Guild Wars 2

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

You know as well as we all do at this point a post like this isn’t good enough. “Wait and see” stopped being a valid response when the system was implemented and every single one of the concerns brought up since the announcement were validated. It was obvious then that you had no plans to address the concerns and you’ve continued to demonstrate this behavior for over a month since the release. “Improvements” on “issues” doesn’t tell us anything. Are any of the RPer’s concerns part of those “issues”? Do you intend to actually compensate for them or should they just be expected to deal with it? Do you have actual plans for allowing large guilds to gather again? These are issues to US. But you’ve made no indication that they’re also issues to you. For all we know, your only concern is bug fixing the Megaservers based on their current implementation when pretty much all of our problems are based on the design/implementation of the feature itself.

Low hanging fruit-
Make a wvw type queue for full pve maps.

Perhaps harder to implement -
Let players see the instances of the maps and pick the one the want to enter directly. Use low, medium, high and full if you need to obfuscate the actual number of players in the map. That way for big guild missions and tts events, people wont have to rely on RNG to find a relatively empty map, and people who DC have a way of getting back to the same instance they were in before.

I really wish for one feature: Megamap ID.
Just give us an ID of the instance we’re in. Expose events through API via ID. Let people try to join map by ID.

This would solve “I need a Taxi please” (instead we’d get Guild Broadcast “Doing missions in Frostgorge ID 332, join please”), “Is Lyssa up?” / “I need Grenth for trait” (instead timers server would let you enter ID and see relevant temples states, and see on which server IDs event is in progress/scheduled soon). “Which map is COF open?” (timers server giving you a list of IDs dungeon is available)

Creation of new servers would still be limited (ANet systems would decide when it’s time to create a new instance or destroy empty one), just would allow players to move between them when capacity allows

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

Any idea what they’re actually doing? What issues specifically are they working on?

Because if they’re just “touching up the paintwork” then that’s of little comfort, if they’re reworking the fundamentals and adding in some of the features selected here then that’s great.

So no update till July 1st for the next part of the living story. So dose that mean that we have to wait another month before any fixes come to this system? It seems that all this discussion and something, SOMETHING needs to be fixed.

Almoryk Kane.6085:

So no update till July 1st for the next part of the living story. So dose that mean that we have to wait another month before any fixes come to this system? It seems that all this discussion and something, SOMETHING needs to be fixed.

Well they haven’t even spoken up as to whether ANY of our concerns are actually issues they’re addressing. All they’ve said is that they’re improving the system. But we’ve had major concerns about the very design of the Megaserver since it was first announced and so far none of them have really been addressed or acknowledged. So I would not expect any “fixes” in the sense that you might be thinking to come to the game, ever. If anything, they’re probably working to fix the increased disconnects happening. But they’ve made no indication that they’re in the wrong as far as the design and implementation of the megaservers so I’m inclined to believe they plan to do nothing about it aside from polishing the kitten that they already have. And from the way they’ve handled the situation thus far, I don’t see any reason why anyone should put their trust/faith in them otherwise. They’ve done nothing to deserve it.

rfdarko.4639:

Low hanging fruit-
Make a wvw type queue for full pve maps.

Perhaps harder to implement -
Let players see the instances of the maps and pick the one the want to enter directly. Use low, medium, high and full if you need to obfuscate the actual number of players in the map. That way for big guild missions and tts events, people wont have to rely on RNG to find a relatively empty map, and people who DC have a way of getting back to the same instance they were in before.

The “do nothing and say nothing” fruit hangs even lower and has often been plucked by ANet.

Tyops.5894:

rfdarko.4639:

Low hanging fruit-
Make a wvw type queue for full pve maps.

Perhaps harder to implement -
Let players see the instances of the maps and pick the one the want to enter directly. Use low, medium, high and full if you need to obfuscate the actual number of players in the map. That way for big guild missions and tts events, people wont have to rely on RNG to find a relatively empty map, and people who DC have a way of getting back to the same instance they were in before.

The “do nothing and say nothing” fruit hangs even lower and has often been plucked by ANet.

The weed of voiced discontent is creeping up on that tree, making that particular lowest hanging fruit quite unbearably sour. Or i hope so.

Im glad that there is at least a team working on things. Thats a good start. And its more than just “we are listening”. Though it would be great if they listened AND had a team working specificly on what they learned while listening.

I certainly hope that we will have some notifications on what exactly the fixes are meant to fix at the very least when it comes out. We cannot give feedback about the success of a fix if we dont know there is a fix in place or the RNG gods favored us just this once. Or more likely, people who had issues with the Megaservers stopped playing and will never know if or when their issues are solved, and thus wont know to log back in for another try and give their feedback about the fixes they themselves asked for.

