Guild Wars 2

So.

Add me to the list of people who avidly hate the megaserver system and boss scheduling.

Seeing people around while I level alts is alright but it doesn’t do a kitten thing for me that I wasn’t already able to do before.

I hate how crowded cities are, but it won’t kill me.

I hate that there’s no real server identity anymore. Sucks to see this affecting WvW.

I hate how hard it is to get in to kill a world boss now. It’s not fun at all. In fact, it’s a pain. I don’t know how I’m going to accomplish my goals without that source of income, but I have no motivation to go to these events anymore when they are so terrible to sit through.

I hate that my guildies can call a boss being up but going to that map puts me in another instance. Ridiculous.

I am doing my best to continue enjoying what is left for me in GW2 but it really really sucks that, in essence, parts of the game I played and enjoyed have been patched out.

With this change, mega server, we are losing the very same thing what kept many people still playing this game: community and server identity.

I will dare and say many were comfortable with the server they chose to call a home because they know the community and know where to find players. Now we lost it, we lost the same thing that would define us as a player from server X, just as we lost that community bonding, a place where many would hangout and talk, recruit or even make pleas for WvW.

I know and understand anet is trying to save money and yet help those players that have been asking for a way to get rid with the deserted maps for so long, however, as someone that chose ET as a server, which I did exactly because I wanted a small tight community, a place where we pretty much know almost all players.

As I know it is an open world and events are supposed to be done with many players, one helping each other, but I liked the fact ET had only a few doing them, because it added to the challenge to solo or duo an event. I am not saying because I want things my way, but for me, it takes the will away to play when I get to a map which is so full with people, so laggy, my fps drops to 8-10 when usually is 130, and there is nothing else to do besides afk while auto-attacking because can’t keep up with anything under these conditions.

I think right now the mega server is lacking balance, less players per map (lower cap) and better AI. A ‘zerg’ shouldn’t only gives higher HP for bosses, they should have more attacks, be smarter, so the zerg will have to work their way out. However at the same time I know some players don’t want to put effort into doing events, only wants what is quick and easy so they can move on to the next.

What I can say so far is: balance for maps and events, a recheck for allocation of players since for many times I got a different map from my friends and guildes. At some point, only a few were able to run a bounty because we got different instances from each other and, also important, a place where we can keep our identity, a city where we will be separated and be able to hangout with our friends and server mates.

I was asking the other day in chat about how people viewed the concept of servers. I wanted to know if people thought that servers were primarily a tool for community building or a simple limitation of data storage. What I’m hearing from a lot of people is that they feel that servers are a way of creating and organizing a community primarily. I always thought that the only real reason that developers had different segregated populations was because they couldn’t fit 10 million players on one server. It’s really interesting when you think about it. WVW aside, right now, the server populations, the players you meet and friends you make are more fluid because of the blurring of the lines between servers. It has forced many to feel uncomfortable because the nature of servers have changed from our traditional understanding of them. In a way, this is actually more like what an mmo would be like without that hard space limitation. Think about it. I think it’s interesting and definitely presents challenges that are still being considered by Anet. But I definitely feel that we are moving in a positive direction if only we can keep innovating on this concept instead of moving backwards in fear. I vote that we continue to take a step forward into this unknown but be cautious about it.

Unfortunately the one thing missing from most of these posts about how horrible the Mega is for the players is the fact that Anet has absolutley zero motivation to switch it back.

The change was not made because they wanted to improve player’s experiences, it’s was made because it reduces costs and improves their bottom line. Take UA as a prime example of the direction that Anet is heading in, the customer’s concerns are secondary to profits. And UA has maintained a large profit margin even though 90% of it’s player base is disgusted with a lot of it’s actions.

Until we can appeal to that bottom line as motivation to get rid of this change it’s going to stay the same. Unfortunately i don’t know how that’s going to happen but I can definitely say that posting “I don’t like it” doesn’t even register on their priority list.

I like this game and many parts of it are still fun. But the megaserver trend plaguing MMO’s nowdays has come here to stay and we would probably do best to “roll with the punches” so to speak.

nightwulf.1986:

I was asking the other day in chat about how people viewed the concept of servers. I wanted to know if people thought that servers were primarily a tool for community building or a simple limitation of data storage. What I’m hearing from a lot of people is that they feel that servers are a way of creating and organizing a community primarily. I always thought that the only real reason that developers had different segregated populations was because they couldn’t fit 10 million players on one server. It’s really interesting when you think about it. WVW aside, right now, the server populations, the players you meet and friends you make are more fluid because of the blurring of the lines between servers. It has forced many to feel uncomfortable because the nature of servers have changed from our traditional understanding of them. In a way, this is actually more like what an mmo would be like without that hard space limitation. Think about it. I think it’s interesting and definitely presents challenges that are still being considered by Anet. But I definitely feel that we are moving in a positive direction if only we can keep innovating on this concept instead of moving backwards in fear. I vote that we continue to take a step forward into this unknown but be cautious about it.

Actually agree-I feel server identities are not always good, because they tend to divide communities rather than unite them. “This is my server!” It’s hard to accept when you have grown to love your community and its given identity over time, but I do believe it’s for the overall benefit of the game, and certainly gets you to meet many other players you wouldn’t otherwise encounter (trolls? Report them, but not every player you don’t know is a trolling incident waiting to happen.)

You’ve clearly never had to report or follow through with trolls if you believe reporting them results in immediate action and a cessation of their behavior.

