.

We're talking about disincentives, not incentives.  I don't need any more incentive to repair than having my walls in good health.  The issue is that, by removing participation, I am now being told that repairing is not intended gameplay.  If I want to reap rewards from WvW, I now may face situations where I should skip or delay repairing a wall.

Running past and checking for enemies is a much smaller time commitment (~30 seconds instead of 15+ minutes) and does not, on its own, create situations where I lose participation for doing it.

[Gorani.7205]

I want to refer to my post here from yesterday, so I don't have to repeat everything:

 

Getting participation from a squad is very limited (you usually have to know the commander to get granted the privilege; the slots for granting participation are limited by the size of the squad. Unless you have a full squad, those spots are scarce).

I don't see the "do one repair tick and then go idle" players very rarely, perhaps because I play mostly DBL, some Alpine and almost no EBG (where you can practically "siege damage/repair trade" from structure to structure. Perhaps the map layout of EBG is the core or the "repair problem"? ANet might not have the data how repair WxP is earned, but my bets are on 80% EBG.

[Cuks.8241]

I think the repair change is good. This won't make any difference for players, groups that actually play the game mode. Those players do not think about participation from repairs because participation is not an issue if you actively play. 

It will stop players to just repair mindlessly just for participation. For example the ones that are semi afk in SM and just repair outer walls, possibly while being trebed and draining supplies uselessly hurting everyone on the team.  

I would go even as far that repairing wouldn't count towards objective defense event. Another way to get exp and participation while actually possible to hurt the team with supply draining.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

The issue is that, by removing participation, I am now being told that repairing is not intended gameplay.

You are already being told that fighting is not participating in WvW unless you win. 

What's the difference?

[Metzie.3451]

On 10/23/2021 at 10:43 AM, Gorani.7205 said:

I don't see the "do one repair tick and then go idle" players very rarely, perhaps because I play mostly DBL, some Alpine and almost no EBG (where you can practically "siege damage/repair trade" from structure to structure. Perhaps the map layout of EBG is the core or the "repair problem"? ANet might not have the data how repair WxP is earned, but my bets are on 80% EBG.

You've practically given yourself the answer (if you play mainly on dbl, you don't necessarily notice it). The stronghold of "afk loitering", including their mentioned activities, takes place mainly on ebg. Less on the Alpine borderlands and almost hardly on dbl (at least according to my experience). And the ones I see are often the same.

I jokingly asked someone (one of these species - perma "afk" wall repairer) yesterday on EBG how his/her playstyle was going to change with the upcoming update/change (9 November 9). I didn't necessarily expect an answer, and so I didn't get one (of course, that could be for several reasons, but never mind). I only give this example because I don't see some players doing anything other than standing at a wall to fix it, no matter where on the map. But (who cares, ...) this is meanwhile only one of many issues of the WvW mode or the game system that allows such behaviour.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Metzie.3451

[Danikat.8537]

I think a good solution would be to put it on a diminishing returns system, like Josh Davis said they're planning to do for siege in this thread.

That way if you're genuinely repairing something because it's just been broken or you're slowing down siege to give a group time to arrive it won't make a difference. Even if you're somehow stuck on your own repairing all the broken walls in a keep you'll be able to keep doing it for a while before you lose participation, and IMO if that's going to be an issue the solution is to let everyone else know in map chat that the keep has a lot of weakened walls that need repairing because it shouldn't be down to 1 player to do all that.

But it would still stop pairs of players from effectively afking somewhere with one attacking and one repairing a wall with no intention that either will actually achieve anything except wasting all the locations supply on artificially maintaining participation.

[SweetPotato.7456]

First of all thank you for starting this thread, as I have intention of addressing it myself. 

If the removal of participation from repairing wall is to counter afk repairing (what ever you called it) you are actually making actual defenders not want to defend anything ever again. No one wants to use Shield  Generator to defend  Wildcreek, Klovan, Anzalias, Ogrewatch, Durios Gulch and Quentin Lake because shielding gives no pips, - that's why they repair walls, if you give participation to people who use the shield, maybe they won't be repairing wall anymore.

Otherwise you just kill the scout and defenders in the game entirely everyone can move to SoS and ktrain everything Like the Maguuma Jungle map .
 

[Boh.4568]

People who actually play the came won't mind because they don't need to get participation uptime from every action they do. Just playing the game gives you max participation uptime and you won't notice if reparing a wall didn't give you an extra minute.

People who AFK in stonemist and slowly drain all the castle supply repairing outer walls while some bot on the other team uses a treb from their tower, those people will mind.

