Guild Wars 2

For a game that makes the claim of “play your way” removing the very basic choice of actually playing on the server you chose makes no sense.

This game restricts actual choice more than any other MMO I have played, in all aspects. “Play your Way” is spurious, meaningless babble coming from the current Anet.

titanlectro.5029:

It would be really nice to get some developer comments on this thread…

Clearly they are reading it because they released a language hotfix. We have dozens of questions and suggestions in this thread, we could use some feedback too.

they are probably fairly busy. They probably want to iron out a lot of this stuff fast (as some of it is pretty polarizing) and they want it to be a system thats ready for release in like a week? in china.

Just attempted Guild bounty tier 1, 3 parties of 5 players, all the same guild, all of the same home server.
One party was in Lornas looking for Bookworm Bwikki while the other two dealt with the other bounty, once the other bounty was finished the two parties waypointed to join the third in Lornas, at Mistriven waypoint where Bwikki had been found.

One party joined the first, the other party ended up on a different megaserver to the other two parties.

We got around this by leaving parties and taxi’ing each other, but seriously we should never have been split in the first place, especially for an active bounty mission.

This is going to be a nightmare tomorrow when we do a tier 3 with 400 people

Lalocat.6793:

I can’t find the option to turn off not seeing other languages in chat. I looked in general options and chat options.

someone posted about the chat option, but want to add that, even with it enabled(which it should be automatically).
It doesnt prevent you seeing other languages, all it does is block anyone who has their client in that language.

The language fix needs to be changed. It’s a quick bandaid that assumes everyone uses only one language and wants nothing to do with the others.
There are several reasons why someone’s client may be in a different language from the one they chat in.
Personally, I’m fluent in French and English and I’m learning German. Before the patch, I could play on an international server with a DE client, and chat mostly in EN, but if someone on an overflow/megaserver asked something in FR, I could just type a reply and hit send.
Now I have to use an EN or FR client if I want to be able to communicate with other players at all, and if I see someone asking something in the other language, I have to go change my own options in order to answer them.

SUGGESTION:
At the very least, allow players to choose their “main” language instead of taking the client localization.
One possible solution is to implement language-specific channels for English, French, German, Spanish and maybe other languages used by many players (like Polish and Russian). One international channel for everyone else. Allow players to pick any number of channels to display.
The problem with this is coordination for world events. Maybe have an “events” channel always on? The thing is, whatever you do to allow for such coordination, it HAS to allow cross-community contact and that means someone, somewhere is going to be exposed to a language other than their own and whine about it.

My suggestion.

Give people the chance to play the game as they want to. Some don’t like to be merged with huge maps filled with people since for them it adds nothing to the game. Why is that? Simple enough world bosses became sort of a joke as they are right now, the fire elemtal dead after 40 seconds is the proof of that.

There is joy in being in a large map with people yes, but there’s also something as “Too many people”. If doing the world events is reduced to a mindless rush towards the reward chest then there’s something wrong with the concept of world bosses if you ask me. Personaly I’d rather take a small group and struggle a bit to get that chest, rather then see it melt while I stood still pressing 1.

Then there’s the big elephant in the room that comes with mixing players of different languages in the same overflow. I almost refuse to call this thing a Megaserver, right now it’s just a system that finds a open spot for you and putt you in there for the sake of filling a room, generating a fake sense of community and group that is bound to vanish as soon as people realize that you’ll never see most of those persons again. Unless you turn your friends list into Facebook.

This sense of losing the community i very much enjoyed is killing this game for me. Piken Square is still present in the Tequatle and Jungle wurm boss fight, but outisde of that we are scattered to the winds.
I used to recognize all the guilds that I came across while exploring the world. Now I can’t even understand half of their names. What good is a community in an MMO if it’s volatile. You might as well change all those players for NPCs while at it, at least you know they won’t start arguing with each other on map chat.

This problems affect all of us, besides the more casual players that didn’t join an active guild or that didn’t create a community before this fallout. Those enjoy it of course, they do what they’ve done before but with more people around, little they care if they’ll see them again.

This effects mostly the Roleplay community, which, oddly enough, was even more active then the past before this patch. Now it’s crumbling. Chances to find random roleplay while walking somwhere are non existing, and trust me that is the backbone of the roleplay. Random interactions between people and characters outside of guilds, party or friend list. To find it now they are forced to stick with the same group with little chances to extend this reletionships outside because there are just too many people between them and the next roleplayer.

All this pessimism is not allevieted by the fact that they told us, before this patch, that the system would’ve been available only in the heart of the mists and low population zones. But they took that statement and ignored it, the patch was active since the first second in all major cities besides Divinitys Reach, the bank and Tp filled with random players standing still or AFK or talking crap in the map chat.
So they lied to us.

They said this system would’ve been smart and separate the differente lenguages in europe.
They lied and now they put an automatic language filter on the chat.

They said that it would place you with your guild and friends.
They lied as stated by many people on top of my rant.

I’m not against the idea of uniting people, i had some fun while leveling, but I want the freedom to chose where to go and with what kind of people stay.
If they could allow us to chose on which “Sub server” go that would be perfect. Like Queendale 1-2-3 / Fr/De/Sp or Rp.

Either that or stay true to their statement and make this system work. But again, I’d rather don’t leave the choice of where I’ll end up to a computer.

Ok, I Just finished the fight with High Priestess of Lyssa, and obtained the Illusions XIII trait. There have been many saying that these Events are Impossible to accomplish with mega server since there will always be people there to mess up the fight. Maybe it’s because I am on Tarnished Coast. Maybe it’s because players In there are generally more cooperative.

All I know is, all it took was some communication on map chat. " do not defend against those mobs..just wait.." a few times…. people stood around and chatted, when they weren’t avoiding and diodging and running away from mobs without engaging them. It is Not " Impossible."

I have unlocked 3 out of 5 grandmaster traits in 4 days. That hardly sounds “Impossible”. Try a different argument. This one is not compelling anymore.

