Guild Wars 2

There’s been a host of complaints involving guesting and it causing players to be thrown into an overflow map. People are obviously just watching dragon timers and attempting to guest in when they might appear.

Fixes to this situation might be to have those that are guesting be put into overflow BEFORE anyone else who has that server as their home. Not sure how this might work. The guesting mechanic was obviously implemented so that people could play with friends on other servers. However, its seemed to cause some problems as well.

In my mind, if you are on your home server, you should be the last of the folks to be put into an overflow map. Those that are guesting should be put there before those that call that server their home. This may alleviate the entire problem regarding people using guesting just to farm dragon bosses.

Since the idea of guesting is to allow people to play with their friends, perhaps if a guest is grouped with their friend, and their friend is on their home server, then that guest might be allowed to negate the overflow. Allowing legitimate guests to be able to stay, play with their friends, and fight the dragon. However I think most people are just barreling in from other servers, have no real interest in playing with a friend, and instead just wishes to farm dragons. This probably needs to stop somehow.

Because when I can’t fight a dragon on my own server because folks from other servers just can’t get enough dragon farming, I find it unfair and selfish on their parts. Thank you.

Actually, it’s causing a lot of resentment in-game, too. I just saw some people who “guested” to fight the Shadow Behemoth get told in chat to go back to their own server.

I mean, ok, but WvW isn’t supposed to really spill over to PvE, yanno?

I tried to participate in the Kill The Shatterer event this morning, and the quantity of people that showed up reduced my machine to about 4 frames a second. Luckily I somehow got a bronze participation, although I’m pretty sure if I got a single hit on the dragon, it was an accident.

This server is not, natively, that crowded. Prior to the update that reintroduced guesting, I hadn’t been in overflow – in any zone – since the Southsun Coves one-shot event.

Now, if I don’t arrive for an event more than 10 minutes before the spawning window opens, I don’t get to do it. Period. And the overflows don’t end until the meta event ends, which guarantees that people who are on the same server miss out on playing together.

Like, for example, what just happened; I looked at the timer a few minutes ago, and said to my wife, “hey, baby, the behemoth will be up in a few minutes, want to run it before you leave for work?”

So I log in, go there, no problem. She logs in, maps from Lion’s Arch, lands in overflow; we’re not going to get to play together for this event. At all.

So someone from another server can get an extra lick at the Behemoth.

I’m pretty sure the reason my wife and I created our characters on the same server, and dragged our friends who also play to this server, was so we could play together, not so people could abuse the guesting system to allow them to get extra loot at the expense of us getting to play together.

A better solution than changing the overflow rules might be to automatically apply DR to all guested meta events. That removes the incentive for cross-server farming, without penalizing people who actually guest to play with friends. You can participate in the event, you can get a reward, just not as good a reward as you’d get for doing the event once daily like you’re supposed to.

Some people may never be able to log in when the event they want is up on their server. In my opinion people should be able to travel to other servers, but they need to stay for a period of time so we don’t just have 100 semi afk people ikittenone waiting at the dragon spawn and warp out the minute it leaves. In my opinion they need to do one of the following:
1) Make people actually do something to qualify for the chest prior to the event starting. Maybe complete 5+ events that day in the region and server they want to pop the chest in.
2) Greatly increase the cost of travel. Both to waypoints and to other servers.
3) Nerf the chest so it drops gear similar to what was dropped prior to the santa clause update.

Im just gonna cut and paste what i said in another thread on the topic

If we’re going to have this discussion honestly then lets . Is guesting part of the problem yes but there are other things as well.

1 ) The introduction of bounties . You may not think about it all that often but if a guild triggers a bounty and gets one in an event zone there could be a swarm from 1 guild at the other end of Frostgorge or Sparkly right before or as a dragon pops .

2 ) Map population reduction. Its my understanding that the population allowed per map has been reduced. This of course will cause more frequent overflow

3 ) Guaranteed rares . Do you honestly think that only the guesting population is increasing the event mobs? Have you ever thought that since you are guaranteed a rare or better that people on your own server might be hitting the chests that didn’t bother before?

Now discuss

Really? With a three hour turnaround, they can “never” log in when the event is up on their own server? I doubt that quite a lot; I have a full-time job, a wife, and a life, and I somehow manage to hit most of the major events at least once every day.

Nerfing the loot back to previous levels, I can maybe see.

Increasing the cost of travel between waypoints, no.

Between servers? Sure; the huge mass migrations that are going on right now are pretty clearly not what the devs had in mind anyway.

How about, in order to “guest,” you have to be sponsored by a player on the server you want to guest TO. In other words, you actually have to be guesting to see someone, which was the whole point.

I am 100% sure that the guesting mechanic wasn’t introduced as a way to allow cross-server farming.

Requiring a native sponsor for a guesting session seems reasonable, totally prevents event farming across servers, and still permits actual cross-server friendships to exist without penalty.

Adine.2184:

1 ) The introduction of bounties . You may not think about it all that often but if a guild triggers a bounty and gets one in an event zone there could be a swarm from 1 guild at the other end of Frostgorge or Sparkly right before or as a dragon pops .

2 ) Map population reduction. Its my understanding that the population allowed per map has been reduced. This of course will cause more frequent overflow

3 ) Guaranteed rares . Do you honestly think that only the guesting population is increasing the event mobs? Have you ever thought that since you are guaranteed a rare or better that people on your own server might be hitting the chests that didn’t bother before?

Now discuss

OK: Yes, guild bounties happen. Do they happen enough to hit every single major meta event area, consistently, across the entire game world, multiple times a day? I’m pretty sure they don’t. I’ve seen plenty of the guild bounty targets wandering around in the zones, and I’ve never seen one pop during a meta event in the same area.

Map population reduction is definitely not the problem. The huge quantity of people showing up for events is way above the original population caps as well.

Guaranteed rares will certainly be a draw for more players, but a casual glance at the in-game chat during any meta-event demonstrates that at least fifty percent of the people present at any given meta-event are guesting from other servers.

Be honest: just ask, in chat, at any event. “How many people here are guesting?”

I bet the responses will surprise you, if you think anyone complaining about the numbers of cross-server farmers is somehow being dishonest.