So in short, keep us in touch.

lakdav.3694:

So in short, keep us in touch.

Wishful thinking at this point.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

Thank you, even a brief answer is really appreciated after months of silence.
However, could you please be a bit more specific? Exactly which of the many issues will you be tackling?

The WvW Tournament is coming to an end, and a lot of people unhappy with the state of the game were only still playing because of it. Now that it is over, and tourney isn’t keeping the dissatisfied customers, could you give us some firm answers for what we can expect in the future. I.e. what can people tell their guildies to keep them from leaving etc.

Issues I would like to see SOLVED, not just “improved”, as I would love to play the pre-April GW2 that I initially enjoyed:

• Community: Alliance button for friendly guilds and specialised guilds that run megabosses.
• Community: Ability to choose a megaserver instance to join our guildies and serverians and friends.
• Community: Server chat. Ability to communicate only with our co-serverians.
• Megabosses: Teq, Wurm and Karka spawn more often.
• Megabosses: Instanced raids.
• World bosses: End of the schedule. Dynamic Events =/= Timetable Events.
• Orr: Again, ability to chose which Megaserver instance to go to, to finally make Temple events available to more people.

#bringbackourservers

I have been dissapointed with megaserver since the start, it’s making me want to quit playing this game.

Today was the worst. I have been spamming join in on a party member for 4 hours now. Constantly trying to join an organized Crown Pavilion group, but with no luck. I’ve seen other people get in while I spammed as fast as I could. I do not understand why you have to make joining a pve raid rng based aswell. Why does wvw have que but pve doesn’t?

CC Danicia is most probably not on the Megaserver team, and whatever she knows, I am sure she ‘s not freely allowed to share. Rather than hating on her as if she was ANet’s Avatar, think about all she’s doing: her job.

The hate she got from unreasonable voices in these forums is why I don’t mind when ANet is silent about issues-as soon as anyone replies, they just get some hate and “your comment isn’t enough!” Yet these very people tend to complain about ANet’s supposed “perma-silence” which obviously (to them) means ANet doesn’t care about “the playerbase” (which is usually a community among players, and not really “the playerbase”.) Under these circumstances, I would actually post less than they do (ANet is hardly silent-and not only about the gem shop, as is often stated-but many people just want to hear what they want)

In that regards, they are kinder than I am-stating an “official” response in these forums is bound to be unsatisfactory and irrationally hated upon by many. Ultimately I believe it’s a pointless exercise for them to try to convince haters that the megaserver is good for the game, if the latter have already made up their minds about it. “Inconsiderate”, “lacking in foresight” ANet just wanted to destroy their community and gaming experience in their minds, rather than helping to further develop the game.

Best of luck to all ANet employees as you try to move the game forward. The Megaserver needs refining, not removing, and I am glad you are taking that stance rather than letting yourselves be intimidated by all the hate-which as we all know, is hardly universal. No one should admit to a crime they didn’t commit.

(The above is not meant to mean that it’s “wrong” to dislike the megaserver-like what you like-but as my own lamenting about how people often choose to voice their dislikes; intolerance, lack of compromise (other players are important , not just my point of view), etc. Additionally, many people who have voiced their concerns AGAINST the megaserver have done so rationally and maturely, so disliking it is certainly no indication of someone necessarily being like the haters I alluded to above.)

If you can’t agree to disagree, and are just going to reply with more hate, just ignore my post altogether. I care not for unnecessary debates about games, and there’s no reason to expect we must always agree or otherwise hate each other.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

I’m delighted to hear that, nice to know people are still working on it. What issues are being addressed? Could you please (PRETTY PLEASE! (do you have any idea how hard it is for a Charr to say that?!)) give us some info about grouping RPers, as part of the Megaserver flagging?

Star Ace.5207:

CC Danicia is most probably not on the Megaserver team, and whatever she knows, I am sure she ‘s not freely allowed to share. Rather than hating on her as if she was ANet’s Avatar, think about all she’s doing: her job.

The hate she got from unreasonable voices in these forums is why I don’t mind when ANet is silent about issues-as soon as anyone replies, they just get some hate and “your comment isn’t enough!” Yet these very people tend to complain about ANet’s supposed “perma-silence” which obviously (to them) means ANet doesn’t care about “the playerbase” (which is usually a community among players, and not really “the playerbase”.) Under these circumstances, I would actually post less than they do (ANet is hardly silent-and not only about the gem shop, as is often stated-but many people just want to hear what they want)

In that regards, they are kinder than I am-stating an “official” response in these forums is bound to be unsatisfactory and irrationally hated upon by many. Ultimately I believe it’s a pointless exercise for them to try to convince haters that the megaserver is good for the game, if the latter have already made up their minds about it. “Inconsiderate”, “lacking in foresight” ANet just wanted to destroy their community and gaming experience in their minds, rather than helping to further develop the game.

