Guild Wars 2

timmyf.1490:

Inspired by CharJC, here’s what it looks like right now on my server. Note the not-ridiculous number of players. Also note that I recognize all these guild tags: EG LION RISE GSCH Aco Shdw Ph LUN SIN, putting the number of players almost certainly part of my server at half, maybe higher.

I have a much slower PC (i5 3770, Radeon HD7770, 8gb) which explains the lower framerate.

I’m really confused about all these pictures showing so many people in the Keep as it doesn’t match with my experience. At all.

It is no longer “your server”. Suppose the map can hold 150 players. Now, if there is 170 players, one map is full, the next holds the additional 20 players (basically). The same happens with 320 players, or 470 players… Do you notice? if you have 470 players, 20 will say “oh, it’s not full here”, the other 450 will be crammed into the place. That’s where your experience comes from.

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

First of all, avoiding living story worlds events of the zergy kind was a totally viable way to play the rest of the game if your PC couldnt handle it. Megaservers are unavoidable.

Second, you present a proof of your claim that “Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.” Preferably a statistic chart published by Anet itself no older than a month.

Third, Its not just unnecessary to joing guilds and communities with the megaservers, it is also pointless, since the Megaservers in their current state simply dont support the whole “community” aspect. Also, the game is called Guild Wars 2.

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

Without having the exact number I am pretty sure most people are in guilds or communities (at least it’s a huge part). That can be people who just are member of guilds and so guild-missions and or other things with the guild. It can be communities on specific servers like RP communities of people that go to a specific server because of country or language or because a server is WvW focused. Even people that seek out the lower populated servers are in a way a community (together they are looking for a specific type of game-play or type of players to play with)

So that are all different type of communities and for sure most people do belong to one or more of them. Not saying they are always busy with the community, they might do a lot of solo playing as well.

Of course there are people who completely random pick a server, never want to join a guild, never want to do organised content and only play together with people they randomly come across in the game at that moment (or a few friends). Yes for those Megaservers works great… if those people like crowded servers. But it’s not like that is the vast majority and there are just a few that belong to some community.

There are solutions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-MegaServer/3966755 that work good for both but the current implementation does not.

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

The people who pick up the game and then quit within a few months tend to be the same people who run around solo, don’t join guilds, don’t take part in community events, and don’t communicate with their server-mates.

While I don’t have exact statistics either, I would say with confidence that out of those people who have been playing this game for any significant amount of time, the overwhelming majority are in guilds. And have at least at some point, they have probably taken part in a large, coordinated group event of some sort.

The whole megaserver ideal of ‘who cares, who needs guilds/communities/etc’ works great if all you are concerned about is maintaining a revolving-door clientele. People will buy the game, level a character to 80, get bored and leave for whatever other latest and greatest thing is being hyped.

However, it completely contradicts the goal of maintaining a loyal fan base. Those player-initiated levels of organization and social grouping are what make the game fun for the longer-term.

I have a question to the EU community regarding map chat – I have disabled the chat filter: It seems that only german speaking players use the map chat for the purpose to chat. Except for guild advertisings I never saw more than one or two lines in a row in other languages by different players, be it English, French, Spanish or something else. I have been on various maps and in different cities since the Megaserver went live, and there never happened longer chat communications in other languages than German. Was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time or can someone confirm this?

Lanhelin.3480:

I have a question to the EU community regarding map chat – I have deactivated the chat filter: It seems that only german speaking players use the map chat for the purpose to chat. Except for guild advertisings I never saw more than one or two lines in a row in other languages by different players, be it English, French, Spanish or something else. I have been on various maps and in different cities since the Megaserver went live, and there never happened longer chat communications in other languages than German. Was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time or can someone confirm this?

No, wrong place/wrong time. I usually end up on maps where most ppl are chatting in french, but I am german. Oh, the miracles of modern technology…

Uhm, do you play on an international server? I’ve been on some maps and sometimes people speak english and quite often french (I have no idea why I get placed on french-speaking maps but anyway.) I have an en/int as my homeserver.

Maybe the sorting starts working? Sometimes I think it does, sometimes not. :S

timmyf.1490:

Inspired by CharJC, here’s what it looks like right now on my server. Note the not-ridiculous number of players. Also note that I recognize all these guild tags: EG LION RISE GSCH Aco Shdw Ph LUN SIN, putting the number of players almost certainly part of my server at half, maybe higher.

I have a much slower PC (i5 3770, Radeon HD7770, 8gb) which explains the lower framerate.

I’m really confused about all these pictures showing so many people in the Keep as it doesn’t match with my experience. At all.

Take that same picture pre reset when people get kicked out of wvw. Also read the chat when that happens. It be interesting to see what this reset is like after they tweaked the numbers (if they have).

munkiman.3068:

timmyf.1490:

Inspired by CharJC, here’s what it looks like right now on my server. Note the not-ridiculous number of players. Also note that I recognize all these guild tags: EG LION RISE GSCH Aco Shdw Ph LUN SIN, putting the number of players almost certainly part of my server at half, maybe higher.

I have a much slower PC (i5 3770, Radeon HD7770, 8gb) which explains the lower framerate.

I’m really confused about all these pictures showing so many people in the Keep as it doesn’t match with my experience. At all.

Take that same picture pre reset when people get kicked out of wvw. Also read the chat when that happens. It be interesting to see what this reset is like after they tweaked the numbers (if they have).

Look, if your point is that during the brief period prior to WvW reset, Vigil Keep is overrun with players and it brings your computer to your knees, that’s fine. I’ll accept that. I won’t argue with you at all.

My point is that people are posting videos of an overrun-by-players Vigil Keep and saying it’s ordinary, everyday reality now. That doesn’t match with my reality. I’m not disputing it, I’m just presenting my own side.

