(edited by Moderator)
Guesting and Overflow [merged]
The forums have been hit lately with a lot of requests to remove guesting as a feature. Many of these requests have stemmed from the overpopulation of server events due to the recent limitation put in place by the latest patch—that you may only loot a world event once per day per character. The bottom line: use of Guesting to enable looting of a world event more than once per day is an exploit.
People are using this exploit in blatant disregard for the servers they are guesting onto and for those who do not use this exploit to triple their ability to loot. This exploit has the potential to crash servers, not just the economy. After the Jormag event on my home server, chat was taking several minutes to post messages I was sending. It’s hurting the community as well.
After a recent Teq kill, I asked a member of the fight to stop guesting and lagging our server, their response was, “you think it only happens to your server. every server is experiencing this issue, and it’s not my problem..thanks though.” Though I didn’t appreciate the fact that s/he was unconcerned with the well-being of the server s/he was exploiting, their message is clear. Every server is experiencing this, and those who are exploiting servers to further their own gain, do not feel that they are at fault for it.
We need to send a clear message to these people, it is not okay to do this. It needs to be prevented somehow, and those who are aggressively and unmercifully exploiting the guesting mechanic need to be punished for it.
I agree. While I was not exactly polite to the guestors, I’ll admit…they are on our server, lagging our server all because its they can exploit a hole in the game and farm more than the normal guy.
Please do something about this.
Karma is as abundant as air, and as useless as the Kardashians.
Exploiting? you realise you don’t get more chests per day from doing this right? you get to do your dragon kills in a timely fashion and thats about it.
Also theres no risk of it “crashing the economy” ectos have already stabilized at 28-30s based on time of day, which is a much more healthy price the previously.
And no, not every server is experienceing this, If you are on a very high pop server, yes you will run into it, but hell, then you’d run into it anyways, because, hey, you are on a high pop server.
Also what gives you the right to tell someone to stop guesting? you may play on the server, that dosnt mean you own the rights to it, people guesting got as much right to be there as you, so get of your pedestal.
On a diffrent note, I don’t bother guesting myself, however your opinions on the mather look rather silly to me.
I must however say, it is not everyday you see people whine about open world zones actually being populated, intresting turn of events indeed.
What really needs to be done is: Better servers, Less players allowed per zone etcetc
You can only loot the chest once a day per character. It doesn’t matter if you guest to another server, you can’t loot it again with the same character.
People guest to other servers to do the event without having to wait for the timer. Even if guesting is removed, there’s still going to be that many people doing the event. They’re simply too rewarding to not to.
A few weeks ago, before the loot buff, I used to do the claw of jormag with at least 50 people at hours like 4 am. I can easily see that number doubling because of the buff, so it’s not just guesting that is the problem. I for example never used to farm the dragons but now I do, because I get close to 20 rares a day basically doing nothing (park character, play alt while waiting for timer, swap every now and then to check). I was even thinking of getting a second account to just park it, so I can know exactly when the event occurs without having to swap. Plus I’d double my loot due to how AFKable the events are.
20 rares a day, thats about 4g, and the 10+ kills alone easily add up to 1-2 hours, more waiting.
People highly overestimate just how profitable doing this is, It feels like it takes less time because your not doing the same thing over and over, but in the end you actually spend more time per g, then you could other places.
Also what gives you the right to tell someone to stop guesting? you may play on the server, that dosnt mean you own the rights to it, people guesting got as much right to be there as you, so get of your pedestal.
I asked, politely, for the other player not to guest. I made no demands, I did not “tell” them to do anything, and I apologize if I come across and being on a “pedestal.”
And no, not every server is experienceing this, If you are on a very high pop server, yes you will run into it, but hell, then you’d run into it anyways, because, hey, you are on a high pop server.
The idea that “every server” is experiencing this may be an overestimate, but it is clear that the number of people being affected remains large because the most affected servers will be the high-population servers. The idea that you would run into a large number of people at this event anyway, if you are on a high-population server, is true; however, there is a much higher number of people at these events than were at these events prior to the recent patch which limited loot-ability. Why are there more people at these events when they are not farm-able than when they were farm-able?
