help the "underdog" factions

[nthmetal.9652]

Yes, alliances are incoming, but I have heavy doubts they will solve the problem of one faction ultimately domination others due to better performance or population. In theory, of course, within a matchup, alliances would offer a better population balance, however when an imbalance starts to happen we basically are subject to a runaway train: Things might start out okay, then you get wiped repeatedly, while enemy captions your objectives. Players get demotivated and start leaving the game mode for the week. Without alliances, things are even worse, as we have much more real and lasting population imbalances.

Now, how does one of our big competitors, New World, who suffer from a lot of the same effects plan to tackle such things?

Quote

We allow players to switch Factions, but don’t allow them to switch into the dominate Faction. We also increase the influence underdog factions earn for PvP faction missions to give them a better chance at earning the right to declare war., but we may need to do more. We are watching Faction balance on all the servers and if it becomes a general problem we have a few ideas to help resolve it in interesting ways.

(via https://forums.newworld.com/t/dev-blog-pvp-war-and-territory/494952 )

So part of this is also implemented in GW2: We are not allowed to switch to a full server. Likewise, I assume you won't be able to join a full alliance. However, we have nothing to help out underperforming or understaffed factions in a matchup. Instead you have an escalation of punishments: You face harder enemies, meaning rewards in fights and sometimes even participation are harder to come by. You hold less terriroties. Which means less pips. And less resources, so flipping objectives becomes harder, too.

Yes, we have the outnumbered buff, but it basically does nothing, as more player numbers are a lot more relevant than better stats.

I'd say, we need the following changes:

• weaker factions need better chances to flip stuff. Maybe their siege needs to be more effective. Maybe they need additional resources for attacks. Obviously this should not make flipping a T3 keep trivial, but maybe more effective siege could be applied stronger to tower and somewhat less effective to keeps. Maybe once you have flipped stuff, you need additional protective measures, to hold on to stuff so that you don't lose it right away again.
• alternatively to the ideas above, introduce an NPC faction, which can effectively attack objectives and take them over, and this NPC faction would target the faction based on their overall influence. However, as players seem to react badly to PvE elements in WvW I am not sure this idea will fly.
• possibly - but this is highly debateable, weaker faction needs some support in fights. A better solution would be diminishing returns on stacking offensive effects, but if that's not possible, this is the only idea I can come up with. An idea would be to offer special tactics that are not bound to an objective - like banners were in the past - to incentivize guerilla-like behavior. Other ideas?
  Possibly take a look at the k/d ratio to not hand these kind of tactics to factions, taht are not holding on to siege, but already killing enemy groups a lot.

To prevent this system from being gamed overly, causing the stronger factions to actively become weaker, the rewards for holding on to objectives should be increased. These rewards should not directly translate into WvW-relevant resources as the goal is to have a more dynamic battlefield. Directly buffing the already winning faction would go contrary to that. But I think we have a lot of headroom here, as WvW rewards are basically ... bad. You can earn more money in sPvP or PvE easily.

Changing stuff like that, makes it easier to keep people motivated to try and keep flipping stuff, while also ensuring defenders have a reason to hold on to objectives and not just abandon stuff.

Edited November 3, 2021 by nthmetal.9652

[joneirikb.7506]

This was a good summary/take on one of the main problems with WvW, thanks for posting it.

The way I read your post it could be summed down to these general topics: Fair-Weathers and Mechanical-Balancers.

---

Fair-Weathers: 

Or the human side of the game, since the cause is incredibly simple, most people doesn't find losing to be fun. The only real way to combat/deal with this is to make losing "fun" for the majority of players, and that's something I've yet to see a game manage. Individuals can enjoy losing in games, especially if they feel they improve, but most players just doesn't get to that point through lack of interest, motivation, dedication, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't think GW2 is going to crack that magic lamp anytime, they might have tried around launch, but now they're too set in their ways. The artificial "bad" way to solve it would be to just tack on a bunch of rewards to losing, so people would tolerate it as "the most efficient way to rewards". Which would lead to win/loss trading farms etc.

Which leads to...

---

Mechanical-Balancers:

Ways to force more balance through mechanical changes to the game/rules. These will usually feel unfair to lots of users, and almost always go against the idea of "pure pvp" since it removes some level of player agency for the sake of "fairness".

(And this is where my long-winded self gets around to comment on your suggestions):

Quote

  weaker factions need better chances to flip stuff. Maybe their siege needs to be more effective. Maybe they need additional resources for attacks. Obviously this should not make flipping a T3 keep trivial, but maybe more effective siege could be applied stronger to tower and somewhat less effective to keeps. Maybe once you have flipped stuff, you need additional protective measures, to hold on to stuff so that you don't lose it right away again.

