Guild Wars 2

With this change I imagine that all events will be extremely populated. This means less loot unless Anet graciously fixes the tagging system. At this time the only way to have a chance at loot is to deliver a certain threshold of damage. What will happen with the change is mobs will die before many people ever touch them. Anet has to consider doing a couple things:

1. Greatly increase the base hp of mobs, maybe just make them all vets.

2. Change the tagging system to wear it only requires you to hit it once instead of meeting specific damage requirements.

The new boss schedule supports 4 continents in their prime time. What about support for (Pacific) Asia and Oceania primetime?

I knew certain things were just too good to be true, but I had no idea how much of a downward spiral it would turn into. I’m not going to bother repeating all the things everyone has said, because at this point I think they know how much they’re catted up, but that’s some sad news man. Really sad. Effectively catting up your entire userbase without even asking their opinion, and listening, on such a majour change.

Why in the world do you MMO-team types never think before you act?

I’m seriously reading all these complaints and thinking to myself “please ANet don’t backpedal on this issue and ruin this for me.” I was promised a schedule, and I’m expecting you to live up to that promise.

JackDaniels.1697:

Knowing the information ahead of time, does not mean that things will play off as it seems like it would. Like e.g., the boss scheduling, as it is right now, you get a chance at it pretty much every hour. While that seems fine, how many people are actually participating in these events hour by hour? It varies by server I know, but you can’t tell me that these events are full all the time, every single hour.

No, they are not full everytime. Which is good – i’d rather do these events with smaller groups than with fullscale zerg.

JackDaniels.1697:

Now with the update, you will have less spawn times yes, but it could turn out to be good, as having less of them means having enough people (most of the time at least, I would think) to be able to do these events and not worry that there is not enough.

Good for who? Most of those events can be done with only few people, you know. Most of the time they have enough people as it is now, too (i have seen a world boss event fail due to not enough people exactly once). Of course, i’m not talking here about Teq or Wurm, but looking at their schedule i won’t be attempting them in the future anyway. Before now i did manage sometimes to guest in Deso for succesful kill, which won’t be possible anymore – so that again is (for me) a loss.

And also, i wouldn’t call making the content zerged even more than it already is a good thing. Increasing the “zerg factor” on the events, is a definite negative. When it is glued on top of making the events harder to catch, it doesn’t leave much space for any positive feelings about the proposed change.

JackDaniels.1697:

The wp’s and dungeons part I get it, but I’m taking pros over cons here, and the pros outweigh the cons imo. You may not agree with me on this one though.

Yeah. I do think that not only cons heavily outweight the pros, but also i am not certain that using such highly destructive means was really necessary for those pros.

OtakuDFifty.2965

I’m seriously reading all these complaints and thinking to myself “please ANet don’t backpedal on this issue and ruin this for me.” I was promised a schedule, and I’m expecting you to live up to that promise.

Love your posts. Best trolling ever.

I am honestly surprised this system got as far as it did, coming up with the answers it comes up with.
destroy dynamism, destroy shared world, destroy communities, destroy options
to gain?
more people on a map
server effeciency

now, i can see that maybe behind the scenes server effeciency is a big deal, however i think you have to design solutions that work with your product, not solutions that destroy your product in the process.

Im guessing you guys are really commited to this idea, so i suggest you start taking a look at some out of the box ideas to actually make systems that work and reinforce this system. And yeah It wont be simple solutions, but that makes sense, because you are introducing a pretty complex system.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

OtakuDFifty.2965

I’m seriously reading all these complaints and thinking to myself “please ANet don’t backpedal on this issue and ruin this for me.” I was promised a schedule, and I’m expecting you to live up to that promise.

Love your posts. Best trolling ever.

Yes, because everything you don’t agree with must be an attempting at trolling. I actually share similiar feelings with OtakuDFifty. Apparently, you all are playing a different game then me because I don’t see where the majority of you are coming from.

Scheduled events will destroy immersion and the living world? All the major events are ALREADY on a timer. The timers may be a little more dynamic and vary from world to world, but they still are all scheduled. I agree that the event schedule should vary from day to day to give everyone a chance to try all the events, but beyond that aI like the idea of a schedule. I am tired of running around trying to find an event thats up and also has enough players to complete it.

WP costs will bankrupt us? Seriously?

The temple events won’t be dead. There actually will be players doing them! Maybe it’s been sweet for some of you guys on highly populated servers, but I run through Orr and see maybe half a dozen people. On a good day.

Like it or not, things have to change. If not server mergers, mega servers. Guesting is NOT good enough to address server population.

Tyops.5894:

I think a lot of people in this thread are probably lacking perspective on the what and why of this change. This is most assuredly ANet devs making the best on what is probably a cost cutting measure to try and save money on servers that are up for empty maps.

Bsed on the way this is affecting waypoints/dungeons/temples I would assume that this is a change that is happening more quickly than the devs were prepared for.

I wouldn’t bet on this being wholly based on hardware consolidation. In an age of virtual servers, SANs, load balancing, and dynamic provisioning in the data center I doubt they are running on pure hardware. It would also help from a DR perspective to have these running in such an environment, distributed, with fiber replication between sites. That also can double as a testing environment in the case of dev->production.

Most likely I think this is the devs trying the best they can to guess what the community would best need and help make this the best game out there. They are human (as are we!) and humans can make mistakes. Now this could need some tweaking, but we also can use air to think it out with fewer knee jerk reactions before we have even had a chance to experience it.

