So let's talk Scoring

[godfat.2604]

If scoring should be based on population, why not make it more points when more players are standing in the circle capturing objectives? Or make it more points when one player is killed by multiple players. That would at least make it based on actual activity rather than handing out points even when people are idling or running into a wall... and a great excuse for everyone trying to stand inside a sentry circle. Forget about spreading out, right?

It's also not clear to me if ANet is actually looking at the dynamic of population, or predetermine the supposed to be population, and make a static multipliers based on a fixed timeline as they suggested in the table in the post. What if a supposed to be lower populated time, actually has more activities? Is this dynamic at all?

Edited: and of course, this is kinda walking back skirmishes, making it pointless.

Edited July 11 by godfat.2604

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Yes.  It's proportional scoring rather than an activity-level based multiplier that TylerB once outlined (even in his proposal both NA and EU primetimes would be locked at max multiplier).  It's proportional to the populations of other skirmishes rather than based on the population in a single skirmish.  TylerB's proposal still would have locked EU and NA prime skirmish at max multiplier regardless of the population in that single skirmish in order to fudge proportionality.

There's an EU player that does a much better job than I at explaining the proportional scoring using data he's pulled from the API for EU matches going back 6 months.  Anet has, of course, the accurate data on play times and hours.  He explained it this way: if 20% of EU activity is in the EU primetime skirmish, then they now will contribute 20% of the VP to the team.  Before they were contributing less than that.

The problem with this is the insane increase from 33%/66% score difference to 100%/200% score difference. It's not an issue with the individual 24h contribution of a team - it's about the differences for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the skirmish. It'll probably just lead to absolute blowouts with no hope for teams to fight against their closest in point and trying to go past it. Not to mention the impact of everyone off prime feeling worthless when they already "suffer" the vastly lower activity. It was about the fact that 2h of playtime for a player off prime should be worth the same as 2h of playtime for a player in prime. That these 2h get more "points per players" because there are less players is irrelevant.

Edited July 11 by Dawdler.8521

[Mistwraithe.3106]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

It was about the fact that 2h of playtime for a player off prime should be worth the same as 2h of playtime for a player in prime. That these 2h get more "points per players" because there are less players is irrelevant.

As someone who plays outside of peak NA time I'm not a fan of the change.

But, I can see that logically what Anet is doing is an attempt to make 2h of prime time player worth the same as 2h of an off peak time player. If there are 150 players active on each team at peak time and only 30 players active on each team off peak then strictly by the numbers you need to give out 5 times as many points during the peak time in order to make the efforts of each of those individual 150 players equal to the efforts of each of the individual 30 players. 

It's quite demotivating for off peak time players compared to what we used to have tho.

Our team is already complete rubbish in my time zone compared to the old server I was on and now they're reducing the motivation to try to do better for the team anyway. I've already reduced my play hours significantly, used to get to end of gold, platinum or higher virtually every week whereas since WR and the painful teamwork over the last few weeks weeks its been silver or bronze. I've switched my WV from WvW to PvE so it's time to give WvW a complete break and see if I end up on a more interesting team next relink.

[Safty.7326]

You could argue current system off peak hour players are far more valuable to the server then peak hour players if your servers' sole goal is to rise through the tiers. In NA we have seen this time and again if you simply look at the old server system with SoS and JQ as extreme examples. They had mediocre to poor NA prime time coverage yet sat in tier 2 to tier 1.

I am guessing the new scoring system is to change the mentality of alliances/servers looking to coverage as a form of manipulation.

[Dawdler.8521]

5 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

But, I can see that logically what Anet is doing is an attempt to make 2h of prime time player worth the same as 2h of an off peak time player. If there are 150 players active on each team at peak time and only 30 players active on each team off peak then strictly by the numbers you need to give out 5 times as many points during the peak time in order to make the efforts of each of those individual 150 players equal to the efforts of each of the individual 30 players. 

I mean if we condense WvW to capping a single objective… 10 vs 10 vs 10 fighting around it would be the same ”activity” as 50 vs 50 vs 50 fighting around it. Someone gonna cap it. Someone gonna loose it. Someone gonna be unable to do either. Why would the objective itself suddenly be worth 5x more? They’re already individually rewarded 5x more and much faster with the higher player count since kills would roll in.

But yes I understand what they’re trying to do. I suppose we will see what the effect of it is next shuffle unless they change it mid month.

