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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

IMHO virtually all of the negative posts about the playability of HOT could be solved by fixing the broken mega server system.

Despite wanting to play these maps, I am absolutely sick and tired of being shunted around from one empty map to another.

Is it really so difficult to design a system that fills up one map at a time instead of creating god knows how many sparsely populated maps and just keeps moving players between them until they get so frustrated they give up?

It’s been well over six months since we had an announcement that Anet was aware that a fix was needed and yet still we are waiting for a fix to a system that basically underpins the playability of a whole expansion.

Added – PLEASE READ

As I was kindly pointed to a thread which explained what the current ‘problem’ is – I would like to use an analogy simplify the explanation of why megaservers are not working and invite others to comment:

A man walks into a bar ……………

Sitting down he notices that despite the fact that it is Friday evening the bar is rather empty, in fact he is only the 5th person – he orders a drink and notices another man who tries to enter the bar but is turned away.
Curious, he questions the doorman who explains, the capacity of the bar is 50 people but as there are 5 people inside and he and the 4 others may have friends who want to join them later, they hold spaces for them in case they arrive and cannot let any more people in.

As the man returns to his seat, one of the other customers leaves and a few minutes later the Barman announces that because there are only 4 people in the bar and none of their friends are coming, they are closing and everyone should go find another bar.

Totally perplexed, the man is kicked out of the bar and goes in search of another ….

Half an hour later, after entering and being kicked out of half a dozen bars for the same reason, he manages to contact a friend who has managed to find quite a lively bar, sadly though, when he arrives, he finds there are several hundred people waiting in to get in and the bar is totally full.

Simply put – The reasons Mega-servers are not working is because Anet is prioritizing holding spaces for players who may turn up to play over actually filling maps with players who are actually playing.

Am I the mad one or is this totally bonkers?

(edited by Daroon.1736)

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Posted by: ImTasty.2163

ImTasty.2163

It is actually. In the AMA they stated that they are working on the problem but it’s not as simple as flipping a switch or adjusting a few lines of code. In fact, the megaserver system is currently being reworked and has been for several months.

In the meantime, you can just use taxis in the LFG sections. Thanks to squads being able to post spots getting meta maps are much easier now.

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

It is actually. In the AMA they stated that they are working on the problem but it’s not as simple as flipping a switch or adjusting a few lines of code. In fact, the megaserver system is currently being reworked and has been for several months.

In the meantime, you can just use taxis in the LFG sections. Thanks to squads being able to post spots getting meta maps are much easier now.

I’m sorry but it’s been well over 6 months since they issued a statement indicating that there were ‘problems’ with Mega servers – they managed to produce an expansion in around the same time so any competent set of dev’s; or more importantly management, would have prioritized fixing a system that underpins ensuring that HOT maps are playable.

Taxi’s are not the solution – Taxi maps only tend to be advertised towards the end of the meta cycle and so fill very quickly and it’s pot luck as to whether you get ‘map full’ or not. When maps are advertised earlier and you join X in whatever map it is, most of the time I find that the squad I have joined is spread out over god knows how many map instances and as there is no way of identifying who is in what map, more frustration ensues.

Just look at this sub forum, on this page alone there are the following threads:

’Dragon’s Stand map dead’ – Mega server issue
‘full meta map’ – Mega server making too many empty maps issue
‘Unplayable Solo’ – Mega server issue – If every map was full, the maps would be playable.
‘L2P – I did HOT Why can’t you?’ – Discussion of various issues but mainly the un-playability of HOT maps due to empty maps.

A combined total of over 40,000 views and nearly 1,000 replies and ALL of them are indirectly related to the fact that Megaservers are not working and need fixing as a matter of absolute priority.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Read the first response again, please. Tasty says that ANet is working on megaservers, but it’s not a simple thing to fix. Tasty recommends using taxis; they don’t say it’s a “solution”.

Everyone agrees that megaservers need to be improved — even ANet. The fact that they haven’t been changed yet isn’t an indication that they aren’t working on them; it’s an indication that it’s taking a long time to do right.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: ImTasty.2163

ImTasty.2163

It is actually. In the AMA they stated that they are working on the problem but it’s not as simple as flipping a switch or adjusting a few lines of code. In fact, the megaserver system is currently being reworked and has been for several months.