Ok, so suppose this megaserver thing goes through – probably a done deal by this point but it can be likely tweaked! Also suppose we have multiple map instances. If you do not like this timed boss system or the schedule, what is the proposal you would like? If it is the schedule specifically, is there an alternative or rolling alternatives that may best suit the entire world community? In your proposals are you taking into account the merged server populations vs what you are familiar with now pre-patch on your home server?

Others have expressed displeasure of the inability to run these events as smaller groups post-patch with the merged server populations. What possible alternatives can you see that would be technically feasible to meet this need? Instancing a specific area like a storyline instance may be a bit much of a stretch to ask for, but is one possibility. Can you think of others?

The way point costing has been discussed with alternative implementations. I think people are feeling slighted toward the extra 2 silver cost to move around to the zone, plus the extra loading screen time. To get around the extra cost, a freebie way point off somewhere in the instance was proposed – maybe make it off in a corner or some hideout that couldn’t be abused for free ports in general? For the extra loading screen time, are there solutions you can think of to help with this?

Proposed, well thought out solutions to the problem with reasoning behind it will catch a dev’s eye a lot better than cries to leave the game.

downwithdragons.8291:

Like it or not, things have to change. If not server mergers, mega servers. Guesting is NOT good enough to address server population.

That i agree. I’d rather see the “solution” not be worse than the current state, however.

I haven’t seen any responses to two critical issues:

1. Orr event chains. Are we really supposed to port into all 3 zones every 10 minutes to see if any meta event chains are up or temple bosses being done? This is going to be beyond ridiculous. I get that you don’t want to put them on timers, but there has to be some way for us to keep track of when they spawn. There are a lot of people that mainly do these events, and not normal world bosses, and they’re getting kicked in the face if there’s no way to predict events without manually checking locations.

2. Gathering nodes. Yes, I get that you want to keep them random because bots, but really, forcing us to run all over the freaking map to find nodes? Seriously? What could take an hour or two of farming per character will now become hours and hours of traversing Orr…which we all know sucks to begin with due to every mob and their mother having 50 conditions or CCs at their disposal. Making us check through every inch of the map is not an improvement. It will greatly affect the economy if it goes live like this, and that is not a good thing.

To be honest, I haven’t seen one good upside to the whole Megaserver thing. You’re going to rip apart communities, double waypoint costs, screw people over for the meta event chains that you’re not “synchronizing”, force people to be on at a specific time for a specific boss (not to mention cause some serious upscaling for certain ones, like Golem, when there’s 30+ more people than what we see now), and in one fell swoop completely ruin the economy for gathering materials.

What makes you guys think this is such a great idea?

storiessave.3807:

What makes you guys think this is such a great idea?

Really does sound like they’re trying to ruin their own game, does it not (great censor when I can’t abbreviate that, by the way)?

Especially the new players and the role players. who have even more to worry about than those of us that can actually afford the wp costs more and aren’t being ripped from their worlds to join on maps with people that have the potential to ruin their fun of the game for them

I just don’t know what to say. When I read the blog post about the Megaserver yesterday I felt excited. Today it all came down to a pile of dust.

I can understand that the current API wont cooperate with the new system. But dumping it is just bad. You wanted us to create an extended experience with your API. We did and now the hours of work are thrown away. Bold move.

But that’s not the point that cultivates a headache I never hat before because of a MMO. The fixed schedule is just horrible. Can you at least try to answer how a player with full time job and a family should be able to experience the world bosses when they are scheduled somewhere at night, midday and from 6pm to 8 pm? Are you kittening serious? How should those of us be able to participate? Why is it so kittening hard to keep the dynamic rotation so that we can jump in or not when you have the chance. Almost everyone in my guild is affected by that dumb change. It’s nonsense. It’s bullkitten. We already have lost enough members, but this change will hit our activity big time. Well done, I’m happy that today the last big change of the feature build got announced.

I don’t post frequently on the forums, but I felt that this idea should be put out there for the devs to hopefully read and consider. I am not sure if this has already been brought up, given that there are 10 pages of responses, most of them being negative and/ or bickering, I just skimmed it.

Anyways, the dev team should be able to come up with a solution to be able to see which dungeons, and waypoints are contested/ open at any given time for any given player. This may not be the most computationally simple algorithm, but then I don’t know their infrastructure and can’t say for sure. I’ll let them be the judge.

The game already keeps track of servers that the player has an affinity for based on home world, guild, friends list, and who we play with most frequently. When you open your map they should be able to let you know which waypoints are available or contested on your current map without any problem. They are, however, claiming that they can’t tell you which waypoints are available on any map you currently aren’t on. This needs to be remedied. By using the same algorithm they already use to determine which server you will load on when you go between maps you can do the following:
1. When the user opens the map, run their affinity for each zone adjacent to their current zone, even if only when zoomed in to the point waypoints are fully visible.
2. When the user moves their map, recalculate the zone affinity as necessary based on the current map position and adjacent maps to that position. This should be fairly simply when using an R-tree since you have the dimensions of the user’s screen, the position of the map, and the zoom level. With that you can create a rectangle of what they are currently viewing. Narrow that done to zones that intersect with the viewing port (should be very simple since all zones are rectangles anyways) and, if the zoom if far enough in, determine which waypoints are contested based on the server affinity that we have already calculated.
3. Maintaining the current waypoint polling interval (or, better yet, a push interface) you can update the current viewed maps as necessary, so that if (for example) the version of Caledon Forrest that your affinity places you in fills up while you are on the map, it could update to show the runner up’s available waypoints.