As best as I can tell, greater than half the players on my megaserver at any given time belong to my server, Sanctum of Rall. I’ve had a couple people accuse me of not caring about my guild or my community, that is false. I am a guild leader of a small guild (140 roster, probably 15 active daily) and I care about them all very much. <3 I also care about my server, have taken the time to learn about its history and namesake, Roger “Oldroar” Rall, and participate regularly in server activities and Teamspeak meetings.

I am also not a troll. I had high hopes for megaserver, some of which have been met (more people in maps!) and some of which haven’t (put in maps with people on your friends list!) However, as somebody who is “mostly happy” with the changes and finds that people in the world are “mostly happy” as well, I feel that it’s important to give my own opinion as best as I can – and without trying to negate the opinion of others.

I recognize there are problems on EU servers with languages. While those problems do not affect my gameplay, they should be fixed. I recognize that there are problems for RPers. While those problems do not affect my gameplay, they should be fixed. I recognize there are problems with guild missions. These do affect my gameplay, they should be fixed.

A poster claimed that “a thousand” people have come here to post their negative feedback. Poppykitten! I’d say 90% of the posts are the same 20 people arguing the same points over and over. (Including myself.)

If you actually care about helping ArenaNet and providing useful feedback, as opposed to simply raging, you could perhaps do so by posting your own screenshot. Like I did. Like CharJC did. Show us how none of the players are part of your guild or server community. Show us your 1fps. You’ll win far more support from me if you show it to be true because right now it sounds like a lot of hyperbole.

lakdav.3694:

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

First of all, avoiding living story worlds events of the zergy kind was a totally viable way to play the rest of the game if your PC couldnt handle it. Megaservers are unavoidable.

Second, you present a proof of your claim that “Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.” Preferably a statistic chart published by Anet itself no older than a month.

Third, Its not just unnecessary to joing guilds and communities with the megaservers, it is also pointless, since the Megaservers in their current state simply dont support the whole “community” aspect. Also, the game is called Guild Wars 2.

1) That is fine but doesn’t cover all the people that are reporting problems, especially loading times.

2) I’ll present the statistic about most people not being in big guilds/communities immediately after people present statistic proving that most people are in big guilds/communities.

What I know is that Megaservers are an answer to those that complained about seeing deserted zones. If they were in deserted zones, they are playing solo or with 1-2 friends/guildies, otherwise it wouldn’t be deserted.

3) I could go and say that Guild Wars was an historical lore event and blah blah but the truth is that the game is called Guild Wars 2 because there was a Guild Wars made by the same people and it was a successful product.

It is fun that you point Guild but not the clear absent Wars between Guilds from the title.

Again, the truth is that Guild Wars started as a game focused in PvP with a “mandatory” introductory PvE (amply protested by hard core PvPers) and as the time passed it became mainly a PvE game.

One of the most important aspects of GW2 design was the following:

“With traditional MMOs you can choose to solo or you can find a good guild or party to play with. With GW2 there’s a third option too: you can just naturally play with all the people around you. I personally spend a big chunk of my time in traditional MMOs soloing, but when I play GW2 I always find myself naturally working with everyone around me to accomplish world objectives, and before long we find ourselves saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of us here; let’s see if we can take down the swamp boss together,” without ever having bothered to form a party.

Of course GW2 has great support for parties, but they just don’t feel as necessary as they do in other MMOs, because your interests are always aligned with all other nearby players anyway. When someone kills a monster, not just that player’s party but everyone who was seriously involved in the fight gets 100% of the XP and loot for the kill. When an event is happening in the world – when the bandits are terrorizing a village – everyone in the area has the same motivation, and when the event ends, everyone gets rewarded."

And the mega server just reinforces that.

We can’t criticize Anet for breaking certain aspects of their manifesto and then criticize them when they keep them.

Karuna.1357:

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

The people who pick up the game and then quit within a few months tend to be the same people who run around solo, don’t join guilds, don’t take part in community events, and don’t communicate with their server-mates.

While I don’t have exact statistics either, I would say with confidence that out of those people who have been playing this game for any significant amount of time, the overwhelming majority are in guilds. And have at least at some point, they have probably taken part in a large, coordinated group event of some sort.

The whole megaserver ideal of ‘who cares, who needs guilds/communities/etc’ works great if all you are concerned about is maintaining a revolving-door clientele. People will buy the game, level a character to 80, get bored and leave for whatever other latest and greatest thing is being hyped.

However, it completely contradicts the goal of maintaining a loyal fan base. Those player-initiated levels of organization and social grouping are what make the game fun for the longer-term.

Because we didn’t have huge communities and guilds leaving GW2 a few months after release?

Being in a guild is different than being in a community or guild that will spend gems to change server or will be doing guild events every day of the week.

I remember that when Guild missions were introduced there was quite a big outcry in the forums.

Devata.6589:

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

Without having the exact number I am pretty sure most people are in guilds or communities (at least it’s a huge part). That can be people who just are member of guilds and so guild-missions and or other things with the guild. It can be communities on specific servers like RP communities of people that go to a specific server because of country or language or because a server is WvW focused. Even people that seek out the lower populated servers are in a way a community (together they are looking for a specific type of game-play or type of players to play with)

So that are all different type of communities and for sure most people do belong to one or more of them. Not saying they are always busy with the community, they might do a lot of solo playing as well.

Of course there are people who completely random pick a server, never want to join a guild, never want to do organised content and only play together with people they randomly come across in the game at that moment (or a few friends). Yes for those Megaservers works great… if those people like crowded servers. But it’s not like that is the vast majority and there are just a few that belong to some community.

There are solutions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-MegaServer/3966755 that work good for both but the current implementation does not.

Crowded servers are crowded for a reason.
Also people would guest to crowded servers for a reason.

Of course some big guilds and communities are know to move into less populated servers.