Muusic.2967:

Unfortunately the one thing missing from most of these posts about how horrible the Mega is for the players is the fact that Anet has absolutley zero motivation to switch it back.

The change was not made because they wanted to improve player’s experiences, it’s was made because it reduces costs and improves their bottom line. Take UA as a prime example of the direction that Anet is heading in, the customer’s concerns are secondary to profits. And UA has maintained a large profit margin even though 90% of it’s player base is disgusted with a lot of it’s actions.

Until we can appeal to that bottom line as motivation to get rid of this change it’s going to stay the same. Unfortunately i don’t know how that’s going to happen but I can definitely say that posting “I don’t like it” doesn’t even register on their priority list.

I like this game and many parts of it are still fun. But the megaserver trend plaguing MMO’s nowdays has come here to stay and we would probably do best to “roll with the punches” so to speak.

You can’t just think of motivation in binary. It’s often not either/or but sometimes both or more than you think. Some people wanted something like this change to the server structure to help increase player population in dead areas, others clearly want to keep map populations low for other reasons. So, clearly, someone other than Anet was benefited by this change and yes, others lost out. Couldn’t they have simply opted to merge the low population servers without investing time and money into changing the way maps are created too? Was this option truly the most cost effective and how do we know that? The “bottom line” is rarely not a part of the equation in game design, don’t get me wrong, but it seems to me that there is evidence to suggest that more was at play here than finances.

And lastly, “I don’t like it” is motivation enough for change some of the time. Was the famous/infamous change to the Flamekissed armor primarily a profit motivated change, player discontent, or both? The Ranger forums often tossed around that absolutely zero positive changes to the ranger pet would happen because it doesn’t affect Anet’s bottom line but there were some fixes in this recent patch that players requested that got through despite that belief. I get that you are trying to temper expectations but instead of saying don’t try, I would recommend that people keep voicing their opinions and just be aware that sometimes changes aren’t made for a number of reasons and not necessarily just because of money. Still, it seems they thought this change to the server structure through. And I agree that short of something truly catastrophic to player experience, loss of income, or any other combination of things related to that they are probably not going to do a straight up reversion of the system.

P.S. What is UA? Did you mean EA or is that another mmo?

Star Ace.5207:

nightwulf.1986:

I was asking the other day in chat about how people viewed the concept of servers. I wanted to know if people thought that servers were primarily a tool for community building or a simple limitation of data storage. What I’m hearing from a lot of people is that they feel that servers are a way of creating and organizing a community primarily. I always thought that the only real reason that developers had different segregated populations was because they couldn’t fit 10 million players on one server. It’s really interesting when you think about it. WVW aside, right now, the server populations, the players you meet and friends you make are more fluid because of the blurring of the lines between servers. It has forced many to feel uncomfortable because the nature of servers have changed from our traditional understanding of them. In a way, this is actually more like what an mmo would be like without that hard space limitation. Think about it. I think it’s interesting and definitely presents challenges that are still being considered by Anet. But I definitely feel that we are moving in a positive direction if only we can keep innovating on this concept instead of moving backwards in fear. I vote that we continue to take a step forward into this unknown but be cautious about it.

Actually agree-I feel server identities are not always good, because they tend to divide communities rather than unite them. “This is my server!” It’s hard to accept when you have grown to love your community and its given identity over time, but I do believe it’s for the overall benefit of the game, and certainly gets you to meet many other players you wouldn’t otherwise encounter (trolls? Report them, but not every player you don’t know is a trolling incident waiting to happen.)

The funny thing about divided communities is that they definitely have benefits and people who are complaining about the changes definitely understand those benefits. I liken it to my fiance, hailing from a small town, who always complains about being in a big city where she never feels like she’s a part of the community because of the sheer scale of human interaction. I think there’s some truth to that and it’s a complicated subject. Right now, it’s like players in small towns were all moved to the big cities and there is some culture shock (trolls and all). But yeah, I also believe this is an interesting step but also needs some improving, so people need to keep talking.

I and other people don’t seem to be getting guild rewards for completing missions, this is a bug from guesting, please fix this as I see no reason to do guild mission if I get nothing for it.

Here is my take on megaserver. It has some good and a ton of bad.

The good:
- You now see players more frequently on your middle tier maps (30-60).
- You get to socialize a lot more with people who are from different servers.
- Who knows, it could be saving anet money by switching to megaservers (This isn’t true though)

The bad:
Megaserver has been screwing up a lot of guild/organized events since it has been out. I will admit, it has made some of them a lot easier (Tequatl is actually somewhat doable now). I’ll talk about guild missions right now.

Guild Missions:
This is probably the worst i’ve ever seen. The way it used to be was a lot easier. Home servers had a very low percentage of guilds actually conflicting with one another. I think in my time since doing guild missions. We’ve only ran into other guilds maybe 5/100 times. After reset, we would start and we’d get to the bounty and wait for everyone to gather. 5 minutes later we would kill it and move onto the next thing. Challenge was even easier. Everyone got to the map and finished the event. Move onto puzzle, no issue at all. Move onto the rush, start it, escort everyone through. Boom done.

Megaserver guild missions was very different. Start bounty, guild was in 3 different overflows and took at least 10 minutes to get everyone into the correct megaflow. We barely had enough time to kill the person we were looking for. Move onto guild challenge. This was probably the worst I’ve ever seen. We had guild members spread across possibly 4 different megaflows. Finally got it down to 2 megaflows and then on one of the other instances, another guild starts the challenge. ONE PERSON. From our guild, who most likely was new, finished the event with the other guild and accepted the rewards. When we finished on the main, we didn’t get commendations at all. About 50 guild members got screwed over. About half of the guild moved onto rush, which in itself, was just like challenge. Had members participate in rush and accepted reward, main megaserver players got screwed over and never got rewards from our own activated event.