In the meantime, you can just use taxis in the LFG sections. Thanks to squads being able to post spots getting meta maps are much easier now.

I’m sorry but it’s been well over 6 months since they issued a statement indicating that there were ‘problems’ with Mega servers – they managed to produce an expansion in around the same time so any competent set of dev’s; or more importantly management, would have prioritized fixing a system that underpins ensuring that HOT maps are playable.

Taxi’s are not the solution – Taxi maps only tend to be advertised towards the end of the meta cycle and so fill very quickly and it’s pot luck as to whether you get ‘map full’ or not. When maps are advertised earlier and you join X in whatever map it is, most of the time I find that the squad I have joined is spread out over god knows how many map instances and as there is no way of identifying who is in what map, more frustration ensues.

Just look at this sub forum, on this page alone there are the following threads:

’Dragon’s Stand map dead’ – Mega server issue
‘full meta map’ – Mega server making too many empty maps issue
‘Unplayable Solo’ – Mega server issue – If every map was full, the maps would be playable.
‘L2P – I did HOT Why can’t you?’ – Discussion of various issues but mainly the un-playability of HOT maps due to empty maps.

A combined total of over 40,000 views and nearly 1,000 replies and ALL of them are indirectly related to the fact that Megaservers are not working and need fixing as a matter of absolute priority.

I never said taxi’s are the solution. It’s just a band aid.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/490u3k/missed_the_ama_heres_a_summary/

I recommend checking out this link and scrolling to the bottom under the server section. There are a few links to where devs are talking about megaservers. I summarized it a bit by saying it’s a difficult fix and to use taxi’s in the meantime, but what I said is echoed in the AMA but in more detail.

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Posted by: Zenith.7301

Zenith.7301

They need to also look at raising map caps. It’s pretty silly that a single HP train can see a map capped and like 20-30 people can’t even zone into the map, now imagine for meta events.

Either that, or they need to get to work on their scaling so that the kitten events don’t need 5-10+ people to complete. I can understand for final stage bosses like Gerent and whatnot.

But these maps entirely encourage brute force zerging because of how badly the events scale down.

And it WILL become a problem once people get their masteries and legendaries done and the population moves out of these maps, so late comers/new players won’t have the population density to get their collections/progression done.

(edited by Zenith.7301)

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

I recommend checking out this link and scrolling to the bottom under the server section. There are a few links to where devs are talking about megaservers. I summarized it a bit by saying it’s a difficult fix and to use taxi’s in the meantime, but what I said is echoed in the AMA but in more detail.

Many thanks for the link – very interesting reading that explains everything. Here’s a quote from Stephen The studio Tech director:

“Megaservers does what Gw1 did ala districts, except automatically. The downside, which really became apparent with HoT, is that we have an almost impossible problem to solve: how do we reserve space for all the people that will want to play together but are not currently playing together? Fans have solved his problem with taxiing, which is amazing, but obviously that is not the best solution. Or perhaps if it is the right way to do it we should make it easier. But the basic problem is a map holds N people and if we leave space for M people that may or may not show up, then it really only supports N-M people and if M is large, the map is mostly empty. Megaservers favors parties when grouping, which is why taxiing works: a small buffer is reserved so parties can generally get into the map together. But reserving say for an entire guild, where we don’t know how many will show up for any particular map, is a hard problem conceptually, never mind the programming of it. I’m open to suggestions.”

Here’s a suggestion:

Instead of creating dozens of empty maps every time a player joins a region and hoping that M players from his/her guild turn up to fill it – create ONE map at a time (lets call it map 1), fill it and when it is full, create another (map 2) and so on – let players know what map instance they are on by having this information available and have a little drop down box so they can easily move between the available instances and problem solved.

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Posted by: Inculpatus cedo.9234

Inculpatus cedo.9234

^That solution sounds a lot like Servers. Player A is playing on good server/map 1, and his/her friend wants to join. ‘Sorry, server/map is full. Your friend can not join you, but you have the option to transfer to not-so-good server/map 2 and play together there.’