It is clear that there could be easier ways to allow big guilds to do their guild missions and world bosses in isolation, but since it is clear to us, unless Anet is filled with idiots (which is doubtful considering the success of their products) it should be clear to them.

So it is a choice.

Although I’m confident we will see improvements that allow the same party to arrive in the same zone together (not that affected me and my parties so far).

What do you want to say? Because small guilds were unhappy when the guildmissions got introduced, it’s now time that big guild should be unhappy too? I think it doesn’t help to argue wether there are more big or more small guilds. There are big and small guilds and both should be taken into consideration.

timmyf.1490:

Look, if your point is that during the brief period prior to WvW reset, Vigil Keep is overrun with players and it brings your computer to your knees, that’s fine. I’ll accept that. I won’t argue with you at all.

My point is that people are posting videos of an overrun-by-players Vigil Keep and saying it’s ordinary, everyday reality now. That doesn’t match with my reality. I’m not disputing it, I’m just presenting my own side.

(snip)

I’m not trying to convince you of anything, to be clear. I enjoyed doing world bosses before, now it’s a zergfest. I actually enjoyed the LA events when there were a lot less people and you were challenged. But, there is no fix for it in this megaserver world. Best i can hope for is WvW and dungeons for a challenge. I can take plenty of screenshots… But who needs that feedback? Not anet.

I mentioned map chat on reset, since it’s a prime example of how toxic things can get when you dump a bunch of rivals into a map. There again is no fix for that either. You don’t build a game with a mode that pits servers against servers, then somewhere down the road just toss them all together in the same map. It’s not healthy for the game or the players. They’ve actually made that clear by removing any of the match-up threads (even the ones that praise other servers) that they don’t want that behavior happening on the forums, so now they have it in the game instead, GG. I don’t have any big issue with FPS, i have a pretty strong rig. Although skill lag is pretty high in massive events.

I would say you’re right i get about 50% of my server mates in vigil, but before it was closer to 100%. I don’t see how that is an improvement.

There are several players that rarely come to the forums, that thought it was “broken” enough to post. That is a pretty good indicator somethings wrong. I haven’t gone through and counted unique posters in this thread, but from reading a large chunk of it, i’d say it’s quite a lot. I could even go out on a limb and say it’s more grim than the black lion chest feedback thread awhile back.

I’m trying to retain a positive outlook on this ordeal, but it’s tough since most of the people i talk to really don’t care for this change. It’s like saying, would you rather get hit in the face with a hammer or a frying pan. Saying people are “mostly happy” is mostly useless.

munkiman.3068:

Saying people are “mostly happy” is mostly useless.

Ahh, here’s where I disagree! I think we have a system that most people like in theory but not in execution. When we say things like “megaserver has ruined the game for me, everybody I know is quitting,” we’re not providing useful feedback. (This is a feedback thread, remember.)

Far more useful would be feedback like this:

“Look, I get the whole idea of Megaserver. Filling out empty maps is a great idea. But here’s my problem:

1) Every world boss has like 100+ people at it [developer reads and considers solution: lower soft cap on megaservers]
2) I don’t see very many people from my guild or server [developer reads and considers solution: increase minimum number of megaservers per zone for better sorting]
3) Guild Missions make it very difficult to get everybody into the same zone [developer reads and considers increasing space between soft and hard cap, either by lowering soft cap or increasing hard cap]
4) Worse, we often have to wait for other guilds to finish first [developer reads and there’s a few options here…]"

Providing feedback where you clearly state which things are good, which things work, which things don’t work, etc, is far more useful. And, to be fair, many people on these threads are doing so. But there are many, many posts which bear no resemblance to my example here (or to the examples ArenaNet gave themselves on their HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK thread), so I sometimes try to come in and fill that gap.

But you still need to list the good things! That’s just as useful of feedback as listing the bad things.

timmyf.1490:

munkiman.3068:

Saying people are “mostly happy” is mostly useless.

Ahh, here’s where I disagree! I think we have a system that most people like in theory but not in execution. When we say things like “megaserver has ruined the game for me, everybody I know is quitting,” we’re not providing useful feedback. (This is a feedback thread, remember.)

Far more useful would be feedback like this:

“Look, I get the whole idea of Megaserver. Filling out empty maps is a great idea. But here’s my problem:

1) Every world boss has like 100+ people at it [developer reads and considers solution: lower soft cap on megaservers]
2) I don’t see very many people from my guild or server [developer reads and considers solution: increase minimum number of megaservers per zone for better sorting]
3) Guild Missions make it very difficult to get everybody into the same zone [developer reads and considers increasing space between soft and hard cap, either by lowering soft cap or increasing hard cap]
4) Worse, we often have to wait for other guilds to finish first [developer reads and there’s a few options here…]"

Providing feedback where you clearly state which things are good, which things work, which things don’t work, etc, is far more useful. And, to be fair, many people on these threads are doing so. But there are many, many posts which bear no resemblance to my example here (or to the examples ArenaNet gave themselves on their HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK thread), so I sometimes try to come in and fill that gap.

But you still need to list the good things! That’s just as useful of feedback as listing the bad things.

While your feedback is fine, mine would be, why continue to put time and effort into it at all when before it was working just fine? At least from a players perspective. I was fine with 10 people at a world boss, it was fun, it was a challenge, it felt more rewarding working together as a smaller unit.

The bottom-line for me is that they essentially “ruined” the sense of community that some of us have worked hard to build and support this game. It feels like a huge “kitten-you” to me. They built a game, with a specific mode that pits servers against each other, which they then decide to merge into one big melting pot. It’s just all around bad, and doesn’t solve anything other than “more people on a map”, which has it’s own set of unique problems.

I haven’t had 10 people at a world boss since they added the guaranteed daily chests with rares. It’s usually 30-40 or more. I guess I’ve just had time to get used to it.