Megaserver screws every guild mission. Of course you can change the times your guild does missions, but then you lose about 75% of your guild population due to time restraints and time zones.

Lets move onto world events, specifically tequatl and tri-wurm. Tequatl has mixed results. I’ve seen it succeed with pug commanders and just flat out fail terribly. So it is a 50/50 with teq. Wurm however, if you ever want to finish the event and actually beat it. You need organization, you’ll never get that with people who are not in teamspeak, not paying attention to map/say chat, and under leveled. I have yet to beat the wurm and I’ve been trying to do it with TTS for a while now. My times very so I can’t really say they haven’t beat it (I know they have) however, with megaserver, getting us all on the same instance is ugly. You now run into megaservers who have a ton of people who are trying to map complete and take up the spots for players needed to actually complete the event. You never end up in the correct megaserver. The public spawn time can stay the way it is, but when it is started by a guild, they need to be given their own instance if they want it. Groups such as TTS that need pure organization would love this. Personally making your own instance for it would be perfect. Limit them to just the area where they are going to be and have the system kick them out if they leave the area (Just like personal story stuff).

At least give the person who started the event the ability to start a new megaserver so that they can start fresh, no mapping players, nothing. Fresh start. I’ve read that people think that anet did the megaservers because it would save them money. Looking at it from an IT stand point. Yes it would save them a lot of money, but the other reason it was done was entirely different. You have maps that have never been touched unless its people doing mapping or meta events. Once they are over the map is completely empty again with maybe 3 players on it trying to gather materials or finish a heart. They did this because their mid level content maps are dead. You have tons of players complaining about how they cant finish certain events or they never see other players on the maps they were on in their home server. Thus megaserver was born. I see the reasoning behind megaserver, it is a great reason and it has been ok in certain areas, but like almost all things anet has done. It seems like a lot of thinking went into certain aspects, but not all.

Asking anet to fix this is almost like asking them to fix the problems with fractals. Getting uninfused rings in lvl 40+ runs. Getting dredge after colossus when almost half a year ago, we were told that shouldn’t happen (plot twist: it still happens very often) My most recent favorite is how anet ninja patched the ability to hop over to the aetherblade boss after beating mai-trin. Yet, we haven’t seen a fix to the fractals drop rate (Its god awful now since a couple patches ago where they said they increased it), fix dredge/colossus overlapping issue.

It has been about a month since megaserver was announced and there has been no response to feedback except for propaganda.

The only way I will find megaserver and boss schedule acceptable is if players have the choice of being on their home server map or to join a megamap and the ability to switch between them.

Anet’s communication has been utterly terrible. In it’s present state the game is rapidly losing it’s appeal.

nightwulf.1986:

The funny thing about divided communities is that they definitely have benefits and people who are complaining about the changes definitely understand those benefits. I liken it to my fiance, hailing from a small town, who always complains about being in a big city where she never feels like she’s a part of the community because of the sheer scale of human interaction. I think there’s some truth to that and it’s a complicated subject. Right now, it’s like players in small towns were all moved to the big cities and there is some culture shock (trolls and all). But yeah, I also believe this is an interesting step but also needs some improving, so people need to keep talking.

Sociologically, what happens in cities is that people make their own communities, small subsets of the greater whole, based around a myriad of things like sports, other entertainment, religion, schools, etc. The thing with mega-server is that the tools to keep sub-groups like guilds together need work. It takes effort to get together with guild members or friends in the right instance, if the system doesn’t get it right the first time. Under the old server system, people only had that problem on the few largest, most popular servers. People will adapt or leave. And just maybe, the devs will refine the systems to more easily allow the various communities that predated the mega-server to continue to get together.

nightwulf.1986:

Right now, it’s like players in small towns were all moved to the big cities and there is some culture shock (trolls and all). But yeah, I also believe this is an interesting step but also needs some improving, so people need to keep talking.

Well unfortunately atm it’s like players in small towns were moved to the big cities and when they come back from a trip to the countryside their house is completely different with completely neighbours.

From what I’ve experienced so far with megaserver is, for a new comer or solo player its great… as for the rest of the players (guilds/parties/friends etc) its a joke. I spend more time standing around at a wp trying to get onto the same map as people I want to play with than actually doing anything ingame. I thought the system should be placing us on same map as party/guild/server, what happened to that concept?

To sum up my personal experiences, it seems they’ve opted to remove the ‘guild’ from guildwars2 and make it a solo player mmo

A lot of you are missing a point.
Not everybody has a top of the line computer with decent internet service. We don’t all live in the glorious United States and for some of us the massing of players has made it impossible to function with the agonizingly slow lag issues in WvW, PvE etc. When I bought this game it worked. Now it does not. I care about community a great deal and miss my friends but more importantly I care if I can actually play the game! I’m all for progress as long as it’s good for all. Get it? GOOD FOR ALL.
Now its broke…you broke my game. Now I log in and make coffee and a sandwich while my screen loads. I try to participate. Operative word, TRY.
This is all bs about posting your feedback. If you think they will listen to you then I’m sorry. But I felt I had to put some of you in my picture. This idea you have that it’s people just not liking change is rubbish and it’s not all about those people who like community. For some it’s actually being able to play the game!