I must however say, it is not everyday you see people whine about open world zones actually being populated, intresting turn of events indeed.
It’s not that these zones are populated, it’s that they are overpopulated, and I apologize if I come across as “whining.” I am trying to address an issue in a serious manner, and I thank you for your opinion.
I am in the process of validating the claim that guesting can yield more loot from dragon events.
How do you know they are guesting? Just curious is there a mark or something?
I wouldn’t say to remove Guesting all together, but change it so that it fits the intended purpose of the feature which is to “allow you to play with your friends on other worlds.”
The key word on that one is friends. Meaning that the server choices should be restricted to the home servers that people on your friends list belongs to. If you don’t have any mutual friends on a particular world, then you shouldn’t be allowed to guest on that world. That’s the way that guesting should work.
I do agree that it could potentially be crossing the borders of exploitation, especially for players who have multiple characters within level range to participate in such event.
On the other hand, how are we to tell if someone participating in the event is actually a guest or not? Another thing to consider is that the chests for these events have been buffed considerably. That means that more people are actually doing these events with the potential of putting late comers on Overflow servers.
Maybe showing an icon next to someone’s name could be an idea, similar to the LFG, Commander, and World Completion icons appear for certain players. Then we can truly find out if it’s Guesting that’s causing the problem, or the events just simply having a huge abundance of people from your home world.
“I control my fate!” — Claire Farron
I am Fleeting Flash, in-game dungeon cosplayer of Reddit Refugees [RR] .
I am Fleeting Flash, in-game dungeon cosplayer of Reddit Refugees [RR] .
I wouldn’t say to remove Guesting all together, but change it so that it fits the intended purpose of the feature which is to “allow you to play with your friends on other worlds.”
The key word on that one is friends. Meaning that the server choices should be restricted to the home servers that people on your friends list belongs to. If you don’t have any mutual friends on a particular world, then you shouldn’t be allowed to guest on that world. That’s the way that guesting should work.
I need a friend from every server!
Gotta catch ’em all!
Friendly mon.
How do you know they are guesting? Just curious is there a mark or something?
You dont know if they are. But there are a TON…I mean an insane amount of people. Jormag was just crazy.
The event was delaying by 2 seconds lol
Karma is as abundant as air, and as useless as the Kardashians.
Removing guesting is not the answer, that will only upset a very large crowd that would like to play with friends on another server. The number of servers needs to grow, or the capacity of each server needs to grow. They could also further limit the number of people per map, allowing more overflow servers to open.
How do you know they are guesting? Just curious is there a mark or something?
They addressed the server in all-caps by the server name, which led me to suspect that they were guesting, so I asked politely for them to stop guesting, and that’s how they responded.
I wouldn’t say to remove Guesting all together, but change it so that it fits the intended purpose of the feature which is to “allow you to play with your friends on other worlds.”
The key word on that one is friends. Meaning that the server choices should be restricted to the home servers that people on your friends list belongs to. If you don’t have any mutual friends on a particular world, then you shouldn’t be allowed to guest on that world. That’s the way that guesting should work.
I do agree that it could potentially be crossing the borders of exploitation, especially for players who have multiple characters within level range to participate in such event.
On the other hand, how are we to tell if someone participating in the event is actually a guest or not? Another thing to consider is that the chests for these events have been buffed considerably. That means that more people are actually doing these events with the potential of putting late comers on Overflow servers.
Maybe showing an icon next to someone’s name could be an idea, similar to the LFG, Commander, and World Completion icons appear for certain players. Then we can truly find out if it’s Guesting that’s causing the problem, or the events just simply having a huge abundance of people from your home world.
I am very supportive of these ideas.
I am in the process of validating the claim that guesting can yield more loot from dragon events.
It is true that you can no longer guest to receive multiple loots from the same event.
This does not invalidate the exploitative nature of guesting to receive loot from world events, though. An exploit is using a game mechanic to give yourself an unfair advantage, and the time saved by exploiting the guesting feature (i.e. not using it to play with friends on other servers, as intended, but to save yourself time) is an unfair advantage to those who abide by the “dragon timers” of their own world.
