A problem I feel about structured pvp

[lllBlackSunlll]

Now, I feel most of the attributes in GW2 is great. But in structured pvp, I feel there is a big problem. I'm not talking about the map design or the catapult, but how the point system works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zDRLKp9kAU
Pay attention to this video on the point gain. Each point you need to capture only gives you 1 point at a time out of 500 needed, most of us know this.

Lets put in a hypothetical situation. Lets say my team is doing badly in the early game and at a point my team finds ourselves 350/500 and the enemy is 450/500. The only way my team can actually win is if we capture and hold all 3 points for the rest of the game.
I'm sure in a pug match that is somewhat realistic since that does sometimes happen in other games like LoL: Dominion or even in Arathi Basin from WoW.

However, on an actual competitive match, if you were that much behind, there is no way a professional team could hold all 3 points against another professional team.

What I am suggesting is, at a certain point, if you're that far behind, you already lost, and that is true no matter how good or bad at this game. It is how the structured pvp works. The way it is only true equally competitive is if both teams were close the whole entire time. Eventually at a point in the game if the whole time the enemy held 2 points, you will get so far ahead it will be impossible for you to win at any point in the future of that map.

Well, I personally feel that this current system is broken in that aspect. How can we fix this? Well, I feel that the team who owns the most map points, as in 2 map points = 2 points per second (3 points = 3 points per second). If both team have 1 point on the map and the third point is contested, then they both get points at the same pace (1 per second).

Edit: Changed the wording in my suggested change, but not the context.

[HarlekinFilx]

You can also kill other players for points.

[luedieniel]

-snip-

If your team is doing poorly at the beginning but later on turns it around, you should be able to push the enemy back far enough to maintain 2 and then push them to their start, succeed in doing that and you can lock them up while 1 of your players grabs the last one.

It's perfectly doable and if your team is doing badly, your team probably didn't deserve to win

However I'm pretty certain they'll go for another gamemode for "pro-tournaments".

[terrahero]

So? If in football one team has scored 4-0 by halftime they just have to defend the second half and are guarenteed to win. I dont see the problem. You sucked and they enemy team took advantage of that, and if they do not start sucking suddenly they will win. Isnt that fair?

Besides, you also get point(s) for killing enemy players.

[Naberios]

So? If in football one team has scored 4-0 by halftime they just have to defend the second half and are guarenteed to win. I dont see the problem. You sucked and they enemy team took advantage of that, and if they do not start sucking suddenly they will win. Isnt that fair?

MMO games are a little bit different than football as you might have noticed,
Assuming the point system works as explained by IPlayHorde, the team that didnt do well in the first half of the match completely looses the will to fight. If being 150 points behind enemy team makes it almost impossible to compete with them, the morale tends to fall down, people stop caring about the outcomes of teamfights, making the fight much less pleasurable for both sides (unless you just like to own the enemies with no effort).

I like the LoL Dominion point system, because it supports fighting till the end.
Still, Im fairly certain that ANet actually tested the system thoroughly and it will turn out to be just fine.

[darkwarrior42]

Ok, in an actual competitive match with two "professional" teams... if one team does well enough for long enough to secure an advantage that is all but impossible to overcome... good for them. They earned it. That's not a flaw in the game, that's just rewarding good play.

The problem with systems that support "fighting until the end" is that they fall into one of two categories:
1) They're only different in a cosmetic sense. In other words, they're just as bad in that at some point, the difference cannot be made up, they just change that point a little... but since what's important isn't the numbers on the board, but the amount of effort required to get there, that doesn't actually change anything.
--This is true in systems where the rate at which you earn points does not change throughout the game. In your example, changing the system to grant increased points per objective for holding more objectives doesn't really change the fundamental issue. If team A takes all 3 points early on, then gets pushed out, they could secure so large an advantage that team B might have to do the same thing.

To re-state it again: this system does not actually change the problem of one team being able to secure an insurmountable advantage, it simply changes how the teams go about acquiring said advantage. If that's all you want, cool, but that's hardly the same as saying any team should be able to win, no matter how far behind they are. Therefore, I'm going to ignore this option, because it's purely cosmetic.

2) The alternative is quite popular in game shows, and the biggest reason I lose patience with game shows. This system increases point gains as the game goes on... "in this round, all point values are doubled!" Game shows love to do this because it does mean that it's "still anyone's game". No matter how far behind you may have fallen in the earlier parts of the game, you can earn so many more points later on that you can easily come back and win.... which, of course, completely invalidates the first half of the game. It's great for keeping people watching after the commercial break even when one contestant is well in the lead, but it's crap from a game design perspective. If my team controls 2/3 points for the first half of the game, then 1/3 points for the second half, that's a tie, not a victory for the other side.


I guess I just don't see why we should be trying to punish teams for doing well by making it easier for the other team to catch up (as would be the case in point #2).... and if the team that's behind does poorly because of morale issues or because they give up, sucks to be them.

[Repefe]

MMO games are a little bit different than football as you might have noticed,
Assuming the point system works as explained by IPlayHorde, the team that didnt do well in the first half of the match completely looses the will to fight. If being 150 points behind enemy team makes it almost impossible to compete with them, the morale tends to fall down, people stop caring about the outcomes of teamfights, making the fight much less pleasurable for both sides (unless you just like to own the enemies with no effort).

