Guild Wars 2

My biggest concerns about this part of the announcements are mainly to do with the dungeons and way point changes. It feels terrible to me because it is built on systems that always felt terrible to begin with.

Why are dungeons contested? Blocking the players from being able to run dungeon content when they want is an unnecessary annoyance. Reward limitations are already in place. Players should be able to form a group and hop into whatever dungeon they want without having to go through an artificial time-consuming gate.

Why are way points contested? Considering the way point system was designed to allow us to travel instantly (at a not-insignificant cost), I do not understand why contested way points were then added. It is contradictory. If you did not want us to be able to travel to certain locations, the way point should not have been added. I would recommend removing whatever way points you really don’t want, and moving those you do to out-of-immediate-danger locations and opening them up permanently.

Pifil.5193:

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.

+1, this post really hit the nail on the head for me. I cannot participate in a lot of content I used to enjoy because of these changes. That is unacceptable.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.

While I’m glad it’s not set in stone, the fact that the schedule exists is what disturbs me more.

We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.

I don’t see why these needed to be in the rotation in the first place (assuming no megaserver). A commander could start them for all it matters. Exactly like the previewed guild system.

When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.

This really doesn’t change much. If we clear the event before the 15min is up, we have to wait and do nothing for the remainder. Also, it traps people into fighting only certain bosses because they can only be on at certain times. That’s something the current system has less of an issue with.

The guild events system doesn’t change that. Not everyone is going to be joining a guild with that function unlocked.

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

Honestly? For me, being able to say “I’m tired of this boss; I’ll pass and do another” is far more valuable. That goes away with this.

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

Ok… I’m not fully sure why a grace period, like what fire elemental uses in the final pre event, would not be sufficient for most bosses. Maybe something a bit shorter.

For some reason, this statement makes me wonder if the bosses are going to switch to be “you must be x build to fight or your hurting other people” fights like the assault knights. Either slowly or immediately. I guess we’ll see.

help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content

The scaling system always seemed to do a good job at it. I recall fighting fire elemental with only a few people and it was rather nice. Same goes for other bosses. I think the temples were the ones with the biggest issue, but not so big of an issue it couldn’t be adjusted.

There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

I hope these events do not lay abandoned by the playerbase because they aren’t able to see when they’re up.

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.

I’d rather just have an icon on the map I could check with a sub-window to speed it up if needed. I rather dislike being spammed by the game itself. An option to allow that wouldn’t be bad, but not turned on by default.

But that’s not really possible under the new system. The news post made that quite clear as it would be “cross-map.”

I’d like to add my voice to the people worried and unhappy with the handling of world events and contested waypoints. Let me begin by saying, as a member of Devona’s Rest, a server which barely beats Teq, I am all for more populated events. In concept, I think the megaserver approach is great. More people everywhere is a good thing. But…

1. Always-Contested WP – I do not like that now, all possibly-contested wyapoint will always be contested out of map. What, then, is the purpose of a contested waypoint? It no longer invites a player to do an event, because that player cannot be sure the event contesting the wp will be up in the shard they log into. Similarly, they no longer mark open content or new events as they open, because players will never see them open. So, why have contested waypoints? Is the only solution to the megaserver/many-instance problem to make the overworld map worthless? Why not have no wp ever be contested. This, at least, facilitates players going to places they want to, even if it’s enemy controlled.

2. World Boss Timers – I do not like the world boss timers. I am a casual player, devoting a few nights a week to play GW2. I am not worried about missing world bosses, but I think that making every boss pop on a specific schedule goes against the idea that the world is dynamic and interesting. It’s true that Rooba never brings a CLEAN 5000 that can handle the clean-up, but at least you never know when her event chain is going to start. Under the new system, it looks like it’ll be a definite start time every night every time. Also, what about the event chains? Maw, Karka Queen, Golem, Wurm, Fire Elemental, etc etc all have event chains that lead to the world boss. With a boss popping every 15 minutes in perpetuity, and many of these chains and bosses take more than 15 minutes, how will that work? Are we expected to skip bosses and go to every other boss? Are we expected to show up late to every boss in a chain, riding on the backs of our fellow players’ effort? It just feels like an artificial restriction is being added to little benefit. I agree with the many posters, let multiple bosses pop at once, and then spread them out into 20 or 30 minute slots instead of 15 minute ones.

A couple solutions for problems cited in this thread:

- (Re)introduce guild alliances into gw2 to solve the ‘small guild’ problem.
- Megabosses on a single 24hr timer and a event chain for other times.
- A large adjacency area is free for waypoint costs, but map instance to map instance traveling always costs $.

Dislike this.

I don’t like being forced into certain times in order to complete something in a game. I don’t play the game 24/7.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

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..

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• 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.

I see what you guys think you are doing. And I see where you want it to go.

What most of the people are trying to get across (and I have to say I’m honestly surprised it’s stayed so civil), is that it’s not going to go that way.

These changes are not helping the players. Without seeing them. Without playing them. The concepts alone are fundamentally flawed with regard to how people actually enjoy playing and the things they do.

