Guild Wars 2

terminatorkobold.6031:

Besides that where are the Comissar, Shaman and Foulbear Kraal? Disappeared totally or just out of schedule and map depedant?

Any not mentioned were said to be map dependent. This makes sense for those three given that there’s a long event chain for them iirc (there is for Foulbear at least). It would be weird anyways for Foulbear to happen only once every (roughly) 6 hours (ideally with the schedule). Though for that reasoning, the Megadestroyer’s a bit odd.

Though I’m not quite sure why the world bosses have to sit 15 minutes from each other (counting all three tiers) and why they cannot overlap. Have the low world bosses be 20 minutes between each rather than 30 (given that they each have 10 minute timers, iirc, unlike the “middle tier” world bosses which have 15, or in the case of Claw of Jormag, 20 minutes). Then have a middle tier world boss happen every 15 minutes – doubling the time. I think it’s perfectly fine if players cannot go to them back to back, given that allowing such creates zergs that make the current balancing to be very easy overall, so splitting up the world boss zergers amongst bosses wouldn’t be a bad thing. It risks some goes being few to no players but I see no issue to this.

By no means have I read all 500 posts in front of me… Just way too much to read.

Overall, here’s my feedback:

Schedule
I love the idea of a schedule, and syncing the Mega Server to it. I generally don’t even bother attempting any world events within 3 hours of reset, because I know there’s a 90% chance of hitting overflow and missing it.

I’ve also had plenty of times where I’ve logged in, felt like hitting some world events… pull up the timer… and there’s nothing for an hour or so.

My concerns with it, however, is how prime time is dominated by the mega-events. IMO, each event happening once per day, and having each time zone rotate which it gets daily, makes seems like a good balance. So something like 7pm PST would be the N.Amer mega event, and they’d rotate through them. For those who really love them, and want more, you’re offering the guild mission path.

I’d also put the non-mega events on a rotation, but a planned rotation. I’m thinking something akin to the z-missions in GW1, where it was quickly established that you could look on the wiki and see what the next day/week/month had in store for you. The reason for this is that if I have a set window in which I play regularly, I’d prefer to not have it be the same battles night after night, but instead a psuedo-random mix up.

I have mixed feelings on the 1-15 zones being on the 15’s and 45’s. On the one hand, it lets someone keep a steady pace of these events going. On the other hand, it feels like these battles would get overplayed quickly.

Events not on the Schedule
Honestly, I have no idea how things like the Temple events are supposed to work on the Mega Server. Am I supposed to just hang around Orr until they pop? Personally, I can’t stand going to Orr except for the temple battles. I watch the timers, and when I see one progressing on my server, I’ll hop in. Judging by the population influx throughout the events, I’m by far from the only one doing this. Since temples remain the single best source of dragonite ore, this feels sub-optimal.

I also forsee some of the current patterns disappearing, It’s not unusual for the same pack of players to hop from one zone to another, and the temples come up. They’ll clear Melandru, then Dwayna, then Lyssa, then Grenth, perhaps. There’s two zone transfers in there, so there’s a decent chance that the team will get split up into different instances, since the population splits between the zones might be a bit different.

Dungeons (namely, CoF and CoE)
Me and four other guildies party up, and decide we want to go tackle CoE. We pop into Mount Maelstrom. If CoE is open, cool. If not we check the API, and one person guests to a server where it’s open. We not interested at that time in doing a 10-30minute event chain so we can do our 10-30 minute dungeon run… and then possibly come out and have to do it again if we want another path, since there was no one around to defend.

I view this as a similar concept to the very old favor system in GW1, where a given region had to win five PvP TA battles in a row, a feat that took several long matches to get up to where the battles even counted for favor. The result of the favor? PvE players were able to enter the elite missions of the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. I don’t think anybody, ever, said “hey, I want to play UW, but we don’t have favor. Okay, let’s get a team together, and go spend a few hours in PvP, so we can then immediately afterwards (before another region took favor back) go spend 1-3 hours in the Underworld!” Why? because when you want to PvP, you PvP. When you want to hit a dungeon, you hit a dungeon. When you want open world event chains, that’s what you do. You don’t want to have to do some format you’re not interested in right now, just so you can do what you want to. (There’s too much of that in real life. Games should be more fun.)

By removing World WP status You make us pay twice for Loading Time and WP COST. If that’s the case maybe You could lower the COST of WP, since we have to spend more time watching the load screen + double teleporting.

At lvl 80 teleporting to a dungeon might cost you 5-8silver. Teleporting to some places may cost the same! If you remove the repair cost because low level players die offen You should lower then WP cost, since high level players will have to use WP a lot more offen!

With lowered event rewards, randomized open dungeons it will be so much harder to earn money, and if you’re into dungeons as I am – to do what you like the most!

well i dont use forums often, and i was honestly excited about the april 15th patch right untill i saw the megaserver and world boss scedule. anet basicly trew away any comunitys that have been established on the servers and on top of that removed the option to “play as you like”…. the way i see it we wont be able to arrange server events anymore, temple runs have been removed since we cannot tell when they are up, worl boss runs will become boring since its the same rotation without any changes removing any player choise cos if they want to do em anet have already dicided how it must be done and at what time, gathering will become even harder to do since you cant tell what map you will get on with the next char you login, so my initial optimism have now been replaced by a really BIG disapointment.

Haven’t read most of this thread. Here’s the main problems and potential solutions I see…

1. Boss Schedule
Personally I think having them appear/having the event chain start at specific times is fine, most were already pretty much like that. However, there should be boss overlaps. Having a megaserver means you can fill up these events even if they are split up between multiple bosses. As is, the schedule is just limiting people to kill very specific bosses over and over when they can only log on at a certain time.