I like the LoL Dominion point system, because it supports fighting till the end.
Still, Im fairly certain that ANet actually tested the system thoroughly and it will turn out to be just fine.

That logic is flawed. If one team is able to hold 3 points long enough to get a lead, other team should be able to hold the 3 points long enough to catch up to them if they are equally skilled and with equally good team comp ... ofc if one team is 1 point away from win and other need 500 points the fight will stop being interesting ... but unlike games like LoL the team with more points does not get a leg up on the other team. In LoL match if you are 10k ahead with active baron buff it's likely game over ... I don't see similar snow ball mechanic in GW2.

[luedieniel]

personally I hope they bring out a system like the guildbattles from GW1 for the pvp tournaments atleast.

[Deleted]

Best way of doing it in COMPETETIVE games would in my opinion be something they do in most games and sport where the winner is decided by "best of" or "first to" points. You must win by a set number of points.

Take tennis. You need to win a game point you need to win by 2 points (40-40 is duece, and you need to win too more points). To win a set you again need to win 2 more game points then your opponents.

This could be added in such a fashion that you need to win by atleast 100 points, or the needed points for victory is raised.

Ofcourse, something like this would only be useful in real, competetive games, not your standard "for fun" games, as that could lead to those pesky unending games noone wants.

[Deleted]

personally I hope they bring out a system like the guildbattles from GW1 for the pvp tournaments atleast.

That would be so freaking awesome!

[lllBlackSunlll]

You can also kill other players for points.

Okay, lets add that in our hypothetical. Killing a player gives you 10 points for your team. This means to meet your enemy on even ground you must, 1. killing their whole team twice (kill 10 people) and hold at least 2 points, or kill at least 11 people and have one point always contested while having none of your allies die. Lets be serious, that won't happen on a competitive level. Maybe in a pug, but I'm talking about competitive.

If your team is doing poorly at the beginning but later on turns it around, you should be able to push the enemy back far enough to maintain 2 and then push them to their start, succeed in doing that and you can lock them up while 1 of your players grabs the last one.

It's perfectly doable and if your team is doing badly, your team probably didn't deserve to win*

However I'm pretty certain they'll go for another gamemode for "pro-tournaments".

Sure that could happen, but realistically if you're the opposing team, you're on one bases then you're on nothing but offense and maintaining that one base. The more bases you have, the more exposed you are. If you have the 2 bases and are contesting the third, you are thin in some areas and can be gotten to and lost. Also you noted pushing them to their start. There are two ways to get out of your starting areas so pushing the enemy to their starting area while not having any of them getting out would be a miracle.

So? If in football one team has scored 4-0 by halftime they just have to defend the second half and are guarenteed to win. I dont see the problem. You sucked and they enemy team took advantage of that, and if they do not start sucking suddenly they will win. Isnt that fair?

Besides, you also get point(s) for killing enemy players.

If you suck, you lose, yes that is pvp in a nut shell. However, That is not absolutely true in many sports and should also not be completely true in this type of pvp. In basket ball, you can watch a handful of clips where a team took the last second shot and won them the game. In football, you can still win if you're 12 points behind in you score a touchdown and make the field goal, intercept the the opposing team's ball and score another touch down and another field goal.*

These are unlikely situations, but it can and has happened. What I am saying is in structured pvp, at a certain point when you're so far behind, it is basically impossible to win. Not literally since you can pray all your enemies disconnect and you capture all 3 points. Though how a system works in sports and video games may have something in common, how they are different is the actual play. Sure, you can capture all 3 points, but you'd have to do it before they reach the 500 mark and you cannot let anyone on your team die before you've reached 500 points. That is beyond unlikely since you only have 5 players defending 3 points and you may have 5 players storming one of those points. You may find yourself at risk of not only losing 1-2 players but also losing a point.

Ok, in an actual competitive match with two "professional" teams... if one team does well enough for long enough to secure an advantage that is all but impossible to overcome... good for them. They earned it. That's not a flaw in the game, that's just rewarding good play.*

The problem with systems that support "fighting until the end" is that they fall into one of two categories:
1) They're only different in a cosmetic sense. In other words, they're just as bad in that at some point, the difference cannot be made up, they just change that point a little... but since what's important isn't the numbers on the board, but the amount of effort required to get there, that doesn't actually change anything.*
--This is true in systems where the rate at which you earn points does not change throughout the game. In your example, changing the system to grant increased points per objective for holding more objectives doesn't really change the fundamental issue. If team A takes all 3 points early on, then gets pushed out, they could secure so large an advantage that team B might have to do the same thing.*

To re-state it again: this system does not actually change the problem of one team being able to secure an insurmountable advantage, it simply changes how the teams go about acquiring said advantage. If that's all you want, cool, but that's hardly the same as saying any team should be able to win, no matter how far behind they are. Therefore, I'm going to ignore this option, because it's purely cosmetic.

