When the Participation System Punishes Participation

[KeyOrion.9506]

The participation system is supposed to stop people AFKing in WvW, which takes up a body slot for those that wish to get into the map and play in WvW actively.  Unfortunately quite a few players have multilpe accounts, and sit their alternate account characters in WvW, while giving them participation.  So you can have one guy that has 5 to 10 seperate accounts with 5 to 10 seperate toons, afk'ing in spawn, running into a wall, so that one player can rake in Rewards.  It's severely messed up.  Because Participation was supposed to help stop this from happening.  If anything it gave them new tools to take up space in WvW.

[Xenesis.6389]

3 minutes ago, KeyOrion.9506 said:

The participation system is supposed to stop people AFKing in WvW, which takes up a body slot for those that wish to get into the map and play in WvW actively.  Unfortunately quite a few players have multilpe accounts, and sit their alternate account characters in WvW, while giving them participation.  So you can have one guy that has 5 to 10 seperate accounts with 5 to 10 seperate toons, afk'ing in spawn, running into a wall, so that one player can rake in Rewards.  It's severely messed up.  Because Participation was supposed to help stop this from happening.  If anything it gave them new tools to take up space in WvW.

Pics or it doesn't happen...?

Seriously, never seen more than 1 or 2 people at a time running into a wall to stay logged in.

[neven.3785]

The moogooloo mag folks likely would not have fared as well in other tiers during the beta.  There were multiple teams with several guilds who run 40-50 deep which is something they can't truly counter, just annoy.

[KeyOrion.9506]

8 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Pics or it doesn't happen...?

Seriously, never seen more than 1 or 2 people at a time running into a wall to stay logged in.

There's a few hidey holes near the spawn areas.  Maybe your just lucky or not at the same time as the players that use this method to rake in rewards.  I found six guys one time in a corner near a tower, in a spot nobody even visits anymore in WvW, runing into a wall.  I suppose it could have been a single player, multiboxing which would be very bad in WvW situation, if players started to multibox.

[idpersona.3810]

10 hours ago, KeyOrion.9506 said:

There's a few hidey holes near the spawn areas.  Maybe your just lucky or not at the same time as the players that use this method to rake in rewards.  I found six guys one time in a corner near a tower, in a spot nobody even visits anymore in WvW, runing into a wall.  I suppose it could have been a single player, multiboxing which would be very bad in WvW situation, if players started to multibox.

So how does that help, because won't their participation be crap, which would make rewards next to nothing? (genuine question since I don't understand).

[Kal Durak.2830]

19 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Pics or it doesn't happen...?

Seriously, never seen more than 1 or 2 people at a time running into a wall to stay logged in.

You joke.... haha or are a complete newb?

[Xenesis.6389]

1 hour ago, DtenCfour.3567 said:

You joke.... haha or are a complete newb?

How does that make me a newb? I've never seen a group running afk in spawn, and I've never seen a cluster of green dots in areas that would seem like they're running afk in place. Maybe they're just not widespread as some of you think? maybe it's only on your server? we have one guy that does it on et, and obviously mag does it more often cause ebg is always queued, but I've not see groups do it, 1-2 people.

So please almighty experienced 10k rank player, provide the pics to uncover these underground marathon running afkers that flood our maps into queues. If they're so popular should be easy for you all to run there and take pics right now.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

with respect... placing your character on Autorun in WvW just simply prevents the character from being logged out. it doesn't guarantee rewards from pips, because a certain level of participation (the system) is needed in order to obtain pips toward the chests. these characters don't "rake in the rewards." Only characters that are actively being played, taking objectives, and defeating opponents can even remotely be considered as "raking in the rewards", and are still earning far fewer rewards than quite a few PvE activities.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

with respect... placing your character on Autorun in WvW just simply prevents the character from being logged out. it doesn't guarantee rewards from pips, because a certain level of participation (the system) is needed in order to obtain pips toward the chests. these characters don't "rake in the rewards." Only characters that are actively being played, taking objectives, and defeating opponents can even remotely be considered as "raking in the rewards", and are still earning far fewer rewards than quite a few PvE activities.

 

This is pretty true for all but the most dedicated wall runners that keep their account to t6 participation by taking a nearby objective every so often.  Usually these have a goal though like gift of battle, I don't know anyone sanely doing this for rewards as WvW rewards are utter trash.

Seriously, speaking from a perspective of no longer really needing any WvW currency, the only valuable thing you get is memories of battle.  You can sell as stack every so often for 40-50g; that's if you are at the point where you no longer need them at all (which I'm not sure if most actually are at this point).  

The sad part is the rest of the tracks offer mostly trash, or have trash baked into them like the EoD track with its 'junk item that may be 10s or 1g' boxes.  You literally are better off doing PvE or even sPvP for far better rewards.  

It seems easy to just 10x the reward of like a yak escort as at least it means someone is doing something other than mindlessly capturing empty objectives or sieging up t3 objectives so no capture can occur.  