Were there ever any complaints that there were just too many chances in a day to kill Teq? Did anyone ever post that it would be really swell if we couldn’t get any information at all about what was going on in the world from the map? How many communities said they were a-o-k with it being more difficult to get their large guild together in one place because the zones had become a melding pot? And finally, I don’t recall seeing the public outcry for guilds to be able to kick off world bosses in a public zone where they actually have no possible way to ensure they can get enough of their own members there to organize it because there might be 20 people in the instance somewhere AFK at the bottom of a lake.

I know you all worked kitten this. And are pretty proud of its capabilities. But you have your customers here pretty much begging you to not do this because of the detriment it will be to the many different communities they make up and the things in the game they enjoy. These changes are hurting exponentially more people they are going to benefit.

Again, the fact it takes twice as much to travel and two loading screens just to know if you can go to the place you want to go or do the thing you want to do should be a GIANT indication that this is on a horribly wrong path.

Bonus:
Two of my favorite quotes so far, from a notable community outside of these forums:
“We lose so much flexibility just so we can run across four more people in Lornar’s Pass? No thanks.”

and

“So I have to map somewhere before I know where I can map, where I can’t, what’s open, what events have been done, and I may or may not know anyone there. Waypointing is like being in a broken Tardis”

You know you say the schedule is not set in stone, but I still get kittened by it either way. Working overnights, only playing early in the morning. I have no option here because i’m not the majority and can’t play anywhere near primetime, yet you know i’d still like to play the game.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

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.

That may be the main issue. I know on a few good days i have hit almost 25-30 world boss events in less than 3-5 hours, and im on my alts doing repeats cause of the daily reward limit.

then i spend the rest of time doing dungeons and mine runs. It felt like to me under the current system events get done from reset till about 1-2 am then all day the next day most events are dead or can barely fill to do event, i think they are trying to mabe fix that but not sure if this 1 boss every qtr hour is gonna really do that, but we shall see.

A few events i have just about learned to ingnore cause of the pain it is to do…errrm Teq and 3 Headed wurm… seems like after i got the achievments for them i didnt wanna do them anymore. To much of a pain to fill out after its been done once shortly after reset.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

You know you say the schedule is not set in stone, but I still get kittened by it either way. Working overnights, only playing early in the morning. I have no option here because i’m not the majority and can’t play anywhere near primetime, yet you know i’d still like to play the game.

Just out of curiosity, how many world bosses are you hitting on average in your window? I’m not saying you don’t matter, or can’t be accommodated, but it doesn’t seem like you would be hitting a lot of them even now.

Regarding the megaserver changes:

• But…I like my peace and quiet…
  -
  I like my server because of the low number of players I run into in PvE. I enjoy rarely coming across a single other player and hanging together in silence as we explore and fight enemies before splitting off and going our separate ways to find more adventures. Seeing dozens upon dozens of players running past me every minute ruins my sense of immersion into the world.
  -
  With this virtual server merge, no longer will I be able to play content alone and in relative peace and quiet. Every enemy I face will likely be attacked by several others, or will even already be dead before I can even get to it. Every hilltop I climb for the view will be soured by a dozen other people already crowding the peak. Every remote path through the mountains or forest that I walk along (literally and with the UI off) will no longer be a serene stroll with only sounds of birds, wind and water bubbling in streams. The pleasure of a silent stroll will now be saturated with the unceasing sounds of a dozen other players constantly slaughtering the bunnies and deer nestling nearby and the busy bee line of players running back and forth across my screen.
  -
  Yes, this is an MMO, I know there are other people in the game world and that one can expect to see and interact with other players. However, the frequency of that interaction was a choice players had based on the server they choose to play on. Servers have been specifically chosen by some (many?) players based on the density and attitudes/play styles of other players on that server.
  -
  I like my server because I do not see dozens of players every 15 seconds running around. If I wanted that then I would go to one of the larger, more densely populated servers. The megaserver changes will destroy OW-PvE for me and will take away my choice of playing how I want to play.
  -
  Again, if I wanted to interact with more people in the open world, I’d guest or transfer to a higher pop server. Bringing them to me and forcing interaction against my will sours my game experience. Instead of adding the living feeling to the world, more players thrown across my path only snaps me out of the immersion and reminds me that it isn’t a living world because a person taking a stroll out in the woods shouldn’t be met with the bustling crowds of dozens of people running like mad across my path every 15 seconds.

Regarding the world bosses and events changes:

• Hinterlands: Ulgoth put on a timer? – Living and dynamic world goes bye-bye?
  -
  First I will be losing my solitude and immersion into my surroundings, now I will also lose the ability to run the Hinterlands dynamic event chain (among others) when I choose to?
  -
  “Static” is not the same thing as “Dynamic”, it is the opposite.
  -
  Removing the dynamic nature of zone events (such as those leading up to confronting Ulgoth) and making them into statically scheduled events is nothing short of pure madness. Arguably the most fun and spectacularly designed event chain and zone boss group event in the game (which other zone events should have been modeled off of) …and you remove the dynamic nature of it and throw it on a fixed timer?
  -
  The “living” feeling and the dynamic nature of the world and what occurs in it is constantly being removed from the game.
• Why is the implementation and feeling of the “Living World” being slowly and intentionally removed?
• Why are you intentionally removing the ability for players to bring about and have their own adventures?
• Why are you forcing us to only have the adventures you want us to have, when you want us to have them?
• Are you wanting all players of your game to have a uniform, predetermined experience as is gradually being dictated?

