Guild Wars 2

Lishtenbird.2814:

anzenketh.3759:

That is how sometimes people were able to get in more bosses then with the schedule system. When in average it will likely be about the same.

Just ran over the schedule… I can tell that my usual boss runs will get halved, to 3-4 down from 7-8. Plus, I will have to stick dungeon runs in between and make sure I run “80 only exp speedrun” or I risk missing worldbosses. Not even speaking about occasional farming of Arah, Grenth and Melandru when they’re up – it’s either camping now, or… stop-reporting-minion-masters-in-Orr-as-T6-will-skyrocket-otherwise.

TL;DR: living by a timer is not as fun as it may seem.

thats too funny. the Bot community will save us from the anet dev community lolz

weskay.9217:

As the saying goes: “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

I don’t see how our current system is really broken. If you take a look at the other forums regarding this massive server, I believe the negatives outweigh the positives. I see why they would like to do this but after reading numerous forum posts, this does not seem to be what the majority of the public wants – myself included. I’m not going to go into full detail about this anymore but I think Anet is going down the wrong path for this.

I can see people that are upset about this eventually leaving. Combining this with the way the Living World has been running, people will be scrambling for a seat on a lifeboat while this ship goes down.

yeah essentially, unfortunately this system as currently planned to be implemented creates more problems than it solves. While i think the server unification is a great mechanic for having people in the world, and could theoretically allow them to not be afraid of building new content, It doesnt work with many of the systems present, without also reworking many of these systems drastically (doing it with simple easy changes mess up the world, like boss schedules) they are looking at essentially breaking almost everything the system comes in contact with, with nothing good to replace whats broken.

hchadw.1097:

Lishtenbird.2814:

anzenketh.3759:

That is how sometimes people were able to get in more bosses then with the schedule system. When in average it will likely be about the same.

Just ran over the schedule… I can tell that my usual boss runs will get halved, to 3-4 down from 7-8. Plus, I will have to stick dungeon runs in between and make sure I run “80 only exp speedrun” or I risk missing worldbosses. Not even speaking about occasional farming of Arah, Grenth and Melandru when they’re up – it’s either camping now, or… stop-reporting-minion-masters-in-Orr-as-T6-will-skyrocket-otherwise.

TL;DR: living by a timer is not as fun as it may seem.

thats too funny. the Bot community will save us from the anet dev community lolz

Farmers like their games to be entertaining too. Amazing, huh?

It’s a bit weird that after many complaints about the dynamic world not being all that dynamic in reality you actually remove one of the more randomized factors in the game (world boss spawns).
Also the casual players will very likely not be able to participate in all of the events anymore, with these fixed timers across all server copies. Not everyone is in a larger guild and has the ability to finance a couple of extra spawns a day.

Regards

I am seeing several posts about double WP costs? Where is this coming from? It isn’t mentioned ANYWHERE in the blogs about the megaserver. The only mention of WPs is that if it is contestable it will show up as contested until you arrive in the map. Am I missing something?

pdavis.8031:

I am seeing several posts about double WP costs? Where is this coming from? It isn’t mentioned ANYWHERE in the blogs about the megaserver. The only mention of WPs is that if it is contestable it will show up as contested until you arrive in the map. Am I missing something?

You are because this means that you can no longer waypoint to any contestable WPs from other maps and instead will first have to waypoint to another WP on that map to be able to WP yet again to get to the WP you actually needed to get to if it turns out it was uncontested on that map copy all along.
This combined with short distances being way more expensive to travel by WPs in relation to longer distances is a very clear step backwards

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

Thank you so much Anthony for posting that is some good stuff you posted there, nice to see you guys are watching this stuff.

I wanted to put something out there before it got buried in all the posts. Is there a reason why the District system wasnt adopted from guildwars 1 and used for the instances in GW2 map zones instead of the original overflow idea. Or was that idea tossed around and dropped for tech reasons?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I really like to know, why are some people so against joining big and organised guilds?

