Guild Wars 2

Relevant article: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/22/the-power-of-silence-why-the-simcity-story-went-away/

tl;dr, a recent strategy that developers/publishers have adopted is to give players an outlet for them to vent grievances and then just delay or ignore them until the issue goes away. It’s akin to letting the baby cry itself to sleep.

In force, the community is indicating that they really really don’t like this thing you are doing, and they have gotten zero acknowledgement other than a post from Anthony that included some justification and didn’t recognize one single thing we took issue with.

Now in this instance, it may or may not be the case. But either way, Anet should know that that is the way they are making their customers and fans feel. This is how they made customers feel back with Ascended introductions and I think we can all pretty much agree that fiasco is a scar on GW2 history thus far. It may not have turned out that bad in the end because players can largely ignore its existence; however, people left because of those changes. People are still mad about its inclusion. And that incident still comes up as an example of Anet doing an about face on their core design principles and being out of touch with their players.

History is repeating itself. Your customers are telling you what they want. What they need to continue paying your bills. And the silence we get back is deafening.

World Boss schedule rollout clarification

Since the blog post does not say anything explicitly about this, and people have conflicting ideas, do we have:

1. World boss schedule hits everywhere all at once on April 15, entirely separate from the gradual MegaServer rollout
2. World boss schedule hits maps gradually starting April 15, tied to the gradual MegaServer rollout

Which is the case?

I’m sure it’s been mentioned already, not going to read all 18 pages lol, but I really think the major cities should “not” be included in the megaserver system.

Those areas should be left as a space for players to meet with their fellow server mates, they would serve as areas for roleplaying, guild recruitment, wvw call outs, server community events, easier guild meet ups, etc. Without those areas it forces people to go to wvw zones to get access to those functions, and all that will do is flood the wvw zones for no good reason.

The main purpose of the megaserver really is to make the leveling zones more alive and easier access to do the hearts and the dynamic events, it’s definitely needed but not for every single zone in the game.

You’re not alone in that belief Xenesis and they have stated that it’s not going to be rolled out in the cities to begin with but they do still intend to roll it out in the cities.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-the-MegaServer-roll-out-plan/first

If they had presented this megaserver idea during development or design then our feedback might have had a place in shaping it. As it is they’ve told us about it less than a fortnight before it releases so it’s happening regardless of what anyone thinks or says.

ArenaNet has presented us with a fait accompli and our feedback and questions go ignored and unanswered.

Yeah I noticed it was going to be delayed to cities, just really don’t see a need to include it in the megaserver structure at all. Cities are more for banking, auctioning, trades, and social gathering, there is no need to pile people from other servers in there.

And yeah they should have presented the idea months ago and got our feedback instead of rushing this into the feature pack. One day of feedback and they’ve already held back on cities getting it.

Ezekiel.1985:

You know, I would post all my problems with this part of hte patch, especially that Tequatl, for example, only spawns:
1. At 7:30AM, I am asleep.
2. At 1PM – I am working or taking a nap if it’s a day off.
3. At 10PM – I have other engagements this late in the evening, including going to bed for work.

I’m pretty much in the same boat, I won’t be able to make these times. The only event I’d be able to do is the Karka Queen at 9pm est time.

I don’t like this whole schedule thing at all. At the very least the times should be rotated so the mega-events will start at different times. But the problem I see with that is if we don’t have a schedule posted daily, weekly or monthly, we won’t know when they’ll start.

Pifil.5193:

You’re not alone in that belief Xenesis and they have stated that it’s not going to be rolled out in the cities to begin with but they do still intend to roll it out in the cities.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-the-MegaServer-roll-out-plan/first

Actually…. read that again.

They’re not going to go with the plan to roll it out starting in cities and level 1-15 zones. They scrapped that plan. But then they say that they’ll be starting it in “low population” maps. How populated is Rata Sum? The Grove? Black Citadel? They say that you won’t see any change at first in level 1-15 zones, but they do NOT say you’ll see no change in the cities.

Widowmaker Z.4802:

At the very least the times should be rotated so the mega-events will start at different times. But the problem I see with that is if we don’t have a schedule posted daily, weekly or monthly, we won’t know when they’ll start.

And that’s a complication that takes us right back to the question whether it’s really necessary to have those events only occur 3 times a day. The phrase “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” springs to mind.

Yes. There is zero reason for them to change boss scheduling from how it is. Period.

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

….. substantially reduced rewards for farmers…..

I think this is what Anet is trying to accomplish, to stop players farming through degenerative gameplay. And i second that.

I think boss trains are probably the most generative type gameplay they have. Basically people are grouping together, and traveling the world and doing big events. This is supposedly the thing anet most wanted.
the major reward of benefit is limited to one per boss per day, and a champion chest isnt much better than a champion bag, but takes more time.

So yeah, i dont think this is about degenerative play. I think they believe they have too many events compared to the number of people interested in them. They want it on a slower schedule so that everyone who wants to do it is doing it at the same time, and there is a lot of people around.