Best of luck to all ANet employees as you try to move the game forward. The Megaserver needs refining, not removing, and I am glad you are taking that stance rather than letting yourselves be intimidated by all the hate-which as we all know, is hardly universal. No one should admit to a crime they didn’t commit.

(The above is not meant to mean that it’s “wrong” to dislike the megaserver-like what you like-but as my own lamenting about how people often choose to voice their dislikes; intolerance, lack of compromise (other players are important , not just my point of view), etc. Additionally, many people who have voiced their concerns AGAINST the megaserver have done so rationally and maturely, so disliking it is certainly no indication of someone necessarily being like the haters I alluded to above.)

If you can’t agree to disagree, and are just going to reply with more hate, just ignore my post altogether. I care not for unnecessary debates about games, and there’s no reason to expect we must always agree or otherwise hate each other.

We need to know whether our concerns about the megaservers are actually being addressed, or if ArenaNet is not interested in addressing them and is instead just working on improving their own design. That’s the point of all of these feedback threads. And simply acknowledging that it’s being worked on doesn’t say whether or not it will improve our situation at all. As the community coordinator, it’s part of her job to communicate our needs to the team, but at this point what the community itself needs is a member of the team to explain the future of the Megaserver system. And because no such person has made an appearance in any of the feedback threads, CC Dancia serves as the only line of communication we have with ArenaNet. So, maybe it’s unfortunate that she has to bear the brunt of the player’s dissension, but at the very least that means she can communicate that to the dev team. And until some level of clarity is given to us about their plans for Megaservers, she and any other moderator are going to have to continue to be a target of player dissension. Does that mean she should post nothing? Probably. Like I said, at this point posts like “We’re working on it” and “Wait and see” aren’t good enough and serve as a placebo for maybe a day or two (if that). When talking about “ArenaNet doesn’t communicate with players”, we’re specifically referring to developers or a developer representative. Obviously PR talk and generic statements aren’t going to solve the issue.

And to reiterate, the issue is not whether or not the Megaservers are being “improved.” It’s whether or not the player concerns brought up in these feedback threads are actually things that the devs consider worth addressing. Because for all we know, the plan is NOT to support RPers or large guilds. In fact, with further updates they may be making it harder for such things to exist because they want players to instead be in multiple smaller guilds. Who knows? But until someone gives real information, the assumption is that these things are not being addressed. Why is that assumption valid? Because they were brought up at the exact moment the megaservers were announced, a month before release. There was no dev response properly explaining whether or not those concerns were valid, instead opting for a “wait and see” approach. Well, release day happened and all those concerns are still there. And no response happened. And they continue to be issues for players even now. BUT, whether or not those are issues to developers is unknown. It could be the intended effect, and things like RP could simply be an “unfortunate but necessary sacrifice”, much like contested waypoints were. So that’s why we need an actual statement of dev intent regarding the future of megaservers. Those blanket statements made by PR just don’t have any real effect anymore.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

So does that mean they’re removing it? Because the entire thing is a complete mess. Over 40 pages of valid reasons as to why it fails. Sure, there are some positives but the negatives severely outweigh them.

Again, I wish to mention that this mega server should be optional! If people want the overloaded zones, let them fill their boots. For those that do not, let us have our communities and home servers back.

Agreed. Yes, there have been 41 pages in this thread, another 20 or so in the MS-RP thread, and more in the 3rd thread lumping Guild/MS/World Events, etc. I’m certain that Anet will not rescind their decision on the Megaserver, altho I truly wish they would. Today, whilst levelling a brand new player asked if I was on BG server and I tried to explain the MS. They asked if they could level with me, I said sure! and off we went. As I was explaining some of the ins and outs of the game, levelling in QD I dc’d. Of course, I had no idea what MS we were both on, and we weren’t in a party. Had to log, re-log several times, guested to BG and after several minutes found the person again so we could continue.
Due to my certainty that Anet will not revert back to the old system, it would be helpful if they could institute a flag or something above, say the chat box that shows which server one was on. Anywhere on the screen would be great so that problems like reconnecting with someone wouldn’t be such a hassle.
If I had my druthers, I would rather them go back to the old ways, pre-MS when the World Bosses/Events weren’t Zerg fests. The absolute most memorable moments for me in GW2 were 4 of us on FA fighting Tequatl (pre-buff) for nearly 30 minutes before a few others showed up at 7:30am and two other players and I doing the Maw (after buff). It wasn’t that we did it for the loot, it was for the fight itself, as well as the satisfaction that we did were successful (after much reviving). Now many of the World bosses are just show up, tag a few times, and call it a day – Can you say boring?
I miss my home server, and being able to do missions, and not be one of a hundred out for a crappy loot drop from a boss.

weskay.9217:

Again, I wish to mention that this mega server should be optional! If people want the overloaded zones, let them fill their boots. For those that do not, let us have our communities and home servers back.