There are so many benefits, from my perspective anyway. Why I like being in a large guild:
-Biweekly guild missions, very high success rate (except when a GM is bugged).
-Many other events we organise (such as guild quiz and guild lottery)
-Doing many things with your guildies, in an organised way (like wvw or dungeons)
-Access to a guild forum, facebook group and voice chat (in this case mumble).
-It’s very social, met many people there whom I now consider my friends
-Guild passive bonusses
-Now world events are added to the list

Why are people so resistant to having this?
This is a serious question btw, I’m really curious about this.

I’ll try to answer this, as others aren’t doing.

Being in a large guild restricts your freedom about being able to do exactly what you want, when you want. There will be times when you’re expected to show up for stuff, or requests every so often to help out on something (when all you want is to be leveling up an alt).

If you’re concerned now with running bosses when you want, then joining a large guild looks like the way to go now. However, I don’t think a lot of happy smaller guilds will suddenly just want to be in large guilds.

Upside, you can schedule your play around events instead of watching an event website or overlay for it to start. It’s 9:45, do you know where your Jormag is?

Downside, fewer events as far as I can tell. Those who make a living milking them across multiple servers with multiple alts just had their cheese moved.

I’m seeing this as another attempt to dissuade what I’ve been calling degenerate play styles. That in trying to achieve some goal, players have adopted a play style that the devs were trying to avoid. Problem is every time they’ve attempted to restrict these types of play, the more unusual/extreme ways a player finds to continue.

On one hand the devs want players to experience all of Tyria, to avoid grinding. On the other the players want to maximize their loot for the time they are playing so they seek out tasks to provide great rewards and grind them into the ground. This kind of grind will always be a problem because the devs can’t change human (or gamer) nature.

pdavis.8031:

I am seeing several posts about double WP costs? Where is this coming from? It isn’t mentioned ANYWHERE in the blogs about the megaserver. The only mention of WPs is that if it is contestable it will show up as contested until you arrive in the map. Am I missing something?

If you want to access a contested waypoint, you have to waypoint to the map first then, if it’s open, waypoint again to reach where you want to go. In short, any location that is near a contestable waypoint will require two teleports to reach or one and walking on foot.

How can Anet say they care about server identity and then completely trash it?! Guys, am I being obtuse here? Literally no more server identity in PvE? In which case, who gives a kitten about WvW?

I can see why they dropped all of the good announcements in this patch first. Cause I am kittened by this mega server system. To hell with this. I’m out.

Players who can only play limited hours per day (e.g. after work) will be pushed even farther behind, have to play many more days to be able to accomplish the same old things with their money/resources.
- Instead of using event timers to see where they can join any world event in progress and then move to the next one, they will be limited to the specific events in their available schedule.
- If they choose to do dungeons or fractals, they end up completely missing the daily rewards of certain world events.
- They’ll be required to spend their limited time on pre-events that other players with more time/reason would be doing (in the current system)
- The lesser amount of income they’ll be making will be hit even more by having to waypoint twice to get anywhere, or to dungeon maps to find that the dungeon is closed to them (and if they have a party, everyone else will be put on the same instance: can’t avoid the pre-events)

ExAstris.8527:

How can Anet say they care about server identity and then completely trash it?! Guys, am I being obtuse here? Literally no more server identity in PvE? In which case, who gives a kitten about WvW?

I can see why they dropped all of the good announcements in this patch first. Cause I am kittened by this mega server system. To hell with this. I’m out.

But in PvE who cares about server identity? We’ll still get our server’s WvW bonuses.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

hchadw.1097:

Is there a reason why the District system wasnt adopted from guildwars 1 and used for the instances in GW2 map zones instead of the original overflow idea.

Guild Wars 1 is a very different game both in design and implementation. That’s all I can really say here.

Cool thanks for the answer. Different game design and engine left you guys without the option to do that. ty ty. Thank you for the answer and thank you for the things you guys are doing, and thank you for trying to listen to the community. :-)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

Having a schedule is all well and good, but one thing the schedule currently handles poorly, when the events you want to do ONLY occur at times you’re unable to play. Players are not at the beck and call of your master schedule, we have lives outside the game. There needs to be better ways that the player can find the event they want WITHIN the time they have available to play, rather than having to structure the time they play around the game’s schedule. Predictability is good, but there also needs to be choice.