Potential Problems: Less of a chance to be paired with your friends/server.

2. Hard-Core Bosses

Karka Queen shouldn’t be on the list for hard-core bosses and the two real hard-core bosses should be far more frequent than once every 3 hours. A lot of the hard-core boss killing guilds are comprised of many people from different servers making the guild merit way obsolete. Since they spawn so infrequently a ton of people are going to be trying to get into the same server at the same time, and it’s already hard enough to get into the overflows for these guilds now. Therefore, they should spawn once at least every 4 hours.

Potential Problems: It’s better for unorganized masses to keep the spawn as once every 8 hours since they will all come at once during the very limited spawns.

3. Waypoints
People shouldn’t have to pay twice to go somewhere they want. Make it so waypointing to other places in the same zone is free (like in the main cities).

Potential Problems: Still 2x loading screens. Loss of minor gold sink.

4. Dungeons
You can’t tell when they are open or closed and can’t easily join one that’s open even if there is one. Should just make it so you can enter the dungeon regardless of the event chains (but the waypoint stays contested so you need to run through).

Potential Problems: No consequences for certain event chains.

5. Orr Temples
Temples will lose their connectivity between zones, you wont be able to reliably kill/use the temples you want. In my opinion you should just keep Orr server based.

Potential problems: Low numbers on certain servers, confusing for people since there is a sudden switch from mega-server to home server.

Aidan Savage.2078:

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.

So is your big problem the specific schedule they say isn’t set in stone? Because nothing you’re complaining about sounds like something that’s the result of the idea of a schedule. The Megaserver? I absolutely refuse to make judgments of how that’s going to affect the community when we haven’t seen it in action, and they said they were starting with 1-15 areas first before rolling it out to higher level areas. Sounds like a good place to start. I highly doubt anything cataclysmic will come of it.

And what are these “massive” guilds that don’t have the influence and merits to research? If you’re talking about coalition guilds that are just an alliance of different guilds banding together, there’s nothing stopping them from assigning one of the smaller guilds that form the coalition to make the boss spawns and trigger them, and maybe rotating this responsibility around. I highly doubt there’s going to be a giant coalition guild that doesn’t have the tools necessary to make boss spawns AND doesn’t consist of at least one guild with that capability. And if they DO exist… well, I don’t know what to say. That just sounds illogical.

When I read the changes in Boss schedule I totally lost motivation to continue leveling my 9th character and to play this game at all. My real life work is managed by time schedules. I really don’t want to play according to the developers’ schedule. I’m playing for fun and relax not to have 2nd job.

I have time to kill bosses usually from 17:00 till 20:00 CET. We are running different bosses, but I will not see some of them at all after April 15 (Claw of Jormag, Taidha, Megadestroyer).

Why is it not possible to have at least 2 different bosses available at the same time, just to have possibility to do them all in 2-3 days? I don’t want to kill the same bosses all the time. It’s nothing unusual when there are several bosses killed simultaneously now. Why it is not possible on Megaservers with more people?

The next problem is paying twice for waypoints. I know you need money sink, but who asked to remove paid repair for example?!

It’s more than 12 hours after I read it and I still don’t know if I really want to play this game after April 15. The first few announced changes look mostly good, but now I’m really disappointed.

Well megaserver will obviously decrease server costs for anet being able to relocate resources according to population and waste less…

Yet they should ve found a better solution because the proposed changes doesn t really have anything good for players.

Example, for guild bosses, guilds should be able to open a private istance and invite whoever they want (like the old overflow).

That would ve given more focus at “friendly play” and guilds (also raids).

The scheduled bosses are so that Anet can predict better when population will increase.. that saves them money on server rental time.

Yes, because the most important part of any game is how much money the devs are saving on servers.

About the waypoints, I think that four in each map should always be uncontested, one in the nortern, souther, western and eastern part of the maps so that we can easly walk from there to wherever we have to go.

About the big boss events: what worries me is that we won’t be able to find empty server maps or overflows, big guilds will have a really hard time fitting 150 people for a boss fight if the maps will always have at least 30/40 players on. Please give guilds the option to create an empty overflow to host this events.

For the future an easier solution could be instanced boss fights. It would be much faster and less frustrating for guilds to just create a private group in the lfg window (with password and maybe visible only to selected guilds). I think it could give you also more freedom of choice for the style of the location and the mechanics of the fights, this would make the fight much more epic

I agree that the cons outweigh the pros in the upcoming feature pack. This update will probably take so much fun out of the game that it won’t be worth the ‘nice’ parts of the change. This update seems to many as rushed, not ready, and not thoroughly thought out and tested. It seems to many that Anet isn’t even aware of how their game is really played and possibly even worse, doesn’t care about their consumers like they claim.
There has been so much contradiction and inconsistency from Anet that it appears they will only keep breaking the great thing they had started building. I don’t know if that is because of pressure from NCSoft or not.