Edited July 12 by Dawdler.8521

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

So... 2 hours effort at prime time is worth 10 hours of effort during off-hours?

Is that how baseball innings work? 7th inning is Worth more than 1st - 6th innings combined?

Is that how jobs work? Earn $1000 if you work from 10am til 11am but earn $15/ hour any other time of day?

I thought they offered MORE per hour to work at night, not less... to incentivize off-hours labor.

Oh wait, my logic is flawed because it wouldn't give big prime time zergs special treatment...

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

11 minutes ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

So... 2 hours effort at prime time is worth 10 hours of effort during off-hours?

Is that how baseball innings work? 7th inning is Worth more than 1st - 6th innings combined?

Is that how jobs work? Earn $1000 if you work from 10am til 11am but earn $15/ hour any other time of day?

I thought they offered MORE per hour to work at night, not less... to incentivize off-hours labor.

Oh wait, my logic is flawed because it wouldn't give big prime time zergs special treatment...

well logic is flawed if comparing to baseball because you can't field one inning with 3 people then with 70

[b k.1648]

So long as individual rewards aren't allocated based on which time slice you're playing in, I couldn't care less what the server points are. I'm seeing outnumbered on every map most nights anyway, so I have bigger problems to think about.

[DeWolfe.2174]

Does the number of objectives dynamically scale in proportion to the number of players on map? NOPE!
This "more players, more points" nonsense is dumb when they have less to do in relation to the objectives they need to defend and attack.
Lower population hours require far more effort and coordination to scout, defend, and flip.

And again, it's a form of discrimination to devalue paying customers based on geographic location. If there was a discrimination lawsuit on this, they would lose.

As we all suspected, the scoring changes are rewarding blobbing and punishing everything else.
Population is going to crater as roamers, scouts, builders, ppt'ers, and pugs are being setup as cannon fodder for said blob.
The modes population is going to deflate as the incentive is to just pip farm for GoB and disengage as much as possible.

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

1 hour ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

And again, it's a form of discrimination to devalue paying customers based on geographic location. If there was a discrimination lawsuit on this, they would lose

So making equal contributions per player because more players play at prime hours is discrimination that seems like the opposite of discrimination and more like equal representation.

[Dawdler.8521]

5 hours ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

well logic is flawed if comparing to baseball because you can't field one inning with 3 people then with 70

But if you could, then in this "inning" would 3 people have to make more effort to play or would the 70 people have to make more effort?

Honest question, I have no idea how baseball works. I know how a soccer comparison would work - pretty sure 3 people would have to work alot harder than 70 people on the field.

[Chaba.5410]

4 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But if you could, then in this "inning" would 3 people have to make more effort to play or would the 70 people have to make more effort?

Honest question, I have no idea how baseball works. I know how a soccer comparison would work - pretty sure 3 people would have to work alot harder than 70 people on the field.

If you have 70 players against 3, you don't have to work as hard, right?  Why should you get more points then?  But if you have 70 players against 70, it's harder work.  You should get more more points if you win, no?

[Dawdler.8521]

13 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

If you have 70 players against 3, you don't have to work as hard, right?  Why should you get more points then?  But if you have 70 players against 70, it's harder work.  You should get more more points if you win, no?

True. But then if it was 3 against 3, would they have to work harder or easier? Would the achievement of winning make any difference if there was 6 goals or 60 goals? You still just get one win, dont you?

[CafPow.1542]

I don’t get it… do we favour 2h skirmishes or nah?

cause i feel like it is a good thing.

[Cyninja.2954]

5 hours ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

Does the number of objectives dynamically scale in proportion to the number of players on map? NOPE!
This "more players, more points" nonsense is dumb when they have less to do in relation to the objectives they need to defend and attack.
Lower population hours require far more effort and coordination to scout, defend, and flip.

At equal numbers, maybe (and even that isn't guaranteed) but given the stacking situation especially during offhours, no.

If you blob over the opponent easily because your server has stacked players which pöay offhours, that's just as skilled as outnumbering the opponent during prime time, which is to say: not at all.

Quote

And again, it's a form of discrimination to devalue paying customers based on geographic location. If there was a discrimination lawsuit on this, they would lose.

Please start a lawsuit. Just do it. Grab your cash, get a lawyer, actually go through what is needed to actually start a lawsuit and see which lawyer even takes this case. Discrimination, some of you have no idea what that word means by now given it gets used every time someone has their feelings hurt.