Not sure that pleases/will please the majority. /shrug

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Posted by: Crowley.8761

Crowley.8761

I agree, if they have actual friends they don’t need a great map as well, that’s just being spoiled.

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

^That solution sounds a lot like Servers. Player A is playing on good server/map 1, and his/her friend wants to join. ‘Sorry, server/map is full. Your friend can not join you, but you have the option to transfer to not-so-good server/map 2 and play together there.’

Not sure that pleases/will please the majority. /shrug

If the number of maps available was based on the number of players actually playing rather than on how many we think might want to join those playing, there would not be any not-so-good servers as they would all fill very quickly.

Servers or Districts is already what we have, the problem is that when a player currently joins a map M spaces are reserved for him, just in case friend or Guild members want to join.

If we assume that M represents online friends and Guild mates and N is the map capacity – If player A joins a map with a capacity of 75 and he has 25 guild mates/friends online m=25 and the map is effectively one third full. As soon as a couple of other players join the map with a similar amount of guild mates online, the map is considered full and another one is created.

No wonder HOT maps are always empty – it’s is a completely ludicrous system.

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Posted by: Inculpatus cedo.9234

Inculpatus cedo.9234

Well, sounds like either the maps are full, and friends/guildies/parties/squads have little chance on getting on a well-populated map together (as they would be filled quickly), or maps are created just for those players.

I don’t know; it just doesn’t sound as easy as ‘just fill up the map’.

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Posted by: vifesprit.3514

vifesprit.3514

Megaservers does what Gw1 did ala districts, except automatically.

The actual “Taxi’s” system has many flaws, we have no way of knowing the available space, worse than that, it causes random mass displacement of players that can interfere with the megaserver.

Let’s do something like Taxi’s, except automatically.

Player joins a map, the megaserver do its job as currently, but in the LFG tools, Player can see the other instances (with the number of free spaces) of the same map and only this one.
So playing alone, Player can find a more populated instance, playing with 25 guild mates, a less populated, it’s Player choice.

With this system, players can not intentionally create new maps, but can choose among existing instances.

Of course it’s not the ultimate solution, players can always taxiing people, it doesn’t change the core code of the megaserver system but it gives more decision power and responsibility to the players.

Unfortunately I hold out little hope that someday ANET gives more decision power to the players because of his lack of trust in the player community

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The question was, “is ANet ever going to fix Megaservers.”

  • Yes, ANet is working on a fix (links above) and
  • No, they haven’t said they think LFG/Taxi is sufficient.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

The question was, “is ANet ever going to fix Megaservers.”

  • Yes, ANet is working on a fix (links above) and
  • No, they haven’t said they think LFG/Taxi is sufficient.

That particular post is 2 months old and the first statements regarding ‘fixing’ megaservers were over 6 months ago, so I think the question is a valid one.

Let’s not forget that amongst other things, they said they were going to introduce a new set of legendary weapons.

(edited by Daroon.1736)

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The question was, “is ANet ever going to fix Megaservers.”

  • Yes, ANet is working on a fix (links above) and
  • No, they haven’t said they think LFG/Taxi is sufficient.

That particular post is 2 months old and the first statements regarding ‘fixing’ megaservers were over 6 months ago, so I think the question is a valid one.

Let’s not forget that amongst other things, they said they were going to introduce a new set of legendary weapons.

What else do you want them to say? Megaservers have been around for a few years at this point. The issues that affect the new maps are only ~6 months old, since largely they were minor before HoT (and it took a while before anyone started to recognize the pattern).

I get that you’d like more information, but it won’t be anything newsworthy. Megaservers use complex algorithms to decide how to open/close and when to ask for volunteers. Fixing it isn’t going to be simple; it’s not something that is going to take 2-6 months.

And if you don’t trust their answer because they cancelled 12 of 16 legendaries, what difference does it make what they say?

tl;dr ANet’s working on changing how megaservers work. Up to you whether you want to wait it out patiently or impatiently.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

The question was, “is ANet ever going to fix Megaservers.”

  • Yes, ANet is working on a fix (links above) and
  • No, they haven’t said they think LFG/Taxi is sufficient.