Without too much work (compared to other ideas at least) this could be solved by changing the effects of Outnumbered, examples:

(1) Increase Supply capacity (+10, or more)
(2) Build/Repair faster (twice as fast for ex)
(3) Increase Siege Damage (Say about +50% to start with)
(4) Increase Target Limit Outgoing (+2 to +5, might not be possible)
(5) Decrease Target Limit incoming (-1 to -3, might not be possible)

Now 1+2 are purely logistical and tries to compensate for the other teams just having more bodies to run supplies and build with. While 3 is there mostly to help the outnumbered to be slightly faster to capture objectives, making it more likely to ninja a tower (Keeps would still take a long time, and a minor bonus trying to defend). 4+5 are more theoretical and I'm not sure if it's possible to tie that up to the outnumbered buff, but it would help compensate in outnumbered fights by simply altering how powerful the target-cap is in combat.

Outnumbered naturally has a lot problems, and isn't the perfect solution (due to how random it can trigger, and affects the whole map or nothing etc), but this could be a start towards that idea.

---

Quote

  alternatively to the ideas above, introduce an NPC faction, which can effectively attack objectives and take them over, and this NPC faction would target the faction based on their overall influence. However, as players seem to react badly to PvE elements in WvW I am not sure this idea will fly.

Personally I really like this one, and have seen and suggested similar in the past.

Having an AI faction that can spawn events/hordes attacking backline objectives when there is a clear leader (dominating say 50% of the total objectives, as an example), would force the leading faction to either lose most of their backline objectives, or split their forces to defend, thus giving the outnumbered enemies a chance to deal with the smaller groups. Or just join in on the chaos 🙂

And despite popular belief, not every wvw player hates pve elements (heck would surprise me if it was as much as 10%), and having pve elements to help your world (or alliances) with might be welcome by many. The home BL defenders might even love it to break the tedium.

---

Quote

  possibly - but this is highly debateable, weaker faction needs some support in fights. A better solution would be diminishing returns on stacking offensive effects, but if that's not possible, this is the only idea I can come up with. An idea would be to offer special tactics that are not bound to an objective - like banners were in the past - to incentivize guerilla-like behavior. Other ideas?

I'm personally against direct buffs/nerfs to combat that would affect a 5vs5 anywhere on the map. And tend to fall back on logistics.

One suggestion I saw in the past I quite liked, was to give each team a finite amount of objective guards. If the map is divided evenly among the teams, the number of NPC guards should be about the same as it is now. But if you own the entire map, all those npc's are stretched thin to cover all your objectives. You might not even have proper lords for all the towers and keeps etc. But if you're beat back to your last tower, that tower will be STACKED with guards. (Imagine a whole zerg break the wall and rush into that tower, and have everyone blinded constantly by the blind guard 😛 )

Annother suggestion I personally quite like, but I know would be hated like nothing else: Have an effect/debuff the more people gather together, to reduce movement speed, and give a visual/audio cue nearby so others can see/hear large groups arriving. The speed debuff wouldn't need to be big, just enough that others can see and run away. And if groups split up into multiple 5 man cells while running and try to gather at objectives, well at least that lets havoc squads try to pick them off while moving. (But yeah, touching someone maximum speed is probably considered even more evil that touching your maximum loot in mmo's so I can't imagine this would fly!)

[Xenesis.6389]

This has been touched on in the outnumbered threads.

 

The question is this, how much help do you want to provide to the underdog sides? because the more help you give them the less competitive this mode becomes, not that it is right now, but for the future if we want stuff like tournaments to come in then it needs to be near even population and then let the players work for their points.

 

You cannot have a system where one server has like 20 people on the map and the other two sides have 50 each on their sides, but the side with 20 has a stats advantage or super siege, or npcs, or whatever other buff you want to provide because it's the system then helping those players, not those players helping themselves out of that hole.

 

The system isn't fair, believe me be I know. The biggest thing this game mode needs is motivation for players to win, and also motivation to go after those that are winning, not chasing the underdog around for their points. If A is winning B and C need to go after them for points, A needs to defend and go after whomever is most threatening to them, it shouldn't be A and B hounding C for points, you shouldn't be satisfied playing for 2nd or 3rd. Once this can happen you will see less pressure on lower populations.

 

Unfortunately the one up one down system and points and winning meaning nothing we have players wanting to drop in tiers to get easier opponents instead, heck they transfer down to get there faster. A points system was a terrible scoring system to have in an open world huge population pvp mode in the first place.