I said it once, i said it a bazillion of times, i got ignored, so i’ll say it again :
A-net, give people manual instance selection, so we can pick an appropriate instance that fits our gameplay needs ; High poplulated one, low populated one, RP controlled one, home server controlled one, pizza controlled one (wait, what!?).

Guys, seriously. I did my own research over the last days, and there are people out there who confirm my words. Stop the copy/paste of broken features from other games without tweaking them, it looks bad on you guys.

- maps are way to small for that kind of zerg. u can see someone at every mob on the map. it inspires u to camp on spot which will soon lead to boting.
- farming materials is no ending event. since u can get 1-3 t6 per hour if u r lucky to hit mobs in time
- to many random ppl who don’t care for anything but for their benefits
- chat is horible
- making events for traits is just big pain and time consuming since u need to camp for hours, for the event to start, cos ofc u will miss it since there are big trains 24/day
- pve is worst then ever. never have experienced such crapy farm at any mmo i played. even with open pvp maps bassed games having wars with entire server i could gather way more with killing mobs as i can gather now in gw2.
- at the end game have become time consuming game. u have independed modes pve, pvp and wvw. if u wanna do them all it will take half of the day just to get smth out of them.

and so on…

Introducing a “Megaserver” in a realm vs realm game was probably the worst idea the Devs ever had. Adding a default language filter that prevents you from communicating with the players around you is probably the most ridiculous thing in video game history. The amount of fail in this recent patch is truly epic. If this game was paid by subscription I would have canceled mine for sure. Good thing it isn’t – gives ArenaNet time to revert their mistake.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Rin of Rivvinda.4971:

still don’t understand why mega server was not just added as extra server next to the existing servers. use mega as an underflow option when you enter a low population map (give popup like when server was ready to get out of overflow) so you can opt to join there.

A lot of people are saying this. The real reason we have megaservers is to save Anet money. The fewer map instances, the less server resources are needed, the more money Anet saves.

They could have had the money if they went for an expansion like the players asked for. Just sayin’, I wouldn’t mind paying to play the real, pre-April GW2.

HerrDoktor.3490:

I am doing my best to continue enjoying what is left for me in GW2 but it really really sucks that, in essence, parts of the game I played and enjoyed have been patched out.

TRUTH.

I do not want my post to be lost in oblivion due to moderator activities (at least he didn’t delete the topic/post). So I will just copy/paste my post about why tweaks or modifications can’t fix our problems (with some editing):

Original link:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-are-actually-kind-of-awesome/page/2#post3966589

“People without some technical background can dream about “some tweaks” and “modifications” which will make everything as should be. But it is almost impossible.

First, you need to understand how megaservers are being created now. There is some kind of machine learning algorithm (google it or wikipedia it) behind scene which tries to find your “whom player x likely to play” list. Believe me or not but this kind of problem can be a weekly homework in any university’s machine learning class. Because the problem is not the algorithm (it is the easiest part) but the data about players (which is also easy for ANet since they are monitoring us for collecting data). So, in terms of “finding your best mates” algorithm, ANet can’t fail (I hope).

The hard and almost impossible part (as well as where ANet can’t handle) is putting you with your party/guild/server/friends to same map. Just think about it only yourself. You are the first person that enter, for instance, Sparkfly. Then your friend enters as the second person. Then his/her friend enters as the third person. And so on.

I know this is not the exact system. Actually, in current system, until a map reaches its soft cap, everyone can teleport into that map (oh wait, before megaservers it was also the case). There is no priority for your party/guild/server/friends which is exactly opposite what ANet said. After soft cap, everyone can taxi their party/guild/friend into the map. However, even if they could give priority your social circle, there are HUGE amount of other players with HUGE amount of social circles. If you think about it just for a second, you can understand that it is really a bad problem. Unfortunately, there is no such algorithm/idea/system that can fix this problem if ANet insists on using megaserver system.

In old system, you could meet with your social circle without a problem in your server’s map or you could create your own overflow or you could guest to a lower populated server. However, you HAD CHOICE to do it. Megaserver system took those choices from us and gave us nothing and will continue to give us nothing.

I have to admit that if Guild Wars 2 used megaservers at launch (almost 2 years ago), we could adapt ourselves. However, after 2 years, we made friendships. We construct communities from scratch. We formed guilds and alliances to kill big, bad bosses. You can’t understand if you haven’t try to get first kill of updated Tequatl and Three Headed Wurm. We wasted our hours to get that first kill. We tried hard as a community. We failed hard as a community. We learned hard as a community. We killed them hard as a community and our screams of joy trembled Teamspeak servers.

And now, we have nothing. I open GW2 nowadays, and I am just a random player among huge amount of unknown players. There is no familiar faces for me. I go to Tequatl or Wurm and all I see is random faces again. Even if I try to join my communities’ map, it is also full with more than > 50 random players.

New players may like crowded maps. Altoholics may like crowded maps. But megaservers offer nothing to rest of player base."

The solution

Oow there is another jerk who knows he knows the solution? Yes!

1. Figure out how many ‘servers’ you would need / have on average to get only full maps. For EU I think it are about 7 (me and guild-members are usually split up over 3 or max 4 different servers. But I am guessing we are less likely to end up in German or French)

2. Let servers group up, form PvE alliances. Yes LET THEM do it, involve them. Some servers have a WvW history together (positive or negatives) different languages and RP or other communities all have a role in what servers would be a good match. Of course number of active players is also important so be involved but let the servers also be involved with a smart voting system.

