Guild Wars 2

Holy cow, they deleted the thread.

This is starting to get ridiculous.

Despite being a roleplayer on a lower populated server, I wasn’t too worried about this update before it came. Boy, was I wrong. The fact that we’ve already seen issues with being placed on the same maps within guilds and friends circles is very annoying, but what’s even worse for me is that I can’t visit any of the cities without lowering my settings to a place where the game starts to look pretty darned ugly, or I’ll have to suffer horrible lag.

I honestly do not understand why you’re including the cities in the megaservers at all? Out in the world I can see the merit of running into more players, perhaps, but in the cities? All it does is clog up the space for us with older computers, making it close to impossible to play at all. This is very disheartening, especially upon hearing that its “all working as intended”.

I spend quite a lot of real money on my gems, upgrades and fashion, and right now it feels like all of that has been to a waste.

This is all giving me serious flash backs of Star Wars Galaxies debacle with NGE. I really hope it doesn’t end the same for Guild Wars 2.

You know, all of this would’ve been avoided, if a PTS (Public Test Server – Yes, they DO exist my dear A-Net!) was used for us to test the kitten Skynet before they actually force it down our throats. Instead, we’re experiencing a buggy and worthless system, that tore our communities apart, sent friends to different worlds, broke guild events (RP or not), and made communication a nightmare, especially on EU servers.

A-Net, have you actually played on a EU server, after letting Skynet taking over, to actually see what’s happening there? Or should i start posting comments in Greek, Japanese and Swahili (Yes, i actually speak some) for you to understand what’s happening?

Yanslana.5982:

I hate this megaserver. I hate this scheduled event. I hate this update.

I hate the fact that despite deliberately picking a low population server due to not having a high-end machine, there are now constantly 100+ people slowing down my game.

I hate the fact that I have to stay permanently partied during the world boss run or every time I WP I would be pushed to a random map.

I hate the fact that world bosses are scheduled, it turned what was essentially doing a treasure hunt & the happiness of looting a chest into a chore and I constricted at the feeling of PLAYING ON A SCHEDULE.

I hate the fact that you’re asking for feedback here, when 900+ posts raised genuine concerns on the previous thread, and ALL of it was ignored and the megaserver went live anyway, with none of the issues people foresaw addressed, and you’re doing it AGAIN here.

I hate the fact that I bought this game and liked it enough to care to even post here. I hate the fact that I don’t have it in me to just say I quit right here right now.

Well said and my feelings exactly.

From what I’ve read here about people from guilds and parties being scattered between the maps and the system globbing people together regardless of language used the megaserver sorting isn’t working correctly (what is there sounds a lot like the old overflow system). From the moment ArenaNet tried to tell us that this system would actually increase the chance of playing with people from your server (when you had close on a 100% chance of getting into the same instance of a map as the other people from your server because the vast majority of zones didn’t create overflows) I knew all this was based on PR pseudo logic rather than real logic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-the-MegaServer-roll-out-plan/page/4#post3898312

What happened to the previous plans to roll it out so that “the behavior on level 1 to 15 maps won’t change until we’ve seen the positive confirmation from the community as well as from our metrics that MegaServer is working as expected on lower population maps”? Its been less a day since the patch launched and I’ve not seen much positive confirmation from the community yet but I’ve seen quite a lot of irritation and negative feedback over it though so I’m wondering where did you gather that feedback? Is a day truly enough to gather all this information?

Their assurances that this would work better than what we had before are proving false so I have to say that this whole thing smells of an attempt to rush it into place so that people simply have to get used to it.

That kind of tactic stinks up a place.

This update complete ruined world bosses for me. Which were huge part of my gameplay.
Before i could have intense world boss session, that lasted about 2-3 hours where i got to kill most if not all world boses one right after another. Then i could be on my way and do whatever else i pleased in the game.
Now I have to waste all day waiting on set timers, i kill boss do nothing and get bored till 15 mins is up, kill boss again and get bored till 15 mins is up again rinse and repeat. It will take me whole day to get through world bosses, it makes me start to really hate this game. Old system was WAY better.
Megaservers might be good idea for small servers that were dying. But its terrible and destructive for big servers that had no problems doing events on their own. As a Desolation player i can only say everything is worse for me that was before megaservers were introduced.
Also the forign language spam in general chat is insane which leads to many hostilities between players. I have no idea how players who don’t even have a common language are supposed to coordinate and cooperate.

i’m very dissapointed of the new mega-server system. the world boss schedule needs a rework. it prevents some people from playing specific events and leads into mega-zerging-blob-fest. i did ulgoth in the morning in under a minute. the three champs before ulgoth didn’t even drop one champ bag, like other champs too, although i was smashing so much damage i could against them(full zerk).
world bosses don’t feel challenging anymore, because of the mass of people. it’s just an auto-attacking event – again. this should not encourage you, anet, to scale up events by simply giving more HP and mobs!
furthermore the system leads to more fps drops (similar to wvw back then before you could select the displayed amount of players). in my opinion i would be satisfied with a system, where i could go into an underflow to avoid the mass of people and enjoy the eventchains and bosses like they were worked and designed for. even in a mmorpg there don’t ALWAYS have to be a mass of players running around taking shiver peaks atmosphere for example. it’s much more lovely with less people running around.
limiting the zones with active world boss events to a lower population to make them more challenging could be one solution, but wait.. then they have to open more servers again… i forgot yeah.
the different languages are another problem in EU worlds. map chat in megaserver-maps is a melting pot of at least 4 different languages. and a whole bunch of people flaming and trolling – in at least 4 different languages. it’s even a lot worse than it was in good old overflow-maps.

i did attach the fight against the megadestroyer dying in less than 5 mins and being stuck in lava for about 75% of the fight bounced back from peoples attacks. and it is not even prime time.. welcome to megaserver… -.-

This megaserver SUCKS hard.