[nthmetal.9652]

8 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

You cannot have a system where one server has like 20 people on the map and the other two sides have 50 each on their sides, but the side with 20 has a stats advantage or super siege, or npcs, or whatever other buff you want to provide because it's the system then helping those players, not those players helping themselves out of that hole.

While I might agree on the stat thing - I mean, I've marked the more direct combat impact things as highly debatable - I generally, including even that part say: Why not?
Why is it accetable to have one, possibly two factions stumped, while one reigns supreme and can do whatever they want? Why is this kind of mechanic okay? Wouldn't it be better for everyone, if it was always a challenge?

Why is it okay to tell these 20 people: You might as well not be playing at all, because GG, you're not gonna achieve anything? 

And yes, all of that only works, if you provide a real incentive to hold on to your points. So whatever would be done (and I don't think Anet has read any of this, and is implementing or even close to designing any of these changes), the rewards need to be improved, especially for the leading faction. Give extra rewards to the active players in a skirmish period. Give extra rewards for finishing an event, like taking an objective or defending an objective. Hell, even for slaying or escorting a dolly (of course the rewards should still reflect the importance of the event. Escort dolly: small reward. Take keep / defend keep? Big reward.)

Edited November 4, 2021 by nthmetal.9652

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I think a hard pill to swallow is that WvW is PvE, and players trying to make it not PvE are the ones hurting the game. It prevents us from adding any real balance to the game mode because they want everything to be My Op Build Vs Your Op Build, My Perfect Squad Vs Your Perfect Squad and so on. Until players accept that WvW is PvE, and that it needs to have PvE elements in order to keep the factions balanced, the situation won't improve.

 

There's a reason PvP and WvW are separate, but players keep asking for WvW to be like PvP and then wondering why its slowly developing the same problems . There's this obsession with all fights coming down to numbers, coordination, builds and skill level, instead of having any kind of randomness to it, any kind of outside, unpredictable factors, and so on, when that's exactly what's kept RvR in most online games balanced since DAoC launched.

 

Yes, most fights should be determined by gameplay & experience in competitive games, because that's what makes them competitive. But you have to draw a line at a 2v1 curbstomp for an entire week where the only options are to either take empty objectives for participation or just stop playing altogether.

 

And this is a weekly occurence (i.e, 24/7) for some servers now, and Alliances may not fix it entirely, if at all.

 

The reason this is so dangerous is if you go back into gaming history, you'll find that the entire reason three factions were introduced to alot of games was to make them unpredictable because 1v1 always had lopsided matchups. But because in this game you can just take the underdog out entirely, you end up with the same situation and its as if there aren't three factions at all, which recreates the same problems three-way RvR was designed to prevent.

 

And alot of this has to do with players' resistance to PvE elements in the game mode. Because you can't just magically generate more players, you have to use non-player elements to balance the matchup, at least to a level where the weakest faction can fight back, and be a credible threat to their opponents.

 

Realm Vs. Realm was always about the battlefield being a big mess, basically, which helps keep everything from going lopsided and becoming an endless struggle against overwhelming odds. It has to be messy, that's the whole point.. But despite this, WvW sterilisation continues with each year.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Dawdler.8521]

20 hours ago, nthmetal.9652 said:

Likewise, I assume you won't be able to join a full alliance. However, we have nothing to help out underperforming or understaffed factions in a matchup.

Because its a matchup... you're not meant to "help" them. For good or bad you're winning or loosing.

Just adding more people work in war, but not for a match with fixed size. Although I must admit it would be hilarious to see a championship soccer team just go "oh kitten we're loosing, here's 50 million quid quick buy new players and get them on the field right now so we can win!"

Wait what do you mean we cant have 10 goalkeepers?!?!?!

The alliance system literally has a mechanic to help it outside the matchup, just like todays relink somewhat does it - the bimonthly reshuffle (assuming they keep that schedule).

Edited November 4, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[nthmetal.9652]

49 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Although I must admit it would be hilarious to see a championship soccer team just go "oh kitten we're loosing, here's 50 million quid quick buy new players and get them on the field right now so we can win!"

You know, while that comparison is not really accurate, football  (at least here in Germany) DOES actually suffer from a similar problem that could only be resolved, by ensuring that the teams have equal resources. Here in Germany you typically always see the same 3 teams (often the same ONE team) winning the league. Why? Because they have the most resources. And it is actively hurting the league more and more. Luckily this is a very slow process and while many fans are not satisfied, they are still willing to put up with how things are.

You know how new football teams are built up? Not through performance. No, rather because investors like Red Bull and SAP suddenly start pouring money into a specific team.