Taygus.4571:

Lalocat.6793:

I can’t find the option to turn off not seeing other languages in chat. I looked in general options and chat options.

someone posted about the chat option, but want to add that, even with it enabled(which it should be automatically).
It doesnt prevent you seeing other languages, all it does is block anyone who has their client in that language.

In other words, if I am on the American servers and am speaking on map chat in Spanish with someone else. You will see me speak Spanish. But This as it always was.

No hay ninguna clase de cambio. Siempre ha sido asi.

1. The system is basically still in beta. Most of these are expected problems and ones that they’re working on fixing, especially language ones.

2. I would suggest that we bring the number of players on a map down a bit. Because there are generally one or two big events on a map at the same time, you tend to have a good proportion of the map over in that area, zerging the events and making the player focus on tagging the mob as opposed to fighting it.

I know everyone is gonna hate me for this, but i absolutely hate the new megaservers.

Everyone around me is complaining World Events are becoming Zerg events
people are missing events cause they only last about 3 min en when then join a event…
They miss the loot cause they dont have enough DPS.
I’m on the FS server in Europe (lots of nationality’s) and even just a few months ago the discussion about language diffences in map chat finally ended cause people finally accepted it, Now this all started all over again just after one day ppl are complaining all around cause off everyone talking trash of other players in other languages.
Is it me, or is this Mega server idea breaking up a lot of servers people are seriously doubting these actions, and i know A-net is all giving this for free, free of charge but please go back to the old server system A-net i liked that WAY better than this way, cause in this tempo people are gonna stop playing cause every where they go there will be people in one big zerg crossing the map only complaining.

Well i said what i wanted to say

Megaserver just equates to megazerg, megalag, braincells not longer required..and not all low pop server like it some have good communties that this has just blasted to atoms..i dont RP myself but do feel sorry for them as ive seen the trolling and its disgusting..and if the people who like as they now have people in maps to do stuff with, have never been on a good communtity server or in a good play together guild so when u go to a map you’re never alone unless you want to be..the idea is sound implementation is just a mess an it was never really needed .. please for the love of god anet remove it i already seen over 100people from a low pop server leave so what are the rest thinking( and those were hardcore GW1 & 2 players) but without the community combining the unplayabilty they’ve just given up on you..

Astralporing.1957:

Zok.4956:

anzenketh.3759:

Zok.4956

3.) Give players the choice, which “map/instanced” Version the Player wants to join,
as a drop-down list like:
#0, gendarran field, let the automatic decide (default)
#1 gendarran fields, 100 Players, language english
#2 gendarran fields, full
#3 gendarran fields, 10 Players, language german

etc…

The ArenaNet Developers have already commented that at the moment this is not possible.

Please give a link to an official post/website with this Information. Especially the “at the moment” part.

Thanks.

They actually didn’t say that. They said “this is not GW1 and works differently” – this doesn’t really mean it is impossible here.

Don’t disagree with you there. It is still possible. Anything is possible. However they basically said that the way shards are created is different from that of Guild Wars 1. Due to this it would be rather complicated to implement districts. It is not as simple as copying and pasting some code from a previous game.

Personally I would love to see districts.

BlackfoxKitsune.7480:

But the LAG OMG THE LAG!!!!

The lag is actually quite bad. I seriously understated it in my earlier post. I feel as though the South African gw2 community has just been hit over the head with the fat side of the latency stick.

For me, this game never use to lag prior to 15th april unless (I was doing something stupid on my side). Right now its highly unstable and almost unplayable during “prime” time. It feels as though the servers which are still running are overloaded (some server space probly rested as a result of large numbers of previously split players grouped into fewer instances aka megaserver testing).

meh.. glancing over a lot of what is in this thread its clear to see that there’s huge outcry for rolling back to the old system for various reasons like rollplayers and other event organisers, lag and server stability, guild missions, the multiple languages and bad behavior and weak fix that came with it, new restictions and fixed times for old dynamic event, server identity and community concerns….

Even so there’s a side of me that would want to see megaservers work for those who prefer running around everywhere in a clusterblob of name tags and particle effects with their machines screeming at them to turn their graphics down, and those on low-pop servers who struggle for numbers in Open World PvE.. But the only way that this can work is if the old pre-15th-april server system remains from what we see on client side to the infrastructure over on Anet side, and megaservers added in addition to that with players being able to choose between the two.

Nerelith.7360:

Ok, I Just finished the fight with High Priestess of Lyssa, and obtained the Illusions XIII trait. There have been many saying that these Events are Impossible to accomplish with mega server since there will always be people there to mess up the fight. Maybe it’s because I am on Tarnished Coast. Maybe it’s because players In there are generally more cooperative.

All I know is, all it took was some communication on map chat. " do not defend against those mobs..just wait.." a few times…. people stood around and chatted, when they weren’t avoiding and diodging and running away from mobs without engaging them. It is Not " Impossible."

I have unlocked 3 out of 5 grandmaster traits in 4 days. That hardly sounds “Impossible”. Try a different argument. This one is not compelling anymore.

That negates the basic concept of Guild Wars 2 that other people should not be able to ruin your content. I’d hate to be yelled at because I simply wanted to fight the mobs in front of me.

The basic problem as I see it is that the megaserver idea is a one size fits all solution. People should have more explicit choice on the types of servers that they get assigned to. This needs to be an explicit choice since the same person might want different things at different times and there is no way that the algorithm can know this.

A better solution is to allow the player to specify their preference for player density. Some players like being in a zerg, while others like myself want to avoid zergs like the plague even though I do like to see other players in the world. I suggest these options:

• Frontiersman: preference given to being placed on lowest population instance. Increases chance that new instance of map is started when entering map and as population rises. Will be notified when new instance of current map is started up and given option to join it.
• Adventurer: preference given to being placed on lowest population instances.
• Infantry: preference given to highest population instances
• No preference: the default and uses current algorithm

Having such options should greatly help the algorithm. When maps start to get full and a new instance needs to be started up, knowing exactly which players would prefer to go to the new sparsely populated map allows the algorithm to send them there first without having to forcibly split up guilds and other groups who want to stay together when zoning.