I guess that’s a big part of it. You’re fighting to maintain an experience I haven’t had in, what, a year?

It’s not on this thread, but on the other Megaserver feedback thread, the two most recent posts are a guy claiming he has gotten on the same server as his party ZERO times and somebody else saying they’ve only completed a world boss ONCE. I just simply don’t understand this. It’s so far from my experience of the game that it sounds like lying.

I read the post about world bosses to my girlfriend (who’s been running tons of world bosses for the ecto) and she started yelling. I can’t reproduce what she said here because profanity. She has the same experience as me: world bosses spawn fine (except Megadestroyer) and are easily defeated.

Anyway, that’s why I like to give as much information and background as I can. It can be hard to understand why people feel a certain way without understanding where they come from. I don’t see why people are complaining about world bosses, but I forget that as a high-population PvE server, I’ve had more than a handful of people at these events for months.

So thanks for sharing.

If you are a single lone wolf kind of player I can see how this is working as intended. You have people everywhere. Boss schedule kind of sucks, but it’s bearable. The problem is the communities people built over the past months.
Guild Missions are a major pain to execute these days. Especially since there is very limited number of areas that take part in Missions while there’s an overwhelming amount of guilds out there. The biggest problem is that it was specifically said that the system will “smartly” place people from same server/guild/party on the same map. Which is never the case.
We start guild missions with about 50-60 ppl on average in my guild. Not only I can’t get everyone on the same map, but people in my party end up on different maps. Then we spend another 10-15 minutes partying up with everyone to bring them to the same “version” of the map.
Guild recruitment is also broken. Since if we recruit people from different servers, they do not benefit from bonuses the guild provides, nor they put influence towards the guild as a whole. The only plausible recruitment can be done on wvw maps only, which on many servers have hours long queue because of ongoing tournament.
The game’s performance is also very heavily impacted. Since there’s a huge 100+ people zerg during every major event. And loading times tripled if not quadrupled on some maps. It’s pretty much old Lion’s Arch loading times on every map in the game now.
I can see that some areas of the gameplay like leveling a character are benefiting from Megaservers since they can get help with Skillpoints and mini events easily.
The problem is that the game became a big blob of people from everywhere. And those tight communities that came together before are slowly falling apart, because there’s nothing that can be organized.

After being forced to deal with the Megaserver for a few weeks, I can say that it’s not all bad. I was vehemently against it at first.

That said, pretty much the only real positive to it is that zones are more populated when doing map completions – which is both good and bad, really, because yes, you see more players, and yes, more events get done, but you’re also competing with a crapload of people for tags on some hearts that have very few mobs that count toward it.

As for the rest -

I still hate the destruction of server communities. It’s been suggested countless times that we need either server-specific chats or for the racial cities to not be on the megaserver. Make it happen, please, because we miss our communities.

Having more people at world bosses isn’t necessarily a bad thing. On TC, sometimes there’d only be 10 people at a boss pre-Megaserver, sometimes at prime time there’d be 30-50. On lower populated servers, it’s a completely different story, and I get that – this change is somewhat good for them.

But please, for the love of god, if there’s even one thing that you listen to and actually implement, lower the player cap on maps before a new map is spawned. I don’t mean the hard player cap of 150 – just make it spawn a new map after, say, 60 people have spawned into the zone. It leaves room for guilds to taxi over a lot of people for missions or bosses, and will make the world boss train feel much less overcrowded. This is really, really needed.

Potential fix for guild missions, wondering if anybody has feedback:

Allow right-click Join in <Zone> through the guild panel in addition to the party menu.

That would allow the full guild to join on somebody without all the hassle of re-partying. Would that work? Are there unintended consequences?

Suggestion for improving MegaServers:

Lower the soft cap to 75 players.

At 75, the map will still be populated enough to get content done while not being so overpopulated that some players will experience significant lag.
This idea will also allow large guilds to have 75 slots available for taxi instead of 50, making it easier for them to assemble in a map.

I’d also like to propose a “Priority Tier” system that would allow you to automatically be placed in a soft-capped map based on a priority score that is calculated based on the number of guild members, party members, friend list members, and server members are on a map. For every guild member on a map, you get 2 points, for every party member, you get 10 points, for every friend list member, you get 3 points, and for every server member you get 1 point. Once you reach a certain number of points (say, 75), the soft cap will be ignored for that map and you’ll be placed there (unless it is hard capped).

timmyf.1490:

I haven’t had 10 people at a world boss since they added the guaranteed daily chests with rares. It’s usually 30-40 or more. I guess I’ve just had time to get used to it.

I guess that’s a big part of it. You’re fighting to maintain an experience I haven’t had in, what, a year?

It’s not on this thread, but on the other Megaserver feedback thread, the two most recent posts are a guy claiming he has gotten on the same server as his party ZERO times and somebody else saying they’ve only completed a world boss ONCE. I just simply don’t understand this. It’s so far from my experience of the game that it sounds like lying.

I read the post about world bosses to my girlfriend (who’s been running tons of world bosses for the ecto) and she started yelling. I can’t reproduce what she said here because profanity. She has the same experience as me: world bosses spawn fine (except Megadestroyer) and are easily defeated.

Anyway, that’s why I like to give as much information and background as I can. It can be hard to understand why people feel a certain way without understanding where they come from. I don’t see why people are complaining about world bosses, but I forget that as a high-population PvE server, I’ve had more than a handful of people at these events for months.

So thanks for sharing.

Agreed, thanks to you as well.

There are definitely some people exaggerating. But, ANet really closed the window on choices for players with all this merging. They limited the dailes, they limited world bosses, they limited player choice on how populated their gameplay is, and they limited our community organization abilities. How anyone there thought that doing all this and going quiet wasn’t going to get people to rage is beyond me. The basic fact that i know at least a dozen people that won’t play till this is fixed, is good enough for me to know it was a really bad move.