I kill Tequatl with Jade Quarry at daily reset everyday. We’re not all in the same guild. Most of us aren’t on each other’s friends lists. We don’t play together the rest of the day. But every single day, without fail, we come together as a server and coordinate this kill. What will be our options after these changes take effect? Move the kill two hours later, when it will be too late for many regulars, and hope we all get in the same new map? Create a guild now (I don’t even have a guild slot available) and spend many months farming influence and merits and building upgrades so that we will eventually be able to unlock Tequatl kills at a time of our choosing? Ask the people who take part in this, many of whom may only belong to small guilds or to guilds that don’t have the influence/upgrades/build queue spots/interest available to volunteer to “sponsor” these kills on a schedule and hope that there doesn’t come a day when no guild has it ready? I am dismayed at today’s announcements because I can’t see a way that they won’t fracture our community.

AcidicVision.5498:

Were there ever any complaints that there were just too many chances in a day to kill Teq? Did anyone ever post that it would be really swell if we couldn’t get any information at all about what was going on in the world from the map? How many communities said they were a-o-k with it being more difficult to get their large guild together in one place because the zones had become a melding pot? And finally, I don’t recall seeing the public outcry for guilds to be able to kick off world bosses in a public zone where they actually have no possible way to ensure they can get enough of their own members there to organize it because there might be 20 people in the instance somewhere AFK at the bottom of a lake.

I know you all worked kitten this. And are pretty proud of its capabilities. But you have your customers here pretty much begging you to not do this because of the detriment it will be to the many different communities they make up and the things in the game they enjoy. These changes are hurting exponentially more people they are going to benefit.

Again, the fact it takes twice as much to travel and two loading screens just to know if you can go to the place you want to go or do the thing you want to do should be a GIANT indication that this is on a horribly wrong path.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

You know you say the schedule is not set in stone, but I still get kittened by it either way. Working overnights, only playing early in the morning. I have no option here because i’m not the majority and can’t play anywhere near primetime, yet you know i’d still like to play the game.

Just out of curiosity, how many world bosses are you hitting on average in your window? I’m not saying you don’t matter, or can’t be accommodated, but it doesn’t seem like you would be hitting a lot of them even now.

I don’t presume to speak for the person you quoted, but that number isn’t important. Even someone who only has time for 1 boss per day could hit another boss every day, instead of being completely locked out of a lot of them and doing the same choice of 2 or 3 every time.

Naz.2607:

AcidicVision.5498:

Were there ever any complaints that there were just too many chances in a day to kill Teq? Did anyone ever post that it would be really swell if we couldn’t get any information at all about what was going on in the world from the map? How many communities said they were a-o-k with it being more difficult to get their large guild together in one place because the zones had become a melding pot? And finally, I don’t recall seeing the public outcry for guilds to be able to kick off world bosses in a public zone where they actually have no possible way to ensure they can get enough of their own members there to organize it because there might be 20 people in the instance somewhere AFK at the bottom of a lake.

I know you all worked kitten this. And are pretty proud of its capabilities. But you have your customers here pretty much begging you to not do this because of the detriment it will be to the many different communities they make up and the things in the game they enjoy. These changes are hurting exponentially more people they are going to benefit.

Again, the fact it takes twice as much to travel and two loading screens just to know if you can go to the place you want to go or do the thing you want to do should be a GIANT indication that this is on a horribly wrong path.

+1

This was a complete waste of your time anet.

There was 2 things that needed to be in make it worthwhile.

1. Completely instanced / new instance only accessible by being in the guild, or joining from a party with a guild member in it.

2. Needed to scale to the amount of players starting at something like 20 or 40?

Small guild have no way of doing these, what the hell kind of guild has 150 people online at once anyways? That’s not a guild. Its a megachurch.

pdavis.8031:

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.

They have already “balanced” the free-repair idea by drastically reducing money gained from champion boxes.

The WP costs are a HUGE money drain that is (so far) not balanced by any loot increase during gameplay.

Having a three hour window is just frigging ridonculous, seriously! You expect people to sit in a map for up to three hours, waiting for a boss to pop?!? Jormag’s Claw with its 1+ hour window was hated passionately because of this.

It’s cool that large guilds get a consumable to pop the event, everyone else…, yea, not so much.

Zepidel.5349:

This was a complete waste of your time anet.

There was 2 things that needed to be in make it worthwhile.

1. Completely instanced / new instance only accessible by being in the guild, or joining from a party with a guild member in it.

2. Needed to scale to the amount of players starting at something like 20 or 40?

Small guild have no way of doing these, what the hell kind of guild has 150 people online at once anyways? That’s not a guild. Its a megachurch.

That’s what happens when you don’t ask your community for feedbacks before starting some new projects and don’t have a public test realm for them….

I’m not a specialist, but in my opinion Anet should re-think the way they do things…

Manasa Devi.7958:

OtakuDFifty.2965:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

You know you say the schedule is not set in stone, but I still get kittened by it either way. Working overnights, only playing early in the morning. I have no option here because i’m not the majority and can’t play anywhere near primetime, yet you know i’d still like to play the game.

Just out of curiosity, how many world bosses are you hitting on average in your window? I’m not saying you don’t matter, or can’t be accommodated, but it doesn’t seem like you would be hitting a lot of them even now.