Some of the things that have been severely disliked which I agree in that distaste:

Town Clothes: Mix n’ Match ability gone – forced to wear the entire outfit, only 4 dye panels, single town clothes items except for head pieces will now be unstackable, undyeable tonics. This all results in a step backward from the current system and makes what would have been a fun feature – town clothes over armor – absolutely pointless.
Waypoints and Zone Loading: they are doubled in time and cost, and also make dungeons nearly inaccessible.
World Boss Schedule: Way too spread out and static as the current plan stands, compared to the original dynamic flow. Scheduled events would be more okay if they overlapped and rotated so that all world bosses could be played in a single 3 hr play session by any player. And if they had better world reactions to them coming and going so frequently.
More Gold Outflow than Inflow: (Gold Sinks are BAD. This is a game, not the real world. We want to relax from work and economic hardship when we play not fret over them more.) Gathering resources will be even more time consuming than ever before and basically unreliable which will cause resource prices to rise. The above mentioned waypoints. Less gold reward from already barely rewarding events and champ boxes. The previously mentioned hindrance to dungeons also lowers gold income as they are far more harder to get into. Traits…see below.
Megaserver: Sounds great in theory. But now maps will be too full the majority of the time and shards will be opening all the time making it that much harder to get coordinated activities done effectively, as well as messing with the previously mentioned gathering nodes and affecting the waypoint status broadcasting. This Megaserver destroys server identity – yes you will be more likely to play with people from your server, but so what? Is it really your server instance you are playing on?
Traits: These are affected by the megaserver and static boss timer and the reduced gold inflow and increased gold outflow – they are another gold sink themselves and utterly obnoxious to obtain. Yes it cost money before in the trait books, but this was superior because it unlocked all traits of its associated tier instead of making you errand boy/girl yet again, all the while having to load zones twice and pay twice for waypointing to get there.
Armor Transmutation: will actually be more expensive for low level players (3 stones now instead of one per armor item under lvl 80)

Compared to what I was ’oh yay!" about:
1. Account-wide Wardrobe works across WvW/PvP/PvE, saves inventory space, and I only need a skin once.
2. I only need a dye once.
3. Last Login time stamp for guild members.
4. No more repair costs.
5. Legendaries and Ascended gear switched to account bound.

I’m seeing a lot of incoming gold reduced, a lot of outgoing gold doubled, opportunity to do what you want and have your choices be meaningful reduced, whole structures and features of the game destroyed, ‘transparent communication’ becoming more of a lie all the time and gem store sales becoming untrustworthy. Now I don’t know if it is even worth anyone’s time to continue bothering to play this game anymore – a sort of “quit now while it has any semblance of what made you love it” feeling. It’s just so incredibly depressing.

So far I have seen the april update as the best thing since the game started, but I have a few issue with the schedule. The main thing that concerns me is the limitation of high-end bosses to 3 times / day (which is more like 1 time for each timezone, to be fair).

Wouldn’t it be so much better to start all 3 of them on every red time slot? So as a CET player I have the three opportunities for Karka/Tequatl/Wurm at 18/19/20 now, but do not have the freedom to choose from those 3 encounters.

- If I really like to do the Wurm, I will have only 1 chance / day during prime time
- If someone is working – lets say 9-17 – and cannot get home for Karka at 18:00 CET, the person would miss out on an entire boss completely, because the other two timeslots are not an option for him

Or even better… just simply make the schedule tighter to offer freedom of choice for the people, who play in a 1-3 hour window each day. I think this way, most of the people would be okay with the changes:

_:00 – The Shatterer / Megadestroyer / Taidha Covington / TBD
_:15 – Jungle Wurm / Svanir Shaman
_:30 – Claw of Jormag / Golem Mark II / Modniir Ulgoth / TBD
_:45 – Shadow Behemoth / Fire Elemental

ODD hours – Tequatl / Karka Queen
EVEN hours – 3-Headed Wurm

Plus I’m still curious what will happen, when the Megaserver kicks in on 1-15 areas, but not on others. Are we going to have a schedule only on the starting level bosses? Because if not, we are a bit screwed… I mean I will have a single shot for Tequatl each day, and since my home server almost never does it, I would have to guest for somewhere else, where everyone is guesting for that one and only primetime encounter of the day. I hope it’s not the case. :S

All in all, I still think that the schedule is good idea, but not in this way. It’s just simply not tight enough, and doesn’t give you choices at all. It’s kind of a “be there or miss it” situation right now for primetime players, and doesn’t provide any chance to correct a fail on the same day at high-end bosses, if you are really into one of them.

There are things that I like and things that I dislike about this update.

I like that I’m going to find more people for events. I don’t want to guest if I don’t have to. Running around on my often depopulated server and seeing lots of dead events has long been something that irritated me.

However… I don’t like what you’re doing with waypoints. The whole point of them is that you should be able to travel quickly and easily between different places. Making all waypoints contested is not a good solution at all. It feels like the easiest way out for the programmers and makes the players pay the price, both in number of loading screens and in silver. The same goes for the temples and dungeons. It’s important to many players to know what is active and accessible, and what isn’t. That’s why timers are so popular! I’d rather see a lot less, or even no contestable waypoints at all, or that WP travel within a zone is free, like in the main cities. I’m no programmer, however, so I don’t know how the temple problem could be solved.

Also, while I like that there’s a schedule, I don’t like that it’s so limited and spread out. A lot of players, especially those who work or live in other timezones, will not be able to do a lot of these events. At the very least, make more events happen simultaneously, or have a rotating schedule. Like a lot of other posters have mentioned, it would make more sense to have all three big baddies activate in all red slots. Right now, especially the “hardcore bosses”, are limited to prime-time players in the right timezone, players without jobs and families and players in big guilds that can kick the event off at any time, and that is a very small group, especially for a game that carters to casual players in a lot of different time zones. For too many, this loose schedule means one shot a day at a fraction of the bosses.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

And what are these “massive” guilds that don’t have the influence and merits to research? If you’re talking about coalition guilds that are just an alliance of different guilds banding together, there’s nothing stopping them from assigning one of the smaller guilds that form the coalition to make the boss spawns and trigger them, and maybe rotating this responsibility around. I highly doubt there’s going to be a giant coalition guild that doesn’t have the tools necessary to make boss spawns AND doesn’t consist of at least one guild with that capability. And if they DO exist… well, I don’t know what to say. That just sounds illogical.