This will let the players see which maps and waypoints they can get in to quickly and not place too much additional stress on the servers. If you only update the check each time enough map movement has happened to require it (a new zone has been added to the view port for instance) it won’t even be a very frequent poll.

Now, potential problems that may arise from this idea:
1. What if I see a waypoint is available, port there and find out that it has become contested since I ported?
— This is the same thing that can happen today. I have had it happen a number of times in PvE, and even more notably in WvW, where I have ported to a waypoint just to get a popup on my screen once it is done loading that says something to the effects of “the waypoint you attempted to access has become contested”. I hit “okay” and go on with life. It doesn’t even redirect you to a different location, which I don’t have a problem with.
2. What if the server I have the highest affinity for is full by the time I port?
— Again, I see this as a non-issue. Just let the transaction complete as it had with the runner up, pop up a message if necessary on the screen telling the user that their waypoint has become contested, and move on.
3. I got in to the map I had the greatest affinity for, but the rest of my party didn’t… what now?
— Right click → “Join in map”, or if that isn’t available/ a valid option because, say, your map has the dungeon open and their doesn’t, but your map is full, then you can always try to find another/ wait until they can get in to the map. I don’t see this as being any different than getting caught in an overflow as the current system works in which you don’t have the dungeon open.

Are there possible problems with this solution that I haven’t thought of, or just don’t have enough insight in to the game infrastructure to account for? Very probably, but I am hoping that it can at least provide the devs with a possible solution to the problem a lot of people seem to be having with today’s blog post and lead to something people can be happier with. Plus, I don’t overly enjoy the idea of having 1/2+ of Orr contested at all times unless I am on the map.

AcidicVision.5498:

If condensing instances to save money was the issue, then they could have just merged a few servers and created an underflow for traditionally low pop zones.

The entire point of “megaservers” is that they’re merging servers without using the words “server merge” because it has such a bad connotation.

One of the few valid concerns I’ve seen that I actually agree on is the “always contested” waypoints. Would it be so difficult to make such waypoints “potentially contested,” so if a player tries to waypoint there, it checks to see if a version of that waypoint is open, and if it isn’t, return a report saying that it is contested? I imagine it shouldn’t be any more difficult than WvW queuing.

Lord Kuru.3685:

The entire point of “megaservers” is that they’re merging servers without using the words “server merge” because it has such a bad connotation.

They’re (likely) creating a fix for something that wasn’t broken. Server merges happen to MMOs, no exceptions. The fact that they went so far to mess up so much (likely) trying to skirt the issue is both kitten ing and would be hilarious if it didn’t hurt so much of their userbase.

A schedule… for a game.

Nice… if I wanted a schedule I’d stay at work all night.

Time was when I could get into three Triple Wurm runs a night, now I’ll be lucky to get one in a day.

This move will kill your game. Time for a rethink boys, smarten up.

How about fixing the lag issues as soon as there is orange swords in T1 ebg?. I can just imagine the lag that is coming from this mega server if you can’t handle it on one map.

constantLogic.3486:

Lord Kuru.3685:

The entire point of “megaservers” is that they’re merging servers without using the words “server merge” because it has such a bad connotation.

They’re (likely) creating a fix for something that wasn’t broken. Server merges happen to MMOs, no exceptions. The fact that they went so far to mess up so much (likely) trying to skirt the issue is both kitten ing and would be hilarious if it didn’t hurt so much of their userbase.

Yeah, but when you hear the words “server merge” your immediate thought is that the game is dying. And doing a “server merge” at the same time when other MMOs are coming out makes it that much worse.

Of course, at this point, we’re all used to Anet’s hype/spin machine but new players and potential new players will be fooled into thinking this is a great new “exciting” feature. (By the way, Anet really needs to learn some synonyms for “exciting.”)

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yeah, but when you hear the words “server merge” your immediate thought is that the game is dying. And doing a “server merge” at the same time when other MMOs are coming out makes it that much worse.

Of course, at this point, we’re all used to Anet’s hype/spin machine but new players and potential new players will be fooled into thinking this is a great new “exciting” feature. (By the way, Anet really needs to learn some synonyms for “exciting.”)

My immediate thoughts are “hey, the hype for the game is slacking off a bit and all the users that bandwagon are gone, time to settle things in”. I see nothing wrong with a server merge for low-user servers. I see it as a great thing in that it brings those specific users more users to play with, actually.

I know I might be going against the norm with those thoughts, but I’ve been playing MMOs for years and years. This is by far one of the worst moves I’ve seen by a company though. They’re drastically changing the game people are used to, with many cons that definitely outweigh the pros for most, yet they think it’s going to go over well? I can’t imagine this really flew in their office at all. It’s baffling. (And yes, they certainly do.)

Sallie Forthe.2473:

A schedule… for a game.

Nice… if I wanted a schedule I’d stay at work all night.

Time was when I could get into three Triple Wurm runs a night, now I’ll be lucky to get one in a day.

This move will kill your game. Time for a rethink boys, smarten up.

Oh, god forbid.. you can only do Triple Wurm once a day. I have gotten the chance to do it zero times since it has come out on my server. So what’s the answer? Guest to another server? Not according to the elitist players. Don’t do it then? That’s what I have been doing. Maybe its time everyone shares.

The servers has they are now don’t work. Period.

constantLogic.3486:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yeah, but when you hear the words “server merge” your immediate thought is that the game is dying. And doing a “server merge” at the same time when other MMOs are coming out makes it that much worse.