[neven.3785]

AFK farming is definately more lucrative in PvE land.  Always fun to run up to the Revs and apply might to them so their self torment kills them off.   Some of them arent afk though just multitasking on their PC while they wait for something interesting to start.   Participation farmers are doing the same, but they often need an objective recontesting to repair (and supply) or a camp that keeps flipping to keep things going.  While not efficient for them or effective for their team, it's still allowed but benefits the other teams more. 

 

There is another issue though that you may be seeing, some commanders sell shared participation slots so pve players can farm their gifts of battle by afking, so your team may have a commander who does this regularly.  Several of the commerce guilds from pveland have all sorts of services to purchase for gold.  That or you just have a lot of people taking coordinated bathroom breaks.

 

[Xenesis.6389]

3 minutes ago, neven.3785 said:

There is another issue though that you may be seeing, some commanders sell shared participation slots so pve players can farm their gifts of battle by afking, so your team may have a commander who does this regularly.  Several of the commerce guilds from pveland have all sorts of services to purchase for gold.  That or you just have a lot of people taking coordinated bathroom breaks.

Do they advertise for this in some back channel? like discord or lfg panel? cause I never see people selling slots in wvw channels.

I'm a complete newb!

[neven.3785]

PvE discords is where they advertise, ive seen rates of 20-40gold an hour for participation slots

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 1/3/2023 at 10:17 AM, Xenesis.6389 said:

Nothing wrong with the algorithm when players CHOOSE not to show up, they have the players, but they CHOOSE not to show up.

Last 2 times my server had faced Maguuma:

Oct 22-29 (linked with Darkhaven, our server was definitely dead last)

Comparing stats on Gw2Efficiency during that time yields:

376 kills -- Not exactly a lot of anything with no real groups.

14 hours of total gameplay

10 deaths

17 ranks

 

On December 3-10 we faced "Mag" or more precisely, "MAG", or Moogalloo. Obvious landslide victory in favor of them, especially we didn't have much on our alliance, except for like VIP or something.

519 kills

19 hours of total gameplay

14 deaths

14 ranks

So with this, I can conclude I go afk a lot... Wait, was that the point?

Well one thing is clear. I wasn't doing any "farming" as many WvWers love to claim. If you follow an organized boonball all day you'll get 5k+ kills a week as shown on Gw2 mists. So most of my activity is in small scale and defending or working with pug zergs that got stomped a lot.

But regardless, of what anyone thinks, I can say that I was doing much more than getting spawn killed.

 

Or maybe I just afk a lot.

If you are an actual roamer (especially solo roamer), you will obviously die a lot more just because of how the game works. But if you're casually farming pips and merely just defending an enemy and taking back stuff, you really should be pulling your own weight in kills/deaths.

Of course, you can't blame people for frustration when their team feeds like lemmings though. Even if you get reward track, you may feel you're better off doing something else.

 

  

On 1/3/2023 at 1:19 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

Seriously, never seen more than 1 or 2 people at a time running into a wall to stay logged in.

Punishing legit players for abuse from players that may or may not exist is never a good idea anyways . PvE for example is loaded with bots yet it doesn't stop them from  trashing the rewards.

Also coming as someone that made 700 gold off selling Wintersday food, I feel that's just a stupid waste of electricity just to steal pennies but that's just me.

Not to mention it would seem more obvious that autorunning to stay on is the bigger problem that could be dealt with, not screwing everyone that plays the game mode.

Edited January 4, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Noc Rubu.5804]

On 1/4/2023 at 5:14 AM, KeyOrion.9506 said:

The participation system is supposed to stop people AFKing in WvW, which takes up a body slot for those that wish to get into the map and play in WvW actively.  Unfortunately quite a few players have multilpe accounts, and sit their alternate account characters in WvW, while giving them participation.  So you can have one guy that has 5 to 10 seperate accounts with 5 to 10 seperate toons, afk'ing in spawn, running into a wall, so that one player can rake in Rewards.  It's severely messed up.  Because Participation was supposed to help stop this from happening.  If anything it gave them new tools to take up space in WvW.

It is very obvious as you said, been that way for awhile. 

[Gehenna.3625]

On 1/3/2023 at 7:17 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

Nothing wrong with the algorithm when players CHOOSE not to show up, they have the players, but they CHOOSE not to show up.

The interesting question there is WHY they don't show up.

[Xenesis.6389]

Just now, Gehenna.3625 said:

The interesting question there is WHY they don't show up.

Game too hard.

 

Oh and preemptive - Thanks for the confusion ppter's 🤣 btw sos doesn't seem to have trouble ppting and double teaming in t2, hm wonder what their problem really was.

[jaif.3518]

I haven't followed this topic all the way through, but I don't think mucking with the participation numbers will make a serious difference in population. 

 

It's not clear to me how long wvw in this game has.  Enough old pop has gone that I'm not sure they can bring it back in the long run.  But I doubt the participation calculation is the lynchpin to success.