ANY large guild that doesnt require constant representation. TTS is one such guild. And I’m sure there’s multiple guilds that have a policy of not using influence in such a way that it only benefits a small group of people as opposed to the entire guild as a whole, such as guild banks and boosts. Now, here’s a bit of math for you:
24 possible worlds
500 players max cap in a guild
~20 players per guild chapter at maximum dispersion
This means that even in a best case scenario, there’s going to be a large amount of the guild isolated from any upgrades regardless of the server chosen. There’s very few ways to work around this with the current guild system that shafts any players not on the server the guild happened to be created on, or where the research is carried out at.

The mistake Anet’s making is at the very least two-fold:
[]attempting to conform events into a schedule rotation that undermines their very goal of the game’s content being able to be done at any given time (within reasonable limits)
[]and introducing such a schedule before they fix current issues that large guilds need to deal with that are now exacerbated to the point that some of the aforementioned guilds may decide to dissolve or pack up and leave or otherwise abandon such large scale content because they no longer occur in the primary play time of a large majority of their players.

Certainly there needs to be standardization of the event timers, but like hell does it need to be set to a 24 hour loop.
4 Meta events at “low tier,” schedule them to pop every 15 minutes and rotate. (1 hour for all 4)
6 “standard” Meta events, schedule them to pop every 20 minutes or 30 minutes, with 2 or 3 going off at once (40 minutes at fastest, 90 minutes at slowest)
Karka queen, keep it off of the likes of Teq and Wurm if you arent going to partially undo that stealth nerf you did to it Anet (yes, we know all about the stealth nerf and why you did it) if a fit of overreaction, or increase it’s loot. Otherwise put it on a 2 hour cycle independent of the surrounding meta event (like teq is now) that’s offset from teq and wurm
Teq/Wurm, 8 hours is unreasonable, 2 hours means limited windows for popping a “private” boss with the new consumable, 4 hours is an extremely fair loop time if the consumable use is prohibited an hour before and hour after the bosses’ spawn.

Total time to complete all of the listed meta events anet wants to set a fixed timer to? 4 hours and ~30 minutes if you start with wurm and end with teq, or as little as 2.5 hours if you start with teq and pass on wurm.

The schedule to me is a bad idea. That guilds can open the event is great but the guilds I do the big events with do not have any influence or merits since people just rep when the event is on. That mean they either need to get people to give gold to get influence then farm merits or just disband, which to me is not very healthy.
Others have also hit on that if your real life does not fit the game schedule you are out of luck. At least now you can miss a big event and still catch the next one, after this goes live you are SOL.

It’s not all waypoints. It’s all “contestable” waypoints.

Can you make the rotation of the world bosses is in 22hours or 18hours, instead of 24hours? Some people can only play at a certain time during weekdays. With the upcoming 24hours rotations, i’m guessing those people will be fighting the same bosses everytime they login and play. By creating different rotation, people will be getting more variation on world bosses each day

• Dungeons—You will no longer be able to tell if a dungeon entrance is open until you’re on the same map.

So does this mean we have to pay gold to see if we’ll be able to enter a dungeon or not? Or are you removing waypoint costs?

First of all: I’m from a low population server (Fissure of Woe), and I believe that the idea behind the megaserver is a good one: To gather people again into the game and not feel lone.
But the way ANet is trying to implement it is taking, as said by many upon this post, away far too many possibilities and choices from the players to be accepted.

As just crying about it and saying “No no don’t do that” (I know, not all of you are doing that, but there always will be some of those), I thought about solutions of it as well, and as I at least fast-read all posts up to now, I want to bring an idea of one user back that was really appealing for me:

DougTheSlug.3920, page 4, bottom post, partial quote

I can brainstorm until the cows come home, but it feels like there could have been much more graceful solutions to this.
Here is one such idea brainstormed: WvW already detects low population and gives you a status indicating this. Why can’t PvE zones detect this same condition and simply give you a popup saying “move me to a more populated server for this zone” that uses your friends/guild algorithm but doesn’t use a guest credit? This has the following benefits:
- Maintains server identities
- Maintains ability to guest to specific servers for specific reasons
- Utilizes portions of your existing solution that are good (algorithm for finding a more populated server)
- Maintains current boss timers that allow for variety
- Maintains ability to create overflows for content that clearly should be instanced (teq/wurm)

That, for the metaserver itself and the populations, would solve any issue about “I want to play alone” versus “I want to Roleplay” versus “I want to play with many”, as every player could decide for himself, if he wants to join in on the metaserver or not and it would still maintain the “serverpride” and keep the communities that have grown on this servers together.

On the other hand I wholeheartly disagree with the idea of a boss-schedule. It may be necessary on bosses like Tequatl, the Three-headed Wurm (and on LS-bosses like the Marrionette), but even then and the possibility for guilds to start the boss on their behalf (how fast & how many of the guilds would be able to do that?), the time between the spawns is far too high.
My solution for this would be:
- create Pre-Events for EVERY world boss (regular ones for all but hardcore-bosses, and for the hardcore-bosses, as suggested sometimes in this thread, a counter-NPC like Siegerazer in WvW and when enough have counted in the world boss starts)
- when the world boss event ends, let the Pre-Event restart after a ¼ hour. This would work in Server-Mode-Maps as we have it today as well as in Metaserver-maps (you could even say in ½ hour on success, ¼ on failure)

This solution would allow people to go on world boss trains as well as do the world boss they want to do, while the bonus chest once per account per day / chest once per character per day would prevent boss-farming.