A better solution IMO is have a low base amount of World Boss spawns, and have it increase with population actively killing things. This way when there isnt that many players, you dont have a lot events with no people, but when there is a lot, you have more events to choose from.

Its a logistics thing, maybe they figure if they have multi events they wont get as much population per event.

And it won’t really change. Bosses appear pretty much every 15 minutes all day long. The difference will be which bosses you go to, in what order. The boss train won’t die. It’ll actually have more people doing it, because not everybody even knows to go to a timer site to see what’s up next. This will be easier for a lot of reasons for a lot of people.

I’m guessing bosses will be busier under the new system with the added benefit of that if I don’t get there early enough for a boss event, I’m not shunted to an overflow and wasting my time.

Ezekiel.1985:

Yes. There is zero reason for them to change boss scheduling from how it is. Period.

They didn’t arbitrarily change the boss scheduling. The changed it because of the need to change it because of the megaserver. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the boss schedule was changed because Anet wanted to change it. Here’s the problem.

Right now there are X number of servers in the US. Each of those servers are divided into many zones. Each of those zones require memory and processor power to maintain even if NO ONE IS IN THEM. That’s the problem.

Right now, on slow servers in the middle of the night, 2, 3, 7 zones may be completely empty.

So you take 20 zones and you make one zone from those 20. The value of this is freeing up server power to reduce lag and make the game better for more people on a map, changes that benefit a lot of people….maybe most people. The offshoot of this, however, is that you can’t know what servers will exist, because servers are being created as needed.

Timers CAN NOT work on this system. It’s impossible. How you can tell people that a creature is going to spawn on a certain server if that server isn’t even guaranteed to exist at that time? Having it the old way would destroy the mega server system which is sorely needed.

People are worried they won’t be able to do the events they want when they want to do them. Other people are worried that new people will start playign and they’ll have no one to play with and the game will look dead.

I’m pretty sure the people that sit around just for meta events and do nothing else are actually a minority in the game. The people just banging around and playing and not even thinking in terms of that is probably a much larger group.

That larger group will be greatly benefited by this system.

And yes, people have asked for the megaserver a very long time, calling it by other names like an underflow server.

The change is necessary for the health of the game. Some aspects of it will inconvenience some people. It’s a good change overall however.

timers CAN work on a system like that, only that they only occur on one “megaserver”, and maybe overflows if that’s really necessary. There is no reason for the boss to spawn naturally three times at a day, especially when said times are particularly inconvenient for most folks on the east coast.

You DO realize that Tequatl and Wurm do actually work on this system already, right? The one they’re using after the patch? They said as much in the announcement.

But they are changing the spawn windows anyway. This is arbitrary indeed and not necessary. They can stay on their current 2 hour rotation just fine. There’s no reason they can’t.

That you describe the schedule as an inconvenience suggests that you don’t have characters at level cap. At 80 basically you have wvw, pvp, jumping puzzles, dungeons and meta events.

Every day our guild and others on sea of sorrows team up to do meta events, as many and as quickly as possible. We tend to do 2-3 events per 15 minutes, slowing it down to 1 per 15 minutes, with the same schedule each day and permanently locking players out of events that don’t fit into their schedule, will utterly ruin this style of gameplay.

I tend to think the number of people who will benefit will be small. Small groups of people unwillingly to join a guild active during their timezone and group with other people. There are only a handful of events that cannot be completed with a small group.

Extremely detrimental change, with glaring lack of response to feedback.

I wanted to point out, btw…They said in the announcement, right, that Tequatl and Wurm are already working on the “system/timing/whatever” they developed for the Megaserver thing. Right?

So the only thing they changed is…the time.

It’s quite literally the definition of arbitrary, and that’s why it’s so astoundingly incredulous, along with a number of other changes that hit with this patch. Like nerfing the weakest thief weapon, and removing town clothes.

anzenketh.3759:

village idiot.1436:

The heart of the dynamic events system is being ripped out.

There are still plenty of dynamic events in the game. I would not necessarily call the world bosses the core of dynamic events.

But the way I understand it, it’s not just the major events that will be impacted by this. The point of dynamic events was to make the world seem living. To make you feel like you had an impact in the game. If you failed an event, waypoints would be contested, NPCs would stay dead until you revived them, and so on.

Currently, unless I’m in overflow, I can swap to an alt, or pop to a city and back, to find the world the way I left it. On the megaserver, if I switch maps I might be placed on a different map when I return based on how many players are present from my home world, who I commonly play with, how full the map is, etc. So a node that I was going to go and gather might have disappeared. I might swap to an alt to bring a different toon only to find the event I want to help with never started. I might even be able to “event hunt” by popping back and forth between maps when I’m not in a party, each time being evaluated by the system: “You will simply arrive in a map and be assigned to the version of that map that makes the most sense for you.”

All of the criteria for map placement seems to be centered around population and people you know or have played with. Nothing is being mentioned about experiencing a map that most aligns with how you left it. If I’m in a party, sure, I’ll probably go back to where I was, but what if I’m just cruising around on my own?