~edited formatting
(edited by TwistedLink.5139)
There was a guy on my server fussing at someone for guesting and then other people started ridiculing the guy for fussing at someone who was on his own server. Seriously, do people think they have the name of everyone from their server memorized?
The problem is large numbers of people at events causing lag. That’s the problem that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t matter if they are from your own server or guesting, the lag will occur.
And no, I’m not guesting on other servers. Heck I’m not even trying to make it to the events on my server everyday.
It’s a kitten conspiracy. Kittens gonna be kittens. All is vain!
I don’t know. Limit the chests to your home server and EVERYONE from your own server is going to be showing up to the events during primetime hours. You’re going to end up making overflows anyway.
I think branding it an exploit is a little harsh, these are pretty basic game machanics we’re talking about. That’s not to say things don’t need to be tweaked.
My money’s on going to once per day per account. Tough on the altaholics, but it’d probably make the problem go away. It might also get everyone to do a broader range of events rather than blasting through the Fire Elemental on 5 alts.
20 rares a day, thats about 4g, and the 10+ kills alone easily add up to 1-2 hours, more waiting.
People highly overestimate just how profitable doing this is, It feels like it takes less time because your not doing the same thing over and over, but in the end you actually spend more time per g, then you could other places.
I only do the 4 dragons and the maw to get that many rares, including mystic forged greens. 10 rares is a more accurate average, 20 is a luckly day, getting 3 from most chests then having most greens turn into rares.
It does take less time if you can get accurately notified (this is why a mentioned thinking about getting a second account). You simply have to stop what you’re doing and login to your parked character about 1/2 way through the event, hit it a few times and be fully rewarded. That’s at least 1 guaranteed rare in less than a few minutes, or even less than a minute if you feel like cutting it close. You then park at the next event and continue your normal play.
Your perspective is about not knowing when the event will occur and having to wait out the spawn window, which a lot of people do. But it’s very easy to do casually, allowing you to AFK there and barely pay attention while doing something else. Like, I can be reading these forums and get rewarded in-game by waiting out the dragon and even autocasting 1 on it. That’s something you can’t do while farming a dungeon. Even more AFK friendly rewards are obtained by playing the TP, something which can be done while waiting out the dragons if you really feel like profiting.
Perhaps change it so that you need an invite from somebody who’s on that Home Server to guest on it? Or you need to be a member of a guild which calls that server their Home?
I hate having to introduce these restrictions on guesting, but running into Lost Shores-style lag just for trying to attend events on my server is intolerable.
Guesting is not the issue here. The server still has a set capacity which is not getting surpassed, the problem lies in when 99% of the players allowed on a map are in one place for an event. This is NOT something that can be fixed by disabling or changing guesting, and would instead require a serious overhaul of how the game handles large events.
I would also like to request that people stop throwing around the word “exploit” like it applies to everything that makes you the slightest bit unsatisfied. You can still only loot one chest per character per day, so the system is working as intended and there is no reason whatsoever to consider this an exploit now that they fixed people being able to open multiple chests.
Ok to keep this simple yes i’m mentally kitten so if you attempt to correct my spelling you or insult me for it go ahead knowing I am mentally kitten
Right now Guesting is being a scapegoat to those who want something easy to blame. It is also being blamed by the lazy.
Right now it is come to my attention that many people are not thinking clearly. For now i can’t blame them for that because that’s how they are. Guesting and dragons lag has nothing to do with each other. The Dragon Lag is Sever based lag do to the mass amount of people in one zone attacking one creature. The system has a hard time keeping up as you can tell as the dragon’s attacks and timing don’t match up. In example Shadow B standing up as the portals spawn. This problem is to do with the amount of people in the area which, as you know causes some people to go to overflow.
So here comes in the Guesting part.:
Yes in each map and on each sever there are SOME people guesting and sometimes there are not. I would say on average about 10 people guest during a dragon fight. I even Guest from time to time to get my dragon kills in for the loot. But please know Guesting has been in the game LONGER than last patch. Which patch i do not remember at this time. But what i do remember is that there was no lag. So when you mention that there was no lag before guesting you are wrong. Stop it that’s like saying if i pay $200 dollars more for the same exact thing mines is better. Its wrong and idiotic.