Knowing the player density preferences of the players on a map will also help determining when a map is considered “full”. Having a large number of players on a map for people who want to zerg is different than having a large number of players on a map who like to have smaller encounters.

I’m starting to feel that we are nothing more than beta testers for the China release.

HelixSky.4951:

A better solution is to allow the player to specify their preference for player density. Some players like being in a zerg, while others like myself want to avoid zergs like the plague even though I do like to see other players in the world. I suggest these options:

• Frontiersman: preference given to being placed on lowest population instance. Increases chance that new instance of map is started when entering map and as population rises. Will be notified when new instance of current map is started up and given option to join it.
• Adventurer: preference given to being placed on lowest population instances.
• Infantry: preference given to highest population instances
• No preference: the default and uses current algorithm

But we already had that before, kinda. The server selection window shows what the population of any given server is. Any changing your mind was just a server transfer or “guest” away.

Looking at it that way (from the perspective of players) really makes me wonder why there was a need for megaservers in the first place, unless of course Anet wanted/needed to cut down on active server infrastructure on their end, and that will have a negative impact on everyone, whether they want sparkle clusterblobs or some breathing space.

ok i see good points and bad point for this mega server ok good we now have enough people to do major events it has a good side but it doesnt out weight the bad for me right now
but now the Griefer and troll population is off the scale it used to be fine 1 in say 100 now its every third person this mega sever has increased the amount of trolls in TC and its gona make me not want to play its gona be like the other troll filled games you dont want to play i . e WoW or Rift
i am tired of having to deal with the 13 year olds that got moved there and at this rate the block is gona be half the population because thats how many are trolls & griefers
they correct your spelling every chance they get they push them selves onto you like some sort of bad smell and dont let go till there satisfied and they feel better they have made a person feel this way , they make juvenile remarks about wait for it " so is your mom "
is anybody else having this prob at all ?? is this just me because im finding it hard to stay on a game thats now full of trolls thats full of the people who want to grief
it seems like now TC is full of these

its become very low brow , very demeaning , very trash talk , more swearing than i have ever seen in TC a once thriving community , now a degrading troll infested griefer playground it seems and the comments are toxic

ive know TC all the time ive been on there and now map chat has gone to the dogs full of people trying to tear others down , rip into them for nothing , just to make them selves feel better

anet is this what you wanted to achive ??

i see this as one reason i may just not even bother

why go to an atmosphere where the air is toxic the min you say anything someones right there to correct you or right there to make you feel as tho your in the wrong or grief or troll either someones name or a 13 year old wanting something so they push them sleves on to you i find this deegrading at best anet

blocking this isnt a solution but this has already now had a lot of swearing and have had a lot of others thinking they can tear people down to make them selves feel better

smh it didnt used to be this way

why do you think people leave games ??

edit im fine with everything else but this ……….. something needs to be done and fast before communities are ripped apart for good and you lose what it took you a while to build/achieve Anet FIX IT

Synesh.1094:

My suggestion.

Give people the chance to play the game as they want to. Some don’t like to be merged with huge maps filled with people since for them it adds nothing to the game. Why is that? Simple enough world bosses became sort of a joke as they are right now, the fire elemtal dead after 40 seconds is the proof of that.

There is joy in being in a large map with people yes, but there’s also something as “Too many people”. If doing the world events is reduced to a mindless rush towards the reward chest then there’s something wrong with the concept of world bosses if you ask me. Personaly I’d rather take a small group and struggle a bit to get that chest, rather then see it melt while I stood still pressing 1.

Then there’s the big elephant in the room that comes with mixing players of different languages in the same overflow. I almost refuse to call this thing a Megaserver, right now it’s just a system that finds a open spot for you and putt you in there for the sake of filling a room, generating a fake sense of community and group that is bound to vanish as soon as people realize that you’ll never see most of those persons again. Unless you turn your friends list into Facebook.

This sense of losing the community i very much enjoyed is killing this game for me. Piken Square is still present in the Tequatle and Jungle wurm boss fight, but outisde of that we are scattered to the winds.
I used to recognize all the guilds that I came across while exploring the world. Now I can’t even understand half of their names. What good is a community in an MMO if it’s volatile. You might as well change all those players for NPCs while at it, at least you know they won’t start arguing with each other on map chat.

This problems affect all of us, besides the more casual players that didn’t join an active guild or that didn’t create a community before this fallout. Those enjoy it of course, they do what they’ve done before but with more people around, little they care if they’ll see them again.

This effects mostly the Roleplay community, which, oddly enough, was even more active then the past before this patch. Now it’s crumbling. Chances to find random roleplay while walking somwhere are non existing, and trust me that is the backbone of the roleplay. Random interactions between people and characters outside of guilds, party or friend list. To find it now they are forced to stick with the same group with little chances to extend this reletionships outside because there are just too many people between them and the next roleplayer.

All this pessimism is not allevieted by the fact that they told us, before this patch, that the system would’ve been available only in the heart of the mists and low population zones. But they took that statement and ignored it, the patch was active since the first second in all major cities besides Divinitys Reach, the bank and Tp filled with random players standing still or AFK or talking crap in the map chat.
So they lied to us.

They said this system would’ve been smart and separate the differente lenguages in europe.
They lied and now they put an automatic language filter on the chat.

They said that it would place you with your guild and friends.
They lied as stated by many people on top of my rant.

I’m not against the idea of uniting people, i had some fun while leveling, but I want the freedom to chose where to go and with what kind of people stay.
If they could allow us to chose on which “Sub server” go that would be perfect. Like Queendale 1-2-3 / Fr/De/Sp or Rp.

Either that or stay true to their statement and make this system work. But again, I’d rather don’t leave the choice of where I’ll end up to a computer.

