Guild Wars 2

Ok, I think I may have a solution for all the guesting issues going on. You see ANet want’s guesting because they are trying to make money out of having people switch servers. They put in place a system where a user from one server can “try out” another server to see if they like it there and if they want to make it a permanent home they buy a server pass from the gem store to transfer over.

The obvious problems this has made is the overflow issues, breaking of the Dragon events and Farming of events from one server to the next in a sense “Server leapfrog event farming”. Getting rid of guesting is not the solution, but if you limit guesting from server to server with an account based timer you can control all the chaos and the loads on the server.

Example: Each Account gets 1 hour of guesting time on any other server only once per day. They can guest to as many servers as they like within one hour on their entire account. The timer would start as soon as they start guesting and will continue even if they log off or switch characters. So if you want to guest to check out another server or play with friends guilds, once you decide to guest you get one hour total.

The hour of guesting can “re-set” much like daily’s do, at a specific time, usually the lowest load times. So say the timer can reset every day at midnight PST. Players in “Guest Mode” should have a countdown timer that they can see so they know how much time they have left before they get pulled back to their own server, it can warn them 10-5min before the time runs out that they will be pulled out of the guest server and back to their server.

I’m not sure if this is a great solution but it’s one that makes sense to me.

Feel free to comment and if you have any other suggestions on how to resolve the issues with guesting, chime in.

P.S. ANet please add a filter to the Auction house so you can sort Armor by Light, Medium or Heavy.

This issue with overflowing native players on their servers has got to go.I’m not particularly interested in the how of it,nor the why.I can’t join any events on my server without getting stuck in an overflow.It is not reasonable,acceptable, or fun; Having to show up a half hour before an event, and hope we get lucky enough to make it out of the overflow before the event is over.Judging from the length of this discussion; I’m not in the minority in experience, or assessment of this issue.And while I can’t speak with certainty on behalf of other players, if this situation is now the “new normal” ; I don’t think ill be investing much more of my time in this game.So please, do us all a favor and fix this before we, or at least me, go elsewhere.

Hermes.7014:

ley.8973:

Overflow is just a symptom. The whole problem is caused chiefly by people abusing the predictable timers of bosses, using third party websites to calculate the next spawn time. Predictability + better loot = overcrowding => overflow. Whole crowds of people appear out of thin air and camp the spawn point right before the spawn window opens; and even if you are crafty enough to avoid the overflow, the fight is over so fast you may be lucky to get your participation registered at all.

I’d say, just randomize the spawning times and make them less often. Bosses should be a rare encounter anyway… something you stumble upon by random, not something you camp and gank bi-hourly. I remember when Behemoth was bugged on our server, appearing like twice a month or so… but when he finally appeared, it was THE event. Today, though? Just a generic loot piñata that appears once every two and half hours.

Random spawn timers? You really want people to camp the places all day so that they can obtain a some yellow drop? No thanks. I’ve had enough of camping mob spawns in FFXI, and that was the most annoying, frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced in a game.

But you dont want to stand arone for 6hr+ with a 1hr+ windows with that you have 1 min of real play!? FF11 was crazy for nm and hnm but they where fun in there own way. But ya that would not fit in this game at all the spawn timers are good as is.

I just think that all timers should be on a gobble spawn time for worlds and overflows. I am just wordily about ppl exploiting it doing 4+ dragons in 20 mins or something crazy like that.

After logging in today to begin my dailies, only to wind up in overflow and not get into my server until 30 seconds after Shadow Behemoth went down (a delay of nearly 20 minutes), and then being disconnected the next time Shadow Behemoth spawned, and finding myself in the overflow after relogging (and returned to my server 30 seconds after SB went down… again), I must say I’m less than impressed. This is not the gaming experience I expect; nor do I think it is really acceptable.

In my opinion the whole sum of the world event mass zerging issue is the changes to the loot setup for them.

Firstly, level 70-80 rares commonly give ectos when salvaged. So basically A-Net, in giving away guaranteed rare items from these world boss chests, you’re basically giving away free ectos, and the swarming mobs will be all over that like flies.

Secondly, the “one chest per character per boss per day” causes more problems than it solves. Even if I have only the minimum of five characters on my account, that’s five times I can join the zerg for each boss per day. The congestion isn’t going to go down after the first one or two, because those swarming mobs will be looking to capitalise on this little loophole.

My recommendation is to either roll back the loot changes to the world bosses, or to change it to a “once per account per boss per day” and then scale the loot to reflect that.

My personal preference would be the former – we don’t need swathes of rare items from world bosses. There are more than enough other avenues for acquiring rare+ quality gear.