Make it so that multiple events are running simultaneously, so that they can stack up on once-per-hour cycles instead of “one per three hour” cycles, and you can choose which ones you want to join at any given time.

I’m not saying that the current system is perfect, only that the new system you’re proposing is worse.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:…

You’re either missing or not addressing what people are saying: that we don’t want to play on a schedule, regardless of what that schedule is. While the current setup may not be optimal in a lot of ways, it’s better than the train schedule that you’ve proposed. This isn’t about “I’m going to miss this or that”, it’s about being constrained to a very artificial limitation you’re implementing. This does have ramifications about missing things, but that’s not really the point.

At the end of the day, a strict schedule makes the game less fun for a lot of players.

ANet should consider who butters their bread — people with jobs who can spend money at the trading post. The very same people who may be locked out of certain bosses by this schedule.

This schedule change is very hostile to the people who keep your game funded.

Also, the problem with Tequatl is the lack of scaling, not scheduling.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

You literally didn’t read a word we wrote did you? How does changing the bosses to a 6 hour schedule mean that I’m MORE likely to play them?

Ohoni.6057:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

Having a schedule is all well and good, but one thing the schedule currently handles poorly, when the events you want to do ONLY occur at times you’re unable to play. Players are not at the beck and call of your master schedule, we have lives outside the game. There needs to be better ways that the player can find the event they want WITHIN the time they have available to play, rather than having to structure the time they play around the game’s schedule. Predictability is good, but there also needs to be choice.

Make it so that multiple events are running simultaneously, so that they can stack up on once-per-hour cycles instead of “one per three hour” cycles, and you can choose which ones you want to join at any given time.

I’m not saying that the current system is perfect, only that the new system you’re proposing is worse.

Sounds like one of the better ideas. Seen a few mention it already. mabe have multiple bosses spawn at those times so you can have a choice to do any of them instead of oh its 7:15pm time to kill this boss. Would be nicer to have it “Oh its 7:15pm, i killed that boss already but there are 2 more i havnt ill go to one of those instead”

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

the strengths outweighed the weaknesses, and worked better within the concept of a changing world.

Any solution that involves timed events is going to be problematic, like sliding events where you may have to wait weeks to get the events you want in a certain time frame, and more difficulty in scheduling.

I dunno, seems like the solutions yall are thinking of are too rigid to go with the type of world people loved in this game. You are reducing the variety in experience, and ability to participate in many things. Dynamism and feelings that events/what you do matters. Its a hefty price to pay, for something that doesnt seem to gain much as a player.
Instead of having 5 people in a zone ill have 40 guys who i have no connection to as well. Spread far apart, and having differing objectives. In exchange give up a dynamic world where what players do matters, and access to many different events, as well as any type of permanence.

The question is, how does this benefit the players game other than more people on a map? So far is see no other benefit, but a great many other things lost. What type of long term interesting events and world will you be able to create within this non permanent system?

Wesley.4590:

pdavis.8031:

I am seeing several posts about double WP costs? Where is this coming from? It isn’t mentioned ANYWHERE in the blogs about the megaserver. The only mention of WPs is that if it is contestable it will show up as contested until you arrive in the map. Am I missing something?

You are because this means that you can no longer waypoint to any contestable WPs from other maps and instead will first have to waypoint to another WP on that map to be able to WP yet again to get to the WP you actually needed to get to if it turns out it was uncontested on that map copy all along.
This combined with short distances being way more expensive to travel by WPs in relation to longer distances is a very clear step backwards

Aaaah gotcha. However this system does make sense, if not exactly convient. With the removal of the armor repair costs, they need to increase the gold sink somehow. Granted armor repair wasn’t much of a sink, but it was A sink nonetheless. But it also makes sense from a gameplay perspective. You shouldn’t be able to automagically tell what was going on in a zone that you weren’t in, and the WPs available are going to be the ones at known secure locations. It’s basically Fog of War without actually being Fog of War. It definetly going to make me feel differently about wantonly WP around the world on a whim.

+1 for changing this up. It’s going to be interesting at the least!! I’m looking forward to it.

