Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)
I’m going to be doing a few posts here about the most troublesome topics in GW2 in order to stimulate good discussion and hopefully reduce improve clarity. Today’s focus is on the Megaserver system, namely a breakdown of the intended functions and differences between it and traditional district-based server splitting.
First off, let’s quote the wiki on what the megaserver does:
Average population per map copy +225%
Player goes to the same map as his or her party +25%
Average population from the same party as the player on joined map +36%
Average population from the same guild as the player on joined map +5%
Average population from the same home world as the player on joined map +6%
Average population speaking the same language as the player on joined map +41%Those are some nice numbers. What do they really mean to us though?
• Maps will always be full, near capacity, or quickly filling, as opposed to a random assortment of full and empty maps.
• The majority of the time, the map will contain people who are participating in events of some sort, keeping the game flowing.
What about the infamous population cap? Well...it turns out that nothing changed except the ability of the players to get into a server more efficiently, oddly causing people to not be able to get in.
wait, what?
Let me explain with a comparison:
Overflow System:
1. Attempt to join, find out your home server’s map is capped.
2. Get tossed into an overflow made of a random selection of player who also hit the cap.
3. Wait for the queue to end so you can join everyone in the normal server.
4. Event ends while waiting because you were in a queue.
5. Rage, go to the forums to demand a server placement system that puts you with allies and automatically creates a new map as needed.
Megaserver system:
1. Attempt to join, don’t even know the map is capped because you are placed in another high population zone. (THIS IS WHERE THE OLD SYSTEM ENDS)
2. Decide to force-join your guild while they are doing tequatl.
3. Rage, go to the forums and demand a queue system.
The thing to take away from this is that trying to force 100+ people into a map without considering existing populations just doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Overflow, and it doesn’t work in Megaserver.
Common Solutions (And why they don’t work)
• "Just put a queue on the megaserver!" This just means that everyone and their minipet are going to sit in a queue instead of rolling to the next megaserver as intended.
• "Just use a priority system!" You mean the one that already puts the vast majority of players in the right spots with no complaints, leaving the minority to vocally declare the system broken?
Which leaves us with...
Guild Instancing.
Guild Instances require 75% map capacity in guild members. That may sound like a huge restriction, but bear with me a second.
The vast majority of people "hitting the cap" repeatedly are players trying to join others in a guild. In normal gameplay, players come and go on a map with such frequency that you rarely get a cap message. World/Guild events oppose such a system, encouraging large amounts of players to drop into a server, regardless of the existing population makeup. Having the ability for guilds to create seperate instances fixes this, but introduces new problems.
• Server Load increased: Guilds making new maps would cause overflow-esque lag all over again. Solved! Requiring 75% participation means you are not causing additional server load because you have essentially created a megaserver like the normal system, but appeased the server efficiency gods by ensuring that it won’t be a waste of resources.
• Community exclusion: Guilds can "take their ball and leave", screwing all players who wanted to join in. [i]Solved! This is no different than a normal megaserver, except more predictable and less annoying for everyone involved. PuG tequatl will still happen. PUG friendly guild events will still happen. This just gives guilds who BREAK THE MEGASERVER the option of bypassing it.
BONUS IMPLEMENTATION ROUND!
Activate Tequatl event. All members of the guild activating the event who are in the map are moved to a new instance. A counter appears, showing the map population %. When this reaches 75%, the event can be triggered (this time for real!) and the map is treated as a normal megaserver. Optionally, the guild can (goldsink?) have the map reserved entirely, only allowing guild members to join.
Thanks again for reading, and remember to stay civil in the discussions!