How has outnumbered impacted defenders?

[gloflop.3510]

Outnumbered is for me a measure for the number of players on my map. Normally, it is also a measure for the players online of my world. So, if I am outnumbered, I know that defending makes less sense due to a shortage in number of players.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

u should only view it as "both other servers have more people on the map, currently" ... viewing it as anything more is wrong.

 

but yeah, it does make pugs and random players insecure and often lets them afk more than normal, from my experience.

 

i personally don't even bother defending if i don't expect a defense response, as the dps nerfs makes it impossible to solo higher numbers. only with good players, like if u know u can rely on them, and even then only with a certain numerical %, only then u can defend against overnumbers.

if i don't know, i poke (keeping offensive pressure on) the enemy group a bit to see their response, but i will always position myself in a way that leaves me the option to disengage without further risk.

like, dying does not matter but i won't feed a ppt group even one bag if the rest of the servers' players don't care enough to react to a call.

___

however, a big  issue here are bad scouts. enough people don't scout at all, or make non proper reports. many fail to give numbers, of neither enemy players nor wall%.

 

tho again, also inexperienced players. it all plays into the same direction - trust issues and lack of confidence leading actual content to be one sided, as some rather follow a random "roamer tag" (which is 99% not a roamer, but a random player) instead of joined up a well played defense call by good scouting.

 

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 2/14/2022 at 3:44 PM, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I think this is actually an interesting topic, however (and I've gone on about this before), I think the survey or whatever discussion you are looking to get out of it has two pretty significant flaws: What defending implies is not defined and any example of "successful" or "good" defending is generally missing or sparse.

 

In this case I was referring to defending as the general act of going to an objective and trying to prevent it from being capped. Its not about the defense actually succeeding but did you make the attempt for whatever reason made sense and seemed to be worth the players time.

 

On 2/14/2022 at 3:44 PM, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I think those things are pretty important given what has been argued on this forum in the past regarding balance issues in defending, larger discussions about defending's place or role in the mode and its history, or that the examples that could help bring a more sensible and rooted perspective on defending do present not themselves in the same way as they do in most other types of (sub-) content in WvW (we have general examples of 25-man raiding, 15-man skirmishing, 5-man roaming and so on that simply has no counterpart in any loose definition of defending).

Why bring that up? Because I don't think there is very much contention about incentives to defend, but rather about when, why or how it was done or ceased to be done. Some people argue rewards, others balance and furthermore some argue larger issues like ladder, coverage and PPK/PPT divide. Grimm's phrasing here muddles those things as well because on the one hand it is about rewards (outnumbered) on the other hand it is about balance, ability and content production (staying to fight).

 

I would agree and disagree here. Flip the term rewards to rewarding and that might help fill in the picture of what I think some of the changes impacted. In order to get people to defend they need to feel rewarded for their deeds win or lose. MMOs being time syncs those rewards need to be weighed against other uses of the time. The form of the reward varies from player to player and goal to goal. The question is does the player feel progression. For some that will be in coin/gear/materials. Others will be KDR, others PPT, winning and in some was it fun. Pips are just another of those. Something to make the player feel they advanced. Outnumbered rewarded those that tried and failed in pips and nothing in the other aspects of outnumbered and rewarded those that tried and succeed more in both pips and the other boons. Removing the tried and failed bit just raises the bar to be win=2x lose = nothing. Which to me seems to lead to even more if you can't win, move away mentality which leads to more people avoiding fights versus taking the chance to win against the odds. Again, don't need the loot since fully geared but I like the thought of the extra pips from the fun perspective and could use the extra pips as a shout out that we needed peeps and they could get paid even if we lost the fights. So for different people there were various types of rewarding rewards per say.

 

On 2/14/2022 at 3:44 PM, subversiontwo.7501 said:

If anyone has seen me take part in discussing these things before you can see that I am firmly in the third camp: That, while yes there are few examples and little incentive to defending, I find it to be apart of a larger picture of coverage- and population balance having detached a sense of winning from the game mode. Defending (PPT) has always been more sensitive to those issues than things like raiding, skirmishing or roaming (primarily PPK) is. So it's historical and global in how most good examples examples of such groups having quit a long time ago because of the population balance issues than it has to do with more local issues of balance or rewards.