Believe Revler posted a good suggestion on another thread that was just that. Implementing a district system where we can have the option of going home server, high pop mega, medium pop mega, and low pop mega. Is a great idea but I doubt ArenaNet will be that kind.

Sad as I know I sound when typing this… All I can imagine them doing is buttering up the kitten they call megaservers, so it goes down easier for us.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

As many have said, the fact that people are working on it is nice, but doesnt address the real question
what are they working on?

anet has yet to communicate what they consider to be issues/problems and what are not, they have yet to communicate what their vision for the future of megaservers, or even servers in general is now.

Stark.1350:

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

Hey Danicia, if you don’t mind my asking, what issues are they specifically trying to improve?

Yes, that’s a question i also want to ask.

It’s a little too late, if you ask me. The damage has already been done. But i do hope you’ll fix the Guild, Friends, RP, Zerg, Gold Selling Spam, Racist, Language, Event (am i forgetting something here?) “issues” you introduced when you downgraded the game.

I do hope you’ll value our feedback who’s out there for months now, and act accordingly.

EDIT : Are these issues going to be fixed before July the 1st?

Honestly what I’ve learned most from the current release is that megaservers were a poor idea, certainly as an only option. I would love to see a megaservers option so that people could seek those larger groups if they want.

However right now I’ve never even seen silver reward on Boss Blitz in over ten attempts, severally of them where a large concerted effort was made to try and organize but simply not enough people listened and far too many piled onto one boss making it scale up far too much to kill.

What this made me realize was just how much the megaservers ruined. Content like this is now barred to only guilds, it really is. I remember in the last few hours of the Battle of Lion’s Arch us on Blackgate managed to get Six Minutes to Knightfall. What guild was running this attempt? No guild just Blackgate and the people that guested there. How could a server full of pugs accomplish such a feat? Well it was the community on Blackgate and its reputation. Those of us from Blackgate really wanted to succeed at all these big events and put in the effort, and listened to good commanders, to accomplish these things.

Additionally many knew about this fact about Blackgate and for every person who guested over to get a free achievement there were at least two who guested over to actually try and work together to accomplish this. Now with megaservers all the people, dedicated and otherwise are lumped together. With no dedicated community either many people don’t feel the same connection to the people around them to actually try and give it their all either.

To be honest, it isn’t some Blackgate elitism that makes me post this. After all, I’d be a fool to think we accomplished what we did on our own. When we got the NA first wurm kill many of the people there were guests from different servers. Why I post this is because I miss getting the chance to actually beat this content. Looking forward I cannot see a point to any more of this great and challenging large scale pve content. From my experience the megaservers have set us so far back in progress and our ability to beat this content that there is no point to release anymore.

I may be a part of a large pve guild that can handle this content, but I miss the days we could just show up and have a good shot at beating it because of our strong community and the guests that supported us.

So please, please remember the players who aren’t from China again. Give us a chance again and give us back our main servers. Megaservers have their pluses, but with them the only option then the world content has been destroyed.

I never understood all this “too late” thing.
That would basically imply that they should basically not even bother doing anything about it, because it won’t matter anyway.

Because they should not have implemented megaservers like they did at first place.

They should have listened our feedbacks just after their first megaserver roll-outs. They should have moved step by step. Instead what they did is: “We implemented megaservers. We do not care your feedbacks. So all maps are megaservers now[in one week]. Deal with it. If we want, we may improve some stuff soon[never].”
They should have not even implemented megaservers anyways. They destroyed every server and every server (and even cross-server) communities just because they want new players to see crowded maps. Why? Because more is good. Bite me.

I’m glad to see this thread still going. If anet does absolutely nothing else about this mega-nightmare, they need to make LA server only based. But, even that won’t solve the list of other issues it has introduced. While your at it, how about pushing some solid improvements to the engine and not scattering crafting stations all over LA to try and solve the poor performance of rendering many players in a smaller area.

Shepherd.5839:

Honestly what I’ve learned most from the current release is that megaservers were a poor idea, certainly as an only option. I would love to see a megaservers option so that people could seek those larger groups if they want.

However right now I’ve never even seen silver reward on Boss Blitz in over ten attempts, severally of them where a large concerted effort was made to try and organize but simply not enough people listened and far too many piled onto one boss making it scale up far too much to kill.