That particular post is 2 months old and the first statements regarding ‘fixing’ megaservers were over 6 months ago, so I think the question is a valid one.

Let’s not forget that amongst other things, they said they were going to introduce a new set of legendary weapons.

What else do you want them to say? Megaservers have been around for a few years at this point. The issues that affect the new maps are only ~6 months old, since largely they were minor before HoT (and it took a while before anyone started to recognize the pattern).

I get that you’d like more information, but it won’t be anything newsworthy. Megaservers use complex algorithms to decide how to open/close and when to ask for volunteers. Fixing it isn’t going to be simple; it’s not something that is going to take 2-6 months.

And if you don’t trust their answer because they cancelled 12 of 16 legendaries, what difference does it make what they say?

tl;dr ANet’s working on changing how megaservers work. Up to you whether you want to wait it out patiently or impatiently.

Lol – Are you seriously trying to say that Anet is incapable of re-writing a complex algorithm in 6+ months?

If you read the Reddit post identified above, you will see that the apparent issue is not the complexity of the programming involved, rather it is the ‘impossible’ problem of trying to ensure that there is enough spaces on a map for friends and guildmates, should they wish to join.

Creating multiple maps with a max capacity of 4 or 5 people, because 50 of their friends may or may not joint them is an utterly ludicrous approach.

(edited by Daroon.1736)

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Posted by: Healix.5819

Healix.5819

Even if they fixed it, there’s always going to potentially be that last dead map. Just the mindset around these events, including taxi’ing, can be a major problem. Despite popular belief, you don’t need a full map to do these events. You don’t even need half of that. To truly prevent dead maps, they need to volunteer in reverse, where new instances are only created by splitting a full map into two identical copies. One map would potentially die out however if suddenly all the leaders were lost and no one bothered to do anything. If they wanted to be fair to everyone, all maps would be linked together and every single person would be fighting the same boss. It would never fail however, but why should you fail just because you’re not in the main map? The other way is to separate the big events from the map, where people would queue into and join them with the sole intention of doing the event – think activities.

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Even if they fixed it, there’s always going to potentially be that last dead map. Just the mindset around these events, including taxi’ing, can be a major problem. Despite popular belief, you don’t need a full map to do these events. You don’t even need half of that. To truly prevent dead maps, they need to volunteer in reverse, where new instances are only created by splitting a full map into two identical copies. One map would potentially die out however if suddenly all the leaders were lost and no one bothered to do anything. If they wanted to be fair to everyone, all maps would be linked together and every single person would be fighting the same boss. It would never fail however, but why should you fail just because you’re not in the main map? The other way is to separate the big events from the map, where people would queue into and join them with the sole intention of doing the event – think activities.

To add to this idea.

People in general do not like to fail, nor to spend time doing things only to have it not pan out. For some players, meta events take a significant chunk of their play time. Since people don’t want to waste that time, they prefer to taxi to stack a map and “guarantee” success. This is exacerbated by zone-based rewards, titles, achieves, etc. that require many completions.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I had more fun doing the Orr metas in smaller groups back when we had servers. When there’s no choice, players who want to complete something will try. Give them a choice and they’ll choose the easier path. Now, people who are on less full maps either taxi successfully to a fuller map or they assume they’ll fail and just leave. For me, taxiing is part of, if not a main cause of, the problem.

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Posted by: General Health.9678

General Health.9678

Lol – Are you seriously trying to say that Anet is incapable of re-writing a complex algorithm in 6+ months?

Anet have said it’s complicated. Players saying “lol I bet it’s not that hard” is pointless, we don’t have access to their resources or code.

Creating multiple maps with a max capacity of 4 or 5 people, because 50 of their friends may or may not joint them is an utterly ludicrous approach.

Well it has worked fine for years. Taxi’ing to events is a fine, player-led solution. And you know we should be more grateful to all those people who shelled out hundreds of gold for their commander tags, who take the time to learn the events and organise the map they are in, who set up taxis so that others (including a lot of really lazy people who can’t just turn up on time to something) can do the events. Or, alternatively, this is an utterly ludicrous setup that clearly never works for anyone.

Blame Abaddon, he loves your tears.
pve, raid, pvp, fractal, dungeon, world clearing, legendary questing.. Zapped!