49 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The alliance system literally has a mechanic to help it outside the matchup, just like todays relink somewhat does it - the bimonthly reshuffle (assuming they keep that schedule).

Highly unlikely. That would mean the reshuffle would not only take number of player into account, but also performance of teams. But we will see how alliances will actually perform.

49 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Because its a matchup... you're not meant to "help" them. For good or bad you're winning or loosing.

adn this attitude somehow is supposed to keep people invested? I mean if you're not gonna get anything meaningful out of it, why not simply stop for that matchup? That's somehow gonna help? I doubt it.

Edited November 4, 2021 by nthmetal.9652

[Parthenos Polias.5683]

Quote

I think a hard pill to swallow is that WvW is PvE, and players trying to make it not PvE are the ones hurting the game. It prevents us from adding any real balance to the game mode because they want everything to be My Op Build Vs Your Op Build, My Perfect Squad Vs Your Perfect Squad and so on. Until players accept that WvW is PvE, and that it needs to have PvE elements in order to keep the factions balanced, the situation won't improve.

 

I think you should remember the game is named "Guild Wars", not "Pve Wars".
Of course, the only game mode than allows guild wars must be a PvP environment, not a PvE one.

 

Quote

And alot of this has to do with players' resistance to PvE elements in the game mode. Because you can't just magically generate more players, you have to use non-player elements to balance the matchup, at least to a level where the weakest faction can fight back, and be a credible threat to their opponents.

 

You can "magically generate more players" with big incentives.
Try to mimic Alerts from PS2.
 

Instead of giving an "outnumbered buff" ; launch an Alert (visible for any players playing in PvE or PvP from the corresponding worlds) when one of the server is dominating too much.
Give a huge Alert bonus for a short period of time, a bonus that will matters for PvE and PvP.
Give at the end of the Alert rewards useful outside WvW.

If you do this, you will "magically generate more players" coming from PvE or PvP because they want the Alert bonus.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Parthenos Polias.5683

[Gorani.7205]

Just brainstorming, tag along if you like ...

 

Situation A: a perfectly balanced by numbers match-up

Team Blue, Red and Green (400 players for each team): 100 people on each map (3x BL + EB; with a limit of 400 map slots each); Every map should have activity and winning/losing very much is dependent on commander tactics and individual skill as long as every player shows the same general activity; This does not change, even when there is a "home bias" (you defend your home map with more people and do not have them on the enemy BLs); Queues only happen when large forces move across maps, as every players potentially has a spot on one of the maps.

Expected WvW experience: Most people should be happy, even when you are not on the winning side, because there should be activity on all maps (resulting is fights to happen and structures being available to get attacked / be defended)

 

Situation B: Player base > map capacity

Parameters changed => each team has 800 players; Queues will big long, as there is only a slot for 50% of the players who want to play; Balance is determined by "fist to come, first to take"; This is kind of the current status quo resulting in miss-matched match-ups when new server links are made, as the overall server population is greater than the possible players to play WvW (There are no overflow borderlands, like there are several instanced of "Bloodtide Coast" PvE map).
Expected WvW experience : Long queues; weakest server (mostly in numbers) gets cannibalized by the other two, because current mechanics (rewards for server and individuals) do not distinguish between 1st + 2nd vs. 3rd (prey on the weak) and 2nd + 3rd vs 1st (the enemy of my enemy is my friend); The activity of the "weakest link" will decrease over the match up, beginning with larger scaled activities, which currently are the "most rewarding" (there is a strong attack vs. defense bias in game in terms of loot, participation upkeep and WXP gain)

 

Situation C: Player base < map capacity

Parameters changed => 400 / 300 / 200 players are active on their respective teams; There will be hardly any queues, as only 75% of map slots can be filled by players. Maps will "feel empty"; The players on the weakest team in numbers will have a harder time finding allies for attacks and be very slow to react to attacks on their structures, currently referred to "a dead server"; spreading out to small teams over all maps is possible, but requires a lot of communication.

Expected WvW experience: "Dead maps, no fun", "nobody wants to fight", easy to PPT, mostly for the strongest server, because of a still good amount of players; extensive dominance via night capping or off-hour play is possible; k-trains are the last hope for some larger fight activity (people still want to do that for easy rewards compared to attention/skill required); roamers take turns flipping camps; defence of towers and keeps is not happening.

 

How can you / ANet intervene?

Current maps have static limits on their size. Perhaps a dynamic size change for each skirmish could help?

Player activity on servers can only be predicted. Perhaps Alliances (with players more likely to play at a less random time and for a less random time each match up) can reduce the variance?