Lanhelin.3480:

I have a question to the EU community regarding map chat – I have disabled the chat filter: It seems that only german speaking players use the map chat for the purpose to chat. Except for guild advertisings I never saw more than one or two lines in a row in other languages by different players, be it English, French, Spanish or something else. I have been on various maps and in different cities since the Megaserver went live, and there never happened longer chat communications in other languages than German. Was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time or can someone confirm this?

I had some polish ppl using the map chat, french, spanish and italian very seldom. Mostly I am listening to the english map conversation

claudili.7614:

Lanhelin.3480:

I have a question to the EU community regarding map chat – I have disabled the chat filter: It seems that only german speaking players use the map chat for the purpose to chat. Except for guild advertisings I never saw more than one or two lines in a row in other languages by different players, be it English, French, Spanish or something else. I have been on various maps and in different cities since the Megaserver went live, and there never happened longer chat communications in other languages than German. Was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time or can someone confirm this?

I had some polish ppl using the map chat, french, spanish and italian very seldom. Mostly I am listening to the english map conversation

While most of them are guild ads, or hushing others for using their mothertongue in a public chat.

dadamowsky.4692:

claudili.7614:

I had some polish ppl using the map chat, french, spanish and italian very seldom. Mostly I am listening to the english map conversation

While most of them are guild ads, or hushing others for using their mothertongue in a public chat.

No not really. They announced events etc. guild ads too, yes. Hushing others? No. Yesterday I had a german guy on the map (I am also german) who said something about froglegs to a french player. I told him to stop that, because we do not live in a kindergarden

The Megaserver system causes huge issues for those players who host community events. One of the biggest problems is just getting players together in the same instance of a zone. Often even players that are in the same guild, or in the same party, do not end up in the right instance of a zone.

But the most important aspect of hosting community events, is simply allowing players to quickly join in on the fun. In GW1 it was pretty simple. We advertized an event for the outpost and district it was in, and both EU and US players could meet up in that district. This allowed everyone to join our events.

But in GW2 the players are separated. It was already impossible for American players to join a European community event, but we’re also split between servers, and now the mega server system makes sure that there no longer is a main instance any more. Now everyone is in an overflow, and not the same one. It is nearly impossible to get players together now. The megaserver system completely undermines that social aspect.

Please bring back the districts!

Halvorn.9831:

timmyf.1490:

Inspired by CharJC, here’s what it looks like right now on my server. Note the not-ridiculous number of players. Also note that I recognize all these guild tags: EG LION RISE GSCH Aco Shdw Ph LUN SIN, putting the number of players almost certainly part of my server at half, maybe higher.

I have a much slower PC (i5 3770, Radeon HD7770, 8gb) which explains the lower framerate.

I’m really confused about all these pictures showing so many people in the Keep as it doesn’t match with my experience. At all.

It is no longer “your server”. Suppose the map can hold 150 players. Now, if there is 170 players, one map is full, the next holds the additional 20 players (basically). The same happens with 320 players, or 470 players… Do you notice? if you have 470 players, 20 will say “oh, it’s not full here”, the other 450 will be crammed into the place. That’s where your experience comes from.

Quoting to bring attention to what’s really going on with discrepancies in mega-server experience. As usual, the posts that make the most sense get ignored. Pre-patch, if you were in a popular area with few people, you could conclude with a high degree of confidence that you were on a low-pop server. Post-patch, all you can conclude is that there aren’t a lot of people in your shard because of the way the numbers fall at any given time.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Halvorn.9831:

It is no longer “your server”. Suppose the map can hold 150 players. Now, if there is 170 players, one map is full, the next holds the additional 20 players (basically). The same happens with 320 players, or 470 players… Do you notice? if you have 470 players, 20 will say “oh, it’s not full here”, the other 450 will be crammed into the place. That’s where your experience comes from.

Quoting to bring attention to what’s really going on with discrepancies in mega-server experience. As usual, the posts that make the most sense get ignored. Pre-patch, if you were in a popular area with few people, you could conclude with a high degree of confidence that you were on a low-pop server. Post-patch, all you can conclude is that there aren’t a lot of people in your shard because of the way the numbers fall at any given time.

You both make assumptions here that I consider incorrect. You assume megaserver shards are filled to the brim before a new shard is created. This is wrong, to the best of my knowledge.

More likely, there is a set minimum number of shards based on the minimum player population over time. So, for example, if Timberline Falls -across all of NA- ranges from 100-15,000 people, they might set a minimum shard number of 5. Meaning, on average, there are 20 people per shard.

As more players join, they are initially placed in the 5 shards up to some certain cap. (This could be 100, this could be 50… we don’t know…) At that point, additional shards are created and players are put into them.

I consider it highly unlikely that you’d have a situation where one shard has 150 and the other has 20 except if large guilds/organized groups are manually moving themselves and hardcap (150) a server.

Edit: as an additional note, you make an additional crazy assumption… that I’m only ever in the “20” shard and never in the “150” and that explains the entirety of my difference in perception. This is incredibly unlikely.

This is again a matter of communication. We don’t know much about what is possible, or how the system is supposed to work. I don’t want to know details but I would like to know what I can expect from that system if it works properly.

The second thing is we could provide way better feedback if we were asked the right questions and got a few more infos, like what should be the current status, what was worked on how is it currently supposed to work. How is the perception? Does it work as intended? Which problems remain? Atm one day it feels like it’s working, the next hour everything seems to be completely messy again.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The Megaserver system causes huge issues for those players who host community events. One of the biggest problems is just getting players together in the same instance of a zone. Often even players that are in the same guild, or in the same party, do not end up in the right instance of a zone.