Of course, at this point, we’re all used to Anet’s hype/spin machine but new players and potential new players will be fooled into thinking this is a great new “exciting” feature. (By the way, Anet really needs to learn some synonyms for “exciting.”)

My immediate thoughts are “hey, the hype for the game is slacking off a bit and all the users that bandwagon are gone, time to settle things in”. I see nothing wrong with a server merge for low-user servers. I see it as a great thing in that it brings those specific users more users to play with, actually.

That’s interesting. I wonder if that’s how a lot of MMO vets feel about server merges (this is my first MMO and I’ve always associated server merging with impending doom).

downwithdragons.8291:

Sallie Forthe.2473:

A schedule… for a game.

Nice… if I wanted a schedule I’d stay at work all night.

Time was when I could get into three Triple Wurm runs a night, now I’ll be lucky to get one in a day.

This move will kill your game. Time for a rethink boys, smarten up.

Oh, god forbid.. you can only do Triple Wurm once a day. I have gotten the chance to do it zero times since it has come out on my server. So what’s the answer? Guest to another server? Not according to the elitist players. Don’t do it then? That’s what I have been doing. Maybe its time everyone shares.

The servers has they are now don’t work. Period.

If I might presume to speak for Sallie, if you strip away the Wurm “wrapping paper” the core of the issue is choice.

Don’t like to guest? Cool. For some people who have to accommodate real life, guesting was how they were able to play. Mega server has removed that option.

Have limited time to do world bosses? Well I’m afraid the almighty mega server now dictates what you can do and when.

Like to RP, but aren’t based in TC or PS? Yeah, good luck finding that community.

Everything about mega server strips away choice in order to fill some empty maps. The cure is worse than the disease.

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s interesting. I wonder if that’s how a lot of MMO vets feel about server merges (this is my first MMO and I’ve always associated server merging with impending doom).

I can’t presume to speak for them, but if the games were good it meant absolutely nothing in the way of impending doom. A slightly smaller userbase? Maybe. But one that actually cared about the game and wasn’t there just because it was the new, cool thing.

Reading through all of the complaints about the schedule, even though everyone states that what they hate about it is that the event time are “fixed” or “static”, what it really looks like is that people don’t think that the schedule has the events happening often enough.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

I’m seriously reading all these complaints and thinking to myself “please ANet don’t backpedal on this issue and ruin this for me.” I was promised a schedule, and I’m expecting you to live up to that promise.

They kitten well better backpedal, and they need to backpedal so hard they cough up concessions to the system. I dont care about guilds being able to spawn teq, wurm, and kq whenever they want. Large community based guilds get the shaft still. As someone aptly put it, smaller guilds CAN do the research as they’re on a SINGLE SERVER, but dont have the numbers. So they dont do the research. Massive guilds HAVE the numbers, but they’re so spread out on servers, they CANT do the research. Unless that spawning item can be bought with commendations, they’re basically telling guilds on multiple servers “we dont want your kind here.” Further than that, they back up that information even more with the fact that upgrades and influence pools STILL arent even a priority.

It’s not the schedule such guilds take issue with, as with the megaserver, it’s going to be a necessity. It’s the fact that they made an arbitrary choice of when the schedule happens with total disregard to the players’ collective desires. Yes, there are certain times wurm and teq are never fought, as well as times that it’s always fought and almost always beaten. But you dont shove a big “kitten you” at multi-server/guild communities and tell them the fixes they want are still months away AT BEST.

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s interesting. I wonder if that’s how a lot of MMO vets feel about server merges (this is my first MMO and I’ve always associated server merging with impending doom).

A few games, a notable one that focuses on a galaxy far far away, seen more activity and became more profitable after server consolidation.

All MMOs see server merges eventually. Some of them have seen several and are still alive and kicking and a lot of fun. Considering it a death knell isn’t really accurate anymore. No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.

Which makes this entire thing silly if it was just a way to camouflage a merge. It makes no sense to have upset this number of people to just avoid the “rofl game is dead server merge!” kiddies. Especially since they are going to be saying it anyways.

IMO this is exactly what they say it is. Just a way to reinvigorate dead zones since all of the paths to leveling, paltry rewards, and lack of motivation have left them ghosttowns. Its not that there is a lack of players. Its that no players have any need to go those places for anything other than map completion. And a server merge wouldn’t help that at all. But consolidating all the people in the game that are doing map completion, or whatever else, into those areas at the same time will make them seem more populated.

The problem is that every…single…thing…revolving around this change besides that comes at a very high cost (Like breaking the fraking map) and it just isn’t worth it.

AcidicVision.5498:

No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.

LOL!! I’ve always seen going FTP as implying impending shutdown as well.

Lord Kuru.3685:

AcidicVision.5498:

No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.

LOL!! I’ve always seen going FTP as implying impending shutdown as well.

It is. If a game is not making enough money via subs to sustain the game, it usually goes f2p and then shuts down 2-3 months after that point.

I just can’t see the upsides to this – dead zones will still be dead zones, you’ll still only meet people who are in there mapping in the mid zones.
You’ve got a population starved of stuff to do – and you’re starving them further by scheduling the little you already have.
The map will cease to function as a living breathing dynamic and become unable to tell which events are up by the contested waypoints. The losses far outweigh the positives.
Also – I live in New Zealand, man do my times not match your schedule.
The feature pack was a chance to drag me back but you clearly have no concern over your customers needs and wants.
Also – a server merge simply looks like your population is dwindling and you’re panicking. With the other games coming out its a bad time to give that image.
Theres a few people who think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread but if i did just fractals/wvw all day it wouldn’t effect me either.
There are none so blind as those that will not see.