Reward the individual a bit better for "being at the short end of the stick", so players will not sit out match ups they are losing. Bringing baseline pips up (by +2) and taking out the randomiser of the "Outnumberd" bonus is a first step IMO.

Bring back NPC driven activity for the "weakest link"? (Yes, I know, it is controversial!); A modified Siegerazor event (you can start alone, but need to prepare, e.g. by bringing 60 supply to him, which is later used as a field depot to build a ram or catapult close to the tower); 

 

WvW has no easy solution like other modes (open world PvE => just create / collapse maps; PvP => just limit to 5vs5; Raids => balance for a party of ten); Thats why other RvsR games like New World have the same problems and nobody has the ideal solution yet.

 

Congratulations to you for reading the wall of random text, I wanted to get out of my head. :)

[Xenesis.6389]

5 hours ago, nthmetal.9652 said:

While I might agree on the stat thing - I mean, I've marked the more direct combat impact things as highly debatable - I generally, including even that part say: Why not?
Why is it accetable to have one, possibly two factions stumped, while one reigns supreme and can do whatever they want? Why is this kind of mechanic okay? Wouldn't it be better for everyone, if it was always a challenge?

Did you bother to read the second half of my post? I don't think it's acceptable for the strong ones to always go after the weakest side, I don't think a strong side should have all the rolling effects for them to snowball a match, it should be the other way around, the winning or strongest side should always have pressure on them by the other two, more so if they have more players or coverage. This is the heart of the problem that I see with outnumbered, so we should fix the foundation not apply leaky patches. Because systems like outnumbered can also backfire and help the strongest whenever they have lapses in power and coverage.

Artificially inflating the weakest side power does nothing for them in the long run, because they are the ones who are already facing outnumbered more times than not in a tier they probably shouldn't be in, why help keep them in that tier? But I don't really have a problem increasing rewards to try and help keep the weakest side motivated in a match until they can turn things around, because apparently that's the biggest motivator for people in wvw. And also somewhat don't have too much of a problem handing over bonus points to motivate sides to their proper purpose in the three way match, like taking or killing stuff from the strongest is worth more, but trying to do that to the weakest is worth little or none at all.

Like I mentioned the more you help a side out with these systems, the less fair it becomes competitively, it would be like if a basketball team lost a member in the middle of the game due to illness, then you decide you're going to just give the rest of the players the super soldier serum to be competitive for the time left. Is something like fair? Do we want to go down that road?

P.S we already have people upset over things like guild claims and presence of the keep giving too much stats, so there's a part of the population that hates it off the bat. The bonus scoring I mentioned in part links back to the hot spot scoring that anet mentioned all those years ago when they were doing the links.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Shroud.2307]

WvW needs to be more punishing, not less. Winning and losing don't mean anything other than who you're going to fight - there's no reason to try. If every server becomes equal regardless of numbers, there's even less reason to organize because you get a passive buff just for existing when activity is low.

Transfers need to be disabled.

Winning needs to have better rewards and game-wide effects.

Handholding needs to be discouraged - your server is losing? Get better.

Capturing objectives needs to be about score and not loot - you get big pay off at week end, not per capture.

And Guilds need a way to advertise their activity and weekly statistics to incentivize competition, including average time of activity and map preference.

ANet wants WvW to be casual so you can join any time and do your thing. And that's fine, not everything needs to be hardcore competitive.
But because WvW has received so little in the way of balance, reworks, and general maintenance, most players interested in competition have left with only those wanting handouts remaining.

A lot of these changes would mean do or die. Can't handle fighting a certain server? Give up or get smart. Don't like that your Guild is publicly known for fight avoidance and poor statistics? Change it.

Obviously in the long term having transfers disabled would be a problem, but I'm talking servers and not Alliances. Players could move freely between Alliances because the system will (should) prevent stacking from reaching the severity that it has with servers.

I get that a lot of players won't like the sound of this, but really it just enforces my point that most of the players left aren't interested in trying.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Shroud.2307

[Xenesis.6389]

18 minutes ago, Shroud.2307 said:

Handholding needs to be discouraged - your server is losing? Get better.

 

It's a numbers game, so are you telling people to buy more guilds to get better coverage for their server? Oh, and don't bother saying players need to get better, because you have a server like Mag that supposedly has the best pugs, but it's in T4 right now and about to lose to a server that it double teams every night.

 

Also server stacking needs to be discouraged because that too throws competition out the window, so there goes your rewards for winning every week.

 

Also what guild stats do you want advertised? the amount of kills per week? that's a joke stat with the amount of pugs these guilds hunt down every week instead of going against guilds their own size and skill. Most of the stats in the the game would be a joke. It's like that streamer bragging about getting over a million kills, when in reality it's a million assist tags.