10/10 update

[SweetPotato.7456]

8 minutes ago, Boh.4568 said:

People who actually play the came won't mind because they don't need to get participation uptime from every action they do. Just playing the game gives you max participation uptime and you won't notice if reparing a wall didn't give you an extra minute.

People who AFK in stonemist and slowly drain all the castle supply repairing outer walls while some bot on the other team uses a treb from their tower, those people will mind.

10/10 update

not everyone play the game like you. there are many aspects to consider.

 last time we have objective defender daily, i notice, disabling and killing enemy catapult , preventing them from flipping the objective isn't considered daily. I  have just defended the objective, and found out later, I have to repair a wall to gain that daily (not to be confuse with invasion defender daily).  

Players in SMC can Auto treb your tower while getting participation, but those players trying to defend the objective using shield , those don't get anything if they do not at least repair the wall. 

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by SweetPotato.7456

[Boh.4568]

1 minute ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

not everyone play the game like you. there are many aspects to consider.

Everyone can play the way they want, even AFK wall runners. Is it good fow WwW gamemode health in general? No.

Do you repair a wall just for the participation pips, or do you repair it to prevent the other team from conquering your objective? It's a mindset issue. You have other 100 possible actions to fuel your participation, and they cover all the active aspect of WwW gameplay, from roamers to blobbists.

If you just play the game as intended, you have so much participation income that the repair participation won't matter, so if you want to repair a wall you do it because it has a strategic purpose, not because it's your only source of pips.

The problem here is not penalizing wall repairing, it's penalizing people who only repair walls during their entire WwW presence, uselessly draining supply, not participating in anything active, and creating queues in the map. If your only participation income is from hugging walls then you're not playing WvW, and despite it being true that "anyone should play the game however they want", you don't deserve the pips.

[SweetPotato.7456]

1 minute ago, Boh.4568 said:

Everyone can play the way they want, even AFK wall runners. Is it good fow WwW gamemode health in general? No.

Do you repair a wall just for the participation pips, or do you repair it to prevent the other team from conquering your objective? It's a mindset issue. You have other 100 possible actions to fuel your participation, and they cover all the active aspect of WwW gameplay, from roamers to blobbists.

If you just play the game as intended, you have so much participation income that the repair participation won't matter, so if you want to repair a wall you do it because it has a strategic purpose, not because it's your only source of pips.

The problem here is not penalizing wall repairing, it's penalizing people who only repair walls during their entire WwW presence, uselessly draining supply, not participating in anything active, and creating queues in the map. If your only participation income is from hugging walls then you're not playing WvW, and despite it being true that "anyone should play the game however they want", you don't deserve the pips.

They aren't penalizing the afk repairers, They penalizing everyone.  

Edited October 23, 2021 by SweetPotato.7456

[Boh.4568]

I disagree. If you do literally anything else during your WvW session you get participation, so repairing the walls has actually a strategic meaning rather than a cheap pips farm. If your only action AT ALL is repairing walls, then yes, you are penalized. But then I wonder what you are doing during your WvW time when you're not repairing walls. Or are there really people who only walk around maps repairing walls for hours?

[Zyreva.1078]

23 minutes ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

not everyone play the game like you. there are many aspects to consider.

And yet pips/rewards are the only thing you seem to consider.

Players shouldn't base their actions arround whether it grants them pips or wxp or whatever. Players shouldn't defend objectives for pips. They should defend them because they want to keep their objectives. Because they want to get score. They want to maintain safe spaces. Because they enjoy the confrontation with the enemy that evolves arround those objectives. Because whatever. If a player wants to defend an objective and this requires him to use a shield gen or repair a wall, why wouldn't he do so?

 The real problem seems to be that players don't actually enjoy the game mode. They don't want to play it. They just want to farm easy rewards - "easy", because ease of aquisition of (legendary) rewards is the only thing that sets WvW apart from other game modes, which tend to be superior when it comes to quantity and quality.

So maybe you should ask for a more enjoyable game mode instead of rewards that are ultimatively quite useless anyway?

Edited October 23, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[SweetPotato.7456]

4 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

And yet pips/rewards are the only thing you seem to consider.

Players shouldn't base their actions arround whether it grants them pips or wxp or whatever. Players shouldn't defend objectives for pips. They should defend them because they want to keep their objectives. Because they want to get score. They want to maintain safe spaces. Because they enjoy the confrontation with the enemy that evolves arround those objectives. Because whatever. If a player wants to defend an objective and this requires him to use a shield gen or repair a wall, why wouldn't he do so?

 The real problem seems to be that players don't actually enjoy the game mode. They don't want to play it. They just want to farm easy rewards - "easy", because ease of aquisition of (legendary) rewards is the only thing that sets WvW apart from other game modes, which tend to be superior when it comes to quantity and quality.