Eventually you should end up with the number of alliances you need (servers you would get filled)

3. As soon as a map does not get enough people one of the servers will act as underflow. So people from other servers automatically get moved there and also see on what server they are. They are always able to move back to the home server and people who’s home-server it is should also always be able to get to another server if they don’t want to be in the busy map.

4. If it gets to busy and so guilds or people from the original server are not able to get in the map then people and guilds from other servers (so guilds need a ‘home-server’ defined) will get another server assigned and they get a message that another map is ready. Much like you got when being in an overflow and your home-server had space. Who gets the message is based also in the same things as the mega-server does now, so home-server and guilds and so on. So you should almost always be on the same map with people from your server but likely also with people from one or two other servers)

In this way friends, guilds and communities (usually linked to each other by server) are almost always together while still having the benefit of more crowded maps and having the ability to escape the crowd. Possible even make guessing between alliance servers free and simply with an ingame-option.

Since Megaserver introduction, I have since found another game to get my MMO PvE fix.
I hate the system and boss schedule, not to mention the large impact on guild missions and other problems.
Basically, they are forcing me to do everything open world in a zerg. I have higher expectations from the games I play than to further reduce the gameplay to a zerg mentality, and thats using ‘gameplay’ very loosely. A format that completely makes builds and gear irrelevant is an extremely poor one – go to any world boss or event and try to claim that your build, gear, or even your presence mattered.
Couple this with destroying any sense of community. Being thrown into maps, events and bosses with faceless people I may or may not ever see again. May or may not end up with people I know. No home world loyalty or community. I see many people taking issue with the “RP community”….why limit it there? There used to be a sense of community on servers…WvW talks, seeing and running into the same people. It feels less like a community now. It may have created the illusion of population through means of merging, but the sense of community was destroyed to do it.
I continue to play GW2 for PvP as I do still find that enjoyable and WvW during off-peak times for skirmishes and roaming, otherwise I have found another game with far more enjoyable PvE.

Seriously, Plains of Ashford only have 3 uncontested wp on the far west side yet when I zone in theyre all open. WTH, make me wp twice to get where I want to go. Who thought this was a good idea?

rgraze.5169:

Seriously, Plains of Ashford only have 3 uncontested wp on the far west side yet when I zone in theyre all open. WTH, make me wp twice to get where I want to go. Who thought this was a good idea?

Nobody. Even the devs acknowledged it wasn’t their preferred option, it’s just the only one that was technologically feasible at this point.

rgraze.5169:

Seriously, Plains of Ashford only have 3 uncontested wp on the far west side yet when I zone in theyre all open. WTH, make me wp twice to get where I want to go. Who thought this was a good idea?

I take issue with this, too, as even if it was the ‘only technologically feasible option’ they could have held back on rolling this out until they had figured something else out. WPs that can’t even become contested show as contested. In some maps you can just TP to contested WPs, even if they’re genuinely surrounded by mobs. This needed more testing before it went out.

Nevermind that having to WP twice completely negates the removal of repair costs. They said something about repair costs being a system that ‘punishes new players the most.’ You know what? I don’t know a single person who died so much as a new player that they never had any copper on hand. Not a one. You know what new players can’t afford to do, though? Blow 82c to move around starter zones over and over and over and over, and it only gets more expensive as you level up. (And I get that the idea is that they’re rolling through zones on foot completing hearts, but to complete the maps themselves? By the end you always have to bounce around WPing, especially since now most maps don’t show all their hearts until you talk to whichever scout you missed when you were going through. And that’s assuming you found every Vista and POI while you were doing the hearts you could see on zone-in.) Older players experience the same problem, sure, but by the time you have your first 80 if you ever want for 4 silver to port into a zone you are in bad, bad shape. A single path of a single dungeon takes care of even a heavy porter for at least a week. New players don’t have that option. New players get the shaft. I have two friends who just started playing who I had to send gold to just because of this.

I think at this point if they announced a PTR for future features I would actually prostrate myself in front of my computer and weep for joy.

The silver cost for the extra WP is so marginal, I wish they’d remove all WPing costs within zones just so people stop complaining about it. Technically you could travel the whole map for free by WPing to an exit, running through the exit to the next map, WPing to the next exit, running through, etc… but that’d take forever.

timmyf.1490:

The silver cost for the extra WP is so marginal, I wish they’d remove all WPing costs within zones just so people stop complaining about it. Technically you could travel the whole map for free by WPing to an exit, running through the exit to the next map, WPing to the next exit, running through, etc… but that’d take forever.

Who cares about the costs? It’s the extra 2 minute loading screen each time that’s the problem.

Olvendred.3027:

timmyf.1490:

The silver cost for the extra WP is so marginal, I wish they’d remove all WPing costs within zones just so people stop complaining about it. Technically you could travel the whole map for free by WPing to an exit, running through the exit to the next map, WPing to the next exit, running through, etc… but that’d take forever.

Who cares about the costs? It’s the extra 2 minute loading screen each time that’s the problem.

Ahh, thanks for the clarification. I hadn’t thought about this, as I load in within 10 seconds zone-to-zone and maybe 3-4 seconds in-zone.

I get the megaserver in many instances, however…..

I really feel that putting megaserver in our major cities (Ratasum, Divinity’s Reach, etc) is creating a loss of community. We can no longer put out a call “Our garrison is being attacked by insertservernamehere. Please come help defend!”. That server could (and usually is) in the major city now, and half our server can’t see what was typed by they are in a different instance of the same city.