DougTheSlug.3920:

DougTheSlug.3920, page 4, bottom post, partial quote

I can brainstorm until the cows come home, but it feels like there could have been much more graceful solutions to this.
Here is one such idea brainstormed: WvW already detects low population and gives you a status indicating this. Why can’t PvE zones detect this same condition and simply give you a popup saying “move me to a more populated server for this zone” that uses your friends/guild algorithm but doesn’t use a guest credit? This has the following benefits:
- Maintains server identities
- Maintains ability to guest to specific servers for specific reasons
- Utilizes portions of your existing solution that are good (algorithm for finding a more populated server)
- Maintains current boss timers that allow for variety
- Maintains ability to create overflows for content that clearly should be instanced (teq/wurm)

Thats actually brilliant.

EdreasEloyen.9410:

DougTheSlug.3920:

DougTheSlug.3920, page 4, bottom post, partial quote

I can brainstorm until the cows come home, but it feels like there could have been much more graceful solutions to this.
Here is one such idea brainstormed: WvW already detects low population and gives you a status indicating this. Why can’t PvE zones detect this same condition and simply give you a popup saying “move me to a more populated server for this zone” that uses your friends/guild algorithm but doesn’t use a guest credit? This has the following benefits:
- Maintains server identities
- Maintains ability to guest to specific servers for specific reasons
- Utilizes portions of your existing solution that are good (algorithm for finding a more populated server)
- Maintains current boss timers that allow for variety
- Maintains ability to create overflows for content that clearly should be instanced (teq/wurm)

That, for the metaserver itself and the populations, would solve any issue about “I want to play alone” versus “I want to Roleplay” versus “I want to play with many”, as every player could decide for himself, if he wants to join in on the metaserver or not and it would still maintain the “serverpride” and keep the communities that have grown on this servers together.

(snipped a bit)

I like these ideas a lot. Maybe have those three options to choose between when going to an area, or add the preset in options (so you can set it to “alone”, “many”, “roleplay” or “always ask”).

Expanding on that, maybe add a toggle on the bottom or the top of the map that lets you choose between these three modes and through that lets you see which waypoints are contested and which dungeons are open by getting information from the servers you’d land on. This would require at least three megaservers being open at any time, but I don’t know how many usually will be in reality anyway.

The more I think about the world bosses, the more I think it’s a bad idea.

To be able to play the big world bosses you have now the following choices: get one of the three standard event times (01:00-03:00 (UTC), 10:30-12:30 (UTC) and 16:00-18:00 (UTC)) or have a guild to start a fight.

So we went down from twelve occurrences a day to only three, but we can have extra ones by spending influence.

On my server, the timeframe of the Tequatl or Wurm attempts is never in the three suggested timeframes. I’d be surprised if any PVE guild has currently uses these times in EU. I personally cannot join any of the suggested times.

So we can skip the three standard times: they are bad IMO. But hey, there’s an alternative! Make your own time. So first let make the guild spend some of their stashed influence. Yeah, well first you gotta have a guild with enough members to want to start that fight. Secondly (that is, if you don’t have a guild big enough), you have to have that guild be kind enough to share their event. Because if they don’t want to share it, they basically are allowed to keep it for themselves with the megaserver. Thirdly, you have to be friend with them.

So yes, this is indeed social play where you only can play if you’re friend with everyone. But… you are not! There are a lot of people I know on my server, I like them but they are acquaintances, not friends.

So what do I do? Well, I should join guilds that will specialize in killing those bosses beause my guild is too small. Probably more two than only one. In addition to my current ones.

Yet, the other news of yesterday said that “someday you’ll simply have one guild!” What is this I don’t even

So I see two possibilities here: either ArenaNet want to force people in a few guilds where people barely know each other or there’s some larger agenda to which ArenaNet gives us some facets but no actual view.

So what we have here is a complete lack of information that instills FUD in small guilds members. At first sight, people in small guilds will not be able to play with others of their server anymore. People will answer that the metrics show a clear indication of the contrary. Well, they might indicate a tendency, but they actually don’t mean anything as they are not excerpts from the real life. Theory said that we should all have played the Karka event very smoothly all together. Oops, no.

For all of this, I’d like more insurances that me, member of my small guild (70 people, but 20 active, playing PvE, WvW and PvP), will still be able to play Tequatl or the Wurm and have chances of succeeding in it. Because if people don’t get those chances to succeed those events, they will soon be reserved to a small elite and barriers will be put in place because that’s how human nature works.

I think scheduling of the bosses is a horrible idea. Anet has touted this game as a living, breathing dynamic world. Isn’t it extremely contradictory to have world events on a set schedule? It seems like even less a dynamic world than before. This sounds like a literal checklist and set schedule of how you’re supposed to spend your time for maximum efficiency. It kills wandering into events or exploring or events seeming like they’re part of the world. Can’t go exploring, have a pre-determined schedule of bosses to fight.
Honestly, I was excited about the April 15th patch, right up until the Megaserver announcement. I could on a long rant about all I find horrible in the announcement and details about the Megaserver but much has been pointed out already. The sound of almost all in that announcement does not sound like PvE content I want to play and honestly, if I were new to GW2, a lot of that would turn me away from ever buying it. This rigid scheduling of whats supposed to be a dynamic world has me thinking April 15th is the day GW2 and I part ways.

Fror.2163:

Yet, the other news of yesterday said that “someday you’ll simply have one guild!” What is this I don’t even.

Dont take phrases out of context just to suit your argument, especially when they’re THIS out of context. What you quoted means nothing as far as BEING in one guild. Instead, it applies to the fact that large multi-server guilds are shafted as far as guild BENEFITS go.

I have been very critical of the game as of late, especially because of Living Story and the lack of new permanent and good content. But I can not for the life of me understand what is happening in this forum now… Complaint after complaint after complaint, mixed with some whining about trivial kitten.