IF they’re going to insist on a schedule, there’s a far easier way of doing things:

Low tier World Events:
Begins at :15 and :45 of every hour starting at reset (5pm server time)
ALL five zones trigger concurrently Wurm@Falias, Svanir@Vendrake, Elemental@Muridian, Behemoth@Godslost, whatever the 1-15 meta event for charr is in plains of ashford.

Standard tier World Events:
Begins at :00 and every 45 minutes afterwards, again starting at reset with a cyclical pattern of 4 events per time frame with the following order:
Golem Mk2, Taidha Covington, Modniir Ulgoth, Megadestroyer, Shatterer, Claw of Jormag

Raid tier World Events:
Tequatl, Three headed Wurm: Begins at :00 Server time and every 4 hours afterwards concurrently. (2pm, 6pm, 10pm, etc)
Karka Queen: Begins at :00 Server Time +2, and every 4 hours afterwards (4pm, 8pm, etc)
Restrictions for “private” spawns: consumable can not be triggered within 60-90 minutes of the start time of the public event.

And this is just something that took a couple minutes of looking at the “schedule” anet wants to use to put together.

Aidan Savage.2078:

It is. If a game is not making enough money via subs to sustain the game, it usually goes f2p and then shuts down 2-3 months after that point.

Not true at all. There are games out there that have actually done better, one already nodded toward in this very thread, after going F2P, more that have balanced out.

Dislike it for reasons already stated repeatedly in this thread. Don’t like wasted time/gold on WP’s in Orrian zones…don’t like gathering nodes being randomized everytime I visit a zone. Were it not for Temples/Arah openings I would consider just writing those zones off as wasted time after this. I was extremely apprehensive about this change to world bosses/events…but with the schedule I am hoping maybe it will still be possible to do world bosses the way I do now (tab out…check GW2stuff to see who’s up…go wreck who I need still). If that gets screwed up…alongside the gathering my moneymaking and thus the majority of what I do in a day on the game will be shot to oblivion.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Lord Kuru.3685:

AcidicVision.5498:

No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.

LOL!! I’ve always seen going FTP as implying impending shutdown as well.

It is. If a game is not making enough money via subs to sustain the game, it usually goes f2p and then shuts down 2-3 months after that point.

Naming other games on the forum generally isn’t looked nicely upon by mods. But there are no less than six (seven. Just thought of another one) MMOs over the course of the last five to six years that have gone free to play and are still releasing regular content with healthy sustainable player populations.

It has almost become the norm for a game to release with a sub, and then go FTP when box sales taper off. You could probably place a Vegas bet on how long the latest two will stick to their sub model. It’s not a good norm and that’s way off topic and for a separate discussion in another place. But there is no denying it has become a trend over the last few years and FTP conversion hasn’t had a correlation with shut down.

That said, we should stay on topic.

Hiding a merge or working around it, the gains do not justify the costs for players.

constantLogic.3486:

Aidan Savage.2078:

It is. If a game is not making enough money via subs to sustain the game, it usually goes f2p and then shuts down 2-3 months after that point.

Not true at all. There are games out there that have actually done better, one already nodded toward in this very thread, after going F2P, more that have balanced out.

Perhaps, but they are generally the exception, not the rule. The first logical conclusion people reach is that if the game’s going F2P, it’s not able to financially support itself via subscriptions, and F2P “mode” is just to let players get their last fix before the server is shut down and data destroyed. That conclusion is going to be correct more than incorrect for quite a while.

I just don’t like the fact Teq, Wurm, and KQ will only be available every 8 hours and then it’s a 3 hour spawn window!

“they all occur within a three-hour window that begins approximately every eight hours. This is weighted towards regional prime times.”

Now I’m EST so the times for me Teq is at 10 pm (to 1am), 7:30 (10:30)am (9 and a half hrs but okay), and 1 (4)pm(5 and a half hours). For me all these times are awful. I personally am usually killing the Teq at Reset or the one just before. KQ is 1 hr before and Great Jungle Wurm 1 hr after in the new times.

Now the other issue. If you go to Teq you won’t be able to do Great Jungle Wurm. Teq is about a 30 minute fight and wurm needs setup time. Its not a problem currently because both bosses spawn every hour. So you can skip a Teq and go to Wurm, but still get your Teq kill in for the day. Teq spawns on odd and wurm on even ALWAYS. (till next daylight savings time) With this change that means you only get 30 minutes to setup and get coordinated to kill wurm assuming they both spawn on time. You may say it’s like that now, but you can skip a Teq kill to get that extra time for wurm and still have another Teq to kill later. Or hey you maybe sitting there waiting for teq to spawn and miss wurm completely cause they are after all a 3 hour window.

I honestly don’t see why you don’t put all the spawns on a universal TIMER not a window but a timer the boss happens at exactly this time every so often like both Teq and wurm are on right now. That way people know exactly when the boss will be up and can plan accordingly. Right now so many servers are doing a world boss train factored around reset. So what if Teq or the Wurm spawn at a certain time and no one is there it already happens. Hell I would even prefer if you made KQ spawn every hour Teq every two hours and Wurm every two hours. Make them both odd or both even just not the same hour. Gives time to get the setup done and everything.