World bosses shouldn’t be killable with a small 5 man group. something that can step on you to kill you is really going to die from choping at its feet. Fire elemental especially which should be intangiable dying from sword swings is a joke. Fale mechanisms shouldn’t be timer base but trigger base/preventable. If you don’t do something uber attack happens or dps from boss becomes so high it wipes you when you enter or new stage of difficulty arises with time fighting the boss. I beleive that events shouldn’t scale based on numbers but that there should be rankings of world bosses with set difficulties and rewards that reflect the effort necessary for completion.

Incorporate randomization of boss that spawns/same boss to incorporates different attack mechanics to keep people thinking on there feet.

Regarding nibblesalil’s question on the increase of trolls due to megaserver:

I started reporting and blocking dozens of players since megaserver went active. I finally just gave up wasting my time with that anymore and have permanently shut my chat off.

Reporting does not really amount to anything at all, despite what some say, as the same players with their sexualized and immature names and highly inappropriate comments and conversations are still around day after day of reporting for months. I don’t expect them to suddenly start actually doing something about these players…or the guild names for that matter…the horrible, horrible guild names with full swear words and of gang kitten and violent “deflowering” and much, much worse. Nothing is done about those. Why must one screenshot the player and their guild name and then come here and file a complaint to support to get the guild name looked at. Why can’t we file an Inappropriate Character Name report in-game and then the person who looks at the report take 2 additional seconds to also look at the guild names this character is in. Or add an Inappropriate Guild Name option to the in-game report?

I do not even know if there is a maximum limit to the block list, but it will not matter as the trolls carry on conversations in /emote knowing full well that blocking them does not block what they say in that. And to even block a person being inappropriate in /emote one must manually enter their name to the contacts list and then report/block them. And with the /emote range being so insanely far, I see inappropriate emote conversations almost no matter where I go in a map. We’ve begged ANet to fix the block function, they refuse to do so.

And that is just chat trolls. This megaserver being forced on all of us has also made my fears realized. One day after it’s forced on us and there is no getting away from other players. There is no peaceful exploring any longer. It is always a dozen players running across your screen at all times.

It only took 2 days of megaserver being live for me to find myself getting trolled by a mob of flamethrower engineers constantly following me around and flaming me and everything else around me. Finally they moved on to trolling someone else and I was relieved…and then I felt bad knowing what that person was then going through.

Yes, trolls are everywhere and unavoidable now, even with chat disabled. I’m not sure if I like the game anymore. The main thing I derived enjoyment from in this game, and was the main reason I enjoyed playing, was taking a pleasant stroll through the woods and mountainside where I could appreciate the sounds, the art, atmosphere… To go on a hike down trails or to simulate camping and surviving in the woods…to hunt for my food. ANet has made it clear that they now seem to want no form of roleplaying to be done or able to be done in their game.

Yes, I’m quite disappointed.

I actually see it as an opportunity to get rid of these trolls and toxic individuals. ANet also bans inappropriate character names-report those as well.

It’s not that there are more trolls, but that now you get to see them more often. As my Elementalist is fond of saying: “Kill ’em all!”

Though I by no means am trying to invalidate anyone else’s experiences, I already reported one player for insulting another on map chat: “didn’t you read? your stupidity is making my head hurt!” in caps of course. Duly reported, didn’t even address him personally. I have however seen such a case only once; if you see those brats spouting nonsense on map chat, please report them to get rid of most of their ilk.

“Freedom of speech” doesn’t exist in GW2. We must abide by their rules. If you read anything offensive, go ahead and report-they will take care of it.

StinVec.3621:

Regarding nibblesalil’s question on the increase of trolls due to megaserver:

I started reporting and blocking dozens of players since megaserver went active. I finally just gave up wasting my time with that anymore and have permanently shut my chat off.

Reporting does not really amount to anything at all, despite what some say, as the same players with their sexualized and immature names and highly inappropriate comments and conversations are still around day after day of reporting for months. I don’t expect them to suddenly start actually doing something about these players…or the guild names for that matter…the horrible, horrible guild names with full swear words and of gang kitten and violent “deflowering” and much, much worse. Nothing is done about those. Why must one screenshot the player and their guild name and then come here and file a complaint to support to get the guild name looked at. Why can’t we file an Inappropriate Character Name report in-game and then the person who looks at the report take 2 additional seconds to also look at the guild names this character is in. Or add an Inappropriate Guild Name option to the in-game report?

I do not even know if there is a maximum limit to the block list, but it will not matter as the trolls carry on conversations in /emote knowing full well that blocking them does not block what they say in that. And to even block a person being inappropriate in /emote one must manually enter their name to the contacts list and then report/block them. And with the /emote range being so insanely far, I see inappropriate emote conversations almost no matter where I go in a map. We’ve begged ANet to fix the block function, they refuse to do so.

And that is just chat trolls. This megaserver being forced on all of us has also made my fears realized. One day after it’s forced on us and there is no getting away from other players. There is no peaceful exploring any longer. It is always a dozen players running across your screen at all times.

It only took 2 days of megaserver being live for me to find myself getting trolled by a mob of flamethrower engineers constantly following me around and flaming me and everything else around me. Finally they moved on to trolling someone else and I was relieved…and then I felt bad knowing what that person was then going through.

Yes, trolls are everywhere and unavoidable now, even with chat disabled. I’m not sure if I like the game anymore. The main thing I derived enjoyment from in this game, and was the main reason I enjoyed playing, was taking a pleasant stroll through the woods and mountainside where I could appreciate the sounds, the art, atmosphere… To go on a hike down trails or to simulate camping and surviving in the woods…to hunt for my food. ANet has made it clear that they now seem to want no form of roleplaying to be done or able to be done in their game.

Yes, I’m quite disappointed.

i agree with you i have to be honest here , i find and am finding it more difficult by the day
the air the atmosphere is toxic , the comments made the things that are goin on here is wrong they say just block that does not remove anything but there name
they can still stand there in front of you and emote you can still see that even if there on block or not , can still see where you are even if you have blocked them they can still follow you and find you where ever you are

i used to enjoy this game and played it a lot

its become a toxic troll and griefer playground that you no longer wana be near or around it will become silent waste land and no one will talk to anyone

i find it intimidating just being there i find it more degrading by the day it has changed a lot and not for the better

anet is this what you wanted ?

im getting more and more concerned about the state of TC

its not even fun to talk in map chat you have to not speak because if you do someones there to tear you down yet again it is not a pleasent experience anymore and it doesnt look like its ever gona get fixed anet poor show

extremly dissappointed

people are not gona log into a toxic mess , why would they subject themselves to this ??