So from that standpoint I do feel like the heart of the dynamic events system has been ripped out. Everything is being changed to focus on having specific people the system thinks I want around, rather than the state of the world. The outcome of an event will have even less impact than it already does. It will only be meaningful to the current map I am in for as long as it exists. And that map, and its state, will disappear if there aren’t enough people to sustain the version of the map. The version might exist for a long time, or it might exist only for a few hours during a peak time. And if I leave, I might not find my way back.

Peacenote.1698:

anzenketh.3759:

village idiot.1436:

The heart of the dynamic events system is being ripped out.

There are still plenty of dynamic events in the game. I would not necessarily call the world bosses the core of dynamic events.

But the way I understand it, it’s not just the major events that will be impacted by this. The point of dynamic events was to make the world seem living. To make you feel like you had an impact in the game. If you failed an event, waypoints would be contested, NPCs would stay dead until you revived them, and so on.

Currently, unless I’m in overflow, I can swap to an alt, or pop to a city and back, to find the world the way I left it. On the megaserver, if I switch maps I might be placed on a different map when I return based on how many players are present from my home world, who I commonly play with, how full the map is, etc. So a node that I was going to go and gather might have disappeared. I might swap to an alt to bring a different toon only to find the event I want to help with never started. I might even be able to “event hunt” by popping back and forth between maps when I’m not in a party, each time being evaluated by the system: “You will simply arrive in a map and be assigned to the version of that map that makes the most sense for you.”

All of the criteria for map placement seems to be centered around population and people you know or have played with. Nothing is being mentioned about experiencing a map that most aligns with how you left it. If I’m in a party, sure, I’ll probably go back to where I was, but what if I’m just cruising around on my own?

So from that standpoint I do feel like the heart of the dynamic events system has been ripped out. Everything is being changed to focus on having specific people the system thinks I want around, rather than the state of the world. The outcome of an event will have even less impact than it already does. It will only be meaningful to the current map I am in for as long as it exists. And that map, and its state, will disappear if there aren’t enough people to sustain the version of the map. The version might exist for a long time, or it might exist only for a few hours during a peak time. And if I leave, I might not find my way back.

world permanence is gone, this is why they had to kill the boss interactions in ORR, which is kind of sad, because although they didnt use it much, that type of trigger would have been an interesting design tool going forward.

New maps will probably start from state zero, so the idea of working towards a better area, is out the window. Nothing can ever matter in this system because every map is supposed to be self contained, and not connected to any overall structure. Essentially dynamic events that matter are out the window.

I think they need to take a second and figure out how to make the world dynamic, and make peoples events matter while using this system. Though ill admit, it will be a lot more limited, i dont think they should give up on the potential of dynamic events, It made the game really fun, and the on release areas really shined because of it.

Nage.1520:

Ezekiel.1985:

Yes. There is zero reason for them to change boss scheduling from how it is. Period.

They didn’t arbitrarily change the boss scheduling. The changed it because of the need to change it because of the megaserver. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the boss schedule was changed because Anet wanted to change it.

I’m not sure how megaserver change necessitated changing the schedule of “wurm/Teq every two hours” to “wurm/teq every 8 hours”. Karka queen’s schedule of “when triggered, one hour cooldown” (which usually meant “when triggered”) also wouldn’t cause problems on megaserver. And yet it got changed as well.
I’d say it was pretty arbitrary, don’t you think?

I typed out a long-winded explanation of why a daily schedule for world bosses isn’t exciting, but deleted it. kitten it.

I feel like the schedule is the unfortunate result of greater changes that will help to bring some life to otherwise dead PvE zones. I love the idea of the megaserver for that purpose, but a boss schedule is just… lame.

Elestian.6134:

I feel like the schedule is the unfortunate result of greater changes that will help to bring some life to otherwise dead PvE zones.

No, the best it would be able to do is to bring an illusion of some life. The dead zones are dead for a reason – there is nothing interesting in there. Megaserver doesn’t address that problem at all.

phys.7689:

I think they need to take a second and figure out how to make the world dynamic, and make peoples events matter while using this system. Though ill admit, it will be a lot more limited, i dont think they should give up on the potential of dynamic events, It made the game really fun, and the on release areas really shined because of it.

It’s too bad, but I think they’ve completely given up on this.

village idiot.1436:

Subscription model is bold? Backward maybe. This game made 116 million dollars last year i think.

Yes subscription model in 2014 is bold. Zenimax even had a Forbes article saying they would fail because of subscription. Buy-to-play or Free-to-play is what mainstream is nowadays. Going the subscription path means you are setting expectations a lot higher than you were back in 2003, and that means you have very little margin for error.

village idiot.1436:

The heart of the dynamic events system is being ripped out.

The most important events will be static, repetitive and heavily regimented. Rates that we do events will be slowed down and player choice severely limited.

The dynamic events system was one of the primary appeals of the game for me.