So, like others have likely already mentioned, I don't tend to consider outnumbered ever having any larger impact on a staying-to-fight definition of defending and I tend not to consider things like just camping an AC or dumping stocked supplies into walls to be staying to fight. They may fit a loose definition of defending, but not any example of successful or good defending that could be narrowed down to fighting and relate to well established examples seen in other types of content. If someone could define and exemplify some generally well-regarded "defenders" then their impressions of this would be more worth discussing.

 

As I said before and will again, to me at least we seem to keep encouraging taking versus holding. It took a lot of forum posts in the past prior to the system where higher tier objectives pay more since its harder to hold. So trends to backpedal there raise the red flag in my book at least. So its related to "rewards" but more in the sense of balancing rewarding gameplay to the side that attacks but also to the side that holds.

 

On 2/14/2022 at 3:44 PM, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Ed. If this is about other people's behaviour (ie., if a public group comes to defend or not) that doesn't really have anything to do with anything. Other people's behaviour does not have to be good, make sense or be controlled by you. There's little point fretting over that and just better to look at what you can possibly do, with some friends. There are as many different reasons for other players' behaviour as there are players and groups. It won't generalize.

 

Its not about behavior but mentality. Game play that doesn't feel rewarding will not occur. So if all we do is reward attacking we will end up with groups avoiding each other as they circle the map to just attack empty structures. We need to balance the act of attacking versus defending, we need end of week rewards to help everyone to want to win, and we need balance in PPT vs PPK. And most of all we need the time spent playing to feel rewarding, in whatever way they translate rewarding to be, so that even the people that log in and face overwhelming odds in their time zone and map still feel like the time was well spent else they will just go to another game or activity versus try and hold the line till they can get help. Not sure if that helps and again posting when should be sleeping but...owed a response to try and help clarify.

[Sinester.3572]

The truth is simple, if you have outnumber buff there's no point in fighting anything at all, when anet gives the outnumber buff 100% means already you are super low and they try to make you feel better by giving you the outnumber, my opinion is stupid, fix the servers, less servers, and balance the population, is better then at 7 am in the morning, BG whit a map queu, golem rushing 5 players LOL

[Zyreva.1078]

 

The truth is simple, if you have outnumber buff there's no point in fighting anything at all,

That's nonsense. The outnumbered buff alone is not indicative of the map state let alone overall server population. It just means your world has less players than the other two worlds on a map at a certain time. Not more, not less. It is very much possible that those other servers are busy fighting each other, giving your world free reign on that map, or that your world has zergs on other maps, that might come and help out whenever neccessary. Likewise, not having outnumbered does not automatically mean your server is doing well on a map.

Since it seems to have a negative impact on players, maybe the outnumbered buff needs to be removed completely, so players stop getting discouraged for no reason ...

Edited February 16, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Ronin.4501]

Several variables factor into whether or not I decide to defend a structure, but I'll concede that the outnumbered buff has never been one of them.  Factors that DO determine whether or not I'll defend include:

- how does the enemy force's size relate to the defending force's size?

- is the structure worth defending? (T0/T1 not so much; T2/T3 yes)

- is the server I'm linked to inclined to send reinforcements to defend? (also depends on the time of day; for example might see reinforcements during EU hours and not during NA hours)

- are the players defending capable? (If I'm noticing that the majority of the allies on the map on any given day are getting one-shotted all the time, I'm less likely to want to defend alongside them).

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 2/16/2022 at 7:48 AM, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Its not about behavior but mentality. Game play that doesn't feel rewarding will not occur. So if all we do is reward attacking we will end up with groups avoiding each other as they circle the map to just attack empty structures.

This is why I phrased my post the way I did, asking for clarification and listing things off in the order I did because there are a number of different rewards, on different levels, with different issues that explain why things are the way they are.