Lishtenbird.2814:

if we have a single boss at a time, we’ll always have to fight with the full zerg, and I think I don’t have to tell developers that killing Frozen Maw or Inquest Golem with 5 people is a lot faster and more fun than a 10-minute auto-attack on a gigantic HP bag upscaled by a large zerg who had no other bosses to do anyway. This is a design decision which will make the game less comfortable with the new system.

Holy crickets, yes. I’ve stumbled onto the world event reset train once or twice. It was uncomfortable and not fun. I bailed after one event. Whereas the times that I’ve 2- or 3-manned Fire Shaman have been very fun, challenging, memorable experiences. (Can’t say Golem is challenging to even solo, but it’s a lot faster and more fun.)

While this is good on paper, it is going to cause some problems for me due to my schedule restricting me to playing certain times of the day, meaning that I am going to have a very difficult time getting dragonite ore due to the bosses that are up during my playtime give very little ore

Becka Williams.4978:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

You literally didn’t read a word we wrote did you? How does changing the bosses to a 6 hour schedule mean that I’m MORE likely to play them?

Honestly, he wrote a lot of stuff but didn’t really said anything… What about our concerns on WP fees, limited timed to play (missing most of the events), economy in the game and all other stuff that has been discussed here?

Is this Dev for real or a troll trainee took control of his computer while he was in the bathroom??

Sytherek.7689:

ANet should consider who butters their bread — people with jobs who can spend money at the trading post. The very same people who may be locked out of certain bosses by this schedule.

This schedule change is very hostile to the people who keep your game funded.

So much this. By rough calculation I bought like… 25.000 gems by now? For me and my gf. Maybe more, really not sure, money is not an issue when I like a game. Actually I work in the gaming industry. For 10 hours a friggin’ day. And when I get back to playing, it’s not to be forced into a zerg to kill some helpless animation, for kitten’s sake.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.

This is an understandable issue, one that many people can agree on changing. Some meta bosses like Jormag has a 90 minute WINDOW, and to this date, there is no info on the wiki if there’s a way to get him to start the pre events outside of waiting for it to randomly happen.

• On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.

Yep. TTS comes across this a LOT. We’ll be getting ready to set up for teq and suddenly get that kitten ed “new build” message, and it sends everyone in a scramble to log out, patch, and get back in so they dont lose their spot. This causes havoc because people go afk on the map and unless we’ve been told otherwise, they directly count towards server capacity regarding the overflow. So now we’re suddenly caught between the choice of if we should move to an overflow or now. It just spirals down from there.

• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it

This consistent access is taken away. TTS regularly does the 3pm, 5pm, 11pm Teq, and the 8pm Wurm spawns just for NA members. We do other spawns if people want to and we have enough.

• deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it

This already existed as well. Tequatl and Wurm should not have been touched. The API already gives players a good idea when bosses will be ready. The only exceptions are bosses like Ulgoth that require a chain of events to be started for his appearance.

• help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content

Here Anet is shooting themselves in the foot. There already are. Yes, some events are not done on a given server because not enough people on or aware, but with the new megaserver construct, that should change. IE: if this change is being insisted on, roll it out on par with the megaserver as opposed to rolling it out in one piece.

• help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc

This isnt going to change. The only way it will change is if Anet forks out some money to fix their “hardware limitation” to increase the number of players on a given map.

While Anet “fixes” their gigantic “kitten you” to large guilds like TTS with the “consumable” that can be built, they give such guilds another one in the same breath. Guilds like TTS have members split on so many different servers, and this splits the influence pools, as well as upgrades.

To make this very clear for anyone who wants to reply based on this sentence, Anet should NOT introduce this change until changes for guilds regarding the bad design of split influence and upgrades is resolved, and guilds so affected have been given a chance to reach the levels they should have had months/years ago.

guys who cares, precursor crafting is coming soon™

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

Hi Anthony,

I appreciate what you’re saying however I simply can’t plan to be at home for the Karka Queen Monday to Friday, it’s just not possible, at 9 and 6 I’ll be at or commuting to or from work and because of the whole work thing I won’t be making the one in the middle of the night.

If you changed the order they spawn in from day to day like I suggested in my other post in this thread then it’d be possible to at least try her every now and then.