Please, remove our major cities from the megaserver. Allow us this small comfort of community that we once had!

I love megaservers, but hate the effects of them. So much that I think our guild is better off without them unless some changes are made.

Adding my persepective on guilds and community as guild leader:

1. Guild missions. Trying to do even a simple Bounty is ridiculous – there’s way too much time wasted during an active Bounty trying to get into each other’s maps. Timers should be adjusted to accomodate this, if not fix the megaservers. To be honest, this is the LEAST of my worries – they are not integral to how our guild is run. The next two topics are.

2. Allow all guild members from any server to share in the upgrades and influence pool. Many guilds like ours only recruit from the same server (equal benefit, no worrying about member activity per server, max. resource pool utilisation, etc.). The community we have to continually build, the upgrades we constantly run – it’s collapsing and we can’t do much about it. Which brings me to my next point…

3. Recruiting for WvW is now way more difficult, because we can’t really find those players amidst masses of other people from servers. Our WvW presence is difficult to maintain – and one could even say megaservers will affect the performance of servers with fewer large WvW-dedicated guilds. The outcome of the Spring Tournament – I don’t know if it can even be fair anymore. One possible solution could be to change how server transfers work – maybe a player could swap to a new guild’s server for free but then isn’t allowed to join other guilds for a month. Or lower the fee. Or new players are not considered server-bound until they join a guild/make a guild for the first time but float around in limbo. SOMETHING. Server selection isn’t based on the popularity of associated activity (e.g. RPing) anymore.

If megaservers are making our servers redundant in a few aspects, the rest of the aspects should be made redundant as well. Change the concept of a ‘world’. A handful of mechanisms for handling player communities need to change along with the megaservers implementation. The very name of this game draws attention to the community aspect, the guild – one would think that mechanisms supporting guild communities would take priority. Currently, they do not.

- Tabs

Just now I’ve tried Tequatl for the 20th time in a row and for the 20th time (for me) in a row it has failed.
Success rate before Megaserver: 50%
Failure rate after Megaserver: 100%
GG, Megaserver. /thread

Player.2475:

Just now I’ve tried Tequatl for the 20th time in a row and for the 20th time (for me) in a row it has failed.
Success rate before Megaserver: 50%
Failure rate after Megaserver: 100%
GG, Megaserver. /thread

Also the Worm.My guild can’t get all its members in the same map for the raid.To many pugs.To many randoms.It’s just not funny anymore.

I am in TTS and I can’t even get into sanctioned TTS servers because of random people on the map.
Why even bother.
The biggest victory in the game isn’t beating the boss but getting into a server with your guildmates. I am done trying.
I am not going to bother doing Tequatl and Wurms anymore since there is ZERO point in spamming join when it is futile.
At least before if I couldn’t get into a TTS server I could kill Teq with a BG(my home server) pug group but now, well, we all know how futile it is to bother trying.
Anet in one fell swoop DESTROYED doing any type of organized raid in the game. Thanks guys.

I’m with TTS too and I agree – the biggest victory is when you make it to the map where your guildmates are fighting Teq/Wurm/Karka Queen because thanks to megaservers, it’s filled in 30 seconds. It doesn’t matter if you got there on time or an hour early and tried to join ASAP. Be prepared for 15-40 minutes of spamming “join” and praying to the GW2 gods that someone crashes or a non-guildie leaves that map.

Yesterday, we had a map filled so fast that 50 TTS members were locked out. In less than a minute. At least with overflows, you had a chance.

Why can’t a Guild Instance be implemented that’s by invite only? This megaserver thing is killing coordinated attempts to take on open world bosses.

Pirlipat.2479:

nightwulf.1986:

Right now, it’s like players in small towns were all moved to the big cities and there is some culture shock (trolls and all). But yeah, I also believe this is an interesting step but also needs some improving, so people need to keep talking.

Well unfortunately atm it’s like players in small towns were moved to the big cities and when they come back from a trip to the countryside their house is completely different with completely neighbours.

And that for each time they step outside, the neighbors change again.

Asacledhae.2650:

PotatoCable.1425:

Feedback?

Well, after this “Megaserver” thing, I’ve basically quit. Logging in and seeing a bunch of random people isn’t as fun as logging in and seeing the old familiar faces. The new update also brought with it a bunch of goldsellers, which spam constantly with seemingly endless accounts.

So until Arenanet rolls it back to how it used to be, I’ll just find something else to play.

I’d also like to point out that, if you people dislike it, then show it. Stop your gem purchasing, don’t play the game. If Anet sees a drop in one of these departments, they will more eager to listen and actually communicate.

Been there, done that…

Leveling isn’t an option anymore anyway, as zerg have taken over everything. I only log-in to RP with the last two (we used to be 29) people of my guild, who despite the now death around us, refuse to leave the game. RP isn’t an option either to be honest, as anything besides “party chat”, becomes a live and vibrant beacon for a collection of trolls, with a common goal in mind…

Oh yeah megaservers are fantabuloulsy 100% great… if you don’t care about efficient game play with guildmates, lower rewards while getting run over by zerg trains, and the mental health of RPers who once chose specific servers for the sole purpose of creating a relatively safe community for RP.

The megaserver code needs to be fixed so it can actually carry out the work the devs said it would when they first announced it.

PS: Even the people who mention the pros about megaservers admit the cons are terrible.