Defending rewards

There are prestige rewards in winning matchups and climbing ladder, early on we even had the tournaments with concrete prestige rewards (I still have my Dolyak stomps). However, this is the area of the game that is the worst and most broken so everything involved with it is completely broken down. PPT still dominates this area of the game. In terms of balance that is still best done by spreading out into smaller groups rather than full 50-man squads. It is here that more dedicated PPT groups disappeared with vanilla because they were far more senstive to the population- and coverage imbalances.

Today we may speak about server identities being more or less PPT or PPK. However, they're not actually in any direct competition. It is more so that PPT-PPT competition just died off early, left further holes in the population (and recently we've seen more of the same even on the PPK side of things with fewer healthy matchups just in terms of finding groups, players and content) and you hardly have any even daytime PPT competition.

Farming rewards

PPK is just so much less sensitive to the population imbalances and the reason you see people run in large groups, favour open fields (beyond that it is better balanced and more fun on a class-level) or just do musical-chair capture trains is because those rewards of bags and WXP are less imbalanced (or rather, they are class-imbalanced rather than server-imbalanced, but that is another story). It's not like WXP from karma trains is super impactful but rather that there is no reason to play that part of the game more strategically (defend), rewarding (ladder) or exploring potential (balance) due to the absolute joke of the population issues.

It's only really here that size is rewarded because singular large groups means more players sharing the same bags and the same flips. It is optimisation of sharing the same crumb rewards. Size may then of course be a mean to win fights but in and of itself that is not rewarded by the game. It is not better for rewards to roll over smaller groups and even if you can leverage numbers to break walls quicker you do cover less of the map. It is only better for sharing rewards.

Personal rewards

That brings us to the last bit, tracks and similar personal rewards, where defending generally is similarily rewarded as long as you assume that defending also means leaving the walls and their siege in any number of ways (from sorties to escorts to flip back and roaming or defending open field). I mean, most of the exploiting of outnumbered we did (me included) involved doing these different things just to keep the timers rolling. Its not like flipping a spawn camp or scoring a kill around your own spawn was ever that much more challenging than running some supplies and dumping them in a wall. Any actual reason or success in holding objectives has not changed with outnumbered. The main motivation, any time as now, to defend has mainly been to annoy opponents, goad them into fights and leverage force multiplication. That's why I do it, when I do it.

The result of that behaviour takes us full circle back to effectively impacting matchups but since more players and better coverage is more impactful than organising, dedicating or succeeding in this manner, no one really cares about it in that way. No one cares about smart, sneaky captures or force-multiplying zergbusting defenses (beyond the lols of it) because it is simply better to be more and play when people are supposed to sleep. It's why they took tournaments away, why we don't care about the ladder and why far more people engage in the better balanced sports of 50-man bag- and flip farms than playing the mode "as intended". The most fundamental systems are the most broken. If you want to fix defending, as intended, then that is where you should start. As with many other things on the forums, the main issue with that is that alot of the players who want rewards and motivation to defend are not necessarily interested in that type of defending or playing maps, as intended. Those players quit and few players do it these days. So these discussions often devolve into things for teamchat scouts, siege- and wall campers.

Edited February 17, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Junkpile.7439]

Why would you entertain blobbers when you are outnumbered? Pointless give them bags. Better just gank their slow players so they can't get wxp for cap. 😎

[TheGrimm.5624]

13 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

Why would you entertain blobbers when you are outnumbered? Pointless give them bags. Better just gank their slow players so they can't get wxp for cap. 😎

 

Not sure what you mean? What I am seeing is less people even willing to try and "gank" or what I would call fight their slow players. Saw 3 people not even try and contest a camp while outnumbered against an equal number of three enemies though reinforcements via the mini-map could be seen. So far outnumbered which used to embolden people now triggers a run reflect in more people versus go for it. To me, that's not good as it signals people to avoid fights. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

15 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

This is why I phrased my post the way I did, asking for clarification and listing things off in the order I did because there are a number of different rewards, on different levels, with different issues that explain why things are the way they are.

 

 

I didn't take your post as anything more than clarification so if it came out differently in my replies that was my bad word choice. I agree its a deep and multi-level topic.

My main reason for the poll was to try and determine if what I was seeing was localized or larger and in the fact that I still wonder if we didn't implement a change to impact a limited number of players but in fact impacted a bigger group that tended to defend.