Typical online pseudo legal bs from someone who has never seen a courtroom from the inside least of all won a case.

Quote

As we all suspected, the scoring changes are rewarding blobbing and punishing everything else.

While I would have prefered the WR system to better allocate players for more even match-ups and scoring is of little value unless there is something to be won, I can see where the developers are coming from.

Encourage prime time engagement.

Rewards are barely affected by these changes

Quote

Population is going to crater as roamers, scouts, builders, ppt'ers, and pugs are being setup as cannon fodder for said blob.
The modes population is going to deflate as the incentive is to just pip farm for GoB and disengage as much as possible.

Which is exactly where offhour ppt is at now: farm rewards, ppt in peace, flip as much of the enemies structures while they are undermanned so they start with t0 strucutres in the morning.

I don't see the change tbh.

[TheGrimm.5624]

The spread across time zones does seem off, agree even while it favors the time zone I am in, in NA. Roy should have shared more details on the why of his numbers to explain.

[Mabi black.1824]

On 7/11/2024 at 7:52 PM, DeWolfe.2174 said:

Pretty much this! The dev's appear to be listening to a handful of tags/streamers who want turn WvW into some super sweetie competitive mode that only matters for a fraction of the day.

It's not about who you listen to. It's about how you want to use the gray matter that we have inside our heads. You can listen to tons of suggestions, but in the end, you have to make your own choices. Choose which problem you want to solve, and choose which mathematical model you want to use to solve it. Because things can be dealt with and resolved in multiple ways. You need to check the result and how effective you were in achieving that result. in terms of reliability .The questions you'll have to ask yourself is whether that result is consistent, and whether this consistency is always verifiable, even when we change/modify all the parameters around it.

[CafPow.1542]

5 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Please start a lawsuit. Just do it. Grab your cash, get a lawyer, actually go through what is needed to actually start a lawsuit and see which lawyer even takes this case. Discrimination, some of you have no idea what that word means by now given it gets used every time someone has their feelings hurt.

Typical online pseudo legal bs from someone who has never seen a courtroom from the inside least of all won a case.

True man.

even if it would be justified i hate the idea of „running to daddy government / lawyer cause billy hurt my feelies“.

just be a decent adult and cope with it. But that’s offtopic kinda.

 

6 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Which is exactly where offhour ppt is at now: farm rewards, ppt in peace, flip as much of the enemies structures while they are undermanned so they start with t0 strucutres in the morning.

We had 2 commanders on drakkar that started their ppt train every morning. Like at 6 am. They flipped all the maps and you barely saw any other player cause those servers where still sleeping. This was kinda the „boring pve experience“ lol.

but it was good for pips, wxp, weeklies etc. i liked to participate on those when i could for 1-2 hours.

i work in shifts and also have my „weekends“ sometimes during the weekdays. So i can visit wvw potentially 24/7. i mean it’s possible that you meet me monday morning at 5 am or sunday late at 11 pm or whatever.

i know exactly how the „player waves“ with high pop times and low pop times happen. That’s why i think that skirmishes with 2 hours are fine and equal it out a bit between primetimes and offtimes.

 

 

[Mabi black.1824]

On 7/11/2024 at 8:32 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

Not this again...

If you can't tell the difference between skirmish population levels across a set of regional worlds, I don't know how to make this clear to you.

You don't have to explain it chaba, you just have to listen for a moment and reflect. If you play in ''prime time'' you are not penalized at all, on the contrary you will be more rewarded, because more players = more content = more things to do = more fun. Also, you have to tell me what's different for you if we're talking about 10 vs 10 rather than 50 vs 50. How is the skill and commitment of all those players you mentioned to be looked ( and evaluated ) at differently?

Edited July 13 by Mabi black.1824

[Cyninja.2954]

17 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

You don't have to explain it chaba, you just have to listen for a moment and reflect. If you play in ''prime time'' you are not penalized at all, on the contrary you will be more rewarded, because more players = more content = more things to do = more fun. Also, you have to tell me what's different for you if we're talking about 10 vs 10 rather than 50 vs 50. How is the skill and commitment of all those players you mentioned to be looked ( and evaluated ) at differently?

Because they are trying to fix population and engagement issues via points because this is in fact not about the 10v10 or 50v50 fights, it's about the 50v10 and 10v2 fights.