But the most important aspect of hosting community events, is simply allowing players to quickly join in on the fun. In GW1 it was pretty simple. We advertized an event for the outpost and district it was in, and both EU and US players could meet up in that district. This allowed everyone to join our events.

But in GW2 the players are separated. It was already impossible for American players to join a European community event, but we’re also split between servers, and now the mega server system makes sure that there no longer is a main instance any more. Now everyone is in an overflow, and not the same one. It is nearly impossible to get players together now. The megaserver system completely undermines that social aspect.

Please bring back the districts!

I don’t know if you know, but you can right click on the player in your party and join their instance. Just an FYI. I do it all the time when I’m roaming with my guildies

Simon.3106:

I don’t know if you know, but you can right click on the player in your party and join their instance. Just an FYI. I do it all the time when I’m roaming with my guildies

Yeah. Try doing it with 50-60 people. If I’m in your party and the map is nowhere near softcapped, there is no reason whatsoever that I shouldn’t end up on the same map as you without having to click on you and joining the map. Megaservers are not working as they were first advertised.

Please note that this is their first time opening the Mega Server. Think of it as a rough draft. They’ll fix these issues, I’m sure. Putting players/friends/guildies together in one server seems difficult to do though, don’t you think. I can’t imagine how to even program that. But regarding the lowering the caps, that is an easy change. So can anyone here give an example of how to bring all friends/guildies in one server without passing the map’s cap by ten fold? (example of having a super super large guild of course).

If they do it based on their “guild size”, how would they know how many of his/her guild member would be there with them? So assuming 100% of their guild would not be good. Any ideas?

Simon.3106:

So can anyone here give an example of how to bring all friends/guildies in one server without passing the map’s cap by ten fold? (example of having a super super large guild of course).

I had the suggestion before that allowing a Join in <Server> from the guild menu (instead of just the party menu) would make it way easier to move the guild. Nobody responded with feedback.

Allowing guild leaders to spawn a guild map would be another option. If you are a guild leader or perhaps officer with appropriate permission, you 1) have everybody map into a zone. 2) right-click your name and select “Invite Guild to <Server>” 3) space is reserved on a Megaserver for the number of online, representing guild members currently on the same map 4) a popup appears, similar to the one for Personal Story, inviting guild members to join the map. This popup would go to all online, representing guild members currently in the appropriate map.

Simon.3106:

Please note that this is their first time opening the Mega Server. Think of it as a rough draft. They’ll fix these issues, I’m sure. Putting players/friends/guildies together in one server seems difficult to do though, don’t you think. I can’t imagine how to even program that. But regarding the lowering the caps, that is an easy change. So can anyone here give an example of how to bring all friends/guildies in one server without passing the map’s cap by ten fold? (example of having a super super large guild of course).

If they do it based on their “guild size”, how would they know how many of his/her guild member would be there with them? So assuming 100% of their guild would not be good. Any ideas?

Quote taken right out of their “reveal”:

With the megaserver system, players won’t be separated into different copies of the same map based on the world they selected on character creation. Instead, you will simply arrive in a map and be assigned to the version of that map that makes the most sense for you as selected by the megaserver system we’ve developed. This new system takes your party, guild, language, home world, and other factors into account to match you to a version of the map you’re entering. This will increase the odds that you’ll see the same people more often and play with people of similar interests.

Does it work the way it was presented. I’ll help you with that answer: No.

And how’s that a draft in your opinion? It would be a draft if they were still testing it. If they just rolled it out only to some maps and monitor how it works. But they already rolled it out to every single map in the game. They didn’t bother actually testing if their “smart new system” work. Rather everything was basically devoured by the whole thing. They were supposed to roll it out slowly and be done by the later of this year.

Quote:
“As mentioned in the original blog about the megaserver system, on April 15 we’ll start by rolling out this technology to level 1–15 maps, the PvP lobby, and major cities. Later in 2014, we’ll expand this system to the entire game.”

Did they take their time in slowly implementing the system, making sure it works? No. The whole thing took them roughly about a week. That’s not testing the waters, seeing if it all comes together. It’s just splatting the whole thing everywhere. Nothing has been adjusted to this day. And rather than hold back and address issues presented by hundreds of people on forums, they just kept going.

Romo.3709:

Nothing has been adjusted to this day.

Well this is obviously untrue.

You know… a company of 300 people cannot test a build that is suppose to provide a service for 1 million + (around there) people right? I know what they said; I read it since the day they posted it. You can’t expect everything to be perfect. Once you get older (I’m only in my mid 20 so I’m not that old), you might understand that. 300 people testing something that was meant for countless people is illogical. They put it out here for us so we can test it, send feedbacks, and they’ll look into it. Give them… a year to reply. Lol! Or at least several of months, I’m sure based on what I’ve been seeing with their progress of resolving issues.

And Timmyf, I like your suggestion =) I think it’s really valid, though making something more simple would be nice. Your suggestion can work by this. Lets say the cap was 100 people, and there are currently 70 people. My guild is 50, so when I send out the invite, it would pass the cap by 20, which isn’t too severe. But if it IS severe, they should automatically move my entire guild to a new instance. That be nice.

timmyf.1490:

Romo.3709:

Nothing has been adjusted to this day.

Well this is obviously untrue.

I’d love to see examples that actually support your statement.

I love the megaservers, but there is one HUGE problem, that is iterated over and over in this – and the other – threads on this topic (but buried in between a dozen other conversations).

Guilds and friends are not being kept together.
Guilds and friends are not being kept together.
Guilds and friends are not being kept together.

That part of the megaserver system they touted in the blogs is not working or simply doesnt take other factors into account. We are not being paired with guildees and friends enough.

To address it, the players need more control over which map version we play on – there is no other viable answer.

At the simplest level, we need two things:

1. A way to tell when we are not on the same map instance as our guildmates/friends

2. (AND MOST IMPORTANTLY) We need to be able to right click friends or guildmates and “join friend in … Map” without having to be in the same party they are in.