After the rollout I have a few things I would like to see fixed/changed to the new world::

1) guild missions should be instanced so as to not waste mine and all my guildies time waiting for X guilds to finish.

2) the harder (read: not a 1 spamfest) bosses need to be instanced so they can be completed again. Was 0 for 8 at Teq and then gave up, never even tried the wurm for obvious reasons.

3) some bosses have to spawn more often, waiting half a day for karka queen to spawn is ludicrous when some of us miss the 7 am zergfest, why the hell must we wait till after reset to do it again.

4) open world merging is fine as it breathes life into areas usually barren of activity, but the cities should at least be server specific so as to allow guild recruitment.

5) I’m not a RPer in MMO’s, but I did play D&D for many years and there is nothing less enjoyable than your drunk uncle coming over in the middle of a session asking lots of questions. The server specific cities could be a step in the right direction, but invariably you will need to seek other ways to make these players happy or they will just find another home.

YMMV, but even though there are some benefits to this merger, the downsides need to be addressed.

Edit: instancing is NOT a dirty word and should seriously be looked into IMO.

As much as I enjoy Mega server for leveling and for map completion, it is absolutely AWFUL for guild activities.. I just don’t see how the benefits outweigh the problems in the case of the mega server. True, when I get in maps I see a lot of guildies and that’s always great but when we tried to do guild activities this week it was just the most terrible thing. Members aren’t getting their guild comms due to not being able to get in the same map and Mega events such as Teq and Wurm have become increasingly difficult because we can’t get all our people on the same map to participate. It was hard before and now it’s even worse.

I loved the idea of mega server at first and was excited about it. I’ve seen the benefits of it as i’ve been leveling and when I do boss events and map events, it’s great! So many people there to help me out, the events are faster to complete too. However, I have become angry and frustrated at it at the same time when it comes to doing things with my guild. It’s not good for server identity either. Why can’t it be just the maps Mega server? Why does it have to be cities? Can’t you just leave the cities alone so we can keep some sort of server identity?

Also, you’ve made it possible to spawn tequatl for guilds, can you make it possible to spawn tiered bounties? It was awful this week trying to get bounty done, not being able to all get in the same map and then having to hurry because there was about ten other guilds following the thing waiting for orders. I’ve never seen that before till now.

Tommyknocker.6089:

1) guild missions should be instanced so as to not waste mine and all my guildies time waiting for X guilds to finish.

While I understand your frustration that you choose to wait. That was actually a design decision for smaller guilds. My guild would not have been able to finish the Guild Puzzle the other day if it were not for us piggybacking on another guild.

anzenketh.3759:

Tommyknocker.6089:

1) guild missions should be instanced so as to not waste mine and all my guildies time waiting for X guilds to finish.

While I understand your frustration that you choose to wait. That was actually a design decision for smaller guilds. My guild would not have been able to finish the Guild Puzzle the other day if it were not for us piggybacking on another guild.

My guild has helped others (smaller) guilds to complete their challenge also, but as it doesn’t give credit (this one didn’t) to the helping guild, it needed to be done again by us in order to complete it thus taking twice as long; they left when done theirs. If both guilds got credit for the initial encounter then I would be all for it, but I believe an instanced version would be preferable. As there are no clear guidelines as to what does and doesn’t give credit for helping, if they will not instance it, they need to give all guild participants credit IMO.

edit to add: also waiting I believe to be the best decision as we have no idea how these events are coded. Messing with the mission reward for the guild that started the mission simply because we entered into it would make for some very unhappy players.

Tommyknocker.6089:

anzenketh.3759:

Tommyknocker.6089:

1) guild missions should be instanced so as to not waste mine and all my guildies time waiting for X guilds to finish.

While I understand your frustration that you choose to wait. That was actually a design decision for smaller guilds. My guild would not have been able to finish the Guild Puzzle the other day if it were not for us piggybacking on another guild.

My guild has helped others (smaller) guilds to complete their challenge also, but as it doesn’t give credit (this one didn’t) to the helping guild, it needed to be done again by us in order to complete it thus taking twice as long; they left when done theirs. If both guilds got credit for the initial encounter then I would be all for it, but I believe an instanced version would be preferable. As there are no clear guidelines as to what does and doesn’t give credit for helping, if they will not instance it, they need to give all guild participants credit IMO..

In order for it to give credit for both they must accept the credit and also the event must be queued in their guild panel.

Also as a general rule always ask first.

I’ll try to say it one more time.

When you click on a map to go to a waypoint, sure let the anet machines decide which server you show up on.

When you post a waypoint link to a chat channel, the link should send everyone that takes it to the same zone. If they can’t make it to that zone they should get queued for it and get a message that they are in an overflow. If you were in the zone you posted the waypoint link the waypoint link should be to the zone you were in.

I didn’t post a link in chat for folks to come to random other zones, I posted for them to come to my zone.

Fix this and guild activities will be come a bit more manageable. Send out runners to locate the event in a zone where its not already contested. And then post the link for the rest of the guild to join you there.

Even for small things, when someone sends a waypoint link asking if they can get some help at a particular event or skillpoint, I expect to take the waypoint link and be in the zone they are in, not some random zone. It is idiotic to not have waypoint links in chat tie to a specific zone.

Heck it would even work for temple runs you finish grenth, the leader drops the waypoint for lyssa and then follows their own link. Everyone that follows that same link gets to the same place, rather than having the temple run constantly fragmented everytime it switches zones.