I don’t presume to speak for the person you quoted, but that number isn’t important. Even someone who only has time for 1 boss per day could hit another boss every day, instead of being completely locked out of a lot of them and doing the same choice of 2 or 3 every time.

Well, the poster wasn’t very specific about what the problem would be, just that it would end up with “no option” regardless of what the schedule is. I don’t get the impression that it’s a variety issue, since that could easily be fixed with a schedule that changes daily or a sliding schedule.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

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.

But there’s nothing preventing people from getting a group together and doing those bosses under the current system. Yes, the Boss train is the most efficient way of doing those events (arguably not the most fun), but under the current system, most of the bosses or the pre-events are up a lot more than they will be after the proposed system. Two nights ago I helped kill Shatterer at about 1am server time. There were about 15-20 people there (several leaked in after we started). It was an epic, fun fight, down to the wire. Just because you miss the train doesn’t mean you missed the boss under the current system.

Also, world bosses scale quite well to smaller parties. Golem and several others are actually soloable if you have a bit of experience with them, and outside of Temples, most are doable by 5 or 10 people. In short, the proposed schedule is a huge step backwards to scheduling, by removing many chances to organize a group to go kill bosses. As it stands, once the system goes into effect, if you’re not on for an attempt, you’ve missed it. Under the current system, you can go back in an hour or so and give it another go.

StinVec.3621:

Regarding the megaserver changes:

• But…I like my peace and quiet…
  -
  I like my server because of the low number of players I run into in PvE. I enjoy rarely coming across a single other player and hanging together in silence as we explore and fight enemies before splitting off and going our separate ways to find more adventures. Seeing dozens upon dozens of players running past me every minute ruins my sense of immersion into the world.
  -
  With this virtual server merge, no longer will I be able to play content alone and in relative peace and quiet. Every enemy I face will likely be attacked by several others, or will even already be dead before I can even get to it. Every hilltop I climb for the view will be soured by a dozen other people already crowding the peak. Every remote path through the mountains or forest that I walk along (literally and with the UI off) will no longer be a serene stroll with only sounds of birds, wind and water bubbling in streams. The pleasure of a silent stroll will now be saturated with the unceasing sounds of a dozen other players constantly slaughtering the bunnies and deer nestling nearby and the busy bee line of players running back and forth across my screen.
  -
  Yes, this is an MMO, I know there are other people in the game world and that one can expect to see and interact with other players. However, the frequency of that interaction was a choice players had based on the server they choose to play on. Servers have been specifically chosen by some (many?) players based on the density and attitudes/play styles of other players on that server.
  -
  I like my server because I do not see dozens of players every 15 seconds running around. If I wanted that then I would go to one of the larger, more densely populated servers. The megaserver changes will destroy OW-PvE for me and will take away my choice of playing how I want to play.
  -
  Again, if I wanted to interact with more people in the open world, I’d guest or transfer to a higher pop server. Bringing them to me and forcing interaction against my will sours my game experience. Instead of adding the living feeling to the world, more players thrown across my path only snaps me out of the immersion and reminds me that it isn’t a living world because a person taking a stroll out in the woods shouldn’t be met with the bustling crowds of dozens of people running like mad across my path every 15 seconds.

---

Regarding the world bosses and events changes:

• Hinterlands: Ulgoth put on a timer? – Living and dynamic world goes bye-bye?
  -
  First I will be losing my solitude and immersion into my surroundings, now I will also lose the ability to run the Hinterlands dynamic event chain (among others) when I choose to?
  -
  “Static” is not the same thing as “Dynamic”, it is the opposite.
  -
  Removing the dynamic nature of zone events (such as those leading up to confronting Ulgoth) and making them into statically scheduled events is nothing short of pure madness. Arguably the most fun and spectacularly designed event chain and zone boss group event in the game (which other zone events should have been modeled off of) …and you remove the dynamic nature of it and throw it on a fixed timer?
  -
  The “living” feeling and the dynamic nature of the world and what occurs in it is constantly being removed from the game.
• Why is the implementation and feeling of the “Living World” being slowly and intentionally removed?
• Why are you intentionally removing the ability for players to bring about and have their own adventures?
• Why are you forcing us to only have the adventures you want us to have, when you want us to have them?
• Are you wanting all players of your game to have a uniform, predetermined experience as is gradually being dictated?

I would love to see a direct response to this reply, because I think you are really making some sense here. Some play MMO’s to never feel alone within the game and others play MMO’s to just occasionally see others and work together, but be able to solo around if you want to. This is the reason why most MMO’s work with high, medium and low populated servers (something that GW2 used to have as well, but will now be limited to WvW which is just a game mechanic that doesn’t work fit the second playstyle because you’ll be constantly outnumbered).
The point you address about losing a “dynamic” (not all that dynamic either but at least it’s something) in the world I also addressed in one of my previous posts here so also no disagreement on that.

Regards

Can you please modify the timing on some the bosses?

The timing is excellent for Pacific Coast players, and we can clearly see you only thought about them in your planning.

For players on the Atlantic Coast some times are totally ridiculous. The Wurm for example happens at : 23.00 (too late for most people), 8.30 and 14:00 (too early for most players). And it’s not much better for players on the European side either.

And if we aren’t part of a big guild (many of us dislikes large guilds), then there is no way we can start it on our own.