What this made me realize was just how much the megaservers ruined. Content like this is now barred to only guilds, it really is. I remember in the last few hours of the Battle of Lion’s Arch us on Blackgate managed to get Six Minutes to Knightfall. What guild was running this attempt? No guild just Blackgate and the people that guested there. How could a server full of pugs accomplish such a feat? Well it was the community on Blackgate and its reputation. Those of us from Blackgate really wanted to succeed at all these big events and put in the effort, and listened to good commanders, to accomplish these things.

Additionally many knew about this fact about Blackgate and for every person who guested over to get a free achievement there were at least two who guested over to actually try and work together to accomplish this. Now with megaservers all the people, dedicated and otherwise are lumped together. With no dedicated community either many people don’t feel the same connection to the people around them to actually try and give it their all either.

To be honest, it isn’t some Blackgate elitism that makes me post this. After all, I’d be a fool to think we accomplished what we did on our own. When we got the NA first wurm kill many of the people there were guests from different servers. Why I post this is because I miss getting the chance to actually beat this content. Looking forward I cannot see a point to any more of this great and challenging large scale pve content. From my experience the megaservers have set us so far back in progress and our ability to beat this content that there is no point to release anymore.

I may be a part of a large pve guild that can handle this content, but I miss the days we could just show up and have a good shot at beating it because of our strong community and the guests that supported us.

So please, please remember the players who aren’t from China again. Give us a chance again and give us back our main servers. Megaservers have their pluses, but with them the only option then the world content has been destroyed.

QFT

With the odd hours I play, there are many meta events I would never have succeeded on if not for being a semi-regular guest on Black Gate and a few other servers who come together like that.

Andred.1087:

I get that the new system will supposedly always put you in the same instance as your friends / guildies, but why forcibly automate something so trivial when players could just as easily make sure of it themselves?

That rarely happens from my experience. I rarely see people from my server anymore. So either no one from my server really plays now or there is little rhyme or reason to Megaserver’s way of putting people on to the maps. It makes doing guild missions so much of a pain in the kitten we have virtually stopped doing any because of the 5-30 mins of getting everyone on the same map.

Thats my main complaint is that it destroyed the sense of community I had with my server. Yeah, great always having people for the world boss train, but it just feels like a bunch of randoms (because it is). Never seem to be able to get enough people to go do a temple though but maybe I’m just random zoning in at the wrong time… everytime since megaserver started. Everytime I zone to another map it’s just so random to who is going to be there.

Oh, and doing Wurm and Teq are still virtually impossible unless on a super organized map (meaning TTS or the like).

Bugabuga.9721:

I really wish for one feature: Megamap ID.
Just give us an ID of the instance we’re in. Expose events through API via ID. Let people try to join map by ID.

This would solve “I need a Taxi please” (instead we’d get Guild Broadcast “Doing missions in Frostgorge ID 332, join please”), “Is Lyssa up?” / “I need Grenth for trait” (instead timers server would let you enter ID and see relevant temples states, and see on which server IDs event is in progress/scheduled soon). “Which map is COF open?” (timers server giving you a list of IDs dungeon is available)

Creation of new servers would still be limited (ANet systems would decide when it’s time to create a new instance or destroy empty one), just would allow players to move between them when capacity allows

I’d like that. Maybe then I could do temples again.

Hey, guess what? A multitude of events is STILL hopelessly overcrowded without any proper scaling attached!

Just wanted to bump our lil’ ragethread, maybe we’ll get some kind of response someday.

The megaserver system seems to be improving somewhat as people get used to it, but there are still glaring issues with groups/guild being kept together – especially during guild missions where timers are an issue.

- We desperately need a better way to join friends in other maps. Having to use the 5-man party system to taxi people to servers is clunky and takes away from the fun of the game. Let us right click on friends and guildees to do the same.

- There are still major issues when two guilds end up at the same mission – especially for rushes. No one is sure what to do, if they are going to get credit, when we should trigger, etc. We should want to run into other guilds during missions – currently, there is a collective sigh because we realize it will make our guild missions run longer as we wait for the previous guild to finish their rush or puzzle.

If they can get those two things fixed, I will be happy to call the megaserver system a huge success.

“If they can get those two things fixed, I will be happy to call the megaserver system a huge success.”

I’d like them to also fix:
overcrowding, waypoints being contested, temple status, longer loading screens, lag/fps issues, boss schedule, server activities such as temple runs/mining runs/world boss tours, server Teq and Wurm events etc.

Today, while trying to find a map that wasn’t ridiculously full, and having to constantly re-log and eventually try to guest, I find that there are apparently no low pop servers any more – all are high or very high. How do we chose quieter worlds?

Kestrelle.8165:

How do we chose quieter worlds?

Choose? sigh You people want everything! [/sarcasm]

Right now, there is no point or purpose AT ALL for having a home world, except for WvWvW. And that could be handled a much better way (guild alliances).

GuzziHero.2467:

Kestrelle.8165:

How do we chose quieter worlds?