[Burial.1958]

10 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

I think a hard pill to swallow is that WvW is PvE, and players trying to make it not PvE are the ones hurting the game. It prevents us from adding any real balance to the game mode because they want everything to be My Op Build Vs Your Op Build, My Perfect Squad Vs Your Perfect Squad and so on. Until players accept that WvW is PvE, and that it needs to have PvE elements in order to keep the factions balanced, the situation won't improve.

 

There's a reason PvP and WvW are separate, but players keep asking for WvW to be like PvP and then wondering why its slowly developing the same problems . There's this obsession with all fights coming down to numbers, coordination, builds and skill level, instead of having any kind of randomness to it, any kind of outside, unpredictable factors, and so on, when that's exactly what's kept RvR in most online games balanced since DAoC launched.

 

Yes, most fights should be determined by gameplay & experience in competitive games, because that's what makes them competitive. But you have to draw a line at a 2v1 curbstomp for an entire week where the only options are to either take empty objectives for participation or just stop playing altogether.

 

And this is a weekly occurence (i.e, 24/7) for some servers now, and Alliances may not fix it entirely, if at all.

 

The reason this is so dangerous is if you go back into gaming history, you'll find that the entire reason three factions were introduced to alot of games was to make them unpredictable because 1v1 always had lopsided matchups. But because in this game you can just take the underdog out entirely, you end up with the same situation and its as if there aren't three factions at all, which recreates the same problems three-way RvR was designed to prevent.

 

And alot of this has to do with players' resistance to PvE elements in the game mode. Because you can't just magically generate more players, you have to use non-player elements to balance the matchup, at least to a level where the weakest faction can fight back, and be a credible threat to their opponents.

 

Realm Vs. Realm was always about the battlefield being a big mess, basically, which helps keep everything from going lopsided and becoming an endless struggle against overwhelming odds. It has to be messy, that's the whole point.. But despite this, WvW sterilisation continues with each year.

 

 WvWvW isn't PvE. It Is clearly a Big PVP Modi with siegewars. It has some PvE Aspects (Door, Guards and Lords) but the majority of it is clear PVP Environment. 

 

The biggest problem this mode suffers are those Bandwagoners. This is simply pay to win or pay to have fun. Problem is that the peoples who stay at their Severs are the big loosers in every aspect. 

Edited November 4, 2021 by Grebcol.5984

[Shroud.2307]

4 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

It's a numbers game, so are you telling people to buy more guilds to get better coverage for their server? Oh, and don't bother saying players need to get better, because you have a server like Mag that supposedly has the best pugs, but it's in T4 right now and about to lose to a server that it double teams every night.

 

Also server stacking needs to be discouraged because that too throws competition out the window, so there goes your rewards for winning every week.

 

Also what guild stats do you want advertised? the amount of kills per week? that's a joke stat with the amount of pugs these guilds hunt down every week instead of going against guilds their own size and skill. Most of the stats in the the game would be a joke. It's like that streamer bragging about getting over a million kills, when in reality it's a million assist tags.

You're making an awful lot of assumptions.

"Better" means organized and actually trying to compete. Mag is probably the the least serious server NA. No one cares about anything but fights. If Mag is winning it's a) because they want to be fighting a specific server or b) because the link is stacked and other servers can't handle the coverage. It has nothing to do with anyone trying.

Won't need server stacking if people have reason to participate in WvW. Right now, it's a community of people that spend 90% of their game time in WvW while everyone else avoids it like the plague.

All stats. Give it a kittening heat map to show where they most commonly lurk. PPT, kills, deaths, favorite map, hours active as a group, growth, etc.

All I'm saying with this is that WvW needs to give people a reason to play it for those that don't generally care to, and to reward servers for winning and not for gaming the system.
There will never be a perfect solution, and mine sure as kitten won't solve everything that's wrong with it. The problem at the core is how WvW tells the players it's okay to be lazy because trying won't get different results.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Well the obscession with the "5 organized guys wins over 50 blob" never ends.

 

With current meta, organized guilds, already do better over unorganized blobs, sometimes in a ratio even 1 to 3, 1 to 4.

 

i recommend Anet ignore that, there no such a thing like "underdog" faction. Any faction will remain underdog, only if they want, and dont put effort to forge the alliance.

Edited November 5, 2021 by ugrakarma.9416

[nthmetal.9652]

7 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

Well the obscession with the "5 organized guys wins over 50 blob" never ends.