Good idea, bad implementation (sadly, something we frequently see happening from Anet….)

Pedroso.4603:

That’s what happens when you don’t ask your community for feedbacks before starting some new projects and don’t have a public test realm for them….

I’m not a specialist, but in my opinion Anet should re-think the way they do things…

Since I can’t upvote more than once…

I like the timetable for the world bosses. This will help those people who only zerg in queensdale because they don’t know when bigger bosses spawn. Also, the times are great to work against the zerg, as well.

I don’t like always contested waypoints. I don’t even like that they will just ‘look’ contested. This is just a gold sink option to make people spend more silver on traveling. This is really going to hurt new players the most but will still inconvenience the rest of us.

I don’t like dungeons always being closed. I want to be able to run them at my leisure(in other words when I can get my group online together long enough). This will harm people who don’t play with overly large, or try hard, guilds.

I read in a user’s comment on reddit that certain big events, that were previously open world, will have to be unlocked within the guild like a typical guild mission. I didn’t read this but at the same time, I just woke up and could have glossed over it. How much truth is there to this? If it is true, I don’t like it because it harms people in smaller, more casual guilds.

Enzeru.2789:

I like the timetable for the world bosses. This will help those people who only zerg in queensdale because they don’t know when bigger bosses spawn.

:D

One would think anet wanted us to cut down on the Queensdale-like behaviour…

In a word NOOOOOO. The world event timer sounds awful, the worst development in the game so far. Players are being placed on a schedule rather than having the option to control events.

Rather than having guilds cooperating to push events at the right time so we can fit in as many possible, we will wait around looking for something to fill time between events. There is little point in everyone doing pres, the rewards are minimal and some scale incredibly badly (looking at arah).

The timer seems entirely at odds with the living world concept. You really should have sought feedback before implementing a change of this nature.

The way point changes look annoying too. Waste of time and additional loading screens not fun.

Essentially, large guilds (read: TTS) will be able to start the 3 Mega Bosses (and only those 3 (teq, 3 worm, and karka) off timer). These bosses will spawn 3 times a day, because apparently, people had to it too good before. Oh yes, the best part? TTS apparently doesn’t have the ability to start the world bosses because they don’t accumulate influence, and most guilds don’t have NEARLY enough people online to make it worth their while to spawn teq or the worm.

village idiot.1436:

In a word NOOOOOO. The world event timer sounds awful, the worst development in the game so far. Players are being placed on a schedule rather than having the option to control events.

Rather than having guilds cooperating to push events at the right time so we can fit in as many possible, we will wait around looking for something to fill time between events. There is little point in everyone doing pres, the rewards are minimal and some scale incredibly badly (looking at arah).

The timer seems entirely at odds with the living world concept. You really should have sought feedback before implementing a change of this nature.

You make an awful lot of sense for a village idiot

One more thing. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Balthazar Temple is the only reasonable way to get obsidian shards. I do like the event, but it’s success doesnt happen too often. Right now even if we don’t know about an attempt of taking the temple or it just doesn’t happen on our server, we can always guest a server where it succeeded.
With the megaserver thing working there will be no way to get there other than camping Straits in hope that a good commander will happen to visit the same version of the map making the temple possible to open.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Pifil.5193:

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.

+1, this post really hit the nail on the head for me. I cannot participate in a lot of content I used to enjoy because of these changes. That is unacceptable.

A rotating boss schedule certainly sounds like a very reasonable thing to appease lots of concerns about the timed bosses.

So much overreacting in this thread.

I’m not surprised.

I actually think they should have 3 bosses spawning at once.

Regarding contested waypoints: What happened to the system that would automatically redirect you to the nearest uncontested waypoint if the one you chose was contested? Wouldn’t that work with megaservers?

Just going to say it. This whole scheduling thing, don’t devolve this game into wow.

synk.8762:

OtakuDFifty.2965:

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.

But there’s nothing preventing people from getting a group together and doing those bosses under the current system. Yes, the Boss train is the most efficient way of doing those events (arguably not the most fun), but under the current system, most of the bosses or the pre-events are up a lot more than they will be after the proposed system. Two nights ago I helped kill Shatterer at about 1am server time. There were about 15-20 people there (several leaked in after we started). It was an epic, fun fight, down to the wire. Just because you miss the train doesn’t mean you missed the boss under the current system.

Also, world bosses scale quite well to smaller parties. Golem and several others are actually soloable if you have a bit of experience with them, and outside of Temples, most are doable by 5 or 10 people. In short, the proposed schedule is a huge step backwards to scheduling, by removing many chances to organize a group to go kill bosses. As it stands, once the system goes into effect, if you’re not on for an attempt, you’ve missed it. Under the current system, you can go back in an hour or so and give it another go.

Under the current system I “can,” go back in an hour or so, but I probably won’t, either because I missed all the players with an interest in it, or I myself have to be gone in an hour anyway. Most of the time for me, “missed” is “missed.” I usually only hit what I can within a 2-hour window after reset anyway, so this isn’t going to change for me. But I like knowing when exactly a specific boss will be up (goodbye windows!), and that I have the option of logging on for just 15 minutes to take on a specific boss and KNOWING there’s going to be likeminded people hitting that boss.

Are there really that many people who enjoy organizing small parties to take on a world boss that just happens to be up right now and isn’t being fought by a large group?