Offhours allow for far less committed players to dominate their opponents, due to natural lower activity, which the developers feel should be reflected im the VP awarded.

[Mabi black.1824]

1 hour ago, CafPow.1542 said:

I don’t get it… do we favour 2h skirmishes or nah?

cause i feel like it is a good thing.

A little reasoning. Our ''points delivery'' system is well done, because even if we are talking about 70 players vs 10 at most, one server gets 5 points and the other 3 points. A difference of only 2 points, this in itself mitigates the ''characteristic'' of this game mode, which is: number of players in continuous alternation. If you hand me the points every hour it's just a better thing. Because in 60 minutes we know that the conditions on a map can drastically change.

If by chance your goal is to provide a ''perfect'' score in reference to the ''WVW feature'' that I indicated earlier, we can simply process through a coefficient (multiplier if you prefer) the total VPs accumulated every 24 hours compared to the difference of '' hours played '' of the 3 competing servers.

finished. Easy, clean and transparent like spring water.

Edited July 13 by Mabi black.1824

[Mabi black.1824]

12 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Because they are trying to fix population and engagement issues via points because this is in fact not about the 10v10 or 50v50 fights, it's about the 50v10 and 10v2 fights.

Offhours allow for far less committed players to dominate their opponents, due to natural lower activity, which the developers feel should be reflected im the VP awarded.

These developers should take a deep breath, and calmly consider these ''differences'' in population as a feature of our game mode and not a 'problem''. Something that surely was well aware of those who created this large-scale PvP game. Now, as it should be 10 years later, we want the score to take a step forward and clearly reflect skill over quantity, and I totally agree.

It's just that the way they're doing it is just plain wrong.

[CafPow.1542]

14 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

If by chance your goal is to provide a ''perfect'' score in reference to the ''WVW feature'' that I indicated earlier, we can simply process through a coefficient (multiplier if you prefer) the total VPs accumulated every 24 hours compared to the difference of '' hours played '' of the 3 competing servers.

finished. Easy, clean and transparent like spring water.

I may misunderstand that.

so we let a match go for 24 hours and based in the different playtimes in those 24h we kinda put in some ominous coefficient that does this or that for a team or not. This is by no means „clear“ or transparent imo. Also 24h are very long. This couldn’t also be 1 simple coefficient it had to be a ridiculous overcomplicated coefficient cause having 50vs20vs20 is not the same like 20v3v5 or even 50v1v1 in the night etc.

you need to think about different factors then. It’s way simpler to just say „everyone gets the same and every 2hours we reset“.

 

/edit:

differences in Player amount should already be solved through WR. It should also solve differences in timezones and whatnot if you put the teams kinda equally together.

Edited July 13 by CafPow.1542

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

9 hours ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

well logic is flawed if comparing to baseball because you can't field one inning with 3 people then with 70

organized baseball maybe... but when i was a kid, we'd play with 3 people total... 1 would pitch, one would bat, and one would play outfield... and since this is a game, i consider it like children playing baseball for fun. which is ironic compared to working real world jobs, but either way, 1 run is 1 run, regardless of which inning it's scored in... should i have use d1 v 1 basketball instead? a basket scored during the first quarter is still worth 2 points (unless it's a 3 - pointer shot from outside the 3 - point line, but even 3 pointers are still 3 - pointers no matter which quarter it's scored in...)

the point of me saying that my logic is flawed was two fold:

1) Anet favors prime time zergs in their WvW changes

2) it doesn't matter what my arguments actually are, and it doesn't matter if they're logical or not, rational or not, Anet will Anet, and there will always be people that disagree with me.

[Mabi black.1824]

40 minutes ago, CafPow.1542 said:

I may misunderstand that.

You misunderstood. We can continue to deliver points every 2 hours as we do now. An example of what it could be. A team that has won all 6 skirmishes earns 5x6 = 30 points/day. The other team has lost all 6 skirmishes and earns 3x6=18 points/day. At the end of the day, just for hypothesis, the hours of play of the first team are exactly twice as long as those of the second team. So the real points earned will be: the first team 30x1 coefficient of hours of play = 30 The second team will have 18x2 coefficient of hours of play = 36. The second team, with half of the players available, is actually winning, slightly, but is winning (incentive for the player to propose the content even when outnumbered). And it's just a first hypothesis. You can do 100 more.

There's nothing creepy about math, if you know how it works and especially how to use it.