When i check the waypoint when i want to port, in another map, this waypoint when i come there is completely unsyncronized because the system transfer me to another server.

How i can suppose to do events if what i see on the map is a “fake”?

Please, at least let us choose if we want use megaserver or not.

As my thread dedicated to megaservers in cities got shot down, I will post my opinion here again.

Let’s start about Megaservers in general. Megaservers are a good idea, as is, but the execution is poorly. That shouldn’t be the topic here, so we will move on from there. The main idea behind megaservers is to get rid of the drastic differences between servers. While there are “full” servers, where every map can generate an overflow, as soon, as a world event starts, there are rather empty servers, where nobody shows up for world events.
While guesting to Vabbi, my guild tried to make a joke of killing the shatterer with a 5 man team. It didn’t work, but that’s beside the point. The intent of these changes is to make large content more accessible to the masses. While this is a great idea, I have no idea, how this relates to cities in any way.
In cities, there is no large scale content, no events and no hearts to complete. From this standpoint, there is already no reason to merge the cities.
I will now present a couple of reasons, why introducing the megaserver system to cities is a bad idea.

First off: Language barriers.
While in open world zones, this matters far less, in cities, the rule of thumb was generally to speak in the language of the server, you have chosen. For our server, Drakkar, that language was german.
We chose german servers to be able to communicate in german. There are even people on our server, who can’t even speak english or at the very least are not very fluent in it. Even more, getting the map chat spammed in french or spanish is not really helpful either.
The main purpose of cities is to:
1) Give access to services
2) Give an area, where one can communicate with others.
That second point is severely influenced by the megaservers. You could happen to be the only german speaking person on a server full of french people. What if you have some questions to ask, because you are new to the game?
Someone new to the game, who has chosen a german server will surely find this a bad joke, when he has to use his bad french from way back in school to communicate with others. Heck, I may still be able to understand some basic french senteces, but as I never needed to communicate in french, I am not able to form a single sentence in this language.
Let’s turn it around. A french player landing on a megaserver dominated by Germans.

Second point: Roleplaying
While I surely do not belong to the group of players, who are actively roleplaying, there are many, who do. Outside of dedicated roleplaying servers, they are generally shunned or belittled. Even on Drakkar, which was once hailed as the german rp server, the irrational hatred towards roleplayers runs deep.
The problem at hand is, that especially the cities are like hubs for roleplayers. They mostly meet in the cities, they mostly rp in the cities. With the megaserver system in place, those players will have difficulties meeting up with other roleplayers. They will sometimes be thrown into hostile environment, where every attempt at roleplaying is met by snarky remarks from the bystanders. It will be hard to get any active roleplaying done, and while it does not seem important, the game will also be less immersive. If multiple people are roleplaying on their own in masses, the city will become “alive”.
An experience like that is also prohibited by the megaserver system, which brutally rips apart those rp communities and seperates them over different overflows.

Third point: World vs World
For lower tier servers, the cities are the only place to effectively recruit people. If some special event is going on, like in the case of Drakkar, for example, the 24 hour raid, there needs to be a way of telling the people who don’t frequent WvW as often, that you need people for a large scale offense. There may also be cases, where you need more people for defense, in which case, some people may also go to the cities and ask for help.
During the first season, this was more prevalent than it is now, but especially servers from even lower tiers than Drakkar will surely find it difficult to field people for WvW, when there is no place, where you are guaranteed to encounter people, who are mainly from your own server.
heck, with the megaserver in place, the probability is there, 80% of the players on the map are from your enemy server and decide to go to wvw themselves.
Especially for the lowest tier of servers, where there is no centralized teamspeak(which fortunately Drakkar has), the cities might be a place, where you can discuss and plan strategies for WvW. You are basically disconnecting the WvW community from its own server.

Which leads us to fourth: Server identity
So let’s say, you are a new player. You log in and the first thing, you realize is, that your server choice amounts to literally nothing. You chose a german server, yet everyone is speaking english. You chose “Drakkar”, yet everyone who DOES speak german, assures you, that Riverside is way better than Drakkar, and if you don’t believe it, all you have to do is look up the WvW rankings. What does your server choice amount to? Nothing. You better forget, which server you have selected, because it is of no importance, bears no consequences. You don’t need to know stuff like this, because you are not into PvP anyway.
I view this as a huge problem. It becomes even more complicated for:

Fifth point: Multi-purpose guilds
Right now, there is a lot of guilds, who do both open world, guild missions, aswell as dungeons, some PvP and most importantly WvW. Guilds like that are by definition in need of players from the same server.
because they do some WvW, right? So how do these guilds recruit players?
For pure PvE guilds, it’s no biggie. You grab whoever is in front of you. Boom. Done.
For pure WvW guilds, it’s also no problem. You grab, whoever you encounter in WvW. Boom. Done.
But these multiguilds have a serious problem. For every recruitment request, you’d need to include the server. And even, if your guild is not THAT WvW centric, it will serve to deter people who are mainly PvE based, because if you need only people from a specific server, you are surely some hardcore WvW guild, right?