---

i recommend Anet ignore that, there no such a thing like "underdog" faction. Any faction will remain underdog, only if they want, and dont put effort to forge the alliance.

This isn't about that. I am not of the opinion that 5 should win against 50. I am not sure where you take that from. I am not talking about a single fight, a single interaction between two groups at all. I see the way bigger picture.

ah, the old fairy-tale that anyone can become a millionaire, if they just work hard enough. Sure. But everyone should realize how much of a fairytale that is. Of course ANYONE can become one, but not EVERYONE. Meaning: For the majority of people, no matter how hard they work, they will never achieve that goal. And that creates a snowball effect. Alliances will surely help with some aspects of that, but not all aspects of that. 

If the game mode does not create more equality between the different factions, but instead increases the difference by awarding rewards, that allow for even better winning, this will be a lost cause and the mode will lose players overall. Encouragement is a so much better tool than punishment.

17 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Did you bother to read the second half of my post? I don't think it's acceptable for the strong ones to always go after the weakest side, I don't think a strong side should have all the rolling effects for them to snowball a match, it should be the other way around, the winning or strongest side should always have pressure on them by the other two, more so if they have more players or coverage.

Now here's a strategy I had not even considered in my original post: Award rewards based on the strength of the faction you're hurting.

So I would like to extend one of the original ideas:

• generally hand out better rewards, based on your position / warscore in the skirmish, based on the objectives you are holding  to players actively contributing - these rewards should best not directly influence your ability to perform better in WvW
• hand out better rewards for taking objectives, and fulfilling missions, based on the importance of the mission
• adjust the rewards for taking objectives based on the overall VP of the faction being targeted

I also don't think that helping the weakest faction will really keep them in that tier in the majority of the cases. But it makes sure the winning party has to work at least a bit, while the losing faction has simply better chances of at least achieving some success. And that is vital to keep motivation going. My ideas are not meant to turn a losing faction into a winner, and such concerns could be easily adressed by taking the difference in VP into account. If there's a small difference, give no buffs to anyone, if there is a significant difference, buff the underdogs. Performance overall should still matter.

At the moment, however, performance often does not matter. You can perform with a group of 25 and still lose most of the fights against 30 on the enemy side. While another 30 go and flip your objectives to add insult to injury.
And if you roam around with a group of 5, just trying to find something to flip, so your server has some chance, good luck getting even a t3 tower before enough defenders can show up to stop you. Buffed siege for the weaker factions would help here. The other faction(s) are still stronger, so you likely won't be able to hold on to it, but at least you're able to do something meaningful and gain some rewards.

Edited November 5, 2021 by nthmetal.9652

[primatos.5413]

MAKE WVW GREAT AGAIN!!

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, nthmetal.9652 said:

I am not talking about a single fight, a single interaction between two groups at all. I see the way bigger picture.

Yet you argued individual matchups while brushing aside reshuffles (that Anet has said will remain since its a critical function of the alliance system but you doubt).

I question your scope of the way bigger picture.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[nthmetal.9652]

47 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yet you argues individual matchups while brushing aside reshuffles (that Anet has said will remain since its a critical function of the alliance system but you doubt).

That is a misunderstanding. For the reshuffle to have an effect, the performance would need to be taken into account as a deciding factor on how to assemble teams and where to place them. Yet there has never been any talk of this kind of reshuffle.
Now imagine a reshuffle happens, and your top performing team is placed against the worst performing team. I am sure that will lead to lots of fun for both sides.

Otherwise you once more end up with a matchup (and that's still a whole week, right) - possibly even several matchups, where one group is unlikely to really achieve much, while another will dominate the game. If this were a football game, you'd have like the low performing team compete against the highest performing one. Repeatedly. Until they get a new opponent after like 10 matches. I am sure that's not gonna affect motivation and overall performance at all.

Machtups are still a week, right? So it's not as though I can just relogin later the day, and it will be better, nope. It'll stay like this for at least a week. Imagine a game that's only fun every few weeks.

And as the topic of "just get better" is involved: Apart from what I said about anyone can become top tier - but not everyone - I am sure this kind of constellation is also great for learning. How about we apply this to our school system. Instead of starting with primary school with really simple stuff, simply give the pupils the university stuff right away. They'll learn faster, right?

Edited November 5, 2021 by nthmetal.9652

[Dawdler.8521]

47 minutes ago, nthmetal.9652 said:

That is a misunderstanding. For the reshuffle to have an effect, the performance would need to be taken into account as a deciding factor on how to assemble teams and where to place them. Yet there has never been any talk of this kind of reshuffle.
Now imagine a reshuffle happens, and your top performing team is placed against the worst performing team. I am sure that will lead to lots of fun for both sides.

