The scoring changes are the wrong solution

[XenesisII.1540]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I mean come on. We know why. Just like alliances, Anet is probably backtracking on trying to weight the overall skills/coverage of guilds and thus the WR distribution algorithm. The easy solution? Forget about coverage and make prime matter the most where queues limit the amount of players anyway.

I suppose that's one way to handle it, mass blanket all timeszones but Prime. Which then begs the question, was WR really needed at this point then, since guilds were moving anyways to avoid queues. Probably should have tested the scoring changes on the old system first, although WR was so far along, and taking so long it was going to come out no matter what.

Edited July 24 by XenesisII.1540

[RisingDawn.5796]

With relinks and team matching every 4 weeks, does it matter, which scoring system they use anyway?

As we all know it takes a couple of weeks, for teams or worlds to end up in the right tiers, against equal enough servers, not necessarily in terms of kdr, but more coverage and terms of population, as much as possible in whatever population distribution system which is used, whether people play on main or alt accounts.

So after 6 weeks for this one off round of Team matching, even with the wrong scaling on the EU, it looks like tiers 1-4, would have around the same outcome in terms of victory points won, by reset. 

1

Mirror of Lyssa 

1014

Bava Nisos 

560

Kormir's Library 

479

2

Ettin's Back 

820

Palawadan 

645

Grenth's Door 

588

3

Bloodstone Gulch 

908

Frost Citadel 

723

Fortune's Vale 

422

 

Edited July 25 by RisingDawn.5796

[Chaba.5410]

7 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Pretty baffling they would use weights based on the entire region instead of per match.

Because every time teams are shuffled, it uses the entire region to create the teams from.

[Chaba.5410]

Players want to frame this scoring change in terms of fairness between timezones so I modified this old cartoon in order to illustrate the fairness of the original scores before the change.

https://ibb.co/7NCF396

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Players want to frame this scoring change in terms of fairness between timezones so I modified this old cartoon in order to illustrate the fairness of the original scores before the change.

https://ibb.co/7NCF396

Except the prime person is sitting in a clown car with endless people running out and the off prime keep dying to the first roamer.

5 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Which then begs the question, was WR really needed at this point then, since guilds were moving anyways to avoid queues.

Lyssa is quite literally the example on how stacked worlds worked and why it needs continuous shuffling to break the monotomy, not just a one time deal and leaving it there for months on end.

At best one could argue that we needed 2-3x the worlds to make the link system more granular but that would have meant a WR anyway. Changing the scoring system to this wouldn’t have changed stacked worlds, it’s all in player behaviour.

 

Edited July 25 by Dawdler.8521

[XenesisII.1540]

21 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Lyssa is quite literally the example on how stacked worlds worked and why it needs continuous shuffling to break the monotomy, not just a one time deal and leaving it there for months on end.

At best one could argue that we needed 2-3x the worlds to make the link system more granular but that would have meant a WR anyway. Changing the scoring system to this wouldn’t have changed stacked worlds, it’s all in player behaviour.

Lyssa is also an example of WR system sorting efficiency. 🤭

I suppose we'll see how the next 4 weeks go. 🤷‍♂️

[Chaba.5410]

10 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Lyssa is also an example of WR system sorting efficiency. 🤭

I suppose we'll see how the next 4 weeks go. 🤷‍♂️

Which we were already told will be adjusted:

"there are a couple of teams that stand out as unbalanced, and even on well-balanced matchups we have noticed some performance gaps at specific times of day. We'll be adjusting the algorithm to better address this for the next team creation at the end of July. "

 

[A Hamster.2580]

14 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

It basically means that the contribution of players during off-peak times is worth significantly less than the same contribution by players at peak times.

This claim is being made under the implied assumption that there is only one player per time zone.

As an easy counter example to this, let's look at the case of 70 players playing during prime time and 15 players playing during off hours. Those 15 players playing during off hours will be valued more per player even under this new system than the 70 players playing during prime time.

14 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

To elaborate a bit further, I think it is unfair because there are many players who can not choose when they play the game due to real world constraints (work, family, timezone/location, etc...) and penalising those players for this by making their contribution less meaningful, for something they usually can't control, is completely unfair, and perhaps even crossing into the realm of discrimination.

This goes both ways. Under the old system and using the counter example mentioned above, those 70 players playing during prime time have been penalized vs the 15 players playing during off hours. The point of this new system is to lessen this inequality. No one is saying that it will be mathematically perfect, but anyone with a STEM degree will clearly see it is a lot better than the old system.