TL;DR
From all these points, we can see, that it is a bad idea to introduce the megaserver system to cities, where there are NO largescale events, NO dynamic events and NO heart quests to complete. It destroys immersion for roleplayers, disconnects the WvW players from their home server, while destroying server identity as a whole and giving all sorts of trouble to casual all-purpose guilds, who do both PvE and WvW.
Most importantly, it alienates new players, who chose a specific language server and can’t speak the language, they chose. Everyone will be forced to speak english and Servers of other languages than english will be a laughing stock.

So my heartfelt appeal to Arena.net is:
For the sake of the players, who have created amazing communities on their servers, please do not smash these communities by forcefully deporting them to foreign grounds. For the sake of all the roleplayers, non-english speaking players, WvW players, mixed guild leaders and ultimately everyone. Do not attempt to fix, what wasn’t broken in the first place and fulfilled some vital roles, it will no longer be able to fulfill.
Cities do not belong on megaservers and you should acknowledge this fact quickly and adress the problem.

Lopez.7369:

Temple events are practically impossible for casual players now. You have to teleport around the Orr maps for hours and hope one spawns while you’re there, which is now unlikely because megaserver populations tend to defend the temples. And on top of that, you need temple events for some traits. Just an awful system through and through.

This. Exactly. Temples are now impossible, and why did ANet decided that temples were needed to unlock the new traits ? It’s totally aberrant

The Megaserver System looks fine in paper, to help low populated areas and servers gain life. But…
In pratice it fails imo.

Guildwars 2 had a very Dynamic feel, with events leading up to each other, and this world boss sync just ruins that feel.

Aslo it destroys completelly our “sense of community”. It was nice to know 80% of the ppl in a map, see known faces and guilds. etc… now i feel a foreigner on every map i go wich is on megaserver.

i Did worldbosses form time to time cause it was easy to get to them, and fast fun/loot. Now is a headache.

Guildmissions are completelly RIDICULOUS to do. Half of guildies end up in diferent maps. takes 10 minutes just to change parties and taxi every1 to same server (IF the server don’t gets full bef we manage to do that). and after you are able to do that, you will just end up in a place with 10 other guilds lining up in queue trying to do missions as well. My guild waited for 35 minutes on guild jumping puzzle to be able to start it, is ridiculous and kills all the fun,

i undertsand you guys want to revamp low pop servers and for them this might “look” appealing, but isn’t there GUESTING in place for this exact reason – a low pop server can just guest another and have np.

In european servers is just ridiculous to get into a map and mapchat being in french, german, english, spanish, nordic languages, and every1 qqing they don’t understand each other, etc…

I am sorry Anet, but this world boss sync and megaservers only do ONE thing: BROKE WHAT AS WORKING JUST FINE..

Plzplzplz get rid of this idea…. give us our dynamic world back and no megaservers:D

On PvP it rly ain’t that bad as it eliminates the waiting for tPvP.

Gathering Orichalcum and ancient wood will be a disaster i guess and this will have a strong impact in the economy as this are items that have a very high demand always.

on a more happy note: Congrats to all the hard work and for an amazing feature pack. Apart form megaserver all the rest is awesome

/Cheers

Ever since the megaserver thing started, most big events have been filled with french, italian, spanish, german … and people argue all the time about everyone should speak english. So far all this has done is created more strife between players and the language thing hasn’t worked AT ALL.

chu’ mega jabwI’ Hol — tlhIngan!

chaq Hot ‘ar DawI’pu’ mega jabwI’ ’ay’Du’lIj
wej vaj law’ geeks ‘Iv laH ’oH laD vItul-’antlhe’aS.
meq qatlh jabwI’ Hol jatlh chaH wutlh DawI’pu’ ghaj. HoSqu’mo’ laH English Hol jatlh pagh wej “yIjatlh neH” chaH.
vaj vIDablaH. jIwivlaH pat vaj lIS maH, ‘e’ according to nob criteria (jabwI’, Hol, Guild ghom,) Segh pagh pat qan ghaH wItI’nISmo’ Qap.

Here the translation… to even show A-Net as players occur,
suddenly be flooded with languages and understand nothing.
This is just a language… on the EU servers, there are more than five.

The new Megaserver language — Klingon!

May this shows how many players on the megaservers feel,
I hope the A-Net not so many geeks who can read it. gg
It will have its reason why players choose the server to whose language they speak. Because they can not speak English or not “want to talk”.
So either the system we so adjusted, that according to the given criteria (server, language, Guild, group) is sorted or taking the old system back in operation.

If the megaserver is rolled out everywhere in its current form, I don’t really have any choice but to seek out another game that allows me to RP. There’s just no way me and my guild can RP with this ridiculous system.

I’ve stuck with this game since launch, but this is a total deal breaker to me.

I would love for A-Net to come forth, and speak with us about this.

EU players simply can’t play now. Is this your ultimate goal? To drive EU players away from your game, or force them to move to a US server, so you can shut down the EU ones? Is this a scheme to shut down Guild Wars 2?

Instead of hearing all our worries, an 11 page thread about the impact it has on the RP community and now our obvious negative feedback, they instead stay inside their own “utopia” about how “Exciting” Skynet is, and go with it anyway.

The game doesn’t feel comfortable to play, anymore. It’s more frustrating than fun, there are people everywhere causing lag, people with low end machines simply won’t be able to enjoy or play the game anymore, and of course i won’t mention the language issue again. Each player dumped into the megaserver goes on the defensive, as others seem to be intruding “his” world. Nobody likes this, it cripples the game to it’s core.