Dynamic events were a great concept on paper, but in reality they have failed IMO. Being this repetitive they break immersion. Also, they take a lot of storytelling out of the game, compared to traditional quests.

I was a fan of the event system, but right now I’d rather take a well written and smartly done traditional quest system over dynamic events.

The sweet spot would probably be to have both. I think the mistake here was to found the whole game on DE, and leave storytelling only in the personal story.

Fiontar.4695:

This isn’t much different than the way GW2 has always handled things. It’s just a much more aggressive form of Overflow, where each server no longer has it’s own primary instance of each game zone.
…

There are short term benefits for those who lament how empty many of the game zones often appear, but it’s just an outgrowth of the reality that the game is failing. Losing players in general, while also embracing “Adventure by Checklist” content strategies that have done nothing but destroy exploration of the vast game world and amplified the population issues for the game zones.

The game isn’t dying because game zones feel empty; game zones feel empty because the game is dying. It’s dying because of the horrible Living Story strategy and the way it sucked up all the development resources that were supposed to go into providing a flow of fresh world content that would have given players a reason to keep revisiting the zones in the greater game world.

Megaservers are a further symptom of the game’s woes and a band-aid for dropping world populations that may just accelerate the loss of players, while trying to hide those losses by pooling people together on as few instances of each zone as possible.

True, low population zones are empty because players do not have a reason to go there once they’ve initially explored them (except looking for guild Bounty) – look at Timberline Falls. Even better example – Lornar’s Pass is once again dead after the Marionette event is gone!
ENGAGNING CONTENT, and NOT MERGERS will make a zone more alive. I predict low pop maps to still have very few players as of this patch.

AcidicVision.5498:

But either way, Anet should know that that is the way they are making their customers and fans feel. This is how they made customers feel back with Ascended introductions and I think we can all pretty much agree that fiasco is a scar on GW2 history thus far. It may not have turned out that bad in the end because players can largely ignore its existence; however, people left because of those changes. People are still mad about its inclusion. And that incident still comes up as an example of Anet doing an about face on their core design principles and being out of touch with their players.

History is repeating itself. Your customers are telling you what they want. What they need to continue paying your bills. And the silence we get back is deafening.

I wouldn’t compare this change with the Ascended gear. While one can continue with the overall play completely without ever equipping an Ascended weapon (unless you plan high-end Fractals), the game-change that will follow the inclusion of the Megaserver system has a much greater scope. We will not be able to ignore it, like we could ignore the grind for the Ascended. The choice will fully be taken away from us. Community and gameplay style as we knew them will be gone. We’ll face a new game.

But yeah, I do agree with you that if this goes through, people will leave, prob in bigger numbers than before. And ignoring the concerns and questions from the community (a lot of which are set up in the constructive CDI form!) is not helping.

About schedule: make another 2 or 3 copy of the schedule each shifted forward 1h or 2h, give players the means to choose which one they want run (and an option for a “random schedule selection”), let the MS do its voodoo with this additional info.
This will give to players that will be locked out from the big events (like me) the chance to participate, to everyone the chance to repeat failed ones in a decent time slice, to players that feel constrained in schedule a way to lessen that feeling

Razor.9872:

To solve the WvW problem and levitate the server identity problem, I propose this:

Along with map, say, team, party, whisper, squad, and guild chats…

have a server chat

there, calls for help can be requested and like-minded people can voice their needs.

its a good idea, but it needs to be very strict on the amount of posts one can make there/spam filter.. Dont want guilds spamming over and over again. Or repetitive emotes.

Does anyone else also have a hard time understanding how guild bounties can actually work with the new system? All the bounties will be in different locations around their path in all the different map versions you will get in, there’s no guarantees all the bounty parties will even land in the same version to begin with and there’s also a timer to top it all of. :P

phys.7689:

world permanence is gone, this is why they had to kill the boss interactions in ORR, which is kind of sad, because although they didnt use it much, that type of trigger would have been an interesting design tool going forward.

And with it one of the major selling points that brought me to the game (the other being a connection to the lore from GW1). With it gone I will have to turn to the only other MMO I am aware of that is promising a game that focuses on open world events that give players a feeling that their actions matter in shaping the world, EQ Next.

Somewhere along the line MMOs went from offering interesting open worlds to explore and forge communities that help the world grow to offering “theme park” content that tells you what you should be doing and when. GW 2 really had systems in place that could have offered a different experience, but apparently they’ve decided to abandon those tools for a Living World release schedule that tells you what you should be doing and now a megaserver structure with schedule that says you have to be somewhere at a specific time or you’ll never see these events. So much potential for this game squandered.

Urxx.6840:

The sweet spot would probably be to have both. I think the mistake here was to found the whole game on DE, and leave storytelling only in the personal story.