Why don’t you wait for the patch and get accustomed to it, and then maybe bring you concerns here? Maybe you will have to change certain ways in which you play the game… So what. You will adapt, and if a constant World Boss farm train is all that keeps you in the game, then maybe you should move on.

I for one like the fact that more people will be in most of the maps, and that maybe I’ll get to do some minor events that were not possible with the lack of people around sometimes. And it gets rid of random overflows, one of the most annoying things in the game.

You know what? I’ve been playing ESO for a few days now and man does it suck to not be able to play with my friend half the time since we’re in different instances.* And boy is that world lifeless. I am much much more motivated to return to GW soon (as soon as we get expansion content) than I was before, and I appreciate what we have and whatever things are done to make the game better.

• Edit: If you think this is or will be a problem with GW after the Megaservers, really you have not seen how bad it is when it really doesn’t work like in ESO.

JakeMagnus.4035:

I have been very critical of the game as of late, especially because of Living Story and the lack of new permanent and good content. But I can not for the life of me understand what is happening in this forum now… Complaint after complaint after complaint, mixed with some whining about trivial kitten.

Why don’t you wait for the patch and get accustomed to it, and then maybe bring you concerns here? Maybe you will have to change certain ways in which you play the game… So what. You will adapt, and if a constant World Boss farm train is all that keeps you in the game, then maybe you should move on.

I for one like the fact that more people will be in most of the maps, and that maybe I’ll get to do some minor events that were not possible with the lack of people around sometimes. And it gets rid of random overflows, one of the most annoying things in the game.

You know what? I’ve been playing ESO for a few days now and man does it suck to not be able to play with my friend half the time since we’re in different instances.* And boy is that world lifeless. I am much much more motivated to return to GW soon (as soon as we get expansion content) than I was before, and I appreciate what we have and whatever things are done to make the game better.

• Edit: If you think this is or will be a problem with GW after the Megaservers, really you have not seen how bad it is when it really doesn’t work like in ESO.

So what you’re saying is that we shouldn’t talk about our concerns just because it could have been worse? :P

I think the expectations of more people on maps is greatly exaggerated. Sure, there will, but what will they be doing and on what maps? With the scheduling of bosses?
Maps with world bosses will be more populated, with people congregated around the boss spawn point at spawn time.
Other maps and areas will for sure have a few more people in them, but I highly doubt the ‘population explosion’ in already dead areas and maps that people seem to think is going to happen will actually come to be, when it will actually instead be a timed afk and stand around in one place at boss time. And the population will appear huge, in those areas at those specific times.
This does not solve the overall problem at all. Dead areas are dead because there’s no reason to be there. A ‘Megaserver’ does not address this in any way. There’s still no reason to be in many maps or areas.
All the Megaserver does is provide a nice illusion that the game is full and heavily populated, at pre-determined times and places.

Aidan Savage.2078:

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.

but this way, they don’t technically reduce the rewards, just eliminate the “behavior” of getting the rewards rapidly by making world boss trains inefficient/ difficult. This is in line with their rationale for every loot reduction/removal that happened since launch…..discourage the behavior of “farming”. The casual/ non-farmer gets basically the same rewards regardless…..but the farmer suffers.

if the “shineys” the game offers weren’t so grindy, i wouldn’t mind their approach, but since it is……the tactic just seems like a ploy to increase converting gems to gold (something most of us with a semi-limited play-schedule already have to do from time to time to make big in-game purchases).

Actually… they do have a point. We could have been told that they’re finally giving us increased zone capacity, and then find a little tidbit at the end stating that there’s now ONE map for every zone and EVERYONE is going to be on that zone map. I dare you to run champ trains in that scenario. presses 1 before everyone else is even near the champ “WOOHOO, I GO-GOD kitten IT, I WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO HIT IT, WHY IS THERE NO LOOT”

After reading the last two blog posts, especially regarding the “guilds can start meta events” thing, I think the upcoming changes have potential. BUT this applies if (and only if):

- I can determine which version of the map I am on, for example through an identifier (like “Queensdale #42”)
- Based on that identifier, I can join a particular version of the map
- There’s a hint about how full the current map is

Given that, a specific, large group of players is able to gather on the same map for an event, can easily communicate the map you should join on and probably can pick an (initially) empty map.

Why do we need that? Well, ever joined your folks in edge of the mists when not initially member of a party? I don’t want parties and “Taxi playing” to be a workaround to answer the question if I’m on the right map or not.

CC Danicia.1394:

Greetings!

Please use this thread for all feedback & questions you have regarding “The Megaserver System: World Bosses and Events”: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-megaserver-system-world-bosses-and-events/

I honestly don’t know if this has been said before, there are to many replies to keep track…
Anyway, I really like the Megaserver-idea and the idea of a fixed boss rotation, but I think the way it will be implemented could be improved. Currently players with a short but constant online time will be limited to do certain world bosses while beeing locked out of others.
This mainly applies to the Standard World Events and Mega-Organized Events as the other events are on a much shorter rotation

To give an example:
A player (assuming CET) who comes online between 19:00 and 19:30 and leaves the game at about 22:00 can do Tequatl, Golem Mark II, the Worm, the Claw,Tabitha, Megadestroyer and maybe the TDB-World-Boss but can’t do the Shatterer, Ulgoth or the Karka Queen.