Oh boy, I really hope the devs plan to go over this mega server thing in way more detail in the livestream. As its looking, my highly limited and fixed window of gameplay is going to screw me.

Many of these changes look like huge goldsinks too. Not liking it…

Mattargul.9235:

Having a three hour window is just frigging ridonculous, seriously! You expect people to sit in a map for up to three hours, waiting for a boss to pop?!? Jormag’s Claw with its 1+ hour window was hated passionately because of this.

It’s cool that large guilds get a consumable to pop the event, everyone else…, yea, not so much.

It may also be part of the goal of this update is to get folks to not only run the world events. The dev’s vision may be to get players to expand out into other events not on the timers. Map and guild communication will be more valuable when things do pop up during the window – which with the new weighting when your guildies broadcast an event is up you will more likely join them when zoning. I can’t claim I know what they are thinking, only speculation and going with the flow the best way I can.

Currently with the way the Hard-Core, Mega-Organized Events are (Teq, 3 Headed Wurm) even with the API by the time I get there I’m shoved into overflow. I have never done those events successfully other than run away when only 6 folks are there. Maybe this will help? Not sure. I don’t let it get me down too much though – plenty to keep me busy and have fun. That will continue with this patch or no matter the game I play in.

Yenrah.8532:

One more thing. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Balthazar Temple is the only reasonable way to get obsidian shards. I do like the event, but it’s success doesnt happen too often. Right now even if we don’t know about an attempt of taking the temple or it just doesn’t happen on our server, we can always guest a server where it succeeded.
With the megaserver thing working there will be no way to get there other than camping Straits in hope that a good commander will happen to visit the same version of the map making the temple possible to open.

The opposite could also happen with this particular map. Black Gate completes it fairly often successfully. With the combined map, that population will be mixed with the others and may help complete it.

Change is always scarier before than after. Positives (or some negatives) may arise we haven’t thought of due to the adaptation. With so many unknowns with how the community will adapt, I am taking a wait and see.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

Are there really that many people who enjoy organizing small parties to take on a world boss that just happens to be up right now and isn’t being fought by a large group?

In my experience, yes, there are. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, or across all servers, but I certainly enjoy doing it, and know plenty of other people that do as well. Generally all it takes it working the pres to the point where the boss is about up (if necessary), then announcing it in a major hub and in /map. I’ve also commonly seen a few members of a guild taking down a world boss if there’s not a train up, and have never had an issue joining in.

DFifty, try fighting maw, fire elemental or golem in a small group vs a zerg. The difference in hp is astounding.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Regarding contested waypoints: What happened to the system that would automatically redirect you to the nearest uncontested waypoint if the one you chose was contested? Wouldn’t that work with megaservers?

It doesn’t actually do that. At least, it’s never done that to me since launch, nor anyone I’ve played with. When you happen to pick a contested waypoint once you zone in the message pops up, but it still puts you at that waypoint. There’s no redirection that happens, even though the message says that it has.

Becka Williams.4978:

Essentially, large guilds (read: TTS) will be able to start the 3 Mega Bosses (and only those 3 (teq, 3 worm, and karka) off timer). These bosses will spawn 3 times a day, because apparently, people had to it too good before. Oh yes, the best part? TTS apparently doesn’t have the ability to start the world bosses because they don’t accumulate influence, and most guilds don’t have NEARLY enough people online to make it worth their while to spawn teq or the worm.

TTS isn’t a guild. Its a community made up of about 12 guilds and over six-thousand members. All from different servers. The guild structure is essentially used for them to organize, but since the member base is so large, varied and spread out, they don’t actually do guild missions, upgrades or spend influence. Tbh, I would be surprised if the leaders of each respective guild even knew what their guilds home server was.

So I wouldn’t be looking for TTS to start kickstarting the raid events for a good while.

If you really want to know “the best part”, it’s that guilds like TTS and TxS exist purely so everyone can get a fair shot at harder world events with no bias towards server or guild. Because some of them require more coordination than your typical map full of random people can get together on the fly. Now, not only do the problems that necessitated those communities still exist, but the new changes reduce their ability to organize and provide community services in a reliable way.

It could almost be viewed as Anet intentionally trying to sabotage players. We know that’s not the case, but consider…

1. They introduce open world bosses that require nearly full maps, high degrees of coordination and communication, are prone to player griefing, and do not scale effectively with consideration to players mapping the zone, harvesting, or just too-ra-looing around.

2. The playerbase reacts by creating large communities of like-minded players, that span across all servers to come together at designated times and run these events for themselves and for the general playerbase.

3. Anet reacts in a “feature patch” by obliterating those communities methods of organizing and puts in a guild system as a concession that is functionally useless for events that require 150 people because the ambient population of the zone has increased by an average of more than 200%. AND now they are limiting the amount of attempts in any given day.

Tell me that despite all reason, it doesn’t feel like we are just repeatedly set up to fail?

Becka Williams.4978:

I actually think they should have 3 bosses spawning at once.

And then have legions stomping their feet in fury that they have to choose one and that it’s not fair to everyone in the world?

Now snark aside, I do have some eye-crossing at this development.

1. I get what Arena.net wants to do here. They want players to be able to sign in, and no matter what shell they are in, players can say, “It’s is [x] o’clock, I can go to [y] and do [z].”