Star Ace.5207:

I actually see it as an opportunity to get rid of these trolls and toxic individuals. ANet also bans inappropriate character names-report those as well.

It’s not that there are more trolls, but that now you get to see them more often. As my Elementalist is fond of saying: “Kill ’em all!”

i agree with that !! LOL 100000% LOL

I don’t think ANet considered any consequence of Megaservers whatsoever beyond “well low-population servers will get more players!!!!!”

• Server communities are getting wrecked. All talk about seeing players from your world/guild… just talk. Doesn’t happen. Just like overflows, megaservers are created by the time you zoned into the map and nothing else matters.
• No way to communicate with players about events that won’t be on the same map. If I wanted to do a world event, I used to be able to go to Lion’s Arch (or Gendarran Fields in the past few weeks) and ask people if they wanted to do it with me, and we could all zone into the map and do the event. If something interesting was happening in WvW during off hours, I could pop into the hub map and get people to come into WvW with me. This is now impossible.
• World bosses other than Tequatl and Wurm are now pointless. You can literally afk while autoattacking, take little to no damage, and be done in less than thirty seconds for almost every world boss.
• Anyone without a high-end PC is screwed because there are constantly stupid numbers of players on the map if anything’s happening.
• All waypoints that can be contested show as contested, forcing either double waypoint fees or frustratingly long walks between areas. You can’t know whether a dungeon is going to be open or not until you reach the map.
• If you’re trying to avoid a player that you’ve been in conflict with, it is now impossible, because servers are meaningless and you could be zoned into a map with that player at any time regardless of server, no matter what time of day.

No one asked for this. No one wanted this. No one is fooled by the PRspeak. Megaservers are trash. Get them out of the game.

what about people who have 6k WvW chests even when they are rank 100 ?

Alcyone.8695:

I don’t think ANet considered any consequence of Megaservers whatsoever beyond “well low-population servers will get more players!!!!!”

• Server communities are getting wrecked. All talk about seeing players from your world/guild… just talk. Doesn’t happen. Just like overflows, megaservers are created by the time you zoned into the map and nothing else matters.
• No way to communicate with players about events that won’t be on the same map. If I wanted to do a world event, I used to be able to go to Lion’s Arch (or Gendarran Fields in the past few weeks) and ask people if they wanted to do it with me, and we could all zone into the map and do the event. If something interesting was happening in WvW during off hours, I could pop into the hub map and get people to come into WvW with me. This is now impossible.
• World bosses other than Tequatl and Wurm are now pointless. You can literally afk while autoattacking, take little to no damage, and be done in less than thirty seconds for almost every world boss.
• Anyone without a high-end PC is screwed because there are constantly stupid numbers of players on the map if anything’s happening.
• All waypoints that can be contested show as contested, forcing either double waypoint fees or frustratingly long walks between areas. You can’t know whether a dungeon is going to be open or not until you reach the map.
• If you’re trying to avoid a player that you’ve been in conflict with, it is now impossible, because servers are meaningless and you could be zoned into a map with that player at any time regardless of server, no matter what time of day.

No one asked for this. No one wanted this. No one is fooled by the PRspeak. Megaservers are trash. Get them out of the game.

when you used to ask people did they want to do anything in LA or GF you used to get someone goin ok now its greifeing now its mostly trolls that go yeah i will etc , for example a dungeon i was at TA and this person said ok trolled a lot and left so half way through a dungeon they left we got chucked out

If you’re trying to avoid a player that you’ve been in conflict with, it is now impossible, because servers are meaningless and you could be zoned into a map with that player at any time regardless of server, no matter what time of day and even on block they can emote there not really blocked then this comment i agree with a LOT 10000% in fact you hit the nail on the head there

Alcyone.8695:

I don’t think ANet considered any consequence of Megaservers whatsoever beyond “well low-population servers will get more players!!!!!”

• Server communities are getting wrecked. All talk about seeing players from your world/guild… just talk. Doesn’t happen. Just like overflows, megaservers are created by the time you zoned into the map and nothing else matters.
• No way to communicate with players about events that won’t be on the same map. If I wanted to do a world event, I used to be able to go to Lion’s Arch (or Gendarran Fields in the past few weeks) and ask people if they wanted to do it with me, and we could all zone into the map and do the event. If something interesting was happening in WvW during off hours, I could pop into the hub map and get people to come into WvW with me. This is now impossible.
• World bosses other than Tequatl and Wurm are now pointless. You can literally afk while autoattacking, take little to no damage, and be done in less than thirty seconds for almost every world boss.
• Anyone without a high-end PC is screwed because there are constantly stupid numbers of players on the map if anything’s happening.
• All waypoints that can be contested show as contested, forcing either double waypoint fees or frustratingly long walks between areas. You can’t know whether a dungeon is going to be open or not until you reach the map.
• If you’re trying to avoid a player that you’ve been in conflict with, it is now impossible, because servers are meaningless and you could be zoned into a map with that player at any time regardless of server, no matter what time of day.

No one asked for this. No one wanted this. No one is fooled by the PRspeak. Megaservers are trash. Get them out of the game.

Do you think this kind of response will help your case? I know I would ignore it as an emotional rant, and it’s not even true (“no one wanted this!”)

This is not a personal insult, though. Just a reminder that often the delivery is as important as the content of our message.

Seems to me the bulk of the changes made in this update were to boost the economy. Less people doing WB’s means less rares and exotics on the BLTC. Which will make them worth more. Then players will need to buy gems to own an exotic item. Anet wins, we lose.

AMF..

Alcyone.8695:

I don’t think ANet considered any consequence of Megaservers whatsoever beyond “well low-population servers will get more players!!!!!”

