Guild Wars 2 WvW - True Camp Value - Part 2

It's been a long time, but I finally found the motivation and time to work down my list. Last time we looked at the true camp value based on the actual points camps produce in the Guild Wars 2's World versus World game mode. You can read up and refresh your knowledge over here. One of the follow-up topics I wanted to go over is the balance aspect, specifically whether or not one team's camps provide a significant advantage over the others.

Answering this requires three equally strong teams. Environmental advantages are hard to quantify. Thus, to reduce complexity, we will assume that landscape plays no role. Under these circumstances, the teams will own structures by distance primarily. The resulting structure ownership will look like this:

Ill. 1: Guild Wars 2 World vs World Theoretical Objective Ownership in an equal match by GreenyNeko (Some graphical elements by ArenaNet)

Notice that the map's owner typically conquers the bordering keeps due to increased priority. Now, we can calculate each camp's true value using our dataset. For this, we consider objects connecting to camps and their color. Applying the dataset yields the following result:

Ill. 2: Guild Wars 2 World vs World Dolyak Points Per 5 Minutes by GreenyNeko

We analyze the balance by summing each team's points from our setup. Shared objects yield a percentage of their points to each relevant team. We will use the unbuffed walking speed values because the speed multipliers become irrelevant and for consistency. The result is:

Team	Total Points	Desert	Green	Blue	Eternal
Green	35.332	2.975	10.79	4.075	17.383
Blue	38.355	2.94	3.575	10.79	21.05
Red	41.567	13.507	4.075	3.575	20.41

We already see an advantage in the matchmaking system. As a reminder, we explained that matchmaking ranks servers from highest to lowest: green, blue, and red. The table reflects this, empowering the lower-ranked teams. The big question is whether or not this is confirmation bias, measurement errors, or fact.

To check this via the null hypothesis. We assume equal team points, and the difference is error based. Thus, the scores' average is close to the truth. Finding a significant deviation from the average disproves the null hypothesis confirming our previous supposition. For significance, we will use an alpha value of 0.05. The mean of the scores is (35.332+38.355+41.567)/3 = 38.418. Thus, we get the following deviations:

• 1-35.332/38.418 = 0.0803 (8.03%)
• 1-38.355/38.418 = 0.0016 (0.16%)
• 1-41.567/38.418 = 0.0820 (8.20%)

Apparently, the difference is significant enough to consider it more than an error. Therefore, we conclude that the teams gain a significant advantage from Dolyaks d inversely proportional to their matching rank r. (d ∝ 1/r)

Lastly, I apologize for having taken so long. I needed more time and motivation to write between theses and seminar papers. Since I swapped to Lost Ark, I probably won't post about Guild Wars 2 for now. I hope you will continue to read my blog to learn about the kinds of stuff I present. :3

Interactive Post: How Long Guild Wars 2 WvW Reward Tracks Take [Updated]

The post is now up to date with the 9th November patch! There's a comparison with the old system at the end.

With Elona neither being green nor dominating any matches, I couldn't finish the World versus World
(WvW) Dolyak research yet. However, I noticed an inaccuracy in Guild Wars 2 wiki's minimum WvW reward track time.

Screenshot of the World vs World Reward Track Tab
from Guild Wars 2 by GreenyNeko

What Are The World vs World Reward Tracks?

Players find the reward tracks in their tab in the WvW window. By playing WvW, they gain participation, determining how much reward track progress they get every 5-minute match tick. This table shows the progress given the variables.^[2]

Map	Tier 0	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Tier 4	Tier 5	Tier 6
Core WvW Maps	0	25	60	95	125	160	195
Edge of the Mists	0	19	46	76	90	120	146

The following buffs further increase these:^[2]

Buff	Bonus
Guild Enhancement: World Reward Track	3-10%
Experience Booster	50%
Black Lion Boost	25%
Festival Gobbler Boost	25%
Celebration Bonus	10%
WvW Reward Track Enrichment	5%
Call of War	25%

The buffs sum up to 1.0+0.1+0.5+0.25+0.25+0.1+0.05+0.25=1.5 or 150%. Given that reward tracks need 20000 points, the wiki's supposed minimum estimate is 20000/(195*(1.0+1.25))*5=228 minutes or 3h 50m.^[2]

The Discrepancy

But there are two more sources of reward track progress: Dailies and the skirmish reward track. Since a day has 24 hours and ticks happen every five minutes, we get (24*60)/5=288 ticks. Add that dailies awards players 3*250=750 progress^[1] we gain 750/288=2.60 per tick.

The skirmish reward track gives players one to seven 25 point-rewarding-Instant Reward Track Progress. The amount and frequency depend on the player's skirmish track progress. More on it over at Guild Wars 2: Time Consumption of WvW Pips.^[1]

First Interactive Post! Woooo!

With all the variables, I leave the selection to the reader, allowing them to choose the calculation and result of their interest.