The problem here is that it’s simply NOT how MMO players are wired, and they will actively push back against this change. Arena.net, I am telling you right now, the player base WILL reject this as a rule.

The casual players don’t want a schedule, and the elite players want their own instances where they can bar entry to whoever they kitten well please. No matter how much you try to encourage them to break from what they are accustomed to, they WILL refuse.

On top of that, I really don’t get why they’ve spread the world events out so thin. Yes, I understand they don’t want overlap, and yes an entirely different group of people would complain very loudly if there was… but for the casual world roamer, they may only have a two hour block to play (at most), and because their schedules are pretty well locked in, the chances of them having the wiggle room to adjust to see that content is not there.

Personally, a tighter schedule, even it means some world content overlaps each other, seems like the better idea… if you absolutely HAVE to have a static, locked schedule, which I am dubious is necessary to begin with.

2. I do not get the entire “all waypoints that can be contested will look contested unless you are in that zone.” My best guess is that with the megaserver, there’s no way that the game would be able to reliably draw that information for you unless you were in that zone… but I dunno, it sounds like a roundabout added gold sink at first glance.

The only reason encountering specific bosses with windows was an issue was if you refused to guest to other worlds. With the ability to regularly guest to worlds in your region, it was much easier to catch these bosses when you were ready IF you wanted to or even a friend/guildie casually watched the timers. Scheduling all but removes these chances. Especially for events you’re not adding a ‘trigger me’ option for.

Some very bad changes – or better said, some extreme high costs for the improvements that the Megaserver-System will bring, that we have to pay for.

If that are the costs that we have to pay for getting away with Overflow-Servers, then I’m honest and say, better keep the old system.
As Overflow-Servers in general are far less annoying then being completely blind on a worlds status on all maps… and that for dungeons too .

If Anet really brings things, then they absolutely need to make some important changes to the whole travel system and finally to to make compromises (together with the loads of biased stubborn people that were never openminded enough for that until today)

With these changes to come in the near future, the only solution I see here to improve the whole situation for everyone as best as possible is by making these follow up changes:

1) Change all of the Events in the near of Dungeons or remove them/replace them with new ones, so that Dungeon Entrance Way Points will never be contested again.
This will solve one big concern here, that players will still be able to do Dungeons whenever they want. To be honest, that these WP’s could be contested even before the change was totally idiotic andshould have been changed already alot earlier

2) Reduce all Waypoints on all Maps to maximum 5
Make those 5 Waypoints that stay per Map always useable. Just completely erase all of that braindead nonsense around contested waypoints

3) Therefore, that the game will lose alot of Waypoints, those Waypoints that got removed, will get replaced with either new Points of Interest, Vistas, Skill Points or also new Heart Quests

4) Now that each map has only 5 Waypoints and the spaces between these are much bigger, Mounts will get implemented as new Feature for PvE only which players will be able to rent either temporarely, or you will be able to work on your own permanent mount.
Gemstore will offer from now on also Mount Skins as Account Upgrades, like Finishers.
Under the Finisher Tab will be added a Mount Tab, where you can activate the Mount Skin, that you want to use for your Mount.

Seriously, these planned changes just make the Waypoint system only worser than it is as it destroys the only keypoint basically, that was good about that silly system, being able to travel everywhere you want.
But now, you intentionally cripple that system by forcing us all to make unneccessary double travels, because nowwe will always have to travel first to a maps border, just to become upble to see, if the spot where we want to travel is contested or not… what doubles basically all our travel costs.

And I’m sure, due to this you ABSOLUTELY haven’t any plan on reducing the travel fee from the WPs as a compensation by 50%, or ??? I guess not, otherwise it would have been mentioned in the blogpost, because wold that be at least the plan, then I think, would be far less people complaining about Anet disguising that change as a huge addition to the money sink.

If you don’t make any changes on these thigns, this update will be a huge backwards step and not something, that improves the game, what should be originally the intention.

The Dungeon Display would be no issue at all, if Dungeon WP’s but be just perma uncontested, life could be so simple. So why do you keep on making yourself permanently such uneccessary problems ANet, when they could get so easily prevented???

And the same would work with all other WP’s at all, just get rid completely of the obsolete “contested”-mechanic, reduce therefore the amount of WP avaiable and implement mounts.

You’d hit many birds just with a stone with doing that and I’m sure, alot more people would be just fine with that kind of compromise, than with what you are planning to do… plus I’m very sure, you know very well, what a good chance Mounts would give you as Gemstore Item to make also some good profits with that kind of Content Feature….

AcidicVision.5498:

Becka Williams.4978:

Essentially, large guilds (read: TTS) will be able to start the 3 Mega Bosses (and only those 3 (teq, 3 worm, and karka) off timer). These bosses will spawn 3 times a day, because apparently, people had to it too good before. Oh yes, the best part? TTS apparently doesn’t have the ability to start the world bosses because they don’t accumulate influence, and most guilds don’t have NEARLY enough people online to make it worth their while to spawn teq or the worm.

TTS isn’t a guild. Its a community made up of about 12 guilds and over six-thousand members. All from different servers. The guild structure is essentially used for them to organize, but since the member base is so large, varied and spread out, they don’t actually do guild missions, upgrades or spend influence. Tbh, I would be surprised if the leaders of each respective guild even knew what their guilds home server was.