Again in my post history you will see I am about risk versus reward. Outnumbered is under that group. You risk more while outnumbered and players that do so should gain more. The key here is gain and how players perceive that. To me, already have leggo armors so I just like to see the extra pips be displayed though they meant nothing. The  extra visual pop up while trying to attack more was fun enough. So again people's mileage will vary. I have know people that would also hunt outnumbered to be paid more while they fought. My concern here is we were more worried about people timing out in spawn versus the impacts of people actually playing and filling in the missing numbers on map till outnumbered went away as population balanced out.

As far as rewards, have various replies to that out there but to paraphrase I agree. We need multiple types and levels. We need to understand and have rewards that apply to the diverse groups of players we have. To me the goal of any type of reward associates to aiding your group in the "win" for the week. What form its conveyed in is also varied and should be. 

I say this since I associate said 'win' into more actual activity in WvW where as it makes sense to engage in all levels of play from solo to group to warband to zerg. We need to reward both the player for their own actions and to the team for their week long endeavor. Mind you I use reward as a general term that makes a player feel their time was well spent and that could be in the form of various things ranging from achievements to gold to titles to dailies to mats or whatever. This is also where balance between PPK and PPT comes in. PPK should reward the player more individually and PPT should reward the server/alliance more. The ideal balance should be the side that is more efficient should be awarded the win. Doing more with less should be the balance in numbers on a side which is why we need both PPT and PPK. PPK should play a player, but PPT should reward the server since they broke into groups to do more with less. Prior to the tier system same ideas were in the forums where we needed more reason to both take and hold. Pay a server more score for also holding what they have.

Again, poll in particular was to help gain insight based on the limited players that visit the forums into whether or not their behavior is now different and if it is limiting fights where it might have encouraged more fights.

Edited February 18, 2022 by TheGrimm.5624
forum double spacing bug

[Mabi black.1824]

hi grimm,

I can give you my personal feedback and what I see around me. the rule is always that, always defend. certainly with a little intelligence. what do you get?

first I can make a good call of an enemy attack in progress, second I can slow down the enemy attack, third if I am lucky and skilled I can take some enemy to the grave with me, and fourth if I have gained enough time and my team arrives then there will be fun.

I can also tell you that in recent months I see not only the defense but a bit all the more relaxed mode, but I believe that this is due to alliances coming. and this thing leaves all the teams a bit like pending, floating in the air.

 

now I tell you what are my wishes since you talked about ppt and ppk. it takes some work for the administrator.

with alliances I would like to build teams equal in number of players, and correct the coverage 24/7 on war points (if you are inferior your points are worth more than your opponent, automatic monitoring every 60 minutes)

the only way you have to win are war points, so capture structures and if possible keep structures.

I would like to have two classifications (a bit like in f1 drivers' standings and constructors' standings).

one ranking considers the score of the whole week and the other ranking considers only 120 minutes after the reset, which I would do daily (the teams remain the same but reset all the structures, throw you out of wvw for 3 min and reset all the maps every day at 19.00 continental hours).

at the end of the season I deliver the prizes to the first, second and third classified, the most coveted prize of gw2 I found maybe 3 or 4 in many years of play, the keys to the bltp chests.

10 to the first classified 5 to the second classified and 2 to the third classified. or something like that.

my only problem at that point with alliances are the seasons, 2 months are too short, I would like to feel part of my team for at least 6 months or more.

but these are just my wishes. do you like some of them too?

[Zyreva.1078]

5 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Again in my post history you will see I am about risk versus reward. Outnumbered is under that group. You risk more while outnumbered and players that do so should gain more.

Outnumbered fights involve a greater risk, but just playing on a map with outnumbered buff active does not. That's two very different situations and tying increased rewards to the latter does not reward greater risk.

Edited February 18, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[TheGrimm.5624]

18 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Outnumbered fights involve a greater risk, but just playing on a map with outnumbered buff active does not. That's two very different situations and tying increased rewards to the latter does not reward greater risk.