14 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

I also think there are great risks in using static weights:
1) The data that the weights were based on are not made transparent or reviewed by anyone other than Roy, CC and possibly Trig.
2) The weights assume that all teams follow the same pattern of activity, which is certainly not true.
3) Player activity patterns will change over time - the weights need to be dynamic. Do we have any information on how regularly these static weights will be reviewed or updated? And isn't it just adding more overhead for Arenanet to that manually? Shoudn't that process be automated?
4) I am concerned that players can exploit the static weights by deliberately timing their activity so that it coincides with the peak times, out of a desire for the contribution to have the greatest impact. And I'm referring here to those players that would otherwise perhaps play at others times of the day.

1.) I don't see why Anet is obliged to release internal data like that. How do we know you won't go a step further and asked for the hypothetically released data to be verified and not made up?

2.) Since the teams are not static anymore under this new WR system, you have to take the average pattern of the entire NA/EU playerbase. You cannot make this based on teams/servers/shards anymore.

3.) Huh no. We have over a decade to know which timeslots are prime time and which timeslots are off hours. Sure an individual player activity pattern might change, but you gotta look at the entire NA/EU playerbase. Remember, not as a team/shard/server, but the entire playerbase.

4.) It goes both ways. Players can exploit the old system by playing off hours and avoiding the hard fights during prime time. At least with this new system, there are way less prime time time zones to be exploited versus the off hours time zones.

14 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

In my opinion, a better solution would have been to weight the scores dynamically based on the number of people actively playing on each side on each map at any given moment. This ensures that even when player populations are not equal, each team can still remain competitive. Dynamic scoring would encourage all players to pull their weight and be mindful that they are contributing efficiently. 

This can easily be exploited by players with dozens of alt accounts. I personally know one player with more than 30 alts used primarily for WvW scouting.

14 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

I also think that increasing the score per kill from 2 to 3, together with many other changes in recent WvW patches (including world restructuring), mean it now caters mostly for the fighting guilds. This is concerning for casual players.

As it should. WvW is for players seeking epic fights whether they are solo or in guilds. It should not have to cater to open world casual players at all.

[Riba.3271]

"WvW is not 24/7 gamemode, only log in at primetime"

If the game was released with this scoring system, it would be same as telling Asians/Australians/Russians that they are just not the games customerbase. Same applies to other people who cannot play during primetime. Imagine if Samsung only released phones/TVs with Korean language and no way to change it.. Would be pretty bad sales, right?

I don't see how the gamemode, or GW2 as whole, would be as succesful if it was released with this new scoring system. Hopefully the devs try to be constructive rather than destructive in the future.

Edited July 25 by Riba.3271

[Conner.4702]

2 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

"WvW is not 24/7 gamemode, only log in at primetime"

If the game was released with this scoring system, it would be same as telling Asians/Australians/Russians that they are just not the games customerbase. Same applies to other people who cannot play during primetime. Imagine if Samsung only released phones/TVs with Korean language and no way to change it.. Would be pretty bad sales, right?

I don't see how the gamemode, or GW2 as whole, would be as succesful if it was released with this new scoring system. Hopefully the devs try to be constructive rather than destructive in the future.

It's not a great argument, because the same could be said for years about off hours having way more impact than prime time. If your opponent dominated all night and morning why bother putting in any effort during prime time with a flat scoring system.

I don't care about the score one bit. It makes no difference in the end most people will play when they have time and I doubt many will vhange their play hours just because of scoring changes.

[Zyreva.1078]

Scoring in WvW is and was never "fair". It should just be treated as means for matchmaking and nothing else and if the new system works better for that purpose than the old one remains to be seen. (And that's also why player rewards should never be based on match score - it's not going to be fair).

[Dawdler.8521]

50 minutes ago, Conner.4702 said:

It's not a great argument, because the same could be said for years about off hours having way more impact than prime time. If your opponent dominated all night and morning why bother putting in any effort during prime time with a flat scoring system.

Which in turn is an argument that only goes around in circles. If your opponent dominated all day and all evening why bother putting in any effort into night and morning with a flat scoring system? 🤷‍♂️

[Mabi black.1824]

8 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

This goes both ways. Under the old system and using the counter example mentioned above, those 70 players playing during prime time have been penalized vs the 15 players playing during off hours. The point of this new system is to lessen this inequality. No one is saying that it will be mathematically perfect, but anyone with a STEM degree will clearly see it is a lot better than the old system.