So I wouldn’t be looking for TTS to start kickstarting the raid events for a good while.

If you really want to know “the best part”, it’s that guilds like TTS and TxS exist purely so everyone can get a fair shot at harder world events with no bias towards server or guild. Because some of them require more coordination than your typical map full of random people can get together on the fly. Now, not only do the problems that necessitated those communities still exist, but the new changes reduce their ability to organize and provide community services in a reliable way.

It could almost be viewed as Anet intentionally trying to sabotage players. We know that’s not the case, but consider…

1. They introduce open world bosses that require nearly full maps, high degrees of coordination and communication, are prone to player griefing, and do not scale effectively with consideration to players mapping the zone, harvesting, or just too-ra-looing around.

2. The playerbase reacts by creating large communities of like-minded players, that span across all servers to come together at designated times and run these events for themselves and for the general playerbase.

3. Anet reacts in a “feature patch” by obliterating those communities methods of organizing and puts in a guild system as a concession that is functionally useless for events that require 150 people because the ambient population of the zone has increased by an average of more than 200%. AND now they are limiting the amount of attempts in any given day.

Tell me that despite all reason, it doesn’t feel like we are just repeatedly set up to fail?

Yes, I know. That was kind of the whole point of the second half of my post. My point was that the sole guild (convenience, I know it’s a ton of guilds) that does teq and worm doesn’t have the ability to spawn it, and the guilds that can won’t because they can’t complete it anyways. Anet knows how often teq and worm are done. They know they’re not done very often. I’m actually sure they’ve looked at the metrics, and saw that teq and worm is done at reset, again for oceanic/sea, and again for Europeans. And, oh look, that’s what the schedule’s set up for. But they forget that’s THE ONLY THREE TIMES IT SPAWNS, except for their guild based starters. But they know that guilds don’t do this, servers do. So what’s the point? Guilds don’t do teq or worm now, apart from tier 1 servers, and TTS. Why would they start now?

Temples of Orr—The cross-map mechanics of these temples will be disabled. Instead, god statues will be active only when the nearest temple is contested.

I’ve found a reason to hate the megaserver concept. Honestly, I was loving it until I read this. Why? Because most of the folks on my friends list now are in Tarnished Coast, so I wouldn’t have to guest to TC to RP whenever I wanted to! And so many of the folks I knew on Sanctum of Rall have either since stopped playing or moved elsewhere (most to TC or Dragonbrand). Though I am not fond of the idea of predictable world boss spawnings (I preferred more randomness to events; still do, actually), it’s not something I’m too gruffed about to be honest.

But this? This removes a huge potential of GW2. The mechanic used in the temple showed how an event in one zone could affect another zone in numerous ways. While only used for the statues of the gods, it nonetheless showed cross-zone effects.

Imagine what would happen if the Shadow Behemoth was not killed, and as such there was an incursion of Aatxes and Shades coming out not just from Godslost Swamp, but Blackroot Cut as well?

Imagine what would happen if the Shatterer survives and begins flying back and forth, raining deadly crystal along the Dragonbrand, and not just in Blazeridge Steppes but in Iron Marches and Fields of Ruin too.

Imagine if the Megadestroyer survives and erupts the volcano, causing environmental effects of lava moving down the mountainside and running into Straits of Devastation’s eastern edge, burning that forest down (and the risen too) and spawning destroyers/embers/lava elementals causing a change of foes, more variety in gameplay!

Imagine if they took the concept of Scarlet’s invasions and made zone-specific ones, where failure means that zone-specific invasion moves to a neighboring zone.

But now, all that possibility, all that potential, gone.

I’m not sure if this loss outweighs the benefits of the megaserver.

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.

Wurm and Tequatl were already on schedule, there was no reason to change it at all. Adding Queen to it on the other hand was a bad move, as it was a triggered event and could be done on demand.

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.

Since cooldowns for those events got way bigger than before, many more people won’t be able to access them at all.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

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

Again, while it will become consistent for some, many others will not have access to those events now, unless they seriously reschedule their real life (which lot of people are not able to do easily)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

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

It is hard to prepare for events that happen when you are not playing (and with 6 hour cooldowns on some bosses, that is extremely likely). Besides, lot of appeal of those world bosses was that you could show up and participate on the fly, without the need to schedule it in advance. That’s what Tequatl was for (and see how those normal events were many, many times more popular than Teq).

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

There seems to be enough server capacity now. the change is not going to decrease that capacity, is it?

• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

Correct me if i am wrong, but the events that are on schedule are those that people were most interested in.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

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.

Such messaging system either would be equally useless across the world as event timer sites would be, or would make the need for schedule unnecessary (as the main reason why it got introduced would have been solved).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

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

This is a valid reason for the metaserver system in general, true. This is not an explanation for the schedule however, as it is here seemingly only because you were unable to think of a way to implement underflow system without making a negative impact on many parts of the game. Notice also, how it benefits only a part of the population (those on small servers), and is not the only possible solution to the problem it tries to solve (some servers having too low a population).

Tl/DR: this seems to be very counterintuitive and clunky way to solve problems you have mentioned – and it may actually aggravate (instead of solving) some of them.
At this moment Metaserver system net gain as far as positive changes to the game go seems to be heavily negative.