The second one is vital, especially for things like guild missions (specifically Bounties, where time is already an important factor).

Im not saying this is the perfect solution, but it is the one that best fits with the current megaserver architecture and plan.

I also hate that this important conversation is being buried in all of the other issues people have with the megaserver. It needs to be addressed – and really soon. Guild missions and guild/player run activities are suffering horribly because of this right now.

Gotta say one thing. I am a soloer. I like to SOLO play. I’m getting tired of hearing how wonderful this megamerge is for solo players. For my preferred style of play, it is a failure.

For all of the people who will say “go play single player” I have this to say. There are myriad reasons to play an mmo that do NOT include a horde of strangers “helping” me.
There is no challenge in a blob.

As to the Megamerger somehow magically sorting me to some preferred playstyle somehow I’m not buying the idea that my preferred style is a server full of rude strangers grunting “train?” and linking WPs in chat. My preferred “community” is not chat channels arguing non-stop about “order”, who killed what out of turn with the occasional mandatory insertion of “thats what she said” at random intervals. I can’t even do zones like Timberline without getting ran over by people supposedly “helping” me with content I don’t want or need help with.

Choice, ANET. Please stop shoving YOUR choices in our face. Yeah, it’s your game, but is it wise to tailor it to a single demographic and remove choices?

Stop assuming your choice is the only one that matters. Believe it or not, people might choose to move UI elements around. Choose to delete unwanted quests. Choose to control particle effects. Choose a server. Choose who they play with. Choose a population level they prefer. Choose a community. Even the basic function of choosing a population that speaks the same language is gone.

People identify more with processes they feel they have ownership of, even if limited. It isn’t wise to continually slap people with the fact that they own nothing but an account name.

Stramatus.5219:

Honestly, what’s the problem with the Districts model from GW1?

Simon.3106:

You know… a company of 300 people cannot test a build that is suppose to provide a service for 1 million + (around there) people right? I know what they said; I read it since the day they posted it. You can’t expect everything to be perfect. Once you get older (I’m only in my mid 20 so I’m not that old), you might understand that. 300 people testing something that was meant for countless people is illogical. They put it out here for us so we can test it, send feedbacks, and they’ll look into it. Give them… a year to reply. Lol! Or at least several of months, I’m sure based on what I’ve been seeing with their progress of resolving issues.

When you’re working on a project this big, that affects this many people, you want to take it slow. Obviously it was not tested by vast amount of people at first. This is why we’re having all those problems right now. This is why they did (at first) taken precautionary steps to roll out Megaservers only on certain maps to test it with broader audience of couple hundreds thousands people instead of small group they had to work with before.

Here’s where the problem starts. Since you’re old enough you should realize by now, that when you make an experiment, you record the results. You make that experiment on low scale and test it out. Then only if the results are positive you bring up the scale, record results, and so on and on. Until you go into mass production.

That did not happen with Anet. They started with a small sample (only few maps) then instead of recording and studying the results, they went: “Why waste time, just roll it out further. If the servers can handle it, just finish the whole thing up by the end of the week.”

This kind of a overhaul has to be as close to perfect as possible before it rolls out on such a massive scale (every map). This is not a draft, and the game is way past it’s Beta stages.

Romo.3709:

timmyf.1490:

Romo.3709:

Nothing has been adjusted to this day.

Well this is obviously untrue.

I’d love to see examples that actually support your statement.

I guess it’s open to interpretation.

“Our megaserver team will continue to monitor the performance of the technology on live and evaluate your feedback. We will continue to tweak and update the way the system works until it is providing even better megaservice!” (emphasis mine)

I take this to mean they are actively making changes to the system. I can see where you would disagree.

Simon.3106:

Thank you, timmyf! I always thought you were a guy who acted smart, but you are truly smart. Thank you for doing your research and not just spit out kitten from your mouth like that drama-queen

I have a few long-standing disagreements with Romo, but as somebody who is very dedicated to this game, he certainly deserves more respect than you’re giving him.

Remember: argue against ideas not people.

Constructive criticism makes our ideas better and, in the long run, can make us better. Tearing somebody down only serves your ego.

I understand completely the idea behind it and how it impacts new players trying to explore the game for the first time. Having people around not only makes the game easier to get into, but it also puts overall image at the game that the game itself is alive and well.

That being said, making such a change should take time and testing. You can’t just slap it on the entire game and hope problems work themselves out. My issue with the whole thing is that they specifically said how the system will work. It doesn’t work that way. So instead of taking a step back and looking at what the issue is, they kept going to the point where they rolled it out to the entire game. Using “shoot first ask questions later” ideal. And that is very unfortunate.

They just sent me a message said I’m being too rude and to apologize. Romo, I’m sorry. <3

And as far as I know, Anet has a habit of saying things and not fulfilling it. I’m not surprised it didn’t work as they had stated it. In fact, I expected this problem to happen

timmyf.1490:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Halvorn.9831:

It is no longer “your server”. Suppose the map can hold 150 players. Now, if there is 170 players, one map is full, the next holds the additional 20 players (basically). The same happens with 320 players, or 470 players… Do you notice? if you have 470 players, 20 will say “oh, it’s not full here”, the other 450 will be crammed into the place. That’s where your experience comes from.

Quoting to bring attention to what’s really going on with discrepancies in mega-server experience. As usual, the posts that make the most sense get ignored. Pre-patch, if you were in a popular area with few people, you could conclude with a high degree of confidence that you were on a low-pop server. Post-patch, all you can conclude is that there aren’t a lot of people in your shard because of the way the numbers fall at any given time.

You both make assumptions here that I consider incorrect. You assume megaserver shards are filled to the brim before a new shard is created. This is wrong, to the best of my knowledge.