 

I understand your point and agree there is a difference between people just going to a outnumbered map to fight/hold and also for those ticking down. But we error on the side that all players are looking to game the system where as based on info from ANet there is only a small number of people that already would gain from outnumbered, which means after the change there are even less. The question is, was the majority of players just ticking down or players trying to play while outnumbered? I think it was less people just afking and more people that don't like to lose their stuff without trying to hold. I could be wrong. Since outnumbered paid for trying and failing and more for trying and winning maybe a better change would be the pip gain is tied to contribution. So if you are on an outnumbered map and doing nothing you lose that extra gain but if you are showing you are active you and can still score contribution you don't lose that value at making the attempt.

Again, I am a stubborn a#$ and will bang my pixel head against the wall to try and hold my side's stuff, but I know others will not so in order to not have everyone jump side while outnumbered we need incentives to have people try and hold the line and rewarding gameplay does that. And to many pips are rewarding gameplay. Reasons for winning a week are another which directly relate to holding your objectives, but we won't be there until after Alliances. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

19 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

hi grimm,

I can give you my personal feedback and what I see around me. the rule is always that, always defend.

 

 

While on SoR during its fall from T1 to T8 I think this is the aspect that almost made me leave the game as there was no one that would defend since it was a doomed endeavor and people choose to move on to just attack. My stubbornness wasn't allowing me to accept it was lost which would lead to un-fun moments and trying to hold the line that could not be held. Hence I question aspects that impacts defenders since even when defenders had more tools people would opt to go on the attack versus hold their ground. So now I try and look at and listen to players in game on why they don't defend and reflect others points on the forums since a lot people don't relay feedback here. 

Let me drop a separate reply to other points but wanted to drop a quick one to your first bit, appreciate your thoughts. 

Edited February 19, 2022 by TheGrimm.5624
forum double spacing bug

[Zyreva.1078]

9 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

I understand your point [...]

Apparently you don't. I'm not just talking about players semi afking fo rewards. You can actively play on an "outnumbered" map and still not take outnumbered fights, just as you can engage in outnumbered fights on a map that isn't. Whether a map has said buff active has absolutely nothing to do with the risk players are taking while playing. That's entirely up to the players themself and has absolutely nothing to do with the map they play on.

As far as i understand, you want extra rewards for outnumbered maps to incentivise players to hop on that map and help defend, but that never worked, because as soon enough reinforcements arrive, the buff and additional rewards are gone usually. Which is why the buff actually did the opposite of what it was supposed to do when it granted extra pips - because players wanted to keep that buff as much as possible they would not call for help and instead try to keep population low on said map. Which is exactly why it got removed.

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 2/19/2022 at 12:56 PM, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Apparently you don't. I'm not just talking about players semi afking fo rewards. You can actively play on an "outnumbered" map and still not take outnumbered fights, just as you can engage in outnumbered fights on a map that isn't. Whether a map has said buff active has absolutely nothing to do with the risk players are taking while playing. That's entirely up to the players themself and has absolutely nothing to do with the map they play on.

As far as i understand, you want extra rewards for outnumbered maps to incentivise players to hop on that map and help defend, but that never worked, because as soon enough reinforcements arrive, the buff and additional rewards are gone usually. Which is why the buff actually did the opposite of what it was supposed to do when it granted extra pips - because players wanted to keep that buff as much as possible they would not call for help and instead try to keep population low on said map. Which is exactly why it got removed.

 Same as others forgive me the delay, weekend so doing more playing than forums wars but do want to reply on this, more after the weekend, good gaming!

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 2/18/2022 at 9:11 AM, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

I didn't take your post as anything more than clarification so if it came out differently in my replies that was my bad word choice.

It is all good. It's been the same for me as the rest of you. I've not been around here for a few days. My follow up was not meant to be anything else than a clarification of the first post I made either. I only really made it because the first post took a perspective of playing and since you talked more about rewards, the second post meant to tie the playing and rewards bits together. As many of my posts it was also first meant to be much shorter (essentially just connecting the dots of the first post), but it is what it is. Like others, I often post before bed 🙂 .