A-Net, for the love of god, if you value your game, turn Skynet off before it kills your entire population. It’s never too late…

I love this community:

Before megaservers:
“Buhuhua all maps are empty, the game is dead!!!!”

Now:
“Buhuhu the megeserver system sucks, it is the worst thing ever added to the game, why can’t I play on my server?!?”

And pathetically enough it is often the SAME people that said both of these things.
I suppose complaining for the sake of complaining is something we just have to get used to here.

Everything’s crowded! Everything’s laggy! You can’t do a single event without a bunch of people making it absolutely pointless and mind-numbingly boring! And a bunch of people predicted this as soon as news of this kittenty megaserver idea hit the website!

The events WERE NOT CREATED for large amounts of people, ffs! The netcode is not suited for large amounts of people! There is absolutely no fun in being a part of a huge herd all the time!

Anet has effectively ruined the open world in the best mmorpg I’ve ever played. Kudos. Leaving as soon as something good enough pops up. Feeling kind of silly, having put heavy hundreds of dollars into gems, but who could’ve known. One is certain, they won’t see a single dime from me anymore.

lordkrall.7241:

I love this community:

Before megaservers:
“Buhuhua all maps are empty, the game is dead!!!!”

Now:
“Buhuhu the megeserver system sucks, it is the worst thing ever added to the game, why can’t I play on my server?!?”

And pathetically enough it is often the SAME people that said both of these things.
I suppose complaining for the sake of complaining is something we just have to get used to here.

As a deso player i never complained about population it was not an issue, i could go to any boss at any time and have many people to complete it with. And yes the megaserver sucks, it would be good if it was enabled for small servers only. For big servers it brings nothing but harm.

I’d love to see ArenaNet actually respond to ANY of the concerns being raised in this thread or any of the other ones. Unless they have the actual courtesy to respond to us so that we can have an actual conversation about this we may as well not bother posting anything at all. Before someone from the community team posts to say that they’re “gathering feedback to give to the developers” that’s not enough. ArenaNet actively needs to engage with us, had they done so before this was implemented then then a lot of this feedback could have been taken into account during the design phase and fixed before it becomes a problem for your customers.

Now you’ve given us a messy broken pile of servers that may be cheaper for you guys but has stripped a lot of functionality for us the players.

lordkrall.7241:

And pathetically enough it is often the SAME people that said both of these things.
I suppose complaining for the sake of complaining is something we just have to get used to here.

No.

Don’t even for a moment think that i rather spend my time in a forum, rather than playing the game. I love the game. I love RPlaying in the game. However, I simply can’t play the game anymore, for reasons i and others mention above.

I go with the flow… MMOs change, we adapt.. But this time, it feels like we’re trying to swim on deep waters, with a steel ball chained to our leg. So i have to yell this time, adding my voice with the rest of us, in order for A-Net to hear.

I am not a part of any large guild. But i know who are people from my server and i want play with them. I have choosed my home world and now you decide without me. This implementation is only big mistake. I hope you will enjoy your maps – full with people who don’t talk with each other and don’t know each other – because you just place them randomly together into one instance. Are we only numbers for you or what?

Asacledhae.2650:

No.

Don’t even for a moment think that i rather spend my time in a forum, rather than playing the game. I love the game. I love RPlaying in the game. However, I simply can’t play the game anymore, for reasons i and others mention above.

I go with the flow… MMOs change, we adapt.. But this time, it feels like we’re trying to swim on deep waters, with a steel ball chained to our leg. So i have to yell this time, adding my voice with the rest of us, in order for A-Net to hear.

This. I had my concerns about the megaserver, but what A-Net said at the time eased those concerns. They’ve always came out favourable since the launch of GW1 in my eyes. But this time, they’ve swung and missed massively, to the point where I felt like I actually had to post in an official feedback topic.

They used words like ‘comforable’, phrases like ‘breathing space’. Harr harr.

Gonzo.6475:

Asacledhae.2650:

No.

Don’t even for a moment think that i rather spend my time in a forum, rather than playing the game. I love the game. I love RPlaying in the game. However, I simply can’t play the game anymore, for reasons i and others mention above.

I go with the flow… MMOs change, we adapt.. But this time, it feels like we’re trying to swim on deep waters, with a steel ball chained to our leg. So i have to yell this time, adding my voice with the rest of us, in order for A-Net to hear.

This. I had my concerns about the megaserver, but what A-Net said at the time eased those concerns. They’ve always came out favourable since the launch of GW1 in my eyes. But this time, they’ve swung and missed massively, to the point where I felt like I actually had to post in an official feedback topic.

Same… I actually rage quit the game this morning through not being able to meet the group I wanted to in the Grove… I am still hoping for a fix or an opt out… but at the moment the game is frustrating me.

Day 2. Forums in an uproar against Megaservers. Moderators can barely keep up. Devs in silence, probably sleeping through the bulk of it. They will be disappointed when they come back to work.

I will give a week to Anet to at least admit that its a seriously flawed design. If on the 23rd of April the Megaserver is still in this state (or worse, spread to even more maps in this state) with not a single sign of humbled apology from ArenaNet, im not looking back.

i never threaten with leaving a game. Its not a threat. Its a statement based on my observations of myself and my friends disposition to these changes.