They did have both. Personal story and now Living Story tells more epic tales. The dynamic events, when done well; also tell tales, but they tell tales of overall conflict in an area that can be seen as a back and forth between two warring forces. When dynamic events work is when it makes sense for there to be an ebb and flow between forces. There are all sorts of ways to spice this up so that is isn’t constantly the same types of activities. For example, I proposed the following during the first CDI:

I consider dynamic events the bread and butter of your game. They tell short or multi-branching tales where player actions can help determine the outcome. They aren’t always challenging, many don’t have any impact on the world at all, and when they do this impact is usually short lived; but they can be the perfect vehicle for allowing player actions to have meaning in the world. Going forward before you introduce new dynamic events, whether it be huge invasion type content or small events like hunting an arctodus so Edmund can get a new rug; I think the content creators should ask themselves:

• Does this event and surrounding environment give enough story context for why the player is performing the activity?
• During the event, should a player arrive late; is there spoken or text dialogue that can catch a player up?
• Are the NPCs acting appropriate to the context of the tale you are telling with the dynamic event?
• Can the NPCs make meaningful impact on the world around them should players succeed/fail at the task at hand?
• Does the impact have lasting effects on the surrounding area or the zone at large so that the players feel like they did something meaningful?
• Can those effects be changed back to the previous state by player and NPC actions or are they on a timer? If the latter, try to go for the former.

Presently many of the dynamic events, especially those added in the Living Story content, fail to make the players feel like they’ve made meaningful changes on the world. Whether it be the epic dragon fights or smaller centaur incursions, the events repeat too frequently and many times without cause, removing the immersion and reminding players their actions don’t matter. I know it would upset the loot/achievement/farming motivated players, but I’d prefer a more organic world where player and NPC actions matter, as opposed to one where things run on predictable schedules so that people aren’t denied access to their loot pinatas. To make the world feel more organic NPC actions and reactions need to be logical and whenever possible, off timers. If we succeed in winning an outpost from the centaurs, it should open up new events to fortify that outpost from the centaurs. Making it harder for them to take it back. In response the centaurs will have their own “events”, where they must gather resources to build up their attack, descry new combat techniques or spells, scout out the player controlled encampments for weaknesses in the defenses, perform guerrilla attacks on bases elsewhere, and perform assassinations on key players that wander outside the safety of the encampments. Players may interrupt these centaur “events” to make their reclamation of the fortress harder still. To ensure the centaurs aren’t always pushed from the maps, you can add centaur type “break out events”, where the centaurs get a powerful boss to rally to their aid occasionally. This type of dynamic scaling need not be on a timer either, but can be based on how many successes the players of that world have been against the centaur incursions. The idea here being that a warlord doesn’t enter the fray unless necessary. The more event choices we as the players have to help shape the ebb and flow of the Living Story content or any content the better.

Similar changes can be made to the world boss events. Tequatl shouldn’t be entering the fray unless the players are doing really well at controlling Sparkfly Fen. After he is defeated players should have to perform events necessary for combating his eventual return. If Tequatl wins, he should do more than corrupt the shore and then flee. He should stick around aiding his minions in capturing objectives around them map in an invasion style event. If the players fight back this invasions to the shores again, they get another crack at Tequatl. Again, NPCs need behave in context with the tale you are trying to tell.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Living-World/page/18#post3129254

Urxx.6840:

village idiot.1436:

Subscription model is bold? Backward maybe. This game made 116 million dollars last year i think.

Yes subscription model in 2014 is bold. Zenimax even had a Forbes article saying they would fail because of subscription. Buy-to-play or Free-to-play is what mainstream is nowadays. Going the subscription path means you are setting expectations a lot higher than you were back in 2003, and that means you have very little margin for error.

village idiot.1436:

The heart of the dynamic events system is being ripped out.

The most important events will be static, repetitive and heavily regimented. Rates that we do events will be slowed down and player choice severely limited.

The dynamic events system was one of the primary appeals of the game for me.

Dynamic events were a great concept on paper, but in reality they have failed IMO. Being this repetitive they break immersion. Also, they take a lot of storytelling out of the game, compared to traditional quests.

I was a fan of the event system, but right now I’d rather take a well written and smartly done traditional quest system over dynamic events.

The sweet spot would probably be to have both. I think the mistake here was to found the whole game on DE, and leave storytelling only in the personal story.

dynamic events and quests arent mutually exclusive, they can even work together to enhance each other. And the reason why dynamic events seems bad to you now, is probably mostly because they havent expanded on it much/well since the game released.

As far as dynamic events repeating, im fine with that, without that you have just desolate areas with nothing ever happening, which is basically what happens in most traditional quest systems.

I think traditional quests may be good for overarching plotlines, and telling/unlocking player related stories. I also think dynamic events were supposed to evolve and change, but anet seems to have abandoned them. Especially as a storytelling medium.

Anyhow ive played other traditional quest systems recently and the meat and potatoes of them pale in comparison to dynamic events. The Overarching plotlines and stories tend to beat dynamic events, but i GW2’s equivalent is personal story and living story, and the main problem there is that neither was very good as an over arching plotline, and neither really developed a long term player goal, which is the two things traditional quests usually handle well.