2) The alternative is quite popular in game shows, and the biggest reason I lose patience with game shows. This system increases point gains as the game goes on... "in this round, all point values are doubled!" Game shows love to do this because it does mean that it's "still anyone's game". No matter how far behind you may have fallen in the earlier parts of the game, you can earn so many more points later on that you can easily come back and win.... which, of course, completely invalidates the first half of the game. It's great for keeping people watching after the commercial break even when one contestant is well in the lead, but it's crap from a game design perspective. If my team controls 2/3 points for the first half of the game, then 1/3 points for the second half, that's a tie, not a victory for the other side.*

I guess I just don't see why we should be trying to punish teams for doing well by making it easier for the other team to catch up (as would be the case in point #2).... and if the team that's behind does poorly because of morale issues or because they give up, sucks to be them.

I would just like to say to the people who think that this is where I am getting at is this is not a moral problem. If it were a moral problem then the player is broken, not the system. What I am saying is broken is the system, as in, at a certain point it is impossible to win.

I also do not agree with a system in which there is a point multiplier. I thought about a system in which if you controlled 1 point you would get 1point per second, if you held 2 then you would get 3 points per second, and if 3 points you would get 9 points per second, but that is broken in it's own, so I agree with you, it should not be that way.

What I am suggesting is, the team who holds the advantage, as in if your team has 2 points and the enemy has 1, your team should be gaining points and the enemy will gain none until they hold more points on the map than you. However, the enemy could technically win if all they do is only hold that one point and do nothing but kill your team the whole game while they have minimal losses. It's hardly worth suggesting since if they are killing you significantly more than you are killing them, then if they are competent enough at a competitive level, they'll know that the points are worth more than the kills.

I do not agree with you that it is cosmetic. Sure, it's somewhat of a*gimmick, but it's a fair gimmick. I once played a League of Legends match on a map called Dominion where we held a 200 point lead because we won one of the points on the map early on. The enemy never came back until near the end of the game where they finally held more points than us. They were able to hold more points than us when we only needed about 50 more points in the game to win. Our major point income had ceased from that point on and they won the game even though we had a great start. So, having great beginning in a game is a gimmick in it's own and is not fair. As people have stated, if you suck, you suck. In that game, we sucked and since we lost, it showed. If Dominion had the same system that the structured pvpin GW2 has, we would've won since it would've been impossible for them to win.

[luedieniel]

Sure that could happen, but realistically if you're the opposing team, you're on one bases then you're on nothing but offense and maintaining that one base. The more bases you have, the more exposed you are. If you have the 2 bases and are contesting the third, you are thin in some areas and can be gotten to and lost. Also you noted pushing them to their start. There are two ways to get out of your starting areas so pushing the enemy to their starting area while not having any of them getting out would be a miracle.

I'm aware of the 2 paths out of the start, but if you force them to split up, you can be quite certain they wont be going 5-5 split (asuming 10v10 for the sake of it) but perhaps.. 7v3 or similiar.
Take out the 3 man team, pursue the 7man team, you've efficiently split their forces up.

I'm not saying it is easy to do a comeback in such a situation, but I don't see why it should be more even. The better player deserves the win if they did infact outplay the other team.

Take a look at the battles from the GvG world championship in guild wars:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdJM0xsbHhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnnlKMzJozQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74HhIS-TS10

The entire thing is 3h in lenght but it shows what I feel is the optimal mode for more serious pvp, it also shows you how splits can work wonders if used properly, and how they can backfire miserably if performed poorly

[Discomoose]

I really don't see why you think the losing team should ALWAYS have a chance to come back, they are in that position because they played poorly in the start of the game and conceded too many points to their opponents. What they should do is consider why they lost all those points and fix the issue before the next game. This is how it works in sports, even if you try and think of crazy ways in which a football team can come back from a 14 point deficit, there is still a time limit on the game, thus if they are 14 points down and there is physically not enough time for them to get their 2 touchdowns and 2 field goals, then there is NO WAY they can come back, even though there is still a bit of time left on the clock, its just not enough. This is the time were talking about in competitive PvP where the game is not yet over, but the point deficit is too large to overcome in the time left on the clock. This is always going to be the case in every competitive game unless you make a rule that invalidates all the work done before the end such as "next kill wins the game no matter what happened before" which is frankly not fair.

It is fair that the winning team gets in that position because they worked for it, and it is fair for the losing team to not be able to overcome it because they didn't play well enough to warrant the chance at a win. A true competitive team will look at their performance and look for ways to improve for the next game.

[Merendel]

The current system is balanced, You need to hold X nodes for Y seconds to win (+kill bonuses). If team A's holds alot of nodes early on so their X*Y is very high the other team must do proportionally just as much better in the later half of the game so that their X*Y eclipses team A's before it reaches the win threshold. That is fair in my mind. You speak of the difficulty of Those amazing come from behidn wins where the underdog team pushes the enemy back and caps 3 nods and holds them but ignore the fact that the previously winning team probably had to do the same thing right off the start to build up such a decisive lead in the first place. What you propose devalues amazing early play in the first half by letting just above average play in the second half tie or win. The way I see it if one team is amazing early on the second team needs to be just as much more amazing in the second half to make up for it.