I think the graduates who originally created WVW understood its point system of this team game, where teams are like 2000 players in a 24/7 format, were definitely more prepared. These teams express themselves on 4 maps with a maximum limit of 70 players at a time. So in our format the alternation of numbers (first higher, then lower and sometimes the same even in prime time) are a characteristic, not something you have to correct.

And fortunately, I add, you know how boring it is to always see the same team surpass the others with numbers. or not? Anyone with a STEM degree should understand this. Keep in mind that we give the point to the server not to the player. Whether it is 1 or 10 the point earned is still for the server. Large-scale PVP = participation. and not single player, choose the difficulty level and press start.

With all this in mind, a point system that generates a maximum delta of 2 points (3 - 5) difference is evident that it is able to mitigate what is a feature of this game mode. on the contrary, the new wristwatch point system generates a max delta of 28 points (42-14), it is evident that it exaggerates what is a characteristic of this mode, turning it into a problem. Above all, an insurmountable problem, because after 6 hours you will get a maximum delta of 4 points (2-6) adding a new problem never seen before. Serie A player and Serie B player.

 

Edited July 25 by Mabi black.1824

[Conner.4702]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Which in turn is an argument that only goes around in circles. If your opponent dominated all day and all evening why bother putting in any effort into night and morning with a flat scoring system? 🤷‍♂️

Non argument. It's very unlikely that if you're losing massively during prime time that you'll not be dominated during off hours.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I think the graduates who originally created WVW understood its point system of this team game

Yes, the graduates who had also made DAOC was pretty good.

[Mabi black.1824]

I just watched a video for a few minutes where I see the development guys in the face, and they are very young guys, and this explains many things to me.So I say to these young boys, that: first they should at least listen a little to those who have a few white hairs on their heads; second, they must take a deep breath and consider that all changes must have as their primary objective to intercept the largest number of players. and better yet, new players. How can you achieve this if you give a different and negligible value to that portion of players who play outside what you have chosen to define as prime time? How do you achieve this when you choose to define a portion of players as filler, no one wants to be a filler for sure rather than they don't play. And third, it's not like I can talk to the dad about any of these development guys, so maybe we can make them reason? 🤭

Edited July 25 by Mabi black.1824

[Sheff.4851]

50 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I just watched a video for a few minutes where I see the development guys in the face, and they are very young guys, and this explains many things to me.So I say to these young boys, that: first they should at least listen a little to those who have a few white hairs on their heads; second, they must take a deep breath and consider that all changes must have as their primary objective to intercept the largest number of players. and better yet, new players. How can you achieve this if you give a different and negligible value to that portion of players who play outside what you have chosen to define as prime time? How do you achieve this when you choose to define a portion of players as filler, no one wants to be a filler for sure rather than they don't play. And third, it's not like I can talk to the dad about any of these development guys, so maybe we can make them reason? 🤭

What video was this?

[Experimentee.7612]

I also have memories of the WvW seasons being quite stressful and leading to burnout. At the same time, I treasure memories of rushing home from work to see how my server (Gandara) was scoring, jumping into voice comms and hearing the intense communication and coordination that took place. I treasure memories of staying up late for the sake of the realm, and going into work the following days completely exhausted, but content that I gave my all and made a contribution. I have never experienced anything like that since. Working as a team with so many other strangers on the internet for one common goal was incredible. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they bring seasons back occasionally. 
 

14 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

This claim is being made under the implied assumption that there is only one player per time zone.

As an easy counter example to this, let's look at the case of 70 players playing during prime time and 15 players playing during off hours. Those 15 players playing during off hours will be valued more per player even under this new system than the 70 players playing during prime time.

This goes both ways. Under the old system and using the counter example mentioned above, those 70 players playing during prime time have been penalized vs the 15 players playing during off hours. The point of this new system is to lessen this inequality. No one is saying that it will be mathematically perfect, but anyone with a STEM degree will clearly see it is a lot better than the old system.