 

Thats not what a reshuffle is intended for either.

Thats what the 1 up 1 down tier system handles. 

A tier 1 server by definition does not fight a tier 5 server if the tiers have settled, which they naturally do over time.

[Xenesis.6389]

 

On 11/5/2021 at 5:55 AM, nthmetal.9652 said:

Now here's a strategy I had not even considered in my original post: Award rewards based on the strength of the faction you're hurting.

Just gonna say, I prefer handing out personal rewards like the reward or skirmish track, rather than server wide rewards based on scoring performances. Server wide ones tend to attract stacking and bandwagons, or hand out rewards for "free" to people who don't even contribute much (see the old green bag rewards at the end of matches that you could earn for spending 10mins in the entire match). Personal rewards would provide players with more motivation to play under any scenario, and they would actually have to be active to earn their rewards (yes I know the participation system needs work to better acknowledge that).

 

I would like to see an expanded daily/weekly achievements to provide more personal motivation and rewards, and maybe even daily guild missions to do the same for groups. Only way I want server based rewards is for stuff like tournaments which happen every once in a while, not a weekly thing, that hands out more unique rewards like the dolyak finisher as an example. If alliances do really well with population spread then maybe we can expand on the server rewards, but I don't think that system will solve the problems as "neatly" as everyone thinks it will.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 11/3/2021 at 5:56 PM, nthmetal.9652 said:

Yes, alliances are incoming, but I have heavy doubts they will solve the problem of one faction ultimately domination others due to better performance or population. In theory, of course, within a matchup, alliances would offer a better population balance, however when an imbalance starts to happen we basically are subject to a runaway train: Things might start out okay, then you get wiped repeatedly, while enemy captions your objectives. Players get demotivated and start leaving the game mode for the week. Without alliances, things are even worse, as we have much more real and lasting population imbalances.

Not to discredit your suggestions here and I may be drifting off topic a bit with this, but I think it is prudent to point out that - when Alliances comes - it will also help to restore the ladder. I think that is something that is often overlooked these days when people discuss Alliances or the finer points of population balance (the points beyond sheer numbers, with activity and ability in mind). Things do not have to be perfectly balanced to those finer points since the ladder exists and is meant to place and match servers up according to those finer points. The ever-looming issue with the current system is that the larger points of sheer numbers and coverage have always trumphed those finer points. The ladder is there for the finer points but not the larger points. At the very least this is true for ability, activity is a bit more debatable.

The most active do not have to be the most able, but there is a correlate there which also shouldn't be overlooked. In the end, if the best are at the top the system kind of works so do not forget the ladder. The biggest issue with the existing system is that the ladder has always been in chaos and even back to the early days of the tournaments the gold/T1 stuff was actively avoided (in EU) and the ladder has been manipulated for content ever since. When the system restores that issue, it will do alot for behaviour and matchup/content stability too.

Ps. As for the topic at hand, a map-based score system, using outnumbered for score-degradation rather than stat (or capping-) buffs, deals with the issues you describe about leaving maps when losing, keeping weeks fresh longer and those things too. It's a simple fix that I've suggested for years and years that tends to hold up much better than more complex suggestions that find their way to the forums every now and then.

Edited November 6, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Simonoly.4352]

There's some pretty nice suggestions in this thread - it's an interesting topic to consider in what is essentially a PvP/PvE hybrid mode. 

I'm personally less into any flat out statistical buffs for the struggling server and more into mechanical things that just let a server get back on their feet. I always thought Siegerazor was a great idea for this and kind of disappointed to not see this expanded further and, well, completely removed!

[Cuks.8241]

You would get a lot of hate if you stat buff one side. Hate on all sides. The thing is many organised groups don't care about matchup, they only care about fights. They might have the ability to win the matchup, but they want to tank to lower tier, so they ignore objectives intentionally. Give stat buff to one side and everyone will be sour.

[jahaan.1405]

I think the problem is, that one server, (the one I'm on) refuses to understand that in order to win and stay on top, teamwork is required. I've seen players on other servers use scouts to draw us into traps. One person in a tower harassing us as we attempt to take it and ultimately calling in the rest of their squad because, THEY ALL COMMUNICATE! and we don't. If one server is just a bunch of small factions going after their separate goals, they will never be a viable team server. The other mistake our "leaders" are always making is go for the keep, to heck with camps and towers, get the big prize. This results in not enough supplies to build siege equipment and ultimately, failure. The underdog faction needs to get off their duff and work as a team if they want to succeed, or when alliances begin, we will always be last and always losing.