So what is the REAL REASON for the lagg?:
The real reason behind the lag which will still be there is the new loot buff that all (but the volcano boss) got this last patch. Do to this more and more people want to kill the dragons to get the chests because it has a 100% chance at a rare and maybe a exotic. So people in guilds wait at the dragons and say _______ is up {waypoint} people click this waypoint and come in and most of the time get in an overflow. This will happen with or without guesting as each person tries to kill each dragon on each of their lvl 80’s
So what can we blame Guesting on?
The only blame Guesting can get is that fewer sever locals can get into the dragon fight. But this is minimal as the guester took the time to wait for the dragon as the other member waiting for another person to tell them that it was up and wouldn’t be any the wiser if they were not told by a guild member that it was up.
What can you do to get into a dragon fight?:
Get there early. The early bird gets the worm. Use classes that have pets, turrents, elementals or special aiblities like Turret pod (silvarey), war-band, theifs guild, basically any attack that attacks on its own(aka NPC attacking). (ghost-fire wolf for those who have it). Also note just because you don’t see your toon attacking or white numbers does not mean that it is not attacking. Look for signs that the attack has gone off like theifs losing the dots.
Reason for this post. Anet (no offence) has a terrible tenancy to listen to people who complain because they are no longer the top dog in say PVP or WvWvW. So this post is to inform the general public that blaming guesting wont fix the issue beside the fact that everyone is complaining about it. The Real problem of to many people attacking on target because of easy loot has been established. Also people have been verbally attacking people who guest “Guester should burn in the deepest pits of hell” is one of the many i’ve seen. This should be a reportable offence and the people who say it should be banned for three days. Yes this is extream but so is what they are saying.
For those that reply i ask that you keep this civil.
~TC local
(edited by Sashi.9436)
Most common Arguments
C for complaint R for Reply
C: Well without guesting more locals can get in.
R: They waited to the last min and would of gotten in overflow with the amount of people streaming in such that often 2 overflows are made. If they came a simple ten mins before the window or pre-event they would of gotten in. This is like missing the buss because you left on when you saw it already rolling down the street.
C: Guesters cause lag
R: So do you and every local there.
C: Guesters shouldnt be in our flow
R: then whats the point of guesting. Guesting is there so you can play with friends on other severs and do events on other severs. With an overflow you wont be able to kill Big Bosses without help.
C: Anet should up the limit before overflow
R: So you want to crass as the dragon lands…. More people equals more lag to the point you wont even be able to attack him half the time for the WHOLE fight.
C: Anet should Nerf the amount of people in a zone before overflow
R: Good idea.. That will decrease the lag and increase the people who cant fight it because they waited to long. But that has nothing to do with guesting. Just attendance
C: Well i don’t have 2 hours to wait for a dragon
R: Then wait 10 mins before the pre-event. Or wait till the complaining causes Anet to Nerf the loot so the dragons go back to being not worth your time.
How to Fix this lag issue:
1: Nerf the amount of people in the area before Overflow
(less lagg more QQ)
2: Nerf Loot back to what it was
(more QQ because no 100% rare)
3: Upgrade severs to handle more
(honestly don’t know if this will fix the problem but might help but is unlikely)
4:
Make guesting invite only from a friend in the server you want to guest. That solves most of the problems and doesn’t take away any intended functionality.
Any leftover lag afterwards cannot be blamed on guesting, which would mean it’s solely based on server capacity and as such implies a needed upgrade. This includes the overflow problem (which might be solved if the overflow was simply “cloned” from the map originally meant to be entered).
(edited by Sashi.9436)
Make guesting invite only from a friend in the server you want to guest. That solves most of the problems and doesn’t take away any intended functionality.
Any leftover lag afterwards cannot be blamed on guesting, which would mean it’s solely based on server capacity and as such implies a needed upgrade. This includes the overflow problem (which might be solved if the overflow was simply “cloned” from the map originally meant to be entered).