SirMoogie.9263:

phys.7689:

world permanence is gone, this is why they had to kill the boss interactions in ORR, which is kind of sad, because although they didnt use it much, that type of trigger would have been an interesting design tool going forward.

And with it one of the major selling points that brought me to the game (the other being a connection to the lore from GW1). With it gone I will have to turn to the only other MMO I am aware of that is promising a game that focuses on open world events that give players a feeling that their actions matter in shaping the world, EQ Next.

Somewhere along the line MMOs went from offering interesting open worlds to explore and forge communities that help the world grow to offering “theme park” content that tells you what you should be doing and when. GW 2 really had systems in place that could have offered a different experience, but apparently they’ve decided to abandon those tools for a Living World release schedule that tells you what you should be doing and now a megaserver structure with schedule that says you have to be somewhere at a specific time or you’ll never see these events. So much potential for this game squandered.

yeah looks like EQnext is going to take up the GW2 release torch here. They said they wanted to influence developers, and they have, its a shame that they are not going to lead that innovation any more.

They definately are showing the world isnt nearly as big a focus for them anymore with megaserver changes as they are currently implemented. To be honest most of the dynamic events in living world have not been on par with the initial games dynamic events, and they are actually going to destroy a some of the good ones, like ulgoth chain which is one of the better chains in the game.
Its action packed, it makes sense, taking you on a battle ranging all of the major centaur camps, it ramps up well increasing in difficulty and tension right up to the boss.

kitten shame really

I love the idea of the megaserver, and I like the idea of scheduling the world events so that they happen at the same times across servers, but I hate the current implementation of it. The reason is because I can only play during a fixed time of day, and that will mean that I will NEVER be able to play some of my favorite events again, because they ONLY spawn during periods I cannot play. I don’t imagine I’m the only one impacted by this, and cannot see the benefit to it.

My recommendation to make this better for all involved is to have multiple overlapping schedules. Have at least three event tracks going on at any given time. With the nature of the megaserver, there should be enough total players at any given time to fully populate several maps for each event, so player consolidation should never be an issue.

So basically, take the current schedule, fine, that would be “Track A.” Then take the same schedule and shift it back one hour, that would be “Track B,” and again to make “Track C.” At any given time, three events would be running, and players could choose for themselves which to do. Daily reward timers would still apply, so there wouldn’t be a lot of benefit to running the same events over and over.

In this way, while in the current model Karka Queen is ONLY playable by people who are able to log on at 9PM EST, this change would at least open it up to people who play at 10PM and 11PM EST as well. It would mean that if you had no interest in running Taidha Covington at 12:30, you would at least have the option of tackling Claw of Jormag or Golem MKII instead. It would also mean that if you wanted to do something like a dungeon or Fractal or WvW, which may not be over in time to make your favorite world events, you would have a second or even third chance to catch it the next go around.

Give players more choice in which events they are able to do during the time they have available to play, rather than forcing them to play the events you have scheduled for the time they can play, or to rearrange their lives to be able to play during the time their favorite events are scheduled.

I agree, this would be the best course of action. We depend on overlapping events not only for catching them at multiple times of day, but also so that they pull huge zergs away and we can quietly kill some boss with 10-15 players.

Either that, or have the bosses rotate times on different days. Either would let you participate.

As a Brit on NA servers the set times of Teq, Karka and Wurm will mean I will be unable to complete them.

One set is early hours of morning so asleep. The next set is midday so will be at work and NA will be getting up or still in bed. Might be good at the weekends to match up with my Pacific friends though?

Third set best times for me as early evening but NA still at work so will be unlikely to find these times full.

Fixed at 3 times a days is a bit of a joke.

The ability of the large guilds like TTS to help out small guilds/ no guild players on home servers goes out the window. I know many players who have have only been able to complete Teq/Karka becasue of TTS guesting to different server each day and home server players been able to join in.

Perhaps an Anet member or 2 should join TTS or one of the other cross server guilds set up for big events to actually understand how these guilds work?

With no specific servers the ability to do certain dungeons means being forced to complete the chain quests before the dungeon is open. Better if you just leave all dungeon WPs open all the time.

Impact on Arah looks like it will be damaging but I need to give that some more thought.

If you are going down this route, which lets face it you have already decided to do – so this feedback with less than 2 weeks to go is bogus – open up the ability as in GW1 where you can choose euro/NA/International servers.

I do not want to be forced to leave my NA server and many friends made over the years from GW1 because I will be unable to do events due to prime times being so different.

Calixtus.8617:

Perhaps an Anet member or 2 should join TTS or one of the other cross server guilds set up for big events to actually understand how these guilds work?

What’s funny is that there are actually 2 Anet Devs in TTS right now. While they don’t join our Teq raids very often they were often part of our initial wurm attempts and one of them was part of our first post-patch kill.

So you can imagine most of TTS is quite surprised we weren’t thought of when this new core system was being designed.