• Server communities are getting wrecked. All talk about seeing players from your world/guild… just talk. Doesn’t happen. Just like overflows, megaservers are created by the time you zoned into the map and nothing else matters.
• No way to communicate with players about events that won’t be on the same map. If I wanted to do a world event, I used to be able to go to Lion’s Arch (or Gendarran Fields in the past few weeks) and ask people if they wanted to do it with me, and we could all zone into the map and do the event. If something interesting was happening in WvW during off hours, I could pop into the hub map and get people to come into WvW with me. This is now impossible.
• World bosses other than Tequatl and Wurm are now pointless. You can literally afk while autoattacking, take little to no damage, and be done in less than thirty seconds for almost every world boss.
• Anyone without a high-end PC is screwed because there are constantly stupid numbers of players on the map if anything’s happening.
• All waypoints that can be contested show as contested, forcing either double waypoint fees or frustratingly long walks between areas. You can’t know whether a dungeon is going to be open or not until you reach the map.
• If you’re trying to avoid a player that you’ve been in conflict with, it is now impossible, because servers are meaningless and you could be zoned into a map with that player at any time regardless of server, no matter what time of day.

No one asked for this. No one wanted this. No one is fooled by the PRspeak. Megaservers are trash. Get them out of the game.

Actually people have been asking for something similar since the very beginning of the game sooo. Of course the system is going to need a few tweaks, including the amount of times the big bosses start up a day, and none of the cities should be megaservers or at the very least /Team chat should be server specific so that if you go into any map you can call out WvW or other thing to just your server. So you should stop talking for everyone else it makes you look ignorant.

My suggestion. Totally remove what you did Anet, it’s caused far too many problems than it’s fixed and you’re losing players over it.

Does anyone have a list of zones that aren’t megaservers?

Trixxy.6937:

HelixSky.4951:

A better solution is to allow the player to specify their preference for player density. Some players like being in a zerg, while others like myself want to avoid zergs like the plague even though I do like to see other players in the world. I suggest these options:

• Frontiersman: preference given to being placed on lowest population instance. Increases chance that new instance of map is started when entering map and as population rises. Will be notified when new instance of current map is started up and given option to join it.
• Adventurer: preference given to being placed on lowest population instances.
• Infantry: preference given to highest population instances
• No preference: the default and uses current algorithm

But we already had that before, kinda. The server selection window shows what the population of any given server is. Any changing your mind was just a server transfer or “guest” away.

Looking at it that way (from the perspective of players) really makes me wonder why there was a need for megaservers in the first place, unless of course Anet wanted/needed to cut down on active server infrastructure on their end, and that will have a negative impact on everyone, whether they want sparkle clusterblobs or some breathing space.

I like the megaserver idea better because it can be per map and thus more accurate. I don’t care if the server I’m on has a decent population. I only care if where I’m playing has a decent population. The problem as I stated it before is that ANet has taken away player choice with the one size fits all megaserver.

Instead of megaservers, ANet should allow players to play on a virtual server that places them on map instances based on a prioritised list of criteria that they can select. For example I really have no affinity to the server I’m on. I just want to be able to go out into a populated world but not one that is so populated that I don’t feel like I am having an impact. Other people might greatly value playing with the same group of people. Others might want to follow a zerg around to maximise their gains.

It seems like ANet has the capability to give everyone what they want if they would only let people tell them what they want. That would create virtual worlds that were really different from one another and more suited to each individual player’s tastes.

In fact now that everybody is essentially in the same world, there is no reason why each map instance of that world must identical. A truly wild idea would be for ANet to change the parameters of some map instances so that some versions would spawn higher level mobs, or have fewer waypoints accessible, and so on. ANet could add higher level content to lower level zones without affecting low level players who still need those zones. Players could choose if they wanted to “see” these special zones or not.

phys.7689:

titanlectro.5029:

It would be really nice to get some developer comments on this thread…

Clearly they are reading it because they released a language hotfix. We have dozens of questions and suggestions in this thread, we could use some feedback too.

they are probably fairly busy. They probably want to iron out a lot of this stuff fast (as some of it is pretty polarizing) and they want it to be a system thats ready for release in like a week? in china.

Or, more likely, this is weekend (and holiday time as well), so they are not at work.

HelixSky.4951:

I like the megaserver idea better because it can be per map and thus more accurate. I don’t care if the server I’m on has a decent population. I only care if where I’m playing has a decent population. The problem as I stated it before is that ANet has taken away player choice with the one size fits all megaserver.

Instead of megaservers, ANet should allow players to play on a virtual server that places them on map instances based on a prioritised list of criteria that they can select. For example I really have no affinity to the server I’m on. I just want to be able to go out into a populated world but not one that is so populated that I don’t feel like I am having an impact. Other people might greatly value playing with the same group of people. Others might want to follow a zerg around to maximise their gains.

It seems like ANet has the capability to give everyone what they want if they would only let people tell them what they want. That would create virtual worlds that were really different from one another and more suited to each individual player’s tastes.
…

Kinda like what we have in gw1 and similar to how personal story is managed here. An instance of a map that could be customised to suit various player needs for whether they want zergs, solo or something inbetween and choice of which people they want to be with like guildmates, server crowd, party or full random. Maybe these instances could have additional content like Queensdale Hard Mode with extra tougher mobs scaled for well geared moderately skilled lvl 80’s etc.

Yeah I agree and thats all good provided firstly, players have a choice of where they want to be and who they want to be with and secondly that it can be done in a way that doesnt compromise server stability and make us all lag.

megaservers are bad and are hurting large guilds.

I’m going to be honest- i absolutely hate the megaserver system. i feel like guild wars 2 is focused around guilds, but this megaserver absolutely destroys any organized run for guilds – be it world events, guild missions, temple events, or anything guildies want to do together with more than five members.
I hope this will be addressed, i feel like guild wars should focus around the QoL of guilds since it claims to be about the guilds.
Being in a 500 man guild with at least 100 members at all times, running anything other than dungeons and wvw is impossible and has been made less fun by the megaserver system

I experienced the megaserver on maps such as Malchor’s Leap, Southsun Cove etc and can’t say I like the experience.