Yup its a good idea XD mind if i add it to the ones i listed?
doesn’t come to mind that being in an high populated server could means that its own population can cause overflow? if it happened in LA each time there was a festival event, why shouldn’t happen each time a dragon spawn these days?
what the guesting have to do with all this?
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doesn’t come to mind that being in an high populated server could means that its own population can cause overflow? if it happened in LA each time there was a festival event, why shouldn’t happen each time a dragon spawn these days?
what the guesting have to do with all this?
Thats the thing i’m trying to tell the people who are currently complaing about on the fourms and in mapchat. They think Guesting is the problem when it isn’t its just one of the many reason they got into an overflow for waiting last min. Im not the best at getting my point across because of my disabilities. But if i understand it other should be able to.
Even in what we consider Low pop which is still high. If everyone tries to get into the area an overflow will happen.
(edited by Sashi.9436)
Blaming it on guesting is not a scapegoat, because your point is that it is the servers not being able to handle the amount of players at an event. This is solely in the hands of Anet and I haven’t seen a single person from Anet say its because of guesting.
But as you know, obviously if an event is laggy and you add more people to the event from other servers it isn’t going to help.
your reasoning was pretty clear. but most of people in this forum like blame, guilty and unhappiness at all cost. imo they need to complain about everything or they die without a crusade to fight.
there are classic complain ie. no mount no fun, female toons have to fight in bikini, fix my class nerf the thief etc, and flavor of the patch complains ie. fractal of the mists is the end of the world, dailies are impossible to complete. laurels are a crap currency, and now loot boost is ruining all life in the planet, foreigner from other server are stealing our jobs and marrying our wives.
Looking for a gay friendly guild?
Join the Rainbow Pride
Join the Rainbow Pride
your reasoning was pretty clear. but most of people in this forum like blame, guilty and unhappiness at all cost. imo they need to complain about everything or they die without a crusade to fight.
there are classic complain ie. no mount no fun, female toons have to fight in bikini, fix my class nerf the thief etc, and flavor of the patch complains ie. fractal of the mists is the end of the world, dailies are impossible to complete. laurels are a crap currency, and now loot boost is ruining all life in the planet, foreigner from other server are stealing our jobs and marrying our wives.
Agreed I just want people to put blame were blame is due. Its annoying seeing people blame Blank for Blank when blank has nothing or very little to do with blank.
1 mistake TS. Currently guesting isn’t used to play with friends as much as it is used for faster events. Also, to avoid accusation, ANet should produce some data as to how many guest visits per server each day.
We’re all based on assumptions here. The people who blames it on guesters and the people who defend guesters, it’s all assumptions for now.
This does not invalidate the exploitative nature of guesting to receive loot from world events, though. An exploit is using a game mechanic to give yourself an unfair advantage, and the time saved by exploiting the guesting feature (i.e. not using it to play with friends on other servers, as intended, but to save yourself time) is an unfair advantage to those who abide by the “dragon timers” of their own world.
What is the unfair advantage? Someone getting loot 30 minutes earlier than they would have gotten anyway? OMG this game is doomed if that does not get fixed.
Let’s do some simple math.
3 million players, 51 servers, boss that drops fat loot in zone that holds less than 500 people…..
Guesting is not the issue here.
You can call it an exploit all you want, but it’s still not one. Also guesting isn’t your problem it’s the high population server you’re on. I’m on Blackgate and we don’t have a guesting problem at all. We have an overpopulation problem all of which shows up for these events now.
I did the Jormag event on my server (Gunnar’s Hold -medium pop) yesterday afternoon, and I had not experienced lag that bad since the karka event in Nov. It was so bad, I couldn’t swap weapons ..
I did the event again this morning, and no lag … I guess all the idiots guesting yesterday were still in their beds ..
Whatever is going on, needs to stop …
Lvl 80’s: Ranger; Guardian; Mesmer; Necromancer; Thief
Gandara Megaserver
i think OP did not get his fact right before posting this thread….
Cutie Phantasmer/Farinas [HAX] – CD Casual
Archeage = Farmville with PK
Archeage = Farmville with PK
…you know how Anet loves RNG, right. So, here’s the perfect solution:
Make the timers completely random.
