In light of a recent thread, made here and reposted on Reddit, I’ve decided to make a formal thread for a suggestion one person posed: In order to guest onto a server, a guester must be invited by a native player on that server.
The reasons for doing so have already been posted by my fellow Coasters, but I will take the liberty of highlighting a few.
I am not opposed to the concept of guesting or the spirit of being able to for free visit a server, see what it’s like, play with a friend who is in another time zone and/or guild who you might not otherwise be with all the time. I personally have a good friend who might have been in that situation, rolled on another server in another guild, but wanted to guest with me on occasion. There might be people who don’t want to live on an RP server but want to see what it’s like before transferring.
This is not however the spirit of guesting that we are experiencing. What we are experiencing is an influx of people exploiting the system, bouncing from event to event. Some will argue that it’s not exploitation because it can be done and the game permits it, I’m pretty sure that it’s not within the spirit of guesting as implemented.
I would support Cross’s suggestion- that the only way to guest on another server would be being invited by someone. Guesting was, after all, meant as a way for friends on different servers to still play with each other- this would fulfill that original purpose while cutting down on the coattail-ers.
I do like hopping to other servers just to check out the communities there, and for convenience if, say, Balthazar is derped, but at this rate, the problems solved by implementing restrictions would be worth any inconveniences. Yeah, I know there will be people who will still coordinate to smuggle in troll squads and event hoppers, but the average troll/hopper won’t bother to organize that, and will likely just be lazy and stay on their own servers. It will be harder for people to just drop in if they’re interested in the personality of a server, but again… it won’t be much different (better even) than before paid transfers, when many servers were full. And I’m sure people could arrange something to help interested players over.
But seriously ANet. Those of us who are on the server or have paid for transfers to the server are the ones entitled to experience non-overflow content on the server. Those of us who built the community and who are the community. As Kumu stated, we made the bed. If they liked the bed so much, why do they just want to visit? Have their cake and eat it too? Then transfer.
Guests should receive services as available, not at the expense of natives. Community is built by those present all the time. When you say ‘if it’s too laggy guest elsewhere’ you’re basically saying guests’ privileges are more important than the hosting server population native rights, and I just won’t agree to that.
Come to TC, enjoy your 1-5 fps and crashes during dragon events because of all the other guesters.
The dragon events are becoming almost unplayable for me because of the lag and crashes I get due to all the people, plus the extreme culling problems. I don’t want to have to guest on another server, this is my home. It feels like a bunch of entitled strangers are tromping in, breaking my furniture, eating all my food, then flipping me off on the way out.
Speaking of which, I’ve definitely noticed a huge influx of map chat trolls lately.
If you’re friendly and considerate, I really don’t care. But we definitely have a slew of guesters who don’t give a kitten about the native population, and certainly some who are just plain unpleasant, selfish, and downright hateful. Go home, please. Why would you guest on a server where the lag is so bad you can hardly get anything done, and you clearly hate the people there? I don’t get it.
To be truthful, I don’t like advocating restrictions. I looked forward to guesting. I invited people in hopes that they’d find a home here, and love it so much that they’d begin giving back. I wanted more people to come here and enjoy the community, and leave happier in a way that had nothing to do with loot. Sure, I did realize there would be some trolls, but thought that the majority of people guesting would be good-natured and interested in the server’s community itself… but again, I thought a random commander in Queensdale had his icon on to help people.
Thank you for your time.
Ember Solace [SOL] – A guild welcoming of newbies and those at the margins.
New Player Outreach Thread