I’ve just visited every zone and seen that the following have also been unofficially added to the megaserver list :

Malchors Leap
Mount Maelstrom
Snowden Drifts
Fireheart Rise
Harathi Hinterlands

Which means that there are now only 10 non-megaserver locations remaining :

Divinity’s Reach
Plains of Ashford
Queensdale
Caledon Forest
Cursed Shore
Gendarran Fields
Frostgorge Sound
Wayfarer Foothills
Sparkfly Den
Bloodtide Coast

JamesT.3645:

I’ve just visited every zone and seen that the following have also been unofficially added to the megaserver list :

Malchors Leap
Mount Maelstrom
Snowden Drifts
Fireheart Rise
Harathi Hinterlands

Which means that there are now only 10 non-megaserver locations remaining :

Divinity’s Reach
Plains of Ashford
Queensdale
Caledon Forest
Cursed Shore
Gendarran Fields
Frostgorge Sound
Wayfarer Foothills
Sparkfly Den
Bloodtide Coast

lol..
Can we be sure that its not sentient and spreading like a virus at this point? Did us naming it Skynet give it some ideas?

lakdav.3694:

Can we be sure that its not sentient and spreading like a virus at this point? Did us naming it Skynet gave it some ideas?

Well Anet has created a monster, so let the experiment continue with us as the guinea pigs i guess.

Moon.7310:

Nagiil.1230:

Eigentlich ist doch hier schon alles schön zusammengefasst
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Babylonisches-Sprachenwirrwarr/first

Where the heck did this topic go, I was just posting an answer to someone about the zones which are already megaservers…

Not using english on the english forum is a violation of forum rules. I was allowed to try again in english.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-Babylonian-confusion-of-tongues/first

greetings.

Language Barrier

Unless ArenaNet plan on implementing Google Translate in to their chat system, I suggest they start grouping people based on their language preferences.

I’m English, and apart from the tiny bit of French I learnt at school over 20 years ago (and mostly forgot), I cannot speak/read/write any other language I’m afraid. I have been laughed at, ridiculed and called names because I can’t speak German or French.

This is not bringing the megaserver ‘community’ together.

Vulto.9768:

The Megaserver System looks fine in paper, to help low populated areas and servers gain life. But…
In pratice it fails imo.

Guildwars 2 had a very Dynamic feel, with events leading up to each other, and this world boss sync just ruins that feel.

Aslo it destroys completelly our “sense of community”. It was nice to know 80% of the ppl in a map, see known faces and guilds. etc… now i feel a foreigner on every map i go wich is on megaserver.

i Did worldbosses form time to time cause it was easy to get to them, and fast fun/loot. Now is a headache.

Guildmissions are completelly RIDICULOUS to do. Half of guildies end up in diferent maps. takes 10 minutes just to change parties and taxi every1 to same server (IF the server don’t gets full bef we manage to do that). and after you are able to do that, you will just end up in a place with 10 other guilds lining up in queue trying to do missions as well. My guild waited for 35 minutes on guild jumping puzzle to be able to start it, is ridiculous and kills all the fun,

i undertsand you guys want to revamp low pop servers and for them this might “look” appealing, but isn’t there GUESTING in place for this exact reason – a low pop server can just guest another and have np.

In european servers is just ridiculous to get into a map and mapchat being in french, german, english, spanish, nordic languages, and every1 qqing they don’t understand each other, etc…

I am sorry Anet, but this world boss sync and megaservers only do ONE thing: BROKE WHAT AS WORKING JUST FINE..

Plzplzplz get rid of this idea…. give us our dynamic world back and no megaservers:D

On PvP it rly ain’t that bad as it eliminates the waiting for tPvP.

Gathering Orichalcum and ancient wood will be a disaster i guess and this will have a strong impact in the economy as this are items that have a very high demand always.

on a more happy note: Congrats to all the hard work and for an amazing feature pack. Apart form megaserver all the rest is awesome

/Cheers

Ya had me all the way to last statement. Many problems with ALL aspects of the feature pack.

Zok.4956:

Moon.7310:

Nagiil.1230:

Eigentlich ist doch hier schon alles schön zusammengefasst
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Babylonisches-Sprachenwirrwarr/first

Where the heck did this topic go, I was just posting an answer to someone about the zones which are already megaservers…

Not using english on the english forum is a violation of forum rules. I was allowed to try again in english.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-Babylonian-confusion-of-tongues/first

greetings.

LOL—they just have to change the TOS to the english only rule for ingame communication . Problem solved. (kidding).

lordkrall.7241:

I love this community:

Before megaservers:
“Buhuhua all maps are empty, the game is dead!!!!”

Now:
“Buhuhu the megeserver system sucks, it is the worst thing ever added to the game, why can’t I play on my server?!?”

And pathetically enough it is often the SAME people that said both of these things.
I suppose complaining for the sake of complaining is something we just have to get used to here.

Personally, some maps were dead so the system would work perfectly once the language and guild things are sorted out.

The main issue is the maps are getting way too populated, it’s physically impossible to me to play like this, not even in WvW I’d get blobs with so many people it made the game completely unusable, and I think others are in my same situation.

meh.6784:

Personally, some maps were dead so the system would work perfectly once the language and guild things are sorted out.

The main issue is the maps are getting way too populated, it’s physically impossible to me to play like this, not even in WvW I’d get blobs with so many people it made the game completely unusable, and I think others are in my same situation.