Day 1: Karka Queen → Tequatl → Evolved Jungle Wurm
Day 2: Tequatl → Evolved Jungle Wurm → Karka Queen
Day 3: Evolved Jungle Wurm → Karka Queen → Tequatl

The weekends aren’t much better.

Similarly why spawn only one boss at a time? It’s not like there’ll be a shortage of people to play with now, why have everyone playing on, for example, 6 Fire Elemental maps when you could have 2 Fire Elemental maps, 2 Svanir Shaman maps and (maybe) 2 Dredge Commissar maps attempts? Surely the choice is worth it.

If you doubled or tripled the number of bosses that spawned at a time it’d be more convenient for people and you would be able to spawn all the world bosses on timers. Maybe off peak you can drop the number of bosses that spawn at a time to better suit the server numbers.

Do these guys even play the game? come on anet – are you trying to destroy this game?
A lot of low/mid hearts have a requirement of “kill centaurs or spiders etc” by forcing everyone into the same zones you get a pile of 80’s one shotting everything while doing map completion while the new players can’t tag. I’m now mapping for the 4th time (at this point as a goodbye to the game) and i’m hitting this issue in a few places since i switched to TC and frankly, its annoying.
Organising teq etc is going to be much, much worse as now you’re literally trapped with every peanut in there doing mapping/harvesting.
Ori prices and mats are going to spike freaking hardcore, you’re literally imposing a scarcity – its 4.5 silver a nugget now and thats WITH people farming every node every day, when they can’t find the nodes – hello unnattainable ore. (salvaging is not exactly guaranteed) twilights going to be a hell kitten to craft now.
The waypoint fiasco is an absolute killer for me I check the temples etc to see if they’re uncontested for mapping/karma purchases/skillpoints in orr. Yay, you screwed that up too.
I’m just…appalled at the idiocy you’re showing here.

Gian.4398:

guys who cares, precursor crafting is coming soon™

Lol, this definetely lightened my mood

Regards

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Guild Wars 1 is a very different game both in design and implementation. That’s all I can really say here.

Which is kind of sad considering this is “Guild Wars 2”.

As for an actual question: What happens to parties who complete a dungeon path in a contestable dungeon and are put into a map where the dungeon is now contested? e.g. a party uncontests CoE in Megaserver 1. They complete path 1, and when they return to Mount Maelstrom they are now in Megaserver 2, where CoE is contested. What then?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

But what about pre events? If we have to do pre events that means missing out on other events (sense an even it up every 15minute) some pre events takes 15-20 just to do.

Im not saying get rid of them, I love events, just wondering where these play into the event schedule/chart.

And are you up for the Idea to let guilds do more events like Teq/Wurm/Karka? Some events example are: Maw, Fire Shaman etc.. for smaller guilds or for more PvE based guilds?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it

I want to play it, I have limited play time and might not be able to log on at X o’clock on any day of the week. Most of the events are stuck to their timers and the ones which can be played at any time, are only so if a large guild makes it so. The playerbase is not a hivemind (despite what Queensdale, Frostgorge or a WvW map with Vizunah in it may seem like).

To be, consistently means never.

How awful, my usual playing times fall right in the middle of the long breaks between the runs of the 3 mega hardcore whatchamacallit events. I’ll never see one again unless a guild triggers it. Two big thumbs down, once every 8 hours is punishingly infrequent.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I really like to know, why are some people so against joining big and organised guilds?

There are so many benefits, from my perspective anyway. Why I like being in a large guild:
-Biweekly guild missions, very high success rate (except when a GM is bugged).
-Many other events we organise (such as guild quiz and guild lottery)
-Doing many things with your guildies, in an organised way (like wvw or dungeons)
-Access to a guild forum, facebook group and voice chat (in this case mumble).
-It’s very social, met many people there whom I now consider my friends
-Guild passive bonusses
-Now world events are added to the list

Why are people so resistant to having this?
This is a serious question btw, I’m really curious about this.

Cause there is no RP support and you must rep 100% and can’t join an rp guild as well, or no one helps the noobs on some random event (or a dungeon if you are new) that has been ignored since launch or a skill point (I can name a few) the so called "pros"can do with one hand only on their keyboard.

Luckily, I’m in AARM, and in their third guild that doesn’t require reping all the time. I can join RPCD which I really like as they already do full map clears, in character/ role play mode even, and I can really get help and help others when AARM can’t.