Choose? sigh You people want everything! [/sarcasm]

Right now, there is no point or purpose AT ALL for having a home world, except for WvWvW. And that could be handled a much better way (guild alliances).

no point? ppl had great server communities. we knew which guild is which so we knew how they work, who to avoid. /m chat was useful for any info, now is just spam with “smart” comments and word battles among english speaking players and none english. chat is full of hate most of the time. A LOT gold seller spammers everywhere. trying to make a farm party fails to the point u don’t give a kitten anymore… and so on.

Rapier.3675:

no point? ppl had great server communities. we knew which guild is which so we knew how they work, who to avoid. /m chat was useful for any info, now is just spam with “smart” comments and word battles among english speaking players and none english. chat is full of hate most of the time. A LOT gold seller spammers everywhere. trying to make a farm party fails to the point u don’t give a kitten anymore… and so on.

You misunderstand I think. I mean, why do we have home worlds when we are all mixed together like alphabetti spaghetti. If they want to keep Megaserver, they may as well end home servers altogether.

thefantasticg.3984:

Oh, and doing Wurm and Teq are still virtually impossible unless on a super organized map (meaning TTS or the like).

Ha, so true! I agree emphatically. And that doesn’t even begin to speak to the flip-side of the issue, which groups like TTS face every single time they organize.

You know… just a bit of a sidebar here. I have to brag on TTS Commanders. They have the worst boss fight of all: battling the Megaserver itself for the first 15 minutes of each Tequatl and Evolved Wurm event.

• “Okay guys there are way too many AFKers here so whisper me if you have a clean map!”
• “Guys, I’m not a taxi right now! Don’t join on me! We’re looking for a clean map.”
• “No blind invites guys! If you have a map, whisper me first!”
• Two minutes later…
• “Okay, this… this is not a clean map. Only whisper me if you think you have a clean map.”
• Five minutes later…
• “Okay we have a map, so taxi on me or say in teamspeak that you’re a taxi.”
• “Guys if you get into the zone on me please drop the party and advertise so we can get everyone in…”
• “Okay the server’s full?” muttering “There are only 47 people on my tag… where is everyone…”
• “This map is no good. Okay guys, I’m tagging down and we need a new map. If you’re in 71, that one’s no good. Don’t invite me to that one.”
• “No, 71 is the last number in the ip, not the first one.”
• Five minutes after that…
• “Okay guys we have a new map so let’s taxi into this one. If you’re in 148 and see my tag, that’s the right one.”
• “Okay everyone stack on me for a supply count.”
• “Okay everyone follow my tag if you can hear me in teamspeak.”
• “Guys there are 175 people in the teamspeak channel, so move down to the Teq 3 channel if you’re not on this map already.”
• “Okay everyone, we’re running late so let’s get these positions filled. I need turret operators for turrets one through three. One two and three please.”
• Annnnd they’re off!

Yeah. That seems about as rewarding as solo farming Taidha Covington’s front gate.

So, hug your commanders, everyone! Make it “worth it” for them! Say thank you! Right now they’re battling the game just as much as they’re helping us battle the monsters inside of it.

For any of the anet developer folks who read this far, thank you very much for all of your hard work. This is just one example of why we’d really like to hear additional details from someone on what problems have officially been recognized, whether anet will address them, and how the problems will be addressed.

People are getting left out, there are tons of have- and have-nots, it’s a real shame, we’re really struggling, and we’re having to fight the game itself in order to have our fun within it. This is not how things should be. We’d really like to hear some details on how things are going to be fixed.

lordkrall.7241:

I never understood all this “too late” thing.
That would basically imply that they should basically not even bother doing anything about it, because it won’t matter anyway.

well the too late thing has to do with the reality that they have already committed to and tested this plan. They put in time and money, and it may be awhile before they put in time and money again, even then there are certain things they would probably avoid doing after implementing megaservers that they may have done before implementing it.

Essentially megaserver solutions will most likely be low priority tweaks, rather than system altering things. We have wasted the large scale change they were willing to make with a questionable path.

That said, i think a lot of people are blind to the strengths of the megaserver. It solves one of the big fears anet especially has about empty zones. Theoretically now they can make as much new content as they want without canabalizing zones.

It has some strengths, but it is half baked, they still need to do some big changes to get it to jel well with their gameworld.

• They need to create new meaning for servers (this is probably a large change)
• They need to let the megaserver create groups that almost always stay together
• they need to come up with a system that works better with dynamic events/dynamic world and gives some level of permanance <—- this is the most difficult and time consuming issue, which i dont think they will ever solve. Fact is we probably have lost the potential for a dynamic world here, at least one you can go back to.