I am not sure what are anet’s policy on general map chat languages for MS but for some reason I have found myself paired to maps with french flooded in the chat, this makes me feel out of sorts to say the least, I’m from a ‘normal’ european server and have no french friends added to my list as far as I know and hardly think that alone is reason for what keeps happening to me.

This only heightened my fear about being ‘organized’ by a system and have my choice on my own whereabouts taken away, I have nothing against non english people but if I had wanted to see map chat flooded by some other language other than english I would have joined the respective server.

Other than that, the idea itself has merit, I can see the appeal to populate less frequented maps such as leveling maps to give people a chance to find others to do things with.

But I don’t agree that this should happen on every map, I would like to join a map B where the group I’m doing things with in map A waypointed to, but I can’t control that and thus have no guarantee for it to happen, as sometimes our groups are larger than 5 man, also I absolutely dislike that for MS maps a person can never be sure on the timer for events such as the temples, the wait is abhorrent and unecessary.

Bottomline is, people shouldn’t be forced to do or be somewhere, I no longer recognize the players in the same map as me and there are too many of them for the MS map events, I’m a guildless person so my connections to anything are shaky, but I had hoped I’d at least see people from my own server more….

The Megaserver system was a good idea for small groups and individuals, however, it has horrible consequences for large guilds who are active with world boss events. We’re already having people who can’t get into map areas for WvW, waiting for entirely too long to be able to help defend our keep, and that’s not an event which is time limited. When you cut down on the number of times a day that world bosses spawn, you force guilds to have to speak over each other and negotiate which guild will lead which world boss event. Megaservers will only complicate this already difficult process.

Is there really a problem with the sort of zoning that you used in Guild Wars? For large group events, it was fairly easy for guilds to plan in advance which zone was going to be theirs, publicizing this information in a place which all the members could access and plan accordingly. Please find some way for us to work with the people we know and trust.

Megaserver is ruining the community on SoR and making it impossible to organize large guild events.

I feel sorry for the Anet people who are going to have to spend their whole weekend with the itching thought in the back of their head “Man, I’m going to be buried in email when I get back to the office.” Don’t roll out big patches right before your long weekend, guys!

Astralporing.1957:

phys.7689:

titanlectro.5029:

It would be really nice to get some developer comments on this thread…

Clearly they are reading it because they released a language hotfix. We have dozens of questions and suggestions in this thread, we could use some feedback too.

they are probably fairly busy. They probably want to iron out a lot of this stuff fast (as some of it is pretty polarizing) and they want it to be a system thats ready for release in like a week? in china.

Or, more likely, this is weekend (and holiday time as well), so they are not at work.

Thats probably the case. But there is no need to worry, im sure Skynet is keeping track of all our feedbacks in the game. Even though the actual feedback is not playing the game since its a mess now. But yeah, there will be some amazing statistics and charts about how Megaservers improved the game, because Skynet says so.

I wrote this post a couple weeks back in the feedback thread. Somewhat in response to my post (and others’) you consoled us, saying that the mega-server won’t affect what we do.

I’m coming to you now saying that it is affecting us. My guild gets 150+ people online for world events, and I see, if I’m lucky, five of them. I’m very nervous about our guild missions tonight, which is why I’m just going to repost it in full.

Please think deeply on this. Thanks.

Phineas Poe.3018:

My name is Phineas Poe and I am a senior officer of Ethereal Guardians [EG] on the Sanctum of Rall server. We are a very large guild. We have ~150 concurrent players online during NA prime hours. Just in the past 24 hours we’ve probably had 300 members of our 500-man roster sign online. So understand me when I say we are a very large guild.

We do a lot of things together. We do dungeons and fractals, both tutorial runs and speed clears. We kill Tequatl daily. We do guild missions every Saturday. We do large-scale open world events like monthly jumping puzzle runs. And we push world events on a daily basis for Sanctum of Rall and participate actively in the event train. This past Sunday one of our members organized a dive master run, which saw quite a bit of a turnout.

So understand me when I say that we are not a “guild of pugs,” as some smaller guilds may call guilds of our size. We have an active community—a vibrant one—with a culture, a voice, and everything.

We were for the most part excited for the feature patch. As PvX players, we are looking forward to the PvP reward overhaul that will allow us to take our swag into the Mists. We are looking forward to the Reward Track system as an alternative way to acquire gear. And we are looking forward to watching some of our guild members ascend in rank and see obtaining Dragon as a reachable goal. We’re happy that they’re happy.

But there’s one thing we’re concerned with: the mega-server system. We’re not outright displeased the idea, and I think it will help revitalize Sanctum of Rall getting some mixture with other lower population servers. Since the WvW exodus, things just haven’t been the same on Sanctum, even with regard to PvE! We are looking forward to seeing the world more active and bustling, both inside and outside of towns, but there are a few questions that we have.

We want to be sure that this new system will not threaten what we have been building over the past year and more, crafting a guild that wields enough power to singularly kill Tequatl on its own regardless of what server we guest to, because we like doing Tequatl as a guild. Unfortunately this often means that there is very little space for other players. We don’t make a point to be exclusionary. We don’t mind at all when randoms attend our kills, whether it’s on Sanctum of Rall or whether we guest to another server. We advertise our Teamspeak server openly and are more than welcome to teaching new players the fight. We are OK with this content being open world, but we want to know if we will still have the ability to at least play in a map that isn’t already well populated.

I’m concerned, primarily because the idea of the mega-server system is to make the game feel more populated, yes? This is a very good thing and makes the game more fun. I like the idea of Snowden Drifts being full of people from all different servers farming iron. But I’m not so sure I like that idea when I’m trying to pull 100 people into the map so we can do our own Guild Puzzle. Understand that I am more than satisfied with the idea of the world feeling alive and populated, but understand as well that my objective as an officer of a large guild is to find a way to accommodate my members to the best of my ability—and I am concerned that your objective of making the world feel more populated directly conflicts with our ability to do guild missions and Tequatl.