Well some of you may say well it’s solved by the guilds being able to summon them. Well ya it’s solved for those in massive guilds that have the numbers and knowledge to do it. Well the only massive guild I’m in who has the numbers and knowledge to kill Teq or Wurm is TTS. HOWEVER that doesn’t solve the problem, because TTS doesn’t even have guild missions. They rep during setup and fight only and that’s it!

By doing this though Anet it is making me not want to play the game.

Aidan Savage.2078:

IF they’re going to insist on a schedule, there’s a far easier way of doing things:

Low tier World Events:
Begins at :15 and :45 of every hour starting at reset (5pm server time)
ALL five zones trigger concurrently Wurm@Falias, Svanir@Vendrake, Elemental@Muridian, Behemoth@Godslost, whatever the 1-15 meta event for charr is in plains of ashford.

Standard tier World Events:
Begins at :00 and every 45 minutes afterwards, again starting at reset with a cyclical pattern of 4 events per time frame with the following order:
Golem Mk2, Taidha Covington, Modniir Ulgoth, Megadestroyer, Shatterer, Claw of Jormag

Raid tier World Events:
Tequatl, Three headed Wurm: Begins at :00 Server time and every 4 hours afterwards concurrently. (2pm, 6pm, 10pm, etc)
Karka Queen: Begins at :00 Server Time +2, and every 4 hours afterwards (4pm, 8pm, etc)
Restrictions for “private” spawns: consumable can not be triggered within 60-90 minutes of the start time of the public event.

And this is just something that took a couple minutes of looking at the “schedule” anet wants to use to put together.

far too obvious/great of a solution for them to have ignored. there’s an ulterior motive for the spread out schedule: curb rate of earning loot….in order to stretch out the time required to craft ascended gear/legendaries…..which makes buying gems w/RL money and converting them to gold even more attractive. i also fully expect a stealth nerf to the rate champ bags drop cores/t6 mats as well.

First of all let me say I love GW2 and even when I haven’t agreed with changes that Anet has made, I can understand the thinking behind it. I was really excited for the feature patch up until yesterday. The news they had released got me playing more again and having fun… and then yesterday hit and I just shook my head because I didn’t see how they were going to do the world bosses and many other things well with the megaserver system. Then today’s news hit and I all my excitement turned to dread. They majorly broke a ton of stuff for not much gain. It just seems to me that Megaservers need a lot more polish before being released and then maybe a few minor tweaks that need to be made afterwards, instead of all these glaring major issues. I’m not really even sold on the idea of megaservers to begin with or where they are trying to go with them.

What does Megaservers fix / make better:
- Low population zones not feeling empty, which sometimes I like being in a mostly empty zone, if I am looking for a little more peace.

- I assume consolidates server resources for ANET.

- Large Guilds being able to spawn world events, but only a good thing for large guilds.

What does Megaservers break / make worse:
- Being able to log on whenever and likely being able to do the world event I want to do either on my own server or by guesting to a different server where the event is in window if I have limited play time.
- Orr Temple events. It used to be that you could keep track of if/when an Orr Temple event was starting and if so, go join it. Now, the only way to do this is to sit in the particular Orr map until the Temple event starts. Waiting around for an event is not fun, I would prefer to know that I have XX amount of time until something is in window so that I can plan out my game time.

- Non-permanent gathering nodes. Sending all your characters on an gathering run for Orichalcum/Ancient Wood can already be tedious and boring, but at least knew where the nodes were until the next server reset / patch. I understand that with the server weighting I am more likely to end up in the same server again, but it will by no means guarenteed that I will. BTW, I don’t normally go on gathering runs, but for some people this is an important source of income for them.

- The big event schedule. Why only one big event going on at a time? It would be nice to have say three events going on that people can choose from. With it only being one event at a time, we are going to end up with all the people doing the big events zerging from map to map for the event, while leaving other areas empty. Since the one good thing I could say about megaservers is that it makes low population zones be a little more populated, this kinda negates that some, which doesn’t make sense. With the current system, I normally have many big events to choose from and can go do the one I want to / haven’t done yet. Now it will be, if I want to do a world event, I am stuck with whatever one is going on now whether I like it or not and whether it is fun or not, or deciding not to do a big event. Neither of those options is fun if what I am looking for is doing a big event. Furthermore, its going to be the slightly up to luck of the draw as to whether you get in an instance where people will do well on the event or one where an event is going to take the entire time allowed or maybe fail. To help avoid this you can waypoint to an event earlier and wait, which isn’t fun and is going entirely backwards from where we are now, where we can watch the timers for our server and know when we need to head to the event we want to do and are likely to succeed. I’m not trying to talk bad of people here, but some events like 3-headed wurm and tequatl basically require the entire map’s population to know what they are doing and to be doing the event to succeed. I could be in support of the events being on a set schedule if I have at least 3 to choose from at a time and not “I have 30 minutes to play and want to do an event, whats next…. great it’s Shatterer, no thanks I don’t feel like spending 10 minutes with my 1 button on auto attack while I look at my screen and do nothing”. In the past, they have had events on a schedule for things like marionette or attack on Lion’s Arch, which were fine for the two weeks they were going on. It was nice that they were on a reliable schedule that I could depend upon and plan accordingly, but on the flip side, I felt like if I wanted to do them I was being forced to do them at that time, where as the current schedule is much more random and I have several things to choose from. Only having one event to do and having to do that event at a set time seriously rubs me the wrong way. It seems like what I play is being dictated to me instead of me getting to choose when it comes to this area of the game.