I'm confused. How did you reach the conclusion that I assumed there is only one player per time zone?  As for your counter example, I want to be clear that under the system I propose, the time of day becomes completely irrelevant. It depends entirely on how many players are actively involved in the map, at any point in time. If one side has fewer players, then the points they score will be scaled up to account for the difference in the number of players on each team. While the weights that were applied in the recently implemented system do lessen the inequality you mentioned (to prevent the 15 off-peak players outscoring the efforts of the 70 players at peak times), the problem is that it does so in a way that makes the effort of players in off peak times less meaningful, and that is not fair at all. The system I propose ensures that everyone can make an equal contribution regardless of population levels, and it solves the problem of points scored in peak vs off-peak times by ensuring that points scored at any time of the day are fairly balanced.
 

14 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

1.) I don't see why Anet is obliged to release internal data like that. How do we know you won't go a step further and asked for the hypothetically released data to be verified and not made up?

2.) Since the teams are not static anymore under this new WR system, you have to take the average pattern of the entire NA/EU playerbase. You cannot make this based on teams/servers/shards anymore.

3.) Huh no. We have over a decade to know which timeslots are prime time and which timeslots are off hours. Sure an individual player activity pattern might change, but you gotta look at the entire NA/EU playerbase. Remember, not as a team/shard/server, but the entire playerbase.

4.) It goes both ways. Players can exploit the old system by playing off hours and avoiding the hard fights during prime time. At least with this new system, there are way less prime time time zones to be exploited versus the off hours time zones.

This can easily be exploited by players with dozens of alt accounts. I personally know one player with more than 30 alts used primarily for WvW scouting.

As it should. WvW is for players seeking epic fights whether they are solo or in guilds. It should not have to cater to open world casual players at all.

1) With such a significant change to the scoring system in WvW, I think it is important for the data to be transparent, or at the very least, have a competent person in a neutral/unrelated role that can verify the calculations for the player base.

2 + 3) You don't have to take an average pattern of the entire NA/EU playerbase. If the solution I propose is adopted, weights are calculated automatically on an ongoing basis as the population in each map and in each matchup changes. It's far more accurate.

4) That is a fair comment. I think you are right.

14 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

This can easily be exploited by players with dozens of alt accounts. I personally know one player with more than 30 alts used primarily for WvW scouting.

If players are logged into and active on only one of their accounts at any time, then it is not an exploit at all. If they are actively playing on multiple accounts at the same time, then I believe that is a policy violation.

14 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

As it should. WvW is for players seeking epic fights whether they are solo or in guilds. It should not have to cater to open world casual players at all.

This is ridiculous. Did you ever notice the many objectives/structures in WvW? They can be captured, defended and lost. Capturing and holding them earns your team points? Unbelievable, right? What I'm trying to say here, is that there is way more to WvW than just epic fights. WvW has always tried to cater for all players, casual and hardcore. When did Arenanet officially decide casual players are no longer allowed in WvW? I don't recall seeing an announcement on it.

14 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

"WvW is not 24/7 gamemode, only log in at primetime"

If the game was released with this scoring system, it would be same as telling Asians/Australians/Russians that they are just not the games customerbase. Same applies to other people who cannot play during primetime. Imagine if Samsung only released phones/TVs with Korean language and no way to change it.. Would be pretty bad sales, right?

I don't see how the gamemode, or GW2 as whole, would be as succesful if it was released with this new scoring system. Hopefully the devs try to be constructive rather than destructive in the future.

Agreed!

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

If one side has fewer players, then the points they score will be scaled up to account for the difference in the number of players on each team.

"We need more players to leave the map so our points can get scaled up!  We're almost to the breakpoint!  GET OFF THE MAP! GO TO EOTM!"

Edited July 25 by Chaba.5410

[Mabi black.1824]

20 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

We're almost to the breakpoint!

In what sense are you at ''breakpoint'' (if you mean WR we can agree  🤭) which player or guild is able to count the hours of play that their server is manifesting in real time? Not to mention that he is able to count the hours of play of his opponents as well? I would almost tell you that I'm no longer so sure that not even Anet is able to count them. I can't follow your reasoning.

[A Hamster.2580]

14 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I think the graduates who originally created WVW understood its point system of this team game, where teams are like 2000 players in a 24/7 format, were definitely more prepared. These teams express themselves on 4 maps with a maximum limit of 70 players at a time. So in our format the alternation of numbers (first higher, then lower and sometimes the same even in prime time) are a characteristic, not something you have to correct.

Well we have used the old system where off hours is equal to prime time for years and it is evident that it is something that must be corrected. Gone are the days where a small number of off hours players can control the fate of their entire team by PPTing uncontested in the middle of NA/EU night when everyone else is sleeping.