Essentially it needs a lot of work to integrate well into the world, but we dont even know if they intend to solve these issues. I think their hope is to come up with an algorithm, but that cannot solve many of the issues that megaserver created.

and the other issue, the problem with the “we are observing and working on it approach”, i think they need more user feedback in their actual developmental process. Many of the solutions they have come up with have fallen short of their intended goals, or miss the scope of the problem.

the reason people are so apprehensive about just letting them fix problems with no feedback, is because then we get a big feature patch which is not really making people feel the game is better than it was before.

GuzziHero.2467:

Rapier.3675:

no point? ppl had great server communities. we knew which guild is which so we knew how they work, who to avoid. /m chat was useful for any info, now is just spam with “smart” comments and word battles among english speaking players and none english. chat is full of hate most of the time. A LOT gold seller spammers everywhere. trying to make a farm party fails to the point u don’t give a kitten anymore… and so on.

You misunderstand I think. I mean, why do we have home worlds when we are all mixed together like alphabetti spaghetti. If they want to keep Megaserver, they may as well end home servers altogether.

i think servers as you knew them before are essentially useless, and mean virtually nothing.
That said i think megaservers actually do need some other grouping tool that fits the idea of a community. So may as well use servers for that. But since the community is no longer defined by location, they will need to come up with new meaning/identity/tools for community building through servers. I have seen nothing to suggest they will do this though.

GuzziHero.2467:

Kestrelle.8165:

How do we chose quieter worlds?

Choose? sigh You people want everything! [/sarcasm]

Right now, there is no point or purpose AT ALL for having a home world, except for WvWvW. And that could be handled a much better way (guild alliances).

I view WvW and home worlds as being nothing more than chosen sports teams, at this point. They carry no more weight than that. In fact I’d say that may be giving them more credit as sports teams usually have a large fan base and people that actually care how well their teams do. The people that still claim to care about WvW status are the same ones that choose to try one week and throw a match the next.

phys.7689:

• they need to come up with a system that works better with dynamic events/dynamic world and gives some level of permanance <—- this is the most difficult and time consuming issue, which i dont think they will ever solve. Fact is we probably have lost the potential for a dynamic world here, at least one you can go back to.

Of all the things involved with the megaserver, I think this is the one that stands out most in my mind. I liked the orr temple concept. The cross-map functionality that gw2 had was one of it’s unique qualities, and one I hoped would get improved upon and developed as time went on.

It’s gone now. Just “adjusting the algorithm” is not going to bring it back…

I would like to ask to reduce the amount of people per map. Drastically. Right now, every heart is a zerg, even in the middle of nowhere. Events are just a run to tag anything at all while mobs die as they spawn. The idea of making the world more lively was commendable but every single part of PvE is now a zergfest. Kinda overdid it a bit.

Meluna.1764:

I would like to ask to reduce the amount of people per map. Drastically. Right now, every heart is a zerg, even in the middle of nowhere. Events are just a run to tag anything at all while mobs die as they spawn. The idea of making the world more lively was commendable but every single part of PvE is now a zergfest. Kinda overdid it a bit.

Yeah, seeing map caps of 75+ isn’t working right now. I think I’ve seen an entire map pile on Ulgoth, and it was just ridiculous. I’d say drop it to 50, but then Teq and Wurm would probably be spread too thin on people…

Oh geez megaserver lovers’ only argument is “megaservers are good because of crowded maps”, and you ask lowering player cap. What a coincident! You could get your crowded maps or not so much crowded maps without any problem. But someone out there wanted to fix something had not broken at first place.

Rauderi.8706:

Yeah, seeing map caps of 75+ isn’t working right now. I think I’ve seen an entire map pile on Ulgoth, and it was just ridiculous. I’d say drop it to 50, but then Teq and Wurm would probably be spread too thin on people…

Yesterday doing MAW, there were so many people in my shard that I didn’t manage to get credit for Protect The Supplies, Protect Scholar Brogun, Destroy the Dragon Totem or Destroy the Elite Guard because I just wasn’t in the right place at the right time. I wasn’t on a lowbie character either, I was using an 80.

What these event must be like for lower exp levelled character I have no idea. I fought at a Fire Elemental yesterday as well, broke off from fighting when it was at 80% health to res defeated player. and by the time I got him up, the event was over.

Completely ridiculous – Anet has reduced their own game into farce.

I would like to throw in the fact that every time I wanted to fast travel to a said location, the megaserver just contested 99% of the map. Its freaken annoying and totally an inconvenience.

The MegaServers (aka ‘a server’) aren’t a problem in themselves. The issue is that the events, ALL of the events, were not tuned to handle the number of players that are now completing them.

If the software was developed in the first place with mega servers, then each event could also have been implemented with the expectation of 100+ players and had some player-mitigation that would actually make the events interesting.