Next Post…

Continued…

- The every 8 hour world events. This is simply way too long between these events. They don’t fit in everyone’s window of time to play and never will for some people. This is simply unfair to these people. I think there should be one of these happening every hour, not one every hour for 3 hours out of 8. It’s not fair for everyone. Also with them being only once every 8 hours, its likely people will only get one shot at succeeding at them per day, meaning if you are unlucky to show up right just as a new map instance is created, you are screwed as there is no way the event will succeed for you. So your option is to once again get there early and wait around instead of having fun doing what you want to be doing. Yes, large guilds can spawn them, but this is only a solution for people in large guilds. For players in smaller guild where we can only get 10-20 people together at the same time to do an event will only have a chance at Karka Queen; Or they can once again, wait around the area hoping that a large guild shows up and starts the world event which they can join in on. Furthermore, this change makes it even harder/take longer for the world boss specific guilds like TTS to get their events organized without their map instances having too many people in the map who aren’t going to participate in their event, but they can’t get their own players into the server because of those people not participating.

- Waypoints will now cost more because I only have the option of waypointing to the always uncontested waypoints in a map and then waypoint again to the place I wanted to go if it was open. Why not just show all waypoints that are contestable as uncontested and then when we waypoint there move us as it is supposed to work in the current system but doesn’t. This way I at least have a chance at not getting hit with the double cost. Another option would be that after waypointing into a zone, you get one free waypoint to another contestable waypoint in that zone if it is uncontested, a time limit could even be put on it if needed. Furthermore, for those that have long loading screen, they are having to waste more time that they could be playing and having fun because they either have to sit though another loading screen or run to the location they wanted to get to.

- Another problem with waypoints is I am no longer know by looking at my map or sites such as gw2state.com/gw2stuff.com to see if a certain event chain has been completed or is in progress. For example, if I want to get Obsidian Shards with Karma, I have no way of knowing if the Temple of Balthazar is open on any server. My options are going to be, sit by Rally Waypoint hoping enough people show up to do the event and we actually succeed at it, log out and back into the zone until I find a server which is doing / has done the event (but likely will just be put back in the same zone because of the weighting system), or waiting possibly weeks on end until someone in my guild says Balthazar is open during the time I am playing and hope I am not in a dungeon or fractals or something that I can’t leave immediately. Also getting Obsidian shard with other currencies simply doesn’t work for me. I have 12 alts and need those other time restricted currencies for other things, where as I have tons of Karma and do not have problems getting more.

- Dungeons: If I want to do a quick dungeon run in the 20-30 minutes I have left to play before I have to log off I may no longer get to do the dungeon because I could get a group, waypoint to the zone, and find the dungeon closed. In the past, someone in the group would have, most likely, been able to look up what server the dungeon was open on, guest to that server and we could begin. Now, my options are do the 10-15 minute event chain, which may mean I no longer have time to do the dungeon by the time the event chain is done or leave the party and try to find a different group for a different dungeon which is open, which is also a waste of time.

Next Post….

Continued….

- Breaking up server communities: I have been on the same home server from the beginning of the game and there is a reason for it. I love the community and my guild. It is one where people more often then not want to help people instead of troll them. Yes, there are trolls everywhere but it seems like I see them much less when in my home server. However, during the times I have spent guesting to other servers for an event or in an overflow, the map chat is just filled with people being trolls or being obnoxious. People stay in communities with other people who are like minded and they get along with / have fun with. The same reasoning can be applied to the RP community. I’m sure weighting will help keep groups together, but we are going from a 100% with your main server to <100%, which I don’t see as a good thing.

I’m all for helping open a temple or a dungeon when I have time, they are fun events to do. However, I don’t want to have to wait around for long periods of time for a temple event to start when enough people are around to do it, or have to miss doing a dungeon because I don’t have time to do it once I’ve helped open the dungeon itself.

Maybe I’m being too pessimistic here and the combining people into fewer servers will make it so that things like the Orr temples get done more often and I really hope I am just being too pessimistic, but I still don’t see how to avoid having to wait around in the zone until the Orr temple event starts. I would much prefer, knowing that it is 30 minutes until window, I can do a dungeon instead of waiting around.

TL:DR So, 2.5 moderately good things, for a long list of things that simply make life harder, less fun, and more expensive for the player in general. Not worth it at all in my opinion. The main theme through all of this seems to be more waiting around which isn’t fun.

Question concerning Ulgoth: there’s a massive event chain you have to do across Harathi to get to him. Will the entire meta-event only be available at the spawn time, or only the last sequence of events (starting with “Escort Captain Whatshername into the last Camp)”? And if the latter, if you haven’t done the event chain prior to the last events in time for the window, do you miss out on the boss until the next window?

Relshdan.6854:

Aidan Savage.2078:

IF they’re going to insist on a schedule, there’s a far easier way of doing things:

Low tier World Events:
Begins at :15 and :45 of every hour starting at reset (5pm server time)
ALL five zones trigger concurrently Wurm@Falias, Svanir@Vendrake, Elemental@Muridian, Behemoth@Godslost, whatever the 1-15 meta event for charr is in plains of ashford.