GRRRRRRR! This is annoying. This should be easy to fix, and would address at least some of the most frustrating aspects of megaservers, and really should have been fixed last week.

Megaserver pros: More people can team up for PvE content, world feels more “full” again as you run into people.

Probably less overall server instances, allowing cost savings that hopefully get spent on new content.

Megaserver cons:
My sense of shared purpose in helping those people I run into, as a WvW focused player, is diminished. Why take the time to coach and aid my opponents?

Guild recruiting is more complex, though it’s not hard to add the server to the broadcast if you do that. However, I don’t usually recruit by broadcast, and I have no mechanism today for seeing what server a person is on when I see someone I might want to chat up.

Calling your team to WvW for a sneak attack is now impossible other than within guild. This is dumb. Need server chat or server+map chat at least.

The system for sorting instances is fundamentally flawed. Why do guildmates still end up in different instances? The need to “taxi/ferry” people in using the group priority is dumb. I’ll accept it in EotM, but not for guild missions.

Guild missions are a lot busier. This could just take getting used to. I still don’t like deciding to cooperate or play nice with my WvW enemies when I see them. (Also, you set up no easy chat across servers in WvW for a reason. I can only hope you’re keeping common matchups away from the same megaservers, but since you didn’t prioritize guild members right, I am not optimistic that any more than party is actually reliably taken into account.)

I get that this is hard – you don’t know when the first few from server x join a zone than 50 more are about to follow. But you needed better solutions before pushing this out, IMO.

Did Ulgroth today.

No loot from champs

No chest.

I got there in plenty of time. Did the events. Got to the final event and there were too many people. Couldn’t hit the champs, my skills were endlessly cycling. Couldn’t hit Ulgroth, same thing. I checked my connection as my char stood there (she finally stowed her weapon without me hitting the stow weapon key). It was going along fine. Just……. too many people and effects for it too handle.

And then at the last few seconds I dc. Come back to an empty map. No other people. No Ulgroth.

No chest.

PLEASE. Give us options. Give us several bosses per time slot. Break up the zerg. We do not need a whole capped map for these events!

timmyf.1490:

rgraze.5169:

Seriously, Plains of Ashford only have 3 uncontested wp on the far west side yet when I zone in theyre all open. WTH, make me wp twice to get where I want to go. Who thought this was a good idea?

Nobody. Even the devs acknowledged it wasn’t their preferred option, it’s just the only one that was technologically feasible at this point.

Yeah. Basically they knew the megaserver is going to break the game in this (and several other) points, and yet they did it anyway. Talk about implementing things “when they are ready”.

Cone of silence in full effect. I’ve even have had older posts deleted even though they werent particularly negative,

This is just shameful and all the CDIs in the world wont buy you back the good faith and community good will you’ve squandered with this.

The mega server continues to be an impediment to my gameplay. All the points I could bring up have already been mentioned ad nauseam (nausea?).

Also lag lag everywhere lag.

This is related to all the other issues, but it is also quite a pain to try and organize any player-run events. As a guild, we periodically like to plan out and run special things like scavenger hunts, map-trivia, what have you. The difficulties now being faced in accomplishing this are similar to those experienced while attempting to run guild missions.

We are 100% all based on the same home server (not that home servers even really seem to exist any more) and most all members rep 100% as well, so if we aren’t getting paired up together then there is clearly something wrong.

Basically, I don’t really get what guilds (big guilds anyway) are supposed to be able to do together any more if every single map is always getting filled to capacity and there is no possible way to identify the maps that people are being placed in.

If saving server space is really such a desperate issue, hopefully you guys can devise a better way to do it then cramming all players into the “GW2 Mall of America” where you constantly have to be shoulder to shoulder and it is easy to get lost.

Player.2475:

Just now I’ve tried Tequatl for the 20th time in a row and for the 20th time (for me) in a row it has failed.
Success rate before Megaserver: 50%
Failure rate after Megaserver: 100%
GG, Megaserver. /thread

I tried Tequatl yesterday for the first time since megaserver was introduced, and we beat him. Two seconds to spare, but still, we won. I’ve heard of other successes too. It sucks for guilds like TTS that were built around beating hard bosses (I used to be a member), but as there’s a mechanic in place for guilds to activate Teq, 3xWurm and KQ I’m finding it hard to begrudge casuals the chance to fight in a decent zerg and have a chance of winning.

That said, I do think guilds should be given the ability to open a private instance for such things, including missions, if that’s how they want to do it (and I imagine most large guilds would rather do it this way than deal with the hassle of taxi-ing over 50+ members into the same map).

The original Guild Wars (eventually) had a dropdown menu ingame that showed all the currently active servers. So like, you’d be in Lion’s Arch and it would show 3 American maps (meaning 3 instances had people in it) and an international map (which was where you could meet up with your EU buddies). A pity GW2 can’t do similar. It wouldn’t stop strangers from getting into your server, but it would make changing to a district where your guild wants to meet up a kitten bit more convenient.

Aside from a lot that’s already been mentioned, something that’s really been bothering me with Megaservers has been when GW2 decides it wants to crash half way through a world boss, and then I log back into an empty map without the boss present. It’s pretty frustrating because before Megaservers (these crashes actually weren’t really happening, but let’s assume they were) I could just log back in and most likely be back in the same map I was in when the game crashed. Now I just get placed in some random map which never seems to have the boss I was just doing up. Very, very frustrating. There should be some sort of grace period for disconnects where if you reconnect within 2 minutes you get placed back into the same Megaserver map.