Edited February 22, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Aeolus.3615]

On 2/16/2022 at 5:53 PM, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

That's nonsense. The outnumbered buff alone is not indicative of the map state let alone overall server population. It just means your world has less players than the other two worlds on a map at a certain time. Not more, not less. It is very much possible that those other servers are busy fighting each other, giving your world free reign on that map, or that your world has zergs on other maps, that might come and help out whenever neccessary. Likewise, not having outnumbered does not automatically mean your server is doing well on a map.

Since it seems to have a negative impact on players, maybe the outnumbered buff needs to be removed completely, so players stop getting discouraged for no reason ...

 

Not entirelly true but  servers that are outmanned are always the one farmed to no end, sometimes zergs of the other 2 servers wont engage each other and both ktrain diferent maps (home + EBG) of the outamaned server.

The outmanned servers m8 have shift of population later being the ones to ktrain other emptier servers that loose their zerg ktrain timezone.

This is my wvw experience  as some one who plays on NA it's 1/0  zerg vs empty servers fights each server has its own zerg time vs nothing, and ive been playing in ocx, eu and na timezones.

 

Note i m8 build some siege but when i see that no one cares and alt+f4 cause theres 1 or 2 zergs  going on sometimes in serveral maps.. imo im not online to make others get entertained and create content to them to recap.. over  and over.

Edited February 25, 2022 by Aeolus.3615

[Zyreva.1078]

52 minutes ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

 

Not entirelly true but  servers that are outmanned are always the one farmed to no end, sometimes zergs of the other 2 servers wont engage each other and both ktrain diferent maps (home + EBG) of the outamaned server.

[...]

That might be your experience, but what has this all to do with my post or the outnumbered buff?

[Aeolus.3615]

3 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

That might be your experience, but what has this all to do with my post or the outnumbered buff?

That Outnumbered is useless is more to tell players to not play today or at this time,.

If servers are blobbing an  outnumbered server for a ktrain,   structures should get scaled up  based on the size of the blob (nothing comes free), to make them make more effort  and kinda help or encourage defenders, a full t3 structure melts arround 1-2min, plus 1min or less to lord in a outmaned situation, theres no point of defense with the amount of siege against a fully scaled blob, even with a struture well sieges since there no players to use siege nor kill targets over time.

IF outmaned made structures scale up depending blob size only on outmaned situations could help, besides Anet have talked in the past about structures scaling up depending enemy forces, but making it only scale while on outmaned situations could be good, i can imagine QQ of players that only play WvW while outmaning enemy servers...

 

Edited February 25, 2022 by Aeolus.3615

[Sinester.3572]

To put a point in here, about this outnumber discuss, tell me how you fight us when we only let you have 4 camps an spawn kill =D, show that spirit of fighting, i would like to see. This image show exactly why you should not play against a outnumber force this will happen, the more you fight the more we like those bags. 

The outnumber buff really needs some kind of more appealing buff.

https://imgur.com/5YNZJVl

https://imgur.com/phzlWcI

IF you see the outnumber buff, go roam , go pvp, go pve, dont bother. Come back later, or start a guild run to get numbers. Outnumber buff should be way more strong, or more beneficial, otherwise, there is no point. 

My point is merge the servers too many servers for the current population, new wvw system maybe will fix that.

Edited February 25, 2022 by Sinester.3572

[Shiyo.3578]

On 2/14/2022 at 3:25 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

same here.

There is certain maps completly abandoned by the whole server. And the remaining players stack on another map.

Outnumbered = people leave the map

 

[SweetPotato.7456]

it has not impacted me since we are outnumbered everyday hahahahaha. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

At this point and based on map chat I am more tempted to say just remove the buff. It's just encouraging people to jump maps away. Leave players the sense they can do it versus others using it as its a lost cause sorry, head here. Have seen map chat, outnumbered, time to just go PvE. That is not a good sign for the game mode.

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 2/27/2022 at 8:07 PM, SweetPotato.7456 said:

it has not impacted me since we are outnumbered everyday hahahahaha. 

 

On 2/27/2022 at 8:07 PM, SweetPotato.7456 said:

it has not impacted me since we are outnumbered everyday hahahahaha. 

 

Sent you an oh hai incase we are linked and can roam together. Good hunting!