Indeed, i neeed to put all my graphical settings on minimum just to be able to have a decent 15 fps with no fighting going on :P

I don’t want to play anymore. Where are people I used to know? Where are communities that every single server created? Everything is shattered. Massive amount of people everywhere and not a single familiar face. Overwhelming chaos. Pleasure of doing pve went to the abyss because I can’t interact with my home server community. Instead I have to play with bunch of random pugs every single time. GG no RE

Seeing we got a bit of a.. non really satisfactory answer on the Megaserver and RP thread, and fearing that if is not stated here, might not be taken into consideration, I’ll try to explode a bit the reason why there is a thread with 500 and more posts about that specific problem.

Arenanet answer was “Guild up” but, that, right now, dosen’t really solve the issue, as I stated in the other post yesterday, we were in the same guild, we were even in the same party, but one of ours could not meet us when Metrica was assimilated in the megaserver, we had to jump several times to make it happen.

Now, even if you could just go around with your guildies, there is a reason on why many roleplayers wish for the cities to remain outside the megaserver system.
Some RP guilds are structured as Adventurers guilds, in such guilds, there is a wide range of different characters, they can usually self sustain themselves , even if they also benefit from contacts with others RP guilds.
In the cities some guilds like to play specialized roles, some guilds play the guards, some play the thieves, some play the everyday Joes , the farmer, the merchant, some guilds are merchant, in the RP side of things.

Is the combinations of interactions between such guilds, between all RP guilds, that create the environment necessary for RP to go ahead. If the guards suddenly find themselves without other guilds to interact with, there isn’t much they can do in the long run.

That’s why most people in the other Thread are asking to return the cities to the previous state, would be next to impossible for roleplayers to carry on when people is fragmented among all the servers.

Most big events are planned ones, involve tens of characters, it is done usually to get ahead an important plot, or start one, or just gather like minded roleplayers in a place.
What came to mind is the weekly meeting of Asuran in Rata Sum, it was made so that who play an Asura had one day at week in which was sure to be able to interact with others that play their favorite race.
In the current megaserver system isn’t possible, first you would end up scattered in different server, and second, there is people that don’t like RP.

Trolls apart, which would disturb mostly anything just for the sake of it, there is people that genuinely does not like see other people RP, yesterday in Metrica I was very politely asked to please stop to RP.
It wasn’t a troll, I wasn’t attacked or insulted, I was very politely asked to stop my RP because it was disturbing that person.
It was just three Asura talking about the end of a project they have been working on, so it wasn’t anything strong or strange, but I do understand some people really really would prefer to have a world without RPers, because they are wierded out, they have their own ideas, simply don’t like it and prefer the only ambiance around is provided by NPC.

As much that specific encounter ended up well, explaining that, as RPers, we didn’t have anymore a safe heaven, so we couldn’t “Choose” where to RP, and the other person kindly agreed with us and wished us good luck and have fun with our RP, it is a symptom on why RPrs congregate in one or two servers, not only to meet like minded people, not only to counter trolls (you can troll all the time you want, if you are five against 40 and everybody is ignoring you, feel free to do whatever, you are just filtered out) but also, people that really really really really don’t like to see other RP, but are not trolls, can choose to avoid such servers.

Now that I am thrown in a situation in which I don’t have a single place where to meet other like minded people and play the way I want, what should I do? Force my play style on others? Explain every single time that, as much as I respect their view, they should respect mine? It is possible to find a middle ground with tens of thousands and more different people? (No, it isn’t really, other places and other times have already shown that with that many people involved, you really can’t).

So what’s the point of the other thread, minus vent some frustration?

Put out the city maps from the megaservers, we could have our heavens to RP.
Second thing, put an RP flag so the system know how to put people togheter.

I am not privy of the inner workings of your server, but should I have done something like that, the first parameters I would have used to pair people is “Language” the second would have been “Server of origin”.
Now, should you put as third parameter, over all the others a flag with “RP” the system would have a clear idea where to put me.

“English” – “Piken Square” – “Roleplayer”

v

Ta daaa , couple it with server only city maps, I’d have my play style back, and with such a flagging system, I’d have good chances also to meet other of my servers, english speaking roleplayers, outside where the megaserver like to mix and match others.

I hope this help to clarify some of the issues we are experiencing in a clear and polite manner for Arenanet to see, and hopefully, take into consideration.

The optimal solution for the players would be the option to choose whether or not to use the Megaserver system.

The biggest issue I have with the system is the complete loss of server identity. Right now, the only real difference between servers is their WvW tournament ranking. What do you tell a new player who wants to start, but doesn’t know what server to pick? “Oh, just join the non-full server that’s doing best in WvW. You’ll get a lot of passive bonuses, and won’t have to lift a finger!”

And that’s it. Before, guesting to another server was an adventure in itself. You’d visit and see all these different strangers with their own customs and community, but there was always home, where everything was familiar, where people knew each other.

There no longer is that sense of home. There is no sense of belonging, unless you play in WvW- and even then, each map is isolated- separating the community even more.

With the previous system, the community came together to do amazing feats- developing organized methods of slaying tequatl, wurm, even saving citizens of lion’s arch, or World Boss Trains. Servers could get together easily, and hold community events. Now, it’s difficult to even get all people of the same guild on the same map!

This is why an option to opt out of the megaserver system would be best for players. You get the best of both worlds- If you want a large group of people to play with, you can have it, but in the back, there’s always that sense of home and identity, and community.