More likely, there is a set minimum number of shards based on the minimum player population over time. So, for example, if Timberline Falls -across all of NA- ranges from 100-15,000 people, they might set a minimum shard number of 5. Meaning, on average, there are 20 people per shard.

As more players join, they are initially placed in the 5 shards up to some certain cap. (This could be 100, this could be 50… we don’t know…) At that point, additional shards are created and players are put into them.

I consider it highly unlikely that you’d have a situation where one shard has 150 and the other has 20 except if large guilds/organized groups are manually moving themselves and hardcap (150) a server.

Edit: as an additional note, you make an additional crazy assumption… that I’m only ever in the “20” shard and never in the “150” and that explains the entirety of my difference in perception. This is incredibly unlikely.

You cannot conclude with any degree of confidence that discrepancy in mega-server experience is due to you being right about other posters’ experiences.

Right now, sample size is small. The mega-server has only been out for 15 days, and was not implemented everywhere for that entire time. What is most likely to happen eventually is that: your — and their — experiences should level out over time.

In the meantime, perhaps you should revisit my conclusion: “Post-patch, all you can conclude is that there aren’t a lot of people in your shard because of the way the numbers fall at any given time.” You certainly cannot conclude that your reports are valid and their reports aren’t.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In the meantime, perhaps you should revisit my conclusion: “Post-patch, all you can conclude is that there aren’t a lot of people in your shard because of the way the numbers fall at any given time.” You certainly cannot conclude that your reports are valid and their reports aren’t.

Which is why I included a number of modifiers like “to the best of my knowledge,” “as best as I can tell,” etc.

What I’m accusing people of – to the extent that I’m accusing anybody here – is misrepresenting one-time experiences or situational experiences as regular experiences.

For example: yes, Vigil Keep will be overrun right before WvW reset. No, Vigil Keep should not have 100 people in it all the time. I feel that people are taking images of Vigil Keep during WvW reset and misrepresenting those images as the standard experience. It is not. (At least not for me and I’ve requested, though not received, counter-evidence to my claim.)

Furthermore, it reasons that if the example of 170 people being split into 150 and 20 is true, I am 7.5x as likely to be among the 150 as I am the 20. If 470 people are split 150/150/150/20, I am 22.5x as likely to be among the 150 as I am the 20.

Why, then, do I feel like I’m constantly on servers that are more like 40-80?

The possibilities are:

1) I am lying (which I know I’m not, though you do not know I’m not, other than the the evidence I provided)
2) Other people are lying, or misrepresenting evidence, or stretching the truth to make a point, which I think is the case
3) There is a bug that is constantly putting me in 40-80 person servers and constantly putting all the people here in 150 person servers
4) I have just been abnormally lucky to always be placed in servers that are roughly 40-80% of softcap, except when major world events occur, and others have been abnormally unlucky to always be placed in servers that are softcapped+.

As a side note, I’ve been a little under-the-weather lately, but I’m hoping to get back into the game regularly soon, perhaps tonight or tomorrow. If you’d like to show me how terrible megaserver is and how it never works and you’re on NA, my username is right over there.

Message me. Party up with me. Show me how we have troubles getting into the same shard. Show me how we have issues with world bosses freezing. Show me how we NEVER NOT EVEN ONCE end up in the same shard without having to jump over.

That is not my experience, nor is it the experience of my guild members. I’d be happy to be shown how awful it is and then I’ll be right back here complaining about it.

To the contrary, I’ve noticed things like this: when I do a PUG dungeon run and we leave, I can see player portraits as people exit the dungeon because they’re now loading into the same map as me. If I need to get Obsidian Shards and try to head to the Temple of Balthazar, it’s often open. One time Danicia was there and danced with me. That NEVER happened before.

When I roam in the 1-15 zones, there’s TONS of new players, players who aren’t down-leveled. New enough that they don’t have guild tags yet. If it made sense to recruit players from outside my server, I’d be in recruiting heaven!

So if you really, truly think I’m wrong, let’s get together and see if we can figure it out. I’m not a White Knight, I’m just trying to represent my in-game experience as accurately as possible.

timmyf.1490:

As a side note, I’ve been a little under-the-weather lately, but I’m hoping to get back into the game regularly soon, perhaps tonight or tomorrow. If you’d like to show me how terrible megaserver is and how it never works and you’re on NA, my username is right over there.

Message me. Party up with me. Show me how we have troubles getting into the same shard. Show me how we have issues with world bosses freezing. Show me how we NEVER NOT EVEN ONCE end up in the same shard without having to jump over.

That is not my experience, nor is it the experience of my guild members. I’d be happy to be shown how awful it is and then I’ll be right back here complaining about it.

To the contrary, I’ve noticed things like this: when I do a PUG dungeon run and we leave, I can see player portraits as people exit the dungeon because they’re now loading into the same map as me. If I need to get Obsidian Shards and try to head to the Temple of Balthazar, it’s often open. One time Danicia was there and danced with me. That NEVER happened before.

When I roam in the 1-15 zones, there’s TONS of new players, players who aren’t down-leveled. New enough that they don’t have guild tags yet. If it made sense to recruit players from outside my server, I’d be in recruiting heaven!

So if you really, truly think I’m wrong, let’s get together and see if we can figure it out. I’m not a White Knight, I’m just trying to represent my in-game experience as accurately as possible.

You do realize that you might be in the “sweet spot” for sorting. You could possibly have a guild roster and (server obviously) that has a far better chance to see what you’re seeing than what others might be seeing.

For example someone solo in a less populated server and maybe a very small guild of friends may constantly be running into packed full world event, not getting rewards since bosses melt or find themselves in glitched instances more often than you might.

That’s one of the problems too, with this magical algorithm. Peoples experience could very easily vary wildly depending on the sorting criteria they use. Food for thought.