Map

Core WvW maps Edge of the Mists

Boosts

None 3% 4% 5% 6% 7% 8% 9% 10% Guild Enhancement: World Reward Tracks
Experience Booster (+50%)
Black Lion Booster (+25%)
Snowflake Gobbler or Zhaitaffy Gobbler Boost (+25%)
Celebration Bonus (+10%)
WvW Reward Track Enrichment (+5%)
Call of War (+25%)

Pips

Wood Bronze Silver Gold Platinum Mithril Diamond Chest

3rd in Skirmish +4 2nd in SKirmish +5 1st in SKirmish +6 War Score Placement
No Title +1 Bronze (150-619) +2 Silver (620-1394) +3 Gold (1395-2544) +4 Platinum (2545-4094) +5 Mithril (4095-6444) +6 Diamond (6445-9999) +7 Max (10000) +8 WvW Rank
None Commander +1 Public Commander +3 Commanding a Squad
Commitment +1
Outnumbered +0

---

Calculation

^[1] Guild Wars 2

^[2] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/WvW_Reward_Track

^[3] https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/104411-game-update-notes-november-9-2021/

Guild Wars 2 WvW - True Camp Value - Part 1

I've decided to split my World versus World (WvW) research into two posts. I'll talk about how Guild Wars 2 and WvW works. Then explain what I wanted to research, why, and how. Lastly, I'll show the result using the desert map. The second post will contain the other results and the conclusion I drew from them. I still need time as I'm missing six transitions. In the meantime, let's get this post started.

Guild Wars 2 And World Versus World^[1][2]

Ill. 1: Approximate Points Per Objective And Dolyak Path
With And Without Buffs ~GreenyNeko & WvW Intel

Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG that allows players to play on different servers within a region. The server's choice barely plays a role in gameplay. In the game mode World versus World (WvW), however, these servers fight each other every week in a three-way match. Each server is assigned the colors red, blue, and green, given their rank. WvW contains four maps:

• Desert Borderland for red,
• two alpine borderlands for green and blue,
• and the eternal battlegrounds shared by all.

While the borderland maps are biased to their color, the eternal battlegrounds aren't.

Score System^[1][2]

The server with the most victory points wins. Servers get these given their war score at the end of a skirmish. There are many ways to get Warscore for the 84 two-hour-long skirmishes. For example, killing another player awards two to five points depending on the buffs. Every five minutes, the game also awards Warscore for each owned object. Type and rank determine the amount, as shown in the following table.

Type	Base	Secured	Reinforced	Fortified
Camp	2	3	4	5
Tower	4	6	8	10
Keep	8	12	16	20
Castle	12	18	24	30

Lastly, the game awards one Warscore when an enemy's Dolyak dies or when your Dolyak arrives at its goal. Dolyaks start at a camp and walk to nearby towers and then to nearby larger settlements if a server owns these.

It is similar to owning a street in monopoly, gaining a bonus for the whole alley. That raises the question, how much the bonus is worth and how it compares between the servers.

Approach And Difficulties

To answer these, we must study the Dolyaks in their natural habitat. Specifically, we need to know Dolyaks' speed with and without buffs With this data, we can estimate the time of buffed Dolyaks. Next up, we have to measure how long it takes a Dolyak to reach its destination. It's exhaustive to get this data as the other servers try to conquer as much as possible. Additionally, they try to kill you and the Dolyak you watch. However, your team can screw up your data too by giving swiftness or superspeed to the Dolyaks, giving inaccurate measurements.

Researching Dolyaks

I've already measured the Dolyaks movement speed in an earlier post. So, the next step is to measure how long they travel from their camp to each objective. I used the program Livesplit for this, which speedrunners commonly use for timing speed runs. When the Dolyak spawned, I started the timer and stopped it when the "war score" marker appeared once the Dolyak reached its goal. With the data gathered, we now need to look at two different cases. When the camp and tower are ours but not the keep or castle, the Dolyak will continuously run between the two conquered objectives. However, if we own all three objectives, the Dolyak will despawn after reaching its goal and respawn about seven seconds later. Next up, we get math involved.

Finalization And Representation

By dividing the point we get through the time it took the Dolyak to arrive there, we get the Dolyak's points per second. We can multiply this by five (5*60=300) to compare to objectives. For the visuals, I've linked the camp with the Dolyaks end goal. Now, for visualizing the data, I'm going to mark the objectives with white-filled black circles.  Then I link the camp where the Dolyak starts with its end goal. Lastly, I add the score objectives and Dolyaks give. We can see the result in the illustration for the desert borderland.

For The Future

Once I have gotten all data, I'm going to write the second post. Until then, this has to suffice. Oh, I'll also write the conclusion in the second post. When will it come? Once, WvW is going well enough for me to get the data.

^[1] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

^[2] Guild Wars 2 - ArenaNet