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

Lol – Are you seriously trying to say that Anet is incapable of re-writing a complex algorithm in 6+ months?

Anet have said it’s complicated. Players saying “lol I bet it’s not that hard” is pointless, we don’t have access to their resources or code.

Creating multiple maps with a max capacity of 4 or 5 people, because 50 of their friends may or may not joint them is an utterly ludicrous approach.

Well it has worked fine for years. Taxi’ing to events is a fine, player-led solution. And you know we should be more grateful to all those people who shelled out hundreds of gold for their commander tags, who take the time to learn the events and organise the map they are in, who set up taxis so that others (including a lot of really lazy people who can’t just turn up on time to something) can do the events. Or, alternatively, this is an utterly ludicrous setup that clearly never works for anyone.

They have not said that re-coding is complicated, what they have said is:

“Megaservers does what Gw1 did ala districts, except automatically. The downside, which really became apparent with HoT, is that we have an almost impossible problem to solve: how do we reserve space for all the people that will want to play together but are not currently playing together? Fans have solved his problem with taxiing, which is amazing, but obviously that is not the best solution. Or perhaps if it is the right way to do it we should make it easier. But the basic problem is a map holds N people and if we leave space for M people that may or may not show up, then it really only supports N-M people and if M is large, the map is mostly empty. Megaservers favors parties when grouping, which is why taxiing works: a small buffer is reserved so parties can generally get into the map together. But reserving say for an entire guild, where we don’t know how many will show up for any particular map, is a hard problem conceptually, never mind the programming of it. I’m open to suggestions.”

The problem is they have set up the system to prioritize leaving spaces on a map for players who may want to join over filling maps with players who actually are playing and I will say it again, this is an utterly ludicrous approach.

Taxi’ing to events is not a fine player led solution, it is last resort fix devised by players to overcome a system that is not fit for purpose – try reading this thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Dragon-s-Stand-map-dead/first#post6166789

or this one
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Unplayable-Solo/page/16#post6152951

or this one
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/full-meta-map/first#post6167163

Clearly all of the posters in these threads can see there is a major problem that needs to be fixed.

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Posted by: General Health.9678

General Health.9678

Lol – Are you seriously trying to say that Anet is incapable of re-writing a complex algorithm in 6+ months?

They have not said that re-coding is complicated, what they have said is

You were the one who said it was down to rewriting an algorithm.

Taxi’ing to events is not a fine player led solution, it is last resort fix devised by players to overcome a system that is not fit for purpose

Well it’s up to you. You can take the awesome taxi to the event (that you probably couldn’t be bothered getting to early) or you can see it as a system that isn’t fit for purpose. When in fact it’s fitting its purpose exactly.. getting players onto a specific map to do an event.

No. And you know why? Because Dragons Stand isn’t dead. You (not you personally obviously) may end up on a dead map. Solution.. taxi. Or you know, get there early.. but we’ll go with taxi.

I’ve posted a few times in that thread. The game is perfectly playable solo except for the bits that aren’t mean to be played solo. Which can be whatever your definition is for you but might not be the same for me. I’ve taken all my 9 80s round VB and am cycling them through AB then TD then DS. They’re all glass, I’ve enjoyed doing it on every one of them, using zergs for defence and fun and joining people doing HP’s. If you (again not you personally) can’t navigate the maps or kill the mobs then you’re doing it wrong. Really.

Pretty much a player problem this.
It goes “I tried to turn up a minute or two before the incredibly popular meta started and can’t get in”
Player problem. Get there early.

Blame Abaddon, he loves your tears.
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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

Lol – Are you seriously trying to say that Anet is incapable of re-writing a complex algorithm in 6+ months?

They have not said that re-coding is complicated, what they have said is

You were the one who said it was down to rewriting an algorithm.

Taxi’ing to events is not a fine player led solution, it is last resort fix devised by players to overcome a system that is not fit for purpose

Well it’s up to you. You can take the awesome taxi to the event (that you probably couldn’t be bothered getting to early) or you can see it as a system that isn’t fit for purpose. When in fact it’s fitting its purpose exactly.. getting players onto a specific map to do an event.