Now I know what you’re going to say, but, I am fairly certain that doing this – will make Guesting for events a thing of the past! Kill the exploit!
All the big guilds, the one’s Anet is focussing on, can have someone posted at all the metas to keep track of spawns. So, when a boss pops, the lookout can quickly call it in Guild Chat and the big guilds can, if they are discrete enough, have the boss all to themselves! This worked quite well in other games like Aion and I think it is a direction Anet wants to go towards, anyway, looking at the last changes.
It its quite natural for people to exploit loopholes in a system that is so heavily regulated like GW2. As long as anet sticks to its unofficial claim “Have it OUR way!” and forces power gamers to enjoy the game the way they “envision” for them you will always have weird extremes like that. Drop stupid DR, stop shanghaiing people into your idea of fun, problem solved.
Lag is one problem and thus dampen general gaming mood.
Followed by being dumped to an overflow on your own home server and missing an event.
Solution is for Anet to improve their servers…. Either by capacity or latency.
Gotta love how people insult the players who use a legit game mechanic. I never used guesting except to try it in the first few days, but the way you guys talk about other fellow players here is intolerable. “all the idiots guesting”? Really? Seems to me that they are smarter than you actually, and definitely not idiots.
This makes me actually want to use guesting just to make rude people like you guys angry.
PS: by the way, guesting doesn’t make you able to loot several chests of the same event per day. Not only this thread is rude towards guests, but it’s also based on a false belief and/or intentional misinformation.
PS2: if your server happens to be too laggy during events… why don’t YOU use guesting to go on a lower population server in order to do them? Now that would be smart…
The Farstar Alliance [TFA] – Gandara Server.
A PvX guild for mature players with a life.
A PvX guild for mature players with a life.
(edited by Korrigan.4837)
The problem is not with the guesting is with the waiting times. Before the patch the chest was lootable more than once a day, so a 3 hours wait time between events made sense. Now when the chest can only be open once a day per character the waiting time are only putting extra pressure on the event maps every 3 hours. There are no lag or overflow problems at the Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental because they repeat every 30 minutes. If the waiting time between the end of a dragon event and the start of the chain would be something like 30 minutes this would help spread the population enough to avoid overflows and would make guesting unnecessary.
Remove the world events from a timer and make them happen randomly. Problem solved. I thought it was an illogical idea to have events on a timer in the first place.
If they would make the dragons spawn at the same time on all servers it would help the issue. For example if I want to go to bed in the next 30 minutes but the dragon timer is not up on my server for another hour I will find one that is up now. If all servers were not staggered in their dragon timers it would reduce solo guesting.
I ‘exploit’ guesting to the nth degree this past Saturday, I guess I should watch out in case I get banned.
[Permabanned on Forums]
[Currently Inactive, Playing BF4]
Magic find works. http://sinasdf.imgur.com/
[Currently Inactive, Playing BF4]
Magic find works. http://sinasdf.imgur.com/
I probably would have told you to mind your own business too. My guild is on a different server and I don’t see why I should explain myself to anyone when I guest with them. You may not know if my reason is legitimate, but I still don’t owe you an explanation and I wouldn’t offer you one.
The mechanic is there and I’m using it. Send complaints to ANet because I won’t be listening to them.
Since the other thread was closed, I re-post my point here:
The problem is not guesting, it is that the chest are limited per character, not per account. Sure, guesting in its current form makes it possible to get the events on multible characters in a short time frame, but at the core it is a problem with the over-the-top farmability of these events, not guesting.
With a per character limit combined with the extremely buffed up chest rewards, “everyone” will do their very best to open the chests on as many alts as they can possibly manage. This means both guesting as well as everyone showing up for their own servers’ events. Even without guesting, the more populated servers would go into boss overflows due to all the alts hitting the chest several times during the day. Having it limited to once per boss per account (which is still a good number of chests!) would make things much more manageable.