Sure, it’s nice to see lots of people in previously empty maps. But when everyone’s a stranger who you’ll likely never see again, you’re more alone than if you were just on your own.

Imagine this- two new players, starting out. Both are pushed into the same shard of Rata Sum. They meet, bond over saving each other from wind riders, and become friends. They work together and party up often- sure, there’s occasionally a need to transport one player over from one shard to another, but that’s a minor inconvenience, right? Then one day, they discover WvW. But wait! They’re from different servers! What option do they have? Congratulations new player, you made the wrong friend, and if you want to hang out and do all the things with them, you need to shell out some more money!

Every map becomes an overflow, and with overflows, there’s no community. You don’t know whose commander tag is “serious”, you don’t know peoples’ reputations. There’s no community.

Another anecdote- last Saturday, during guild challenges, we ran into another guild from our server prepping to do the same challenge. Because we were on the same server, and knew of each other, it was easy to coordinate both guilds to complete the challenge twice- once for each guild. Now, you end up with each guild separated on different shards with new, faceless, also fractured guilds that you don’t recognize vying for the same spot. There’s unplayable chaos.

Please take a look at returning server identity to the established communities. Right now it feels like there was no compromise made, no consideration given to existing players. It’s nightmarish right now.

We had a pretty big problem yesterday because of the megaserver.

We were doing our guild missions, but for almost every mission, when we used the waypoints to get to the spot, half the guild got sent to a different instance of the map, so it was pretty annoying to :
- degroup
- group the guys on a “wrong” map
- get them to rejoin
- degroup
- take another group to let them rejoin
- etc.

It’s just impossible to do the bounties with this system now, as you need more time than the whole bounty to just ferry your guildmates to the right map.

lordkrall.7241:

I love this community:

Before megaservers:
“Buhuhua all maps are empty, the game is dead!!!!”

Now:
“Buhuhu the megeserver system sucks, it is the worst thing ever added to the game, why can’t I play on my server?!?”

And pathetically enough it is often the SAME people that said both of these things.
I suppose complaining for the sake of complaining is something we just have to get used to here.

Setting a man on fire because he was complaining about the cold is not usually considered to be a good solution.

What they should take into consideration, is that a large number of players including me, (I don’t count RPlayers) can’t find the game comfortable to play anymore.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t the only fantasy MMO in the business, so if people are displeased with the way the game works, they’ll simply leave. When the decline of the population (and of course A-Net’s income from the game) hits the “critical” level, it’ll be too late to fix the problem. So it would be nice to hit it to it’s core, now that it’s just still “fresh” and out of the box.

We don’t want another Star Wars Galaxies incident, we don’t want another City of Heroes incident. We want to see our game and communities thrive. If “Skynet” is what A-Net thinks that will bring new players to the game, they’re in complete denial.

A friend, will bring a friend, so they can PvE, PvP, WvW, or RP together. If Skynet separates them cause it thinks they have “nothing in common”, then what’s the point of said friends staying in the game? In fact, i was about to recommend our game to my large RP guild in CO, which wanted a “casual but challenging user friendly” fantasy game, for us to expand our worlds and Role Play. At the state the game is right now? I wouldn’t recommend it even to my worst enemy.

A-Net once stated that they’re not planning to “unbalance” the population, making areas “uncomfortable”… But that is exactly what Skynet did, and they’re letting it expand by giving it “Absolute” power over the game servers.

Instead of kittening about the mega-servers, how about we try to offer them some solutions instead? I know some of you people code, you’ve said so yourselves.

Yes, we don’t know what the back end code looks like, but we do know that this is the route anet would prefer to go to attempt to help bring more people into low pop maps. We know some info about the megaservers, what they want to include in the various algorithms and such. Maybe brainstorming some ideas to help them make it better would be more helpful to them. Ideas on calculation adjustments, data gathering and parsing. kitten they might be able to apply and improve the situation. Some of the ideas they may have had, some they may not. No one person, or group, thinks of everything. It never hurts to try and help.

Beyond that, my only real issue with the megaservered maps is the lag. I never lagged before except in highly populated events (like Temples), now I lag all the kitten . sigh Time to buy that 4770…

sigh
All of these problems i knew would happen within about 2 minutes of hearing about megaserver.

I hoped anet had come up with good solutions, but i knew that it wasnt really likely in such small time frames.

Ok anet, for this megaserver system to work, you will have to change some structural things.
communication
First of all, you will need to create extra filters for people, servers used to do most of this, all the RPers went to one server, all the french etc.
these basically need to act like chat subscription, only people within the groups get these chat info, filtered by Some property.
Lets call these groupings “Tribes”
players who join these tribes can speak and see a different type of chat
say you have the french “Tribe”
anything said with tribe active is filtered via tribe.

This will be tricky to develop and message, but you dont really have much options. Servers used to act as this filter.

you could tie these tribes to old servers… however that would force them to be connected to WvW, which may not be ideal. It might be best for WvW and PvE not to have those social groupings connected, after all the purpose is different.

I guess you could decide to do it with languages, and RP. people could join whatever tribes yall make available to filter their chat. But also your system needs to work harder to group people of similar “tribes” because even if you can communicate it will suck if you are constantly filtered to a place that only has 1 or 2 people from your tribe available.

Problem why we have now always all languages mixed on EU Servers :

Thats because they use just ONE map minimum for ALL EU-Servers, instead of at least FOUR servers, so that we have always one EN, DE, FR and ES Zone so that people can land in a zone with their selected Language.