To me the issue seems simply to be people overloading the system to take advantage of a flawed looting system. Change it to close the loopholes and make it more equitable and reasonable, and I think you’ll find a lot of the issues will die down.

As far as guesting goes… I don’t know enough about it to really comment, so I won’t. I have no problems with people joining friends on another server, but if guesting becomes a disruption to the gaming experience of server ‘natives’, then it needs to be fixed. It is not acceptable for players to be locked out of their own servers because people from other servers are overcrowding the population, especially when it locks the ‘natives’ out of events that they have every right to be able to participate in.

Just my thoughts.

Poledo.3256:

Anet created the issue, and punishing people that want to play elsewhere with friends or avoid transfer costs seems like a bad choice.

People who are that desperate to play with their friends need to just bite the bullet and pay for a server transfer and be done with it.

Guesting is causing more harm than good. I would bet all my coins that the biggest % of people guesting are only doing so for chests, ore, berries and whatever else they can use it for to make money, not actually play with their friends.

They need to open the servers for 1 month of free transfers so all these people who have been stranded and can’t play with their friends, yeah right, can just transfer to where they want to go and then remove guesting all together.

Server populations need to stop being diluted. People trying to do events on their “home” server are being punished by the guesting chest leechers and something needs to be done about it.

Open up free transfers. Then turn off guesting.

ok so this seems to be quite the issue now all of a sudden…and i see its not just Borlis pass but also blackgate…is every server experiencing this now or something?

If I were the devs, I’d redesign the events so that there’s an upper limit towards the number of people doing it that any more will simply contribute nothing. Buff dragons so that the environmental weps are the ones needed to bring it down. Make events more difficult, which indirectly affects rare/min value.

Also, make it a way that guests have lower loot (i.e their loot table is lower).

I’m going to keep posting it because it’s the easiest solution:

No group event chests if you’re not on your home server. Everyone goes back to their home server, “low pop” servers are repopulated, people get their rares and stop gaming the system. Problem solved.

vince.5937:

I’m going to keep posting it because it’s the easiest solution:

No group event chests if you’re not on your home server. Everyone goes back to their home server, “low pop” servers are repopulated, people get their rares and stop gaming the system. Problem solved.

I agree with this. It would help fix the portion of the problem caused the guesting, but it’s not going to remove the overflow problems completely. What it will do is give more people a chance to get in on their home server before it hits overflow. With the huge amount of people wanting to do these events now, overflow is still going to happen on most servers even with this change, but it’s still an improvement.

Nerf chests for guesters

Making chests not lootable or reducing their value to guesters would just make true guesting a disadvantage and punish those on low pop servers. Remember back when events, such as Balthazar, were rarely completed and people would request help and group up on a single server to complete them? Say goodbye to doing stuff that like that, because the people guesting would no longer get anything out of it, except in this case, for those doing it purely for the NPC. PvE-wise, GW2 should be seen as a server-less game like how GW1 was, but that’s kind of already moot since you can’t NA – EU.

Randomize event timers

They could make the event occur at random times like some suggest, but that would only worsen the problem and waste people’s time. As soon as the event occur, someone would call it out then everyone would flock to that server. Since the timing would be random, you’d either regularly miss the event or have to sit there for hours to wait for it. This could be a viable solution, but only if you’re not meant to participate in the events because they’re supposed to be rare. As compensation though, the difficulty of them would have to be greatly increased and have to last at least a half hour so cases where a small group that just happened to be the only ones there can’t complete it alone without anyone else noticing – unless of course, it’s intended to be that rare and unfair to everyone else.

Make chests account bound

They could make the chests account bound like some suggest, but why would they? These events are a very casual way to farm rares which means almost everyone is going to do them. If they’re character bound, people are given an incentive to have multiple 80s, meaning more people will be leveling and buying character slots, which in some way will help the in-game economy.

Kick guesters

Some have suggested kicking guesters in favor of home worlders, but that’s simply not an acceptable solution. If you’re going to go that far, why not just kick out everyone not participating in the event? Imagine it from the guester’s point of view. You could have been playing in the zone for an hour, when suddenly BAM, you’re kicked just because the dragon event started. Now imagine if you were actually guesting to play with your friends, and you were in the middle of some group content, a guild event or anything else when suddenly, you’re just randomly excluded when you were just in the middle of it. How is that fair? “Transfer to play with your friends” some say, but that’s what guesting was for. I’m not sure what exactly the reason would be to have friends on different servers, especially where one group doesn’t know about the other, besides wanting to be in a lower or higher WvW bracket, but people have their reasons.