I would be at least partially satisfied with rotating the schedule, the problem with that is that you’d only be able to do the events you want every few days. I mean, currently I play for about 2-3 hours per day, and I try to get in as many of Claw of Jormag, Karka Queen, Shatterer, Svanir, Fire Elemental, Golem MKII, and a few temples or other activities as I can within that window.

With this new schedule, I’ll never be able to do Karaka Queen again, and would usually only be able to do Svanir and Fire Elemental from my usual rotation, with roughly an hour of my usual play time in which nothing I want to do is up, and maybe a few days a week I could make a Claw or Shatterer run if I was able to push my schedule a bit.

If they leave things as they are currently planned, it would utterly DESTROY the game as I currently enjoy it, which I know sounds hyperbolic but is still a fact. A simple change like the one I suggested though would make the game even better than it currently is, as it would allow me to run Karka Queen, then Svanir, then Golem MKII, then Fire Elemental, then maybe Teq (who should be more doable now), then maybe Jungle Wurm (or something else), then Claw of Jormag, then I guess a break because Fire Elemental is the only thing currently running in the :45 block, and then maybe Shatterer. It’s a tight schedule, and I’d probably skip one or two of those in a given day, but I would at least have the option of playing them.

Or make the event circle doesn’t end perfectly, that way some events will change the time but still follow a fixed interval.
Like for example, Claw of Jormag in day 1 start at 14:15, in day 2 it start 14:30 and so on, so every event will occur in every time window at least once in a certain time range.

guardian.6489:

Calixtus.8617:

Perhaps an Anet member or 2 should join TTS or one of the other cross server guilds set up for big events to actually understand how these guilds work?

What’s funny is that there are actually 2 Anet Devs in TTS right now. While they don’t join our Teq raids very often they were often part of our initial wurm attempts and one of them was part of our first post-patch kill.

So you can imagine most of TTS is quite surprised we weren’t thought of when this new core system was being designed.

different devs are on different projects, and you were probably thought of, but this change was going through no matter what. Its clear just from how guild influence is completely wrong for this system, that every other concern is thought of as taking a back seat.
Fact is this change needed a bunch of systems to be in place to actually work. None of those systems are in place.
things like
Boss trackers
changed map travel functionality
Guild influence tied to servers
Reworked dynamic event system and restructured connections of main to shard.

its clear this decsion was decided on first and everything else was jury rigged into the system. I mean, thats how things go sometimes, but i still think its a mistake to so hastily implement this change without properly tweaking existing systems to back it up.

also i dont think it really gets to the core issues of the game. The game is going on two years old now, the big thing it needs is new lasting and interesting content. Aside from LA getting blown up the game is fairly similar to what it was day one, and nothing new is on the horizon. They also havent figured out how to deal with a maturing game population(level/experience wise)

Veron.8645:

World Boss schedule rollout clarification

Since the blog post does not say anything explicitly about this, and people have conflicting ideas, do we have:

1. World boss schedule hits everywhere all at once on April 15, entirely separate from the gradual MegaServer rollout
2. World boss schedule hits maps gradually starting April 15, tied to the gradual MegaServer rollout

Which is the case?

They just stated on a livestream that the schedule will start all at once – there will be no gradual implementation. They did not confirm that it will switch on the 15th, though that seems very likely.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Basically, Anet needs to tighten up the schedule a lot. I’d get into more detail, but I’ll simply link an example of the schedule I’m talking about. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwkJPRmocYDIeTlDNGZjbjRZUnM/
Basically it’s simple: blue means it’s spawning, otherwise it’s not. (No idea if the link is working)

Fixed the settings for the doc, so people should be able to view it now.

I can understand that there is the need for a unique for all server timeline regarding world bosses. Also i can understand that event chains that bring up bosses will be no more for the same motivation. But why put a fixed schedule, is too boring for a lot of motivation already explained by a lot of peoples. Also, at this time, there are 4 bosses not taken into account (Fire Shaman, Dredge Commissar, Eye of Zhaitan and Foulbear Chieftain), Orr temple not included, and a single TBD place available, so i think that already 3 bosses will be out of the schedule and maybe demoted to simple boss or who know…
Additionally in the future, hopefully, we will have more regions, and more bosses that will have to find a place in the schedule, old will go away to leave space for new? Will be a big brother style where people vote for expulsion? (just kidding now :p ).
My idea is, maybe another one just had that, don’t have read all the pages of that thread, so if another had that read it like “Our idea”; make a single timer for all servers, with usual time down, spawning window etc etc. We will run to have more events together like now (little less without guesting around but isn’t a problem) and all will be more dynamic and less work schedule.
Just my thought.

Well, according to the livestream the schedule is going live for all bosses on the 15th, not just those on megaserver maps, we may as well make sure you get one last look at those bosses we’ll never see again before that.

Love how these people stole the idea from another game and make it sound like they came up with the idea for it themselves.
Typical NCSoft stratagem.

For the record, ESO had megaserver tech implemented first….and it’s STILL the better game, IMNSHO.