For instance, the Svanir Shaman (Maw) right now is 100 players hitting one boss that does nothing but stand take the damage. His attacks are meaningless and the whirlwinds do nothing to stop players. Where’s the fun in that? Throw in some DANGER, some unexpected skills.. Make his transformation look TEN TIMES bigger, with a stomp that sends players flying 1,000 range! I made a previous suggestion of giving him Mirror Image, with no indication of which one is real.. That would be so easy to scale up! 10 people? 2 mirrors. 50 people? 15 mirrors. 100 people? 40 mirrors!

All of this makes fights varied, interesting (at least for a while), and can properly handle a large player-base. The most significant bottleneck to this? There are a LOT of events. Every one of them needs to be reassessed with the likelyhood of 10-100 players taken in to account.

What we currently have is an event patched up to handle more players while still using the original script. This is really apparent in some events. Take the Maw pre-event for example, where you get some grawl spawning that die instantly. These are the spawns from the original event. Then you get some that take a beating for 4-5 seconds. This are the patched grawl added after the mega-server came in to effect.
This is not acceptable!

(posted in the other thread just as it closed, doh so it lies unedited in this thread..)

Agreeing on the fact that the game was not developed with the megaservers in mind. Most gameplay aspects were not developed with the megaservers in mind. Most of them are outright incompatible with it. Dynamic events, contestable WPs, inter-map effects of the orrian temples, server community aspects… But the Megaservers were pushed into the game, trampling over everything in its path. With zero indication that its going to get better.

Masses of players trudging through the maps was supposed to make us ignore the massive downsides of the new system. Zero communication and time is supposed to make us forget or just get over the same downsides unaddressed.

They just made Tequatl a little bit harder, and tears of whines flooded these forums. We had our servers and communities for exactly killing Tequatls. But solo players, small servers and some small guilds did not like it because they don’t wanna be in such big coordinated events (I did not say they could not do it because with the help of guest system, small servers could come together, coordinate and do any events without any problem).

They made Crown Pavillion a little bit harder due to scaling, and same happened. Now, we do not have our servers and our communities hardly create an organized map (actually it is much easy now since Pavillion population is decreasing among random players). But organizing in megaservers is much painful than organizing in the old system.

With random intelligent life forms, whatever they do, IT WON’T FIX ANY PROBLEMS! Coordinated events are for server (guilds) or cross-server wide communities (Tequatl/Wurm) killing guilds. They were never for solo mentality players*. Megaservers offer nothing for such communities nor they will ever offer anything as long as Anet decides to let such communities to open their own maps without any limitations for free. In old system we could create our maps without much difficulty. At the worst case scenario, we could just guest to a low populated server. Now, we have nothing. Wherever you go, there will be unpredictable amount of random players that may or may not wanna participate. All we can do is minimizing RNG amount. Also, there is no guarantee that those randoms will participate as they SHOULD BE (for instance joining in TS). Finally, even if they are the perfect random players, still there is no guarantee that they can read what you are writing. Because last time I checked, French/German/Spanish client users cannot communicate with English client users.

*Solo mentality players = “I do what I want. I don’t care whether we can succeed with a group event. All I care is my personal actions and personal satisfactions”.

PLS give us back districts it would solve all problems and can’t be that hard :’(

Personally I don’t like the change. It shows the same ‘diseases’ as I’ve seen in other mmo’s with megaservers.

- Latency….. skills delay in firing, requiring alot of mashing of buttons or simply refuse to trigger at all, often resulting in loosing the combat and becoming defeated.

- Client loosing connection, especially in combat. I have to log in again to find the avatar either dead or none npc present. Npc’s then might spawn ‘in my lap’ omitting any kind of tactics praying skills will trigger or become defeated again.

- “New Event near by” Thing is, the zergs are now so big, by the time I get to the group-event or world-boss, 50% of the time it’s already over and done.

I started this game on Gunnar’s Hold where none of these things ever happened. I can’t recall being disconnected once, nor that skills wouldn’t trigger. Combat was swift, direct and responsive – I really miss that.

For me the introduction of megaserver is sadly all negative…

Honestly this introduction was all negative indeed, even harder to get something organized since now its all so scrambled.

Also I don’t understand why would you take something that was perfect in the original GW and cut it totally out.
It clearly was the best option at that time and nowadays it just makes it impossible to organize to face the harder challenges like tequatl and the wurm.

I think the hardcore pve community is disappearing because it is unbelievely frustrating to try to do anything serious at the moment. And without it the rest of the players don’t have much else to look up to and a game without an objective or motivation other then skins is a game that is lacking ….alot.

Add server based DISTRICTS and you’ll see server population increase for sure.

I seem to recall they saying something about districts simply not being possible with the current server tech they use, which is why they don’t have districts.