Continued.

Phineas Poe.3018:

So here is my question: is it out of the question that guild missions occur in a fresh map? Is it out of the question that Tequatl events started by guilds are capable of being started in our own overflow? We understand that you want the world to feel inclusionary, and we’re OK with that. Don’t let them be entirely locked! Just let us have the opportunity to spawn a new map at our leisure. If other players manage to come in after we’ve started our Puzzle or Tequatl run, that’s more than OK, and we are more than happy to create an inclusionary atmosphere that welcomes non-guildies to our events. We want that.

It may be hard for you to believe me, but there’s nothing more satisfying to me than to see a random player participate in our Tequatl kills and receive Tequatl’s Horde. I love seeing some newer, less experienced player walking away with mounds of goodies, as I believe that is exactly what these world events stand for. We like helping our server with Tequatl to the best of our ability, and we like participating with the rest of the game at large.

Contrary to what other guilds may think of us, we don’t want to hide in our own overflows, or our own server. We don’t want the game to feel like there’s no one else around outside of EG. That’s already kind of (no offense Rallians) how SoR feels like, and is why we are excited for the mega-server system.

But if you could at least throw us a bone here and allow us not just the ability to start Teq at will, but start it in a fresh overflow, you will solve a lot of the issues that are about to crop up with the mega-server system. And we’ll spend all the influence or merits required to do this. Charge us. Fleece us. We don’t mind. Just give us the option!

I do believe that the mega-server system is a gigantic step in the right direction for the game at large, but I do think that this is something that you should take under consideration to make sure that there are no unnecessary side effects that result in making things tougher for us. We truly believe that this game can be what everyone wants it to be, and that we can find a way to satisfy large guilds like EG in organizing events without going so far away as to exclude content from the open world entirely.

Thank you.

I don’t like how the Mega servers make it hard for us larger guilds to get things done with other guilds. Events aren’t fun like they used to be because we can’t have people to help out or to help us.

Hey Anet. I am Part of a Large Guild. 500 full at all times. We do the world event train but its be hard lately. The Mega server make its impossible to group up out side of parties. Please work on getting us in to the same maps. Guild mission will be a reck this week.

We need a option for making guild instances. Please stop hurting large guilds.

One thing i do like about the Mega server is that at night like 2pst-6pst i can do events with other players. Good Idea, sad its not going to work.

Megaservers has been really difficult for large guilds to be in the same world events. Affecting Guild missions as well.

So we tried doing guild missions today, and it was an unmitigated disaster trying to get 150 people onto the same version of the same map.

Supposedly being in the same guild and the same server should help, but it didnt. We had to keep ferrying people into the same one, and trying to figure out which map had the most people in the first place in it and all kinds of other things.

It was kittening terrible.

Between this and the hero panel UI being totally borked, this patch has been pretty annoying for me.

(However, thank you for account bound things. That was pretty awesome)

It’s a shame they implemented this patch without thinking it thru. The changes in World Boss events is horrid, including the timers. With the advent of API the websites gave accurate info of when Meta events should happen, much more accurate than before. A person could log on in the evening, knowing that they would be able to do a few events, say Jormag, Jungle Wurm, Svanir Shaman Chief, the Shatterer. Quite disappointed at how they changed the sequence or required participation in said events (the Maw was always, kill grawl, escort Brolin, kill mobs, destroy totem, kill the Chief’s underlings, destroy Portals, kill Shaman Chief, collect loot.) Now that event fails if you destroy totem, before Shaman chief arrives. You made him difficult enough with a previous change. If it takes 5 minutes for pre-events, provided no one has destroyed the totem, and 15 minutes to kill him (15 minutes is allowed) doesn’t that inhibit your new schedule of low level boss events? I echo the concerns of the megaservers and understand that Anet is doing this to conserve resources (which am sure with the flock of people leaving the game is necessary). New content is what is wanted, leave the old stuff alone. tbh, I wish they would kitten-can this patch and go back to the old way. Large guild events/missions are nigh on impossible to do, bounties, especially when the entire map is contested. Why in the world would Snowden Drifts or Plains of Ashford (for puzzle) have each and every WP contested? Well, I went from avg of 13 hours per day for a year, to about 1 hr per day to complete dailies (which of course changed) and I suppose I can go to 0 hours a day, and you (Anet) don’t need my 30$ a month or so in buying gems. Megaservers are 10 times worse than the overflow events ever were. Good luck for the future Anet.

I am not a fan of this megaserver concept. It has been terribly executed and not very well thought out. It’s extremely difficult for some of the larger even medium sized guilds to do their guild events now that everyone is getting lumped into the same zones.

If you’re going to do this Anet at least name the different megaservers so we know where we are or give larger guilds the ability to force our own servers so we can do events together. This new system is terrible.

Just attempted guild missions with 145 people online. That went horrible. We had 1/5 in one zone, 2/5 in another zone, many just scattered all around. Took us a good 20 minutes each time to try and get in a semi clear zone to try attempting this as a large guild. Megaserver works great for having a full zone, but completely ruins our large guild experience.

I love megaservers but guild missions are a nightmare. Half the people can’t get in and then have to do it on another server or almost the entire guild doesn’t get credit. I hope this gets resolved and we don’t have to reschedule to another day.

The mega server is good and it is also bad in some ways. So don’t trash it completely.

So it’s good because maps don’t feel empty anymore, so going for map completion is fun again. Being in a map by yourself is really awful, and at least now you see toons running everywhere.

And it’s bad because it affects large guilds whenever they try to do guild missions or world raiding.

That’s why I think maybe Anet should consider making some of these instanced. I know Anet is set on making the world feel like it’s alive and that anybody can join these events, whether they are part of that guild or not. But by doing so, it’s affecting guilds with this new mega server system.

Now I know the mega server is still in test mode, so I have hope that they will find a way to really make it work for everyone, somehow.

So I hope they don’t completely get rid of it because of some complaints, because like I said, it does have it’s perks.