No. And you know why? Because Dragons Stand isn’t dead. You (not you personally obviously) may end up on a dead map. Solution.. taxi. Or you know, get there early.. but we’ll go with taxi.

I’ve posted a few times in that thread. The game is perfectly playable solo except for the bits that aren’t mean to be played solo. Which can be whatever your definition is for you but might not be the same for me. I’ve taken all my 9 80s round VB and am cycling them through AB then TD then DS. They’re all glass, I’ve enjoyed doing it on every one of them, using zergs for defence and fun and joining people doing HP’s. If you (again not you personally) can’t navigate the maps or kill the mobs then you’re doing it wrong. Really.

Pretty much a player problem this.
It goes “I tried to turn up a minute or two before the incredibly popular meta started and can’t get in”
Player problem. Get there early.

Thanks for clarifying, I understand now – Anet can do no wrong and all the problems associated with HOT maps are down to players and not the designers.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

Seems to me a reasonable solution is for Anet to make Taxi’ing easier for players. It’s actually a pretty good approach I think.

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

Seems to me a reasonable solution is for Anet to make Taxi’ing easier for players. It’s actually a pretty good approach I think.

The principle is pretty much the same as Districts were in GW1, so yes it can work.

The problem is, Unlike GW1 which had a drop down menu so you could see and choose which numbered instance to join, GW2 has no such feature so it’s all pot luck.

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Posted by: curtegg.5216

curtegg.5216

The solution is fairly simple if Anet’s servers tracks user accounts on them and which map instance they are in, which if they don’t they can add the map instance queues on the server side (after all they do with with dungeons and fractals – although without the countdown clock).

All they need to do is to maintain a user-queue with a five minute countdown clock per user per map instance on the server. The server simply checks if the user is still logged into that same map instance (let’s say every 10 seconds). If the user waypoints to another map instance or any other instance the user’s account is dropped from that queue and added to the other map instance’s queue. However, if the user had DC’d or logged out then the countdown clock associated with the user’s account begins (decrementing let’s say every 10 seconds) keeping their account tagged to that same map. If the user relogs back in with that five minutes the server then checks the map queues to see which map instance that user was on and promptly returns them to the same map and reset that user’s countdown clock. If the user doesn’t relog into the game by the time the countdown timer expired then they are dropped from the queue and the usual mega-server map instance change occurs. If they do log back in then they get returned to the same map instance and their countdown clock is reset.

This methodology supports the mega-server implementation and is a simple handshake between client and the servers. So Anet, I ask why hasn’t this been done?

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Posted by: vifesprit.3514

vifesprit.3514

^ The megaserveur already done that, I think. The problem is that with the taxi system, the space is already taken by someone else before you reconnect. The taxi system completely distorts your solution.

Players have become grasshoppers, it’s a pervert effect of the megaserver system. Players like the devs are all responsible for this.

HOT was supposed to have persistent (2hours) group content with large chains of events (meta). Because of megaserver, in April, the devs had removed the VB daylight T4 chain.
More and more players ask the same for the rest of the HOT contents, to become more and more a solo content, an abberation for open-word content in an MMO.

So is it too late to make things better? I do not know, but currently the only way for players is to play as a grasshopper (Taxi’s), so yes, it’s in the hands of devs and their managers and yes, we need a solution.

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Posted by: General Health.9678

General Health.9678

The solution is fairly simple
All they need to do is
The server simply
simple handshake

Clearly it isn’t any of those things or it would have been implemented already.
It isn’t possible for the server to look at every player and drop them in a full map. Because it’s already full. If you end up in a less than full map or not the one you wanted, taxi in using the LFG tool. If the one you want to get into is already full you need to learn to get there a bit earlier or stay on the map the megaserver drops you on because chances are it’s also going to drop a load more players onto your map as all their taxis fail too. Ergo you will end up on a full map no matter what you do, just not the one you were originally trying to get into.

You can also keep trying to get in. I’ve got into many maps that claimed the world was full by ignoring the message and continuing to try to join that map. At some point there isn’t any point in keep trying as the event will be underway and you’ll miss out on too much of it but until it actually starts, it’s worth trying a few times and if you can’t get on, start the event on the map you are actually on, put your own commander tag up if you have one and start your own taxis. If you don’t have a commander tag, consider getting one, it almost guarantees people will join your event.