Sytherek.7689:

Also, the problem with Tequatl is the lack of scaling, not scheduling.

Thank you. This is what I’ve been telling people in-game for a long time! Who gives a rats -behind- about scheduling. I’d be really happy if I could do this with the 30 guildies online on the weekend successfully rather than having to wait 1,5 hours in Sparkfly and jump through all these ridiculous hoops just to get 100+ people to kill it. Absolutely asinine in my opinion.

Perma contested waypoints is NOT a good idea. Usually I am supportive and I think you guys are doing a great job, but come on. My computer is not the fastest, and I already get stuck in loading screens. Now you’re saying I am going to have to port to a map safe spot, and then again to where I want to go? Is there even going to be enough places open in orr? Wont this double the cost of waypoints? This feels like a giant obstacle to me, and I don’t think there is any justification that would make me feel better about it.

Loving the other stuff though >.>

Ohoni.6057:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

Having a schedule is all well and good, but one thing the schedule currently handles poorly, when the events you want to do ONLY occur at times you’re unable to play. Players are not at the beck and call of your master schedule, we have lives outside the game. There needs to be better ways that the player can find the event they want WITHIN the time they have available to play, rather than having to structure the time they play around the game’s schedule. Predictability is good, but there also needs to be choice.

Make it so that multiple events are running simultaneously, so that they can stack up on once-per-hour cycles instead of “one per three hour” cycles, and you can choose which ones you want to join at any given time.

I’m not saying that the current system is perfect, only that the new system you’re proposing is worse.

My sentiments exactly.

I see the benefit of set times for events and I’m not against the mega-server concept, just the seriously limited schedule for bosses as posted in the blog.

There’s a really good reason that world boss trains happen and most of the rest of the dynamic events in the rest of the world are not regularly completed – and it’s not just a population issue. The karma/gold/loot rewards are horrendously bad if they cannot be very quickly chained. It is very natural to try to get the most benefit for the least amount of effort – how electrons stack up in orbitals of their atoms is all about finding the lowest energy states, and everything from the number and locations of leaves on plants, to hunting strategies of predators is based on minimizing energy used over potential gain. You will not be able to code that behavior away.

It should be about making as many different options both fun and rewarding and it doesn’t appear on the surface that the schedule as is remotely comes close to that.

As someone who mainly does dungeons and fractals, I struggle to get dragonite as it is. My prime-time window is taken up dungeon running with my guild. I depend on guesting to different servers to temple hop and squeeze out what ore I can in an hour or so.

The lack of api for the temple events and the new schedule are both a big nerf to dragonite farming. This, along with the fact that we wont be able to easily guest to uncontested dungeons looks like it will make life as a dungeon runner much more frustrating.

I don’t believe the megaserver system will make the highly challenging world bosses easier to organize either. The guild upgrade is nice, but the megaserver algorithm takes the control out of the players hands. You won’t be able to find or generate an empty map to make sure your full group is in the map. There won’t be empty maps, the megaserver will merge them. And as the blog post pointed out, if a map is full, its full. The algorithm will put you with your friends and guildies if it can, but if a map is full it won’t kick people out to let you in.

The only pro of this system I see is that it makes leveling less lonely, and you will be more likely to get in a overflow with your friend then a random one. But from my perspective at least there are many more negative trade-offs.

Maybe there’s a reason it’s not possible, but I would have preferred to have direct control over which instance of a map I entered, and able to see how many people are in that instance. World event organizers and RP’ers could find some privacy, and solo levelers could find full maps to meet up with random people. I could decide what map I needed to be in, rather then the server trying to figure out for me based on my friends list and guild. All the API would be kept in tact, nothing major would change. I’m sure there are reasons Anet chose the direction they did, but it does not seem optimal to me at all.

Darmikau.9413:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Guild Wars 1 is a very different game both in design and implementation. That’s all I can really say here.

Which is kind of sad considering this is “Guild Wars 2”.

As for an actual question: What happens to parties who complete a dungeon path in a contestable dungeon and are put into a map where the dungeon is now contested? e.g. a party uncontests CoE in Megaserver 1. They complete path 1, and when they return to Mount Maelstrom they are now in Megaserver 2, where CoE is contested. What then?