So maybe you should ask for a more enjoyable game mode instead of rewards that are ultimatively quite useless anyway?

Why should my participation for doing the things I like be taken away/not given?  I've been defending stuffs and scouting for zero pips since forever. How the heck you just jump in here and tell me pips/rewards are the only thing I consider.  I want to be able to operate alone because some of the players I have on my server are kitten bags. Hence why I play solo most of the time, so why are they taking away the pip for repairing wall when I am defending a tower, alone, alternating from shield and wall repair, shield give no pips, disabling gives no pips, only repair wall has tiny amount of pips.

They should consider removing people who only repair wall and does nothing else from the game mode. Not  punishing people who actually play., participate and contributed in the game mode.

 

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

This should really only apply to SMC, this is not an issue anywhere else and I don't think this will fix the issue either. People dump supply into SMC because it's ALWAYS contested, it keeps participation up and gives credit as well for defending, this is also why SMC often never has supply as well. Anywhere else however this is not the case, they are attacked and the group is either pushed off or the structure is lost. In the majority of cases the zerg will just tap closed the walls/gates and leave, it is almost always the roamers and scouts that repair (its always the same names I see doing it with me), and it takes a good amount of time to do when there are 4+ walls down and just you or maybe one other person, big time if the structure has no supply and you have to run it from somewhere. Had you followed the tag like everyone else and just k-trained while spamming 1 you get FAR more out of it than had you stuck around and repaired, and now, even less.

 

With this change it's clear they just want people to zerg and ktrain, so I am no longer going to repair, if the zerg comes back to a wall at 5% and caps it in 30 seconds, blame the tag, I'm not doing it anymore.

 

Keep in mind, from how it is worded, this will do NOTHING to punish those who repair SMC every few minutes. As from the sounds of it, they are only removing the "participation grace time", that being the little bit of time you get from putting supply into something, which doesn't matter to anyone but roamers and scouts, the ones afking EBG/SMC are repairing for the defending participation for the 10min participation grace time.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I'll reiterate what I said somewhere in my linked thread above.

 

There have been times where I've been the only one repairing inner and outer of Garri after a defense as everybody else ran off. That takes a while. Without participation for repairing that would result in my participation starting to decay or already decaying before I finish and run off to tag a player/objective/guard. This is still active gameplay. This is a war mode, there is more than just PvP to it, and that includes maintaining objectives.

I'd rather keep my participation  up if I had the choice, and I'm sure a lot of players feel  the same considering how rough the reward structure is in this mode. So, if they start removing participation from things like repairing walls, you're going to start seeing objectives flip a lot more, and ktraining will become a thing again.

[Zyreva.1078]

27 minutes ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

Why should my participation for doing the things I like be taken away/not given?  I've been defending stuffs and scouting for zero pips since forever. How the heck you just jump in here and tell me pips/rewards are the only thing I consider.  I want to be able to operate alone because some of the players I have on my server are kitten bags. Hence why I play solo most of the time, so why are they taking away the pip for repairing wall when I am defending a tower, alone, alternating from shield and wall repair, shield give no pips, disabling gives no pips, only repair wall has tiny amount of pips.

They should consider removing people who only repair wall and does nothing else from the game mode. Not  punishing people who actually play., participate and contributed in the game mode.

 

You still get participation/rewards from defense events, no?

Also stalling =/= defending. Repairing/using shield gen alone does not defend objectives. It only delays attackers, but does not defeat them. Which does have it's purpose ofc - to grant enough time for reinforcements to arrive and fight the attackers off - and that's the point where the defense is successful and rewards are (and should be) generated. Just like players are only getting rewards for killing other players, but not for letting them hit while spamming heals on a tank build.

[SweetPotato.7456]

7 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

You still get participation/rewards from defense events, no?

Also stalling =/= defending. Repairing/using shield gen alone does not defend objectives. It only delays attackers, but does not defeat them. Which does have it's purpose ofc - to grant enough time for reinforcements to arrive and fight the attackers off - and that's the point where the defense is successful and rewards are (and should be) generated. Just like players are only getting rewards for killing other players, but not for letting them hit while spamming heals on a tank build.

I don't think I get any participation for stalling an attack on an objective waiting for backup that may or may not arrive,  If and when the back up arrive, the back up gets more pips and bags than the one holding the fort.  I flip camps, towers and keep, kill unsuspecting roamers for keeping up participation. Lately I don't defend / scout that much, it's not rewarding for me anymore, But there are a lot of players who still defend, repair walls, siege up objectives for defend, especially the 6 outer towers in Eternal Battleground (WC, Klovan, OW, Anz, Durios, QL) . It is possible to hold those towers if you do the right thing.