Bark N Mad [Dii] ~ The Order of Dii Guild Officer ~ Jade Quarry
Keeping it per character would benefit all of us players. Some might not have alts now, but when you do get alts later down the line, you will be able to switch whenever you would like to get as many chests as u can manage to get more rares/exotics/chances at a pre-curser. Keeping it per character works for the player as it provides more bodies to get an event moving & completed, primarely the temple events. If majority of players complete an event, the minority will be left with trying to find ANYONE to come help complete said event (convincing others who already did their part for chest prolly wont feel any reward out of helping, sadly), making it much more of a hassle for the minority.
The issue like all have said is guesting itself. It definatly needs to be finely tuned on how it works. Possible ways of takeing care of it:
1 – Cap out servers to not allow guesting. If its already full, its ineligible for guesting on. (Only way to get on server would be friend invite)
2 – Players that have made “Home” to that server, have priority over guesters. Guesters will be put into overflow before a “Home” player is put into it.
I think making it account bound does not benifit us at all, and is a step in the wrong direction. Tweaking the guesting system is a benefit for all types of players, casual or not, and im casual.
(When selecting a server to guest, a lower population should always be favored anyways to avoid ability lag)
The bottom line: use of Guesting to enable looting of a world event more than once per day is an exploit.
It’s only an exploit if they’re getting multiple chests on a single character, which I’m pretty sure they can’t.
I’m going to spell it out for you: the world bosses give actual worthwhile rewards now, so a lot more people are showing up to the events. The bigger your server is, the worse the results are going to be. There’s no need to invent conspiracies about hundreds of people guesting into your server (something you can, iirc, only do twice a day per account, and which has been possible for a month at that) to explain that.
(edited by Hyper Cutter.9376)
It is highly unlikely that guesting is actually the source of the problem. The problem is 10 people from 10 different guilds show up near event time. They each announce in their guild chat that this event with good loot is currently in progress. 30 people from each of those 10 guilds then swarm the event as fast as possible. You know have >300 people all packed into this small area and kicking the zone into overflow.
The fact is, there are tens of thousands of people on each server. It only takes about 400 people in a zone to send it to overflow. Nothing they do to guesting is going to change that.
“you think it only happens to your server. every server is experiencing this issue, and it’s not my problem..thanks though.”
Is this where you wanted everyone to stop reading? Every server has a problem with guesting? You clearly don’t understand the dynamics of guesting. First, there is a range of goals around guesting, one of theme being true ‘guesting’ where you play on another server to play with friends or to satisfy curiosity. The big driver right now is the dead server problem. People leave their home server and guest largely because there is no one playing in the open world on their server. There are a few servers that are popular because they are active and have a positive culture. It’s funny because the culture changes due to guesting.
I think guesting is a necessary stopgap. A better solution than to jack around with guesting is to solve the dead server problem. Once that is done, then I’d be fine if they restricted guesting to, say, just guesting.
Why don’t you guest on low populated servers if the events are lagging. I would suspect that on several servers like mine not every event is fully crowded and even more that there are to few people to even start them at some times.
Excluding guests from loot or the event itself is defeating the purpose of playing together with friends imo. And if someone is playing every event even with only one character that would be quite alot of loot, so I personally can’t accept the argument of people with alts beeing excluded.
Make it account wide 1 chest event per day problem solved. And yes there is a loophole to getting multiple chest per character per day its been reported but still has not yet been hotfixed.
…you know how Anet loves RNG, right. So, here’s the perfect solution:
Make the timers completely random.Now I know what you’re going to say, but, I am fairly certain that doing this – will make Guesting for events a thing of the past! Kill the exploit!
All the big guilds, the one’s Anet is focussing on, can have someone posted at all the metas to keep track of spawns. So, when a boss pops, the lookout can quickly call it in Guild Chat and the big guilds can, if they are discrete enough, have the boss all to themselves! This worked quite well in other games like Aion and I think it is a direction Anet wants to go towards, anyway, looking at the last changes.
No don’t make the timers completely random the opposite needs to happen they all need to be synchronized across all timezones.
I can see the need for priority natives for not getting in overflow but i do think guesting is necessary for a healthy community i personally think there should be no limits on how many servers you could guest to per day.