Yeah it would be nice if the dungeons were always open to those that have completed story mode. I too am curious how the dungeon thing is gonna work now, mabe with the increased pop now on each map it might be more apt to be open, guess we will have to wait and see. Good question though!

Pedroso.4603:

The thing that made me quit WoW was the fact that we had strict times to Raid and do some progression, and now the same is happening with GW2.

Time to give a shot on those new releases for 2014, cause now i can see that nothing really good will ever come, bad choices will always overcome the great news.

GG Anet, GG

This is a valid point; One of many reasons I eventually left Eve was its heavy reliance on what that community called ‘alarm clock’ events (the Reinforce timers). With my wacky hours (working 3rd shift, plus the occasional afternoon call/meeting/email), it forced a more casual play within games. That is not very compatible with Subscription MMOs, or anything that’s on set timers.

Before giving GW2 a try, I was preparing to drop all online/multiplayer gaming completely. I increasingly feel like that will become an option again (possibly to the benefit of various FOSS projects – I’d like to re-work how process monitoring works in Nagios/Icinga environments).

Star Trek Online followed a similar design philosophy, and I left the game shorty thereafter. Namely, they time-gated content and made it inconvenient to not be a member of a massive fleet/guild.

Here in GW2, you no longer have the option of guesting to grab an event. Well, why not a Guild World Event consumable???? Because I’m not in an uber-massive guild. We’re still working on unlocking the expensive normal stuff.

What it comes down to is this: the mega server system takes away choice.

Arenanet—this might be a step too far for me. You are basically dismantling the communities I chose. My guild is in SoS. I guest to TC for RP. Now, I won’t get to see those guys. My community is not restricted to just my home world/guild. Yet even those are now taking a hit. My guild is beholden to your schedule, and I chose my home world because the zone chat was nicer than it is elsewhere. Can’t wait to share maps with Grand Theft Auto kidz or constantly hear why Obama sucks. My community is being shredded to accommodate your top-to-bottom approach.

I’m sure these ideas looked awesome on the marker board in your offices, but out here in the trenches—actually in game—you’re really messing with the ecosystem. And if that’s the case, why wouldn’t I just start anew somewhere else?

I’ve never seen such overwhelmingly negative response on these forums up until now. I’m proud of you, people. Maybe we can still save this game. ’Coz I really love it.

Imo having the bosses spawn once at a time with hours between any one boss spawn is going to have a couple of serious drawbacks.

1) it will promote the zerg. Everyone who is doing bosses will wp to boss A, kill it then wp to boss B, kill it then wp to boss C, and so on. They do that already to some extent but since there are more than one boss at one time and on different servers, the zerg doesn’t stay together for more than a couple of bosses.
2) if people are playing at fixed times for fixed amounts of time then they will see the exact same bosses day after day. They won’t have the easy access to all the bosses.

What I think ANet should do is have at least 3 bosses spawning in a time block. With 3 bosses at a time to go to it will give people a better chance of seeing each boss within their play time frame and also break up the zerg in a natural manner.

I tend to agree with most people here that this system seems to have more cons than pros. Plus it completely ignores those people that prefer small guilds/interactions over the massive zerg based ones. I thought you guys had learned that we want less zergs not more! Making every map a zerg fest sounds just awesome….

Personally I like having more empty maps where I occasionally run across someone. Sometimes I zone into a zone I know will be more devoid of people because I just want to play semi alone. Also from a RP aspect in the open world you don’t see people all over the place all the time. Why are you forcing this crowding when the current system seems to satisfy players more? No one is asking for this system (since we have found work arounds for the problems with the current system), so why are you implementing it? Change simply for the sake of change is not a good idea. Especially when it introduces more problems than it addresses.

Plus I want to echo the doubling of wp costs and load screens. That is horrible. And now we are going to get more lag anyway because you are shoving more people into maps which means more lag.

Overall this really does sound like an awful change. I’d love to just trust you blindly when you say your algorithm is showing great simulation metrics, but past experience has shown us that you guys aren’t good at testing on the scale that the actual playerbase is. Test among small groups just don’t cut it when you are going to be dealing with a large actuality.