I think there’s a simple solution for this: Introduce a mismatch between the length of the rotation and the length of the day. As the length of a day is pretty much fixed this would leave the length of the rotation to change. Adding 30 Minutes (or one Boss-Event) to the rotation would make the rotation itself rotate by one slot per day. Adding two would make it rotate by to slots a day. As for the Mega-Organized Events, these could to “rotate their rotation”. You’d still have to be online during “prime time” to do these but you wouldn’t have to be online for the full prime time to get a chance at all of these.

pro:
- more diversity in events for people with fixed schedules

cons:
- only relevant for more casual players
- mildly confusing
- still “not fair” but you can’t please everyone all the time and you can’t fool mom (based loosely on Captain Penny’s Rule)

tl;dr:
to align rotation length with day length leads to lock-in/lock-out situation;
solution: don’t align

Pretty sure people already posted it, but…

How the heck will a TTS or PSDH or any other world boss guild member be able to get to an empty enough map to accomodate the other 100+ people for the event at any time, even when triggered as a mission? If maps are always being kept relatively filled, it means that, unlike previously when you could mass-guest to a low-pop server, there’ll always be an unremovable dead weight in the map doing anything but what the raid members want.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Pretty sure people already posted it, but…

How the heck will a TTS or PSDH or any other world boss guild member be able to get to an empty enough map to accomodate the other 100+ people for the event at any time, even when triggered as a mission? If maps are always being kept relatively filled, it means that, unlike previously when you could mass-guest to a low-pop server, there’ll always be an unremovable dead weight in the map doing anything but what the raid members want.

Same way they do now- get enough people into the map(s) that the system has no choice but to create an empty one to have room.

I have a couple questions regarding the language aspect of map selection. Will it be based on the language selected during client installation or actual geographical location of the player? I’m asking that because I live in a french-speaking country. Usually when I open the GW2 website, it detects me as a french-speaker and bumps me to GW2.com/fr. While I have no issue with understanding my mother tongue, I still need to flip it back each time to /en so I can visit the forums that the people on my server visit.

The language seems to be a rather determining factor for map selection with the megaserver system. Yet I would rather avoid being sent on french-populated maps, if only because my life schedule has me mostly playing during NA prime time. Not to mention is would be odd, as an inhabitant of Blackgate since launch, to suddenly find myself PVE’ing with people from Vizunah Square (actually I’m beginning to doubt that eventuality as I write this, since it is already impossible to guest to the EU servers.)

I believe the blog already addresses that concern, specifically that it’s based on the language of your home server (or the one you guested to, but you cant guest to EU from NA, so…) so any NA server is only going to get sorted with other NA servers. Although it is a valid question for EU servers.

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?

They said there will be changes to preevents. I took it as meaning they will remove all the preevent dependency on the listed world bosses.

Which woud be a bad thing for the living world feeling they once wanted to have.

Aidan Savage.2078:

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.

Pretty unlikely, seeing as all the schedule seems to be balanced about a 15 min timer for a whole event (chain).

Imo they should have left the event timing as it was, but went with the “all the preevents start at the same time on every instance” option. Then, they should have done an API showing the number of instances at each (pre)event stage.
Then they could just add preevents to Teq and Wurm, to allow people to easier trigger them on their schedule, instead of an artificially enforced one.

Aidan Savage.2078:

I believe the blog already addresses that concern, specifically that it’s based on the language of your home server (or the one you guested to, but you cant guest to EU from NA, so…) so any NA server is only going to get sorted with other NA servers. Although it is a valid question for EU servers.

Ah, didn’t see that part. That’ll teach me not to read diagonally. Thanks, anyway.

Star Jewel.5048:

Lishtenbird.2814:

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

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

This is more of a problem with event scaling than with scheduling. Scheduling events is a good thing but I agree it will make the issues with scaling much more apparent than it already is.

Good effort Arenanet, you were close.. but no dice.

Guild Queued world bosses – Spot on…. having these occur in the open world? BA BOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Instanced raid-difficulty content scaled for ~ 20-40 players. Ty.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Pretty sure people already posted it, but…

How the heck will a TTS or PSDH or any other world boss guild member be able to get to an empty enough map to accomodate the other 100+ people for the event at any time, even when triggered as a mission? If maps are always being kept relatively filled, it means that, unlike previously when you could mass-guest to a low-pop server, there’ll always be an unremovable dead weight in the map doing anything but what the raid members want.

Same way they do now- get enough people into the map(s) that the system has no choice but to create an empty one to have room.

But you had to do it about once to fill your own server and you could never fill other empty servers, as an extra overflow would be created/connected once yours is full; with the new system, however, you will be filling several (5? 7? 10+?) other servers where the system will be putting you “so that you’re not alone” until you actually hit the limit and trigger a new empty overflow (which will at once start to be filled with new people so that you’re not alone for too long).

MrRuin.9740:

I think the expectations of more people on maps is greatly exaggerated. Sure, there will, but what will they be doing and on what maps? With the scheduling of bosses?
Maps with world bosses will be more populated, with people congregated around the boss spawn point at spawn time.
Other maps and areas will for sure have a few more people in them, but I highly doubt the ‘population explosion’ in already dead areas and maps that people seem to think is going to happen will actually come to be, when it will actually instead be a timed afk and stand around in one place at boss time. And the population will appear huge, in those areas at those specific times.
This does not solve the overall problem at all. Dead areas are dead because there’s no reason to be there. A ‘Megaserver’ does not address this in any way. There’s still no reason to be in many maps or areas. *
All the Megaserver does is provide a nice illusion that the game is full and heavily populated, at pre-determined times and places.

Bold emphasis is my own. This was far too on point not to quote.

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.

Based 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 agree that this has to do with money. Which means there may be no way we can make them change their minds about it so, we need to focus on qol tweaks and getting our voices heard about them.