This gets more depressing by the day. As part of the Jade Quarry server, I’m really feeling out of options at this point. I currently log in at a set time everyday and do whatever I want for a few hours, then line up with my server for a Tequatl kill before I log off.

I party up with the same people everyday and just about every one of them is already talking about playing other games after Tuesday when our community gets shredded. The map is in shambles trying to put together a guild just to keep players informed and ready for the changes and also being forced to move our usual Tequatl raid to a time when I personally can’t do it anymore.

I know I’m not the only one in this game exploring other gaming options to make the best use of the little time I have.

I have come to the realization that Anet only wants to keep new players interested enough to spend cash on the gem store. They want to make the maps seem full and have a completely different leveling system. This doesn’t do anything for the endgame players comfortable with what they do in game nowadays. You have cut the ability to farm different bosses into nothing. What little endgame they had is completely gone. They no longer care about the things the longterm players do.

SirMoogie.9263:

phys.7689:

world permanence is gone, this is why they had to kill the boss interactions in ORR, which is kind of sad, because although they didnt use it much, that type of trigger would have been an interesting design tool going forward.

And with it one of the major selling points that brought me to the game (the other being a connection to the lore from GW1).

Somewhere along the line MMOs went from offering interesting open worlds to explore and forge communities that help the world grow to offering “theme park” content that tells you what you should be doing and when.

Yep, worlds to explore are one of the biggest attractions for me in MMOs. I enjoyed Rift with its invasions and felt that GW2 has created an even more persistent, realistic world for me. When GW2 introduced invasions (which I guess have sadly been removed with the defeat of Scarlet) I was so very very psyched. I’m guessing it’s way too late, but I know that the devs do read the forums and I’m really hoping ArenaNet reconsiders and does NOT completely change philosophies for GW2.

And the irony here is: since I quit WoW, I’ve tended to hop from MMO to MMO just to try them. I don’t take them too seriously. I tried ESO beta, and for the first time in a while I decided to stick with GW2 and skip ESO because I liked GW2 better. Even in the same PARTY, you would pick up a quest, like blow a whistle for a dog, and your party member would not see the dog that was summoned, that you could see. It was a nightmare to adjust until you ended up in the same place where you could see your friends. I got a lot of that “I’m standing right on top of you, where are you” issue.

And shortly after I made that decision, GW2 announces that it is going to a system similar to ESO’s taking away one of the main things I love about GW2. I had visions of GW2 expanding on the invasions, the realism of the world, the impact I as a hero would have……

GW2 shies away from instanced raid content in favor of “more realistic” open world content and instead ends up completely decimating the concept of having a living world at all? What good is open world content if it doesn’t impact the world in any way? I keep coming back to this thread with the hopes to get some of my fears addressed, but instead I just keep getting sadder and sadder.

“I keep coming back to this thread with the hopes to get some of my fears addressed, but instead I just keep getting sadder and sadder,”

Me too man. Me too. Im not too worried about the mega server though. Although I liked it the way it was before. Dead zones are not much of an issue for me, made farming mobs a lot easier. Now with fully populated zones thats going to be alot more difficult as you’ll have a bunch of people in the same area farming those same mobs. I can live with that. But the schedule is the worst kitten idea ever. Ive posted about it before, as well as many others. I just want to hear from a dev concerning this. There has been plenty of dev response for many other issues, but none concerning the schedule. Please devs, throw us a bone here. Thanks!

Its going to be awesome in lvl 1-15 zones with the megaserver. Right now on TC wolfmaster evaporates in about 20 – 30 secs of spawn.
Don’t type to report he’s popped, just tag it fast.
edit: And heres the maw!

Holy sea of names, Treebeard…

Frankly, this world boss fiasco just shows that anet’s doing a massive server merge, and there is now only one server, with multiple overflows. They tell us that they’re going to try to keep up with our guild members, friends, party members, people from the same server, but eventually, those concepts will erode, and it will just be one server.

Also, a post in the API forum (soon to be depreciated, cause who needs stuff like apis when Anet can just schedule stuff for us) proves that the megaserver concept, and the fiasco that is world boss timers is a done deal. It cannot be stopped, and will not be stopped. It will come to all maps, no matter what we say or do.

Hi,

World Boss schedule will affect all world bosses at once even though the megaserver will only affect low level zones at first.

Explanation please.

—

MercyKilling.8519:

Love how these people stole the idea from another game and make it sound like they came up with the idea for it themselves.
Typical NCSoft stratagem.

For the record, ESO had megaserver tech implemented first….and it’s STILL the better game, IMNSHO.

And Guild Wars 1 had mega servers for cities long before ESO had it. In fact, if it weren’t for WvW, we’d like have had mega servers years ago.

ESO is NOT a game you should be touting as genre defining. There’s pretty much nothing in it that’s not horribly generic.

On topic: I think Anet needs to redo the schedule in such a way where different meta events are offered at different times throughout the day.

It’s the only fair way to move forward. I’m in Australia and these changes aren’t good for me.