Blame Abaddon, he loves your tears.
pve, raid, pvp, fractal, dungeon, world clearing, legendary questing.. Zapped!

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Posted by: General Health.9678

General Health.9678

Taxi’s are not the solution – Taxi maps only tend to be advertised towards the end of the meta cycle and so fill very quickly and it’s pot luck as to whether you get ‘map full’ or not.

This just isn’t true. Taxis are started as soon as people start arriving for the meta. Unfortunately the LFG isn’t geared up for taxis and will allow you advertise an event that is already full. But such is life. Your option is to get there earlier or start a new map with new people and your own taxis. If you don’t have a commander tag, get one, they are player magnets.

When maps are advertised earlier and you join X in whatever map it is, most of the time I find that the squad I have joined is spread out over god knows how many map instances and as there is no way of identifying who is in what map, more frustration ensues.

Also not true. Most people will be one instance. You either join them or you are in a different one. The aim is to get into that one instance with those guys. You have no idea who is spread out where, you just know they are not on your map. So. Find the commander tag, right click on them and join them and only them. That’s the trick. Join the commander. Chances are ALL the other people are already there and the map is full. You should have gotten there earlier like they did. Chances are if you can get in the commander map all the other squad members will be there. Some might not be. If the world is full they’ll drop off the squad once they give up trying to get in or the commander will kick them once they get confirmation the world is full.

A combined total of over 40,000 views and nearly 1,000 replies and ALL of them are indirectly related to the fact that Megaservers are not working and need fixing as a matter of absolute priority.

So that’s 39000 views where people don’t think it’s an issue and of those 1,000 replies how many are saying it’s fine, doesn’t need fixing, use the taxi / lfg / get there earlier.

Also.. man walks into bar, finds it empty. Man is overjoyed because who wants to go to a “popular” bar where you can’t order a drink? Mans friends come to join him when he invites them. Maybe he buys them a round to get the party started.

It’s Friday, mans friends go to bar. Man messes about at home, finally about 11 o’clock, after happy hour is over and after a great band has started to play or the best sports has come on the large TV, man decides to go out after all. Bouncers say the pub is full and due to health and safety, fire regulations etc. it’s one in, one out. “But my friends are in there!!” says the man. “Your friends are welcome to come out and go with you to a different bar” say the bouncers. But they don’t because they’ve enjoyed cheap drinks during happy hour and have good seats watching the band / football etc.

Blame Abaddon, he loves your tears.
pve, raid, pvp, fractal, dungeon, world clearing, legendary questing.. Zapped!

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Posted by: CETheLucid.3964

CETheLucid.3964

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Posted by: Nutjob.9021

Nutjob.9021

Here’s a thought. Use the current system, but put a timer on the soft cap thing of about 10 minutes. So for 10 minutes, it’s a protected map that favors guild members, party members, taxiing, etc. After that, it opens up first come, first serve until it is completely full. With my guild, (TTS), there are times when we have 100 or more players wanting to join an instance as with Triple Trouble Wurm in Bloodtide Coast. Fifty or more for most of our events is the rule of thumb. It’s difficult to find an instance that everyone can get into.

Another idea: If the map is low in population, you’ll get a warning that says something like, “The population of this map is low. In ten minutes it will close unless X more players arrive.” and give an actual number of players needed to keep the map open. Maybe put a counter somewhere on the map screen up in the map completion area. Like maybe if 40 players are required, and there are only 36 in the zone, you’d see a red 36 then a slash mark, then a black 40 and the word “players (100 max)”. When there are 40 players or more, the number will become green. So you might have 62/40 with 62 in green. When you hit 100 players, maybe the whole thing blinks and it’s “100/40 players (100 max)”. Of course you could play around with the whole formatting thing, but the general idea is to show how many players are in the zone, how many need to be in the zone to keep the map open, and how many players means a full map. Players zoning in should be counted as in the zone, even if they aren’t there quite yet, otherwise you could end up with 110 players in a 100 max zone or people starting to zone in and then getting kicked back to where they came from.