14 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

And fortunately, I add, you know how boring it is to always see the same team surpass the others with numbers. or not? Anyone with a STEM degree should understand this. Keep in mind that we give the point to the server not to the player. Whether it is 1 or 10 the point earned is still for the server. Large-scale PVP = participation. and not single player, choose the difficulty level and press start.

The players make up the server so the points do go to the players. With this new system, the points will be distributed more evenly across the players that are playing in different time zones. No one is claiming it is a perfect distribution, but we can reasonably conclude that it is more equitable than using the old system.

14 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

With all this in mind, a point system that generates a maximum delta of 2 points (3 - 5) difference is evident that it is able to mitigate what is a feature of this game mode. on the contrary, the new wristwatch point system generates a max delta of 28 points (42-14), it is evident that it exaggerates what is a characteristic of this mode, turning it into a problem. Above all, an insurmountable problem, because after 6 hours you will get a maximum delta of 4 points (2-6) adding a new problem never seen before. Serie A player and Serie B player.

You are only looking at two teams and the first/third place points as well as only two time zones. You need to do a sum of all the prime time time zones points and all the off hour time zones points as well as their potential second/third place points before doing this "delta" comparison. This delta that you calculate is not a good number to use.

Edited July 26 by A Hamster.2580

[A Hamster.2580]

4 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

I'm confused. How did you reach the conclusion that I assumed there is only one player per time zone? 

So just to recap, you claim "It basically means that the contribution of players during off-peak times is worth significantly less than the same contribution by players at peak times."

You essentially treat "players during off-peak" and "players during prime time" as two singular entities completely disregarding how many players may be in each entity. If you treat them as only two singular entities, then sure you are right in that one may earn 33 points in first place in NA while the other may earn only 9 points in NA and that is unfair. But the whole point of the new system is to no longer look at it from your perspective, the perspective where there are only two entities. 

This new system actually attempts to take into account the number of players in each time zone. 

You constructed your whole essay around that one claim. That one assumption that  "players during off-peak" and "players during prime time" are two singular entities.

Edited July 26 by A Hamster.2580

[A Hamster.2580]

4 hours ago, Experimentee.7612 said:

If players are logged into and active on only one of their accounts at any time, then it is not an exploit at all. If they are actively playing on multiple accounts at the same time, then I believe that is a policy violation.

You know there are tools that allow a player to actively log into multiple accounts at the same time? I have never heard of anyone being banned for using these too. Your model will easily be exploited because it is assuming that no one will try to inflate the number of active accounts on the enemy team by using alt accounts. It is assuming everyone is honorable.

Trust me, this will be omega exploited. Especially when they implement incentives for winning soon.

Edited July 26 by A Hamster.2580

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

In what sense are you at ''breakpoint''

Breakpoint in this context is a gamer's min/maxing term.  Your translation app probably doesn't understand that context.

So let's say there's a 1x multiplier when your team has 80 players on a map.  It changes to 2x multiplier when you have only 40 players on the map.  Then it becomes 3x multiplier when you are down to 20 on a map.  40 and 20 players are the breakpoints at which the score change takes effect.  If you have 22 players on the map, you are close to that 3x multiplier and want 2 people to leave the map.  If you have 38 players on the map, you're much further from that breakpoint.  But you wouldn't want to go down to 10 players on the map.  You'd want as close to 20 as possible without going above that.

You may hear GW2 build theory crafters talk about "wasted stats" or being "overcapped on precision".  That's in the same context.

Edited July 26 by Chaba.5410

[Mabi black.1824]

10 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

The players make up the server so the points do go to the players.

Never seen before, I have always seen points delivered to the team/server. The design of this mode has been designed with reference to the server. The points earned are from the server. This design doesn't give a kitten about the individual player. 70 players on the Alpine border or 10 players on the Alpine border can win a 2-hour skirmish and both groups contributed a maximum of 5 pints to the server.

The intrinsic value of those 5 points earned (understood as commitment / difficulty of the game) is given by the number of enemies those 2 different groups had to face. It certainly does not give the time that your wristwatch is indicating. It is perhaps more likely that the second group of 10 men may have played for 2 hours against an enemy who outnumbers them and still managed to win. while it's a joke for a guild group in prime time, because there are 70 of them, and half of them are winning by pressing just 1 button at a remarkable speed. but it is still only one button.

Edited July 26 by Mabi black.1824