Standard tier World Events:
Begins at :00 and every 45 minutes afterwards, again starting at reset with a cyclical pattern of 4 events per time frame with the following order:
Golem Mk2, Taidha Covington, Modniir Ulgoth, Megadestroyer, Shatterer, Claw of Jormag

Raid tier World Events:
Tequatl, Three headed Wurm: Begins at :00 Server time and every 4 hours afterwards concurrently. (2pm, 6pm, 10pm, etc)
Karka Queen: Begins at :00 Server Time +2, and every 4 hours afterwards (4pm, 8pm, etc)
Restrictions for “private” spawns: consumable can not be triggered within 60-90 minutes of the start time of the public event.

And this is just something that took a couple minutes of looking at the “schedule” anet wants to use to put together.

far too obvious/great of a solution for them to have ignored. there’s an ulterior motive for the spread out schedule: curb rate of earning loot….in order to stretch out the time required to craft ascended gear/legendaries…..which makes buying gems w/RL money and converting them to gold even more attractive. i also fully expect a stealth nerf to the rate champ bags drop cores/t6 mats as well.

If they want to curb the ability to earn loot, it’s as simple as reducing the loot you already get. Teq drops 5 chests the first time you beat him a day. For every other character you beat him with, he drops 4. Honestly I still see this change as a big kitten you to big guilds more than anything else.

Olvendred.3027:

Question concerning Ulgoth: there’s a massive event chain you have to do across Harathi to get to him. Will the entire meta-event only be available at the spawn time, or only the last sequence of events (starting with “Escort Captain Whatshername into the last Camp)”? And if the latter, if you haven’t done the event chain prior to the last events in time for the window, do you miss out on the boss until the next window?

The chain would probably start at X time instead of when someone gets around to it. If the chain fails, so too does the boss spawn.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Perhaps, but they are generally the exception, not the rule. The first logical conclusion people reach is that if the game’s going F2P, it’s not able to financially support itself via subscriptions, and F2P “mode” is just to let players get their last fix before the server is shut down and data destroyed. That conclusion is going to be correct more than incorrect for quite a while.

Please see AcidicVision’s post, and more importantly let’s go back to the topic, in which I believe Quetzalcoatl just made fantastic point outs as to why this is so harmful.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Olvendred.3027:

Question concerning Ulgoth: there’s a massive event chain you have to do across Harathi to get to him. Will the entire meta-event only be available at the spawn time, or only the last sequence of events (starting with “Escort Captain Whatshername into the last Camp)”? And if the latter, if you haven’t done the event chain prior to the last events in time for the window, do you miss out on the boss until the next window?

The chain would probably start at X time instead of when someone gets around to it. If the chain fails, so too does the boss spawn.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seraph_Assault_on_Centaur_Camps

That’s going to be painful. Both for the people wanting to do the world event, who can’t start the entire event chain until the window, and for anyone doing map completion, who can’t uncontest waypoints/areas all the rest of the time.

Relshdan.6854:

far too obvious/great of a solution for them to have ignored. there’s an ulterior motive for the spread out schedule: curb rate of earning loot….in order to stretch out the time required to craft ascended gear/legendaries…..which makes buying gems w/RL money and converting them to gold even more attractive. i also fully expect a stealth nerf to the rate champ bags drop cores/t6 mats as well.

+1 +1 +1 to the moon!

storiessave.3807:

To be honest, I haven’t seen one good upside to the whole Megaserver thing. You’re going to rip apart communities, double waypoint costs, screw people over for the meta event chains that you’re not “synchronizing”, force people to be on at a specific time for a specific boss (not to mention cause some serious upscaling for certain ones, like Golem, when there’s 30+ more people than what we see now), and in one fell swoop completely ruin the economy for gathering materials.

What makes you guys think this is such a great idea?

Also +1 +1 +1 to the moon!

The problem i see with the schedule it that it results in too big cooldowns for events and in that it does not give the choice to players about the events they want to do.

Low level events: starting every 30 mins with 4 events in rotation means that every event takes place with a 2h respawn timer. That is mostly OK and inline with what we have now.

Standard events: starting every 30 mins with 6 events in rotation would means that every event takes place with a 3h respawn timer. Imho that is a too long timer for such events and it is even worse if you look at the schedule. The mega events overwrite the standard ones and the schedule is scrambled in a strange inconsistent way. Look at Shatterer EU times for example, it spawns at 2h, 7h, 9h, 13h, 17h30, 22h30. So the respawn times are 5h, 2h, 4h, 4h30, 6h, 3h30 with an average of 4h10. That average respawn time is way too long for normal events and the total inconsistany of the schedule is quite horrid. This events should take place evrery 2-3h and not be overwritten by the mega events to be like we have them now.
Besides that where are the Comissar, Shaman and Foulbear Kraal? Disappeared totally or just out of schedule and map depedant?

Mega events: this is the worst, the respawn time went from 2h to 8h. How is this acceptable? People playing during the night for example will be totally forbidden to play them? I think thoose 3 should be on a rolling schedule evry hour, giving them a 3h respawn timer which would be nice.

The new world boss schedule supports only 4 continents in their prime time block. leaving out Asia (Pacific)/Oceania. =(

Living in Australasia and obviously outside of the prime schedule times that puts the brakes on my game play, seriously not everyone lives in one or two times zones around the world.

I was looking forward to the upcoming patch as all the changes put forward so far had merit but when I read this yesterday it just floored me. To merge the maps does make sense to increase population on the maps and I thought wow I don’t mind that but to reduce the schedule of event spawns and to try and make people spend by stealth is just plain wrong, I would rather pay a regular subscription than be forced to spend spend spend in order to achieve anything moving forward.

This is big -1 from me