No they start with ONE zone, every language is put into that one until its full, then wie get ZONE 2 and that zone also is further mixed with all languages .. yada yada ..

We NEED at least ONE zone minimum for every official language, else the whole thing will never work !!

Also .. give us an optional way to manually select the zone that we want to use.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Instead of kittening about the mega-servers, how about we try to offer them some solutions instead? I know some of you people code, you’ve said so yourselves.

Yes, we don’t know what the back end code looks like, but we do know that this is the route anet would prefer to go to attempt to help bring more people into low pop maps. We know some info about the megaservers, what they want to include in the various algorithms and such. Maybe brainstorming some ideas to help them make it better would be more helpful to them. Ideas on calculation adjustments, data gathering and parsing. kitten they might be able to apply and improve the situation. Some of the ideas they may have had, some they may not. No one person, or group, thinks of everything. It never hurts to try and help.

Beyond that, my only real issue with the megaservered maps is the lag. I never lagged before except in highly populated events (like Temples), now I lag all the kitten . sigh Time to buy that 4770…

We have, my friend… In many threads, in many occasions, almost the entire time after hearing about the megaserver. There are spread threads about our recommendations and feedback already. We got ignored, so now we’re simply trying to make them hear us.

phys.7689:

sigh
All of these problems i knew would happen within about 2 minutes of hearing about megaserver.

I hoped anet had come up with good solutions, but i knew that it wasnt really likely in such small time frames.

Ok anet, for this megaserver system to work, you will have to change some structural things.
communication
First of all, you will need to create extra filters for people, servers used to do most of this, all the RPers went to one server, all the french etc.
these basically need to act like chat subscription, only people within the groups get these chat info, filtered by Some property.
Lets call these groupings “Tribes”
players who join these tribes can speak and see a different type of chat
say you have the french “Tribe”
anything said with tribe active is filtered via tribe.

This will be tricky to develop and message, but you dont really have much options. Servers used to act as this filter.

you could tie these tribes to old servers… however that would force them to be connected to WvW, which may not be ideal. It might be best for WvW and PvE not to have those social groupings connected, after all the purpose is different.

I think language was one of the things the algorithm was supposed to take into consideration, but it sounds like that algorithm is also ‘learning’ as it goes. I think part of the issue is that they didn’t implement it early enough to create the ‘data backlog’ needed in order for the system to accurately determine where to put players, either that or it’s not parsing the gathered information properly yet. It may just need time to aggregate, or it might need tweaking. Not sure which at this point, it’s still too soon.

Asacledhae.2650:

We have, my friend… In many threads, in many occasions, almost the entire time after hearing about the megaserver. There are spread threads about our recommendations and feedback already. We got ignored, so now we’re simply trying to make them hear us.

Keep in mind that just because you don’t get a response doesn’t mean they are ignoring you. The majority of them don’t post on here, they lurk. They’ve said so themselves. They do read the stuff…

Sure, a ‘thank you’ would be great from time to time, whether they actually use the idea or not, but they do see what we’re saying. They tell us such in every communication (interviews, twitch, here, etc), and we can see evidence at times of that listening. They may not do exactly what we suggest, but we can still see that they do hear us.

Asacledhae.2650:

What they should take into consideration, is that a large number of players including me, (I don’t count RPlayers) can’t find the game comfortable to play anymore.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t the only fantasy MMO in the business, so if people are displeased with the way the game works, they’ll simply leave. When the decline of the population (and of course A-Net’s income from the game) hits the “critical” level, it’ll be too late to fix the problem. So it would be nice to hit it to it’s core, now that it’s just still “fresh” and out of the box.

We don’t want another Star Wars Galaxies incident, we don’t want another City of Heroes incident. We want to see our game and communities thrive. If “Skynet” is what A-Net thinks that will bring new players to the game, they’re in complete denial.

A friend, will bring a friend, so they can PvE, PvP, WvW, or RP together. If Skynet separates them cause it thinks they have “nothing in common”, then what’s the point of said friends staying in the game? In fact, i was about to recommend our game to my large RP guild in CO, which wanted a “casual but challenging user friendly” fantasy game, for us to expand our worlds and Role Play. At the state the game is right now? I wouldn’t recommend it even to my worst enemy.

A-Net once stated that they’re not planning to “unbalance” the population, making areas “uncomfortable”… But that is exactly what Skynet did, and they’re letting it expand by giving it “Absolute” power over the game servers.

probably they need to create more servers based on some settings like low pop mid pop and high pop. where skynet stops placing players at lower thresholds.
say on low pop setting it wont filter people in any more if 50 people are on the map. on mid pop it wont filter people in if 80
and high it wont filter people in if its over 100.
leaving the last slots for people who need to join on party or join with friends type instances.

The simplest and most user friendly solution is just shutting down skynet and set the priority list manually in a well put together option tab. The system wouldnt have to count anything, there wouldnt be hundreds of variables it would try to track automaticly (and fail), player choice would be a factor. Specific servers with specific agendas (like unofficial dedicated RP servers) can broadcast the Priority configuration for all people who would want to encounter them and partake in the activities of that ‘server’.

If Anet wants to go out their way to make it the best thing ever, introduce a template management to it as well, so that switching between RP-oriented or raid content-oriented megaservers can be done as fast as loading the template and mapping once.

One of the fixes is fairly obvious. They have to make the map cap much lower. Currently the crowds are making the world simply unpleasant, stuffy and weird.