Some suggestions so far have been:
Server wide chat channel OR don’t apply megaserver to the central hub
Reduce WP costs while w/in a map
Do not implement mega boss schedule

Just those alone cover a multitude of complaints, although not all.
Personally, I love the idea of server wide chat channel no matter what happens

My only suggestion for improving these changes (honestly, I love all of them. Despite all the doom and gloom going on in here, these changes will be net positive for everyone, based on the information already provided.) is this:

I’m OK with dungeon entrances being locked by events, but the Waypoints to the entrances should be free. For example, if I am in Rata Sum and want to go to Arah, let me WP to Cursed Shores (to the only open WP), then let me WP to the dungeon entrance for 0c (if it is open).

Yenrah.8532:

Well than we’re kittened, cause megaserver is going to sacre a whole lot of people away from this game.
Of course noone will notice, because the genious system will make maps seem full.

Since this thread has had a lot of criticism and not many suggestions, I am going to toss one out there. +1 if you think its an approach closer to what players actually want and the game needs…

Megaserver consolidation should happen in areas that have consistently seen 20 players or less during peak hours. And it should be virtually transparent.

Categorize them as a new type of zone. Let’s call them “Communal zones” or “Shared Regions”. Outline them on the world map as blue or something so players have a quick visual indicator for if they are entering a shared area.

That will actually create it’s own sort of draw. Since those places could be seen as cross server game hubs where players can meet up and play together without necessarily burning a guest pass.

If the goal of this was facilitating friendly play. Mission accomplished. Low pop areas are higher populated and can serve a purpose. Existing communities remain intact. Every player, regardless of schedule or geography, has ample opportunities to participate in world events.

This Leaves the rest of the game and bosses alone and doesn’t break the map

Great changes, keep it up. My soul has been forever filled with tears of despair. Joy.

nachtnyx.7860:

MrRuin.9740:

I think the expectations of more people on maps is greatly exaggerated. Sure, there will, but what will they be doing and on what maps? With the scheduling of bosses?
Maps with world bosses will be more populated, with people congregated around the boss spawn point at spawn time.
Other maps and areas will for sure have a few more people in them, but I highly doubt the ‘population explosion’ in already dead areas and maps that people seem to think is going to happen will actually come to be, when it will actually instead be a timed afk and stand around in one place at boss time. And the population will appear huge, in those areas at those specific times.
This does not solve the overall problem at all. Dead areas are dead because there’s no reason to be there. A ‘Megaserver’ does not address this in any way. There’s still no reason to be in many maps or areas. *
All the Megaserver does is provide a nice illusion that the game is full and heavily populated, at pre-determined times and places.

Bold emphasis is my own. This was far too on point not to quote.

Instead of having 51 Brisban Wildlands you will end up with 2 (1 US and 1 EU) and the 1-2 players of each Brisban Wildlands will become 25-50 players in each copy of it.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
It seems to me the really big PvE servers will be able to keep their “own” version of most maps permanently on and the small-medium servers will end coupled with them.

It seems that in the end we will have something very close to GW1 districts but without any name or the ability to travel there unless you have a friend in those maps.

I would speculate that a server like Desolation will always have their own copy of Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shores for example, so it should be possible to map the resource nodes (we might just end with desolation and fissure of woe and some other server with the exact same nodes since they share the same map).

And if instead of 51 cursed shores we have 20 cursed shores, the chance for the temples being open is higher.

It will be interesting to see which servers end up being “married” to each other.

AcidicVision.5498:

Since this thread has had a lot of criticism and not many suggestions, I am going to toss one out there. +1 if you think its an approach closer to what players actually want and the game needs…

Megaserver consolidation should happen in areas that have consistently seen 20 players or less during peak hours. And it should be virtually transparent.

Categorize them as a new type of zone. Let’s call them “Communal zones” or “Shared Regions”. Outline them on the world map as blue or something so players have a quick visual indicator for if they are entering a shared area.

That will actually create it’s own sort of draw. Since those places could be seen as cross server game hubs where players can meet up and play together without necessarily burning a guest pass.

If the goal of this was facilitating friendly play. Mission accomplished. Low pop areas are higher populated and can serve a purpose. Existing communities remain intact. Every player, regardless of schedule or geography, has ample opportunities to participate in world events.

This Leaves the rest of the game and bosses alone and doesn’t break the map

That… actually is a really good idea.
Additionally, for some other areas you might do “server pools”, where the same area on one server works as usual (because there are people there), but is shared among 3-5 other servers because their population is just so bad (or you might “piggyback” small servers on top of big ones).
Also, overflow mechanic would then first try to drop you into different server main zones, and only after those are completely filled would create new maps.

Astralporing.1957:

AcidicVision.5498:

Since this thread has had a lot of criticism and not many suggestions, I am going to toss one out there. +1 if you think its an approach closer to what players actually want and the game needs…

Megaserver consolidation should happen in areas that have consistently seen 20 players or less during peak hours. And it should be virtually transparent.

Categorize them as a new type of zone. Let’s call them “Communal zones” or “Shared Regions”. Outline them on the world map as blue or something so players have a quick visual indicator for if they are entering a shared area.

That will actually create it’s own sort of draw. Since those places could be seen as cross server game hubs where players can meet up and play together without necessarily burning a guest pass.

If the goal of this was facilitating friendly play. Mission accomplished. Low pop areas are higher populated and can serve a purpose. Existing communities remain intact. Every player, regardless of schedule or geography, has ample opportunities to participate in world events.

This Leaves the rest of the game and bosses alone and doesn’t break the map

That… actually is a really good idea.
Additionally, for some other areas you might do “server pools”, where the same area on one server works as usual (because there are people there), but is shared among 3-5 other servers because their population is just so bad (or you might “piggyback” small servers on top of big ones).
Also, overflow mechanic would then first try to drop you into different server main zones, and only after those are completely filled would create new maps.

+1 this