I sincerely hope that you guys listen to your customers who are begging you not to do this. I know that you probably spent a TON of dev hours on this, but the more I think about this, the more flaws the concept has with regards to the way I play the game. Why implement a system no one is asking for, and the majority seems to be against?

Please stop the mega madness :-(

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.

But it’s not the players who plan now; it’s developers who planned which bosses a player will play after he comes home from his full-time job. That is not convenient.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  -snip-
  At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

What I (and some other people) wanted to see was an “event fairy”, an “asuran news stone” or a similar mechanic that could be used instead of gw2stuff. Playing the world train was fun – you felt like a bunch of heroes who’re helping the poor Tyrian folks in their mishaps on a daily basis, and the more you could help the better. It felt dynamic, it felt real and entertaining – and the only bad thing about it was that it wasn’t in the game itself…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it

Players who have a certain limited time window won’t. Solution? Make 2-3 medium world bosses spawn on their timers, and 3-4 easy world bosses on theirs. People will still be able to plan, but they’ll also be able to choose what to play instead of having to plan: “I’m doing Jungle Wurm, and then a fast AC p3 where I’ll kick all noobs or I miss Shadow Behe… And if I fight Svanir Shaman and Shatterer, I’ll be sleepy tomorrow all day, nah…”.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it

You don’t have to organise and prepare for Svanir Shaman, Jungle Wurm and Ulgoth. If anything, it will be a waiting game – go to boss, park, go watch youtube or eat a sandwich. Auto-attack with zerg, repeat.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content

On the contrary, I see this as a major problem in the future. With the upcoming merge of servers, there will never be 5-player fights with Maw and Inquest Golem; there’ll always be a merged zerg from multiple 5-player maps created to “ensure that there are always enough participants in the content” and “make the game comfortable”, which will in turn lead to horrible upscaling which currently makes me go harvest something for third of the Golem fight. Will you be tuning scaling to ensure that the game remains a pleasant experience? I hope so. But even if you do, it makes bosses less of a challenge because spamming ranged 1 in a zerg makes more sense than going melee and trying to dodge the discharges completely hidden by bodies and AoEs.

Personally Im not really fussed about the waypoint issue, and I can’t wait for this to come out! And if this does get scrapped I shall simply never put up with anybody complaining about Overflow maps ever again because hey Arenanet is trying here!

But on a more constructive note isn’t there already a satellite in place that shunts you to the nearest other waypoint if you attempt to travel to one that becomes contested on the way? Is there not a way to make this work? Or would players probably find it even more annoying to THINK they’ve made it somewhere an then not arrive?

synk.8762:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:…

You’re either missing or not addressing what people are saying: that we don’t want to play on a schedule, regardless of what that schedule is. While the current setup may not be optimal in a lot of ways, it’s better than the train schedule that you’ve proposed. This isn’t about “I’m going to miss this or that”, it’s about being constrained to a very artificial limitation you’re implementing. This does have ramifications about missing things, but that’s not really the point.

At the end of the day, a strict schedule makes the game less fun for a lot of players.

On the other hand, a lot of players prefer having a schedule to plan around, and this may help eliminate the current situation where the world boss zerg takes out bosses for a couple hours after reset, and everyone who misses the train is out of luck because no one is taking on events for the remaining 20 hours.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

This makes some sense… for Tequatl and Triple Wurm.

For the other bosses? Not so much.

What preparation/organization is required for them? You show up and hit “1” This change is going to magnify that, as the zerg is only going to multiply since it’ll be the only boss available at the time. (btw, when you say other meta-events and bosses will not be on the schedule…will those bosses drop guaranteed rares like the timed bosses? No? Then don’t expect them to be popular, or seen as a viable substitute for the timed bosses.)

How does this increase access to these bosses for those of us who enjoy this content? For example, if you can only play between 7-9 EST, you’ll NEVER see the Claw of Jormag, Golem Mark II or Taidha Covington. You’ve taken the possibility of missing bosses and made it a certainty.

I’ll take a little less convenience (all we have to do is keep using the API as we currently do…) in favor of access to multiple bosses rather than just 1 at a time.