The solution

What they should do is have fixed times for the events, in the same way the Karka event started on every server. It wouldn’t matter what server you were on or if you were in an overflow, the event would be starting regardless. With an officially scheduled time on the events, you would no longer be encouraged to sit there and wait for up to an hour and instead, you could actually play the game, then show up when it’s time.

If they wanted to split up the population, all dragon events could occur at the same time (example: event A, B, C, D starts at 2pm, 4pm, 6pm, etc.). If not, each event could occur roughly 30 minutes after the last one started, allowing you to do a different one every 30 minutes the entire day if you chose to (example: event A starts at 2pm, B at 2:30, C at 3, D at 4:30, E at 5, F at 5:30, A at 6, etc). Adding more events would cause them to overlap, such as A and B starting at 2, B and C at 2:30, etc.

The only other soltution is to nerf the chests, because right now they’re simply too rewarding compared to the amount of effort required to do the events. Events like the Temple of Grenth should have far better loot than the Shadow Behemoth, since there is a large difference in difficulty. The fact that the Maw gives the same loot is joke, considering it’s completed in just a few minutes (I’ve seen the boss killed in about 5 seconds – 1 auto attack allowed) and resets every 30, but at least the boss can actually hurt you.

I have been playing the game hoping to get a precursor and used to hit multiple dragon events a day in hopes of getting it. Now I am not even excited to log on because I either have to sit in an area for hours just to get a chance to kill a dragon.

Imo only acceptable solution is kicking guests to overflow, when home server ppl arive. Honestly i dont care about stupid world bosses – waiting x minutes doing nothing just to get realisticly 1-3 rares from chest is crap way to make money.

But what really kitten is me off is, when guild bounty send me to some dragon spawning zone, it splits my guild during doing bounty and half of the ppl dont get anything becouse they were on the overflow – thats just bad design that screws ppl on home server. Better to screw guests than ppl playing on their home server.

vince.5937:

I’m going to keep posting it because it’s the easiest solution:

No group event chests if you’re not on your home server. Everyone goes back to their home server, “low pop” servers are repopulated, people get their rares and stop gaming the system. Problem solved.

Quoting/reposting this for how awesome it is. Find a way to disable event chests entirely for guesting and this will come to a stop.

thekap.8645:

thekap.8645:

Watching chat at some events i have seen people talking about how they are getting 25-40 world boss chests a day by guesting to other servers and using multiple chars. This is infuriating i just want to be able to do the event on my own server and the current state of the guesting system is making this impossible

TheBlackLeech.9360:

From what I understand, and correct me if I am wrong, but you only receive credit once per character per chest regardless of how many different servers you do the event on.

So the current state is that you can take a single character and get a chest from the same world event on the same day as long as you do it on a different server. This can be extended to more than 4 times if you get lucky and get into an overflow that has the event going on as well. so essentially on a single character it is possible to get 24 world boss chests in a day, 24 is off the top of my head because i can think of 8 world boss chests you can get, and this doesn’t include the possibility of getting on an overflow.
*The chest limitation works on a server basis not on an account basis. *

Actually, you are wrong, and TheBlackLeech is right. Limitation is on character basis, and is not tied to the server. Guesting won’t let you get more chests in a day (tried and confirmed).

Apparently, there was a bug with few chests originally that allowed this, but i heard it was fixed already (and i haven’t found any such chest yet, so i can assume that it really is fixed).

Wait 30 mins for a world boss to spawn.
Disconnect.
Log back in on overflow.
Miss boss.
/cry

I really hope these overflows are a way to reduce lag and a means to test and gradually increase the capacity of home servers’ zones.
If this is a final solution it makes me a sad squirrel :’(

There’s no point babbling on about solutions and causes. I’m not an Anet developer and I don’t have a full picture of the situation. I know they’ll be working on a solution…I just hope we can see it soon because atm I can’t kill world bosses at peak times, which is something I love organizing my friends and guild to do.

Toodles.

I do too hope they find a solution soon,but I don’t see this coming
in less than a month from now.
So farmers will have a lot of time to stack up their rares and the rest of us can
wait it off.
I don’t see how devs overlooked this flaw and implemented guesting,
when it is obvious that this game is infested with farmers.
Why didn’t they give priority to the residents of a server,
over the farmers that want to guest and farm dragon chests?
I wrote on another thread and I write it again here.
Since guesting I haven’t been able to finish a Jormag event,
and before guesting there was never an overflow map in Frostgorge,
on my server.
I don’t even wait for spawn timers and all that bs.
I just play the game and if a dragon spawns when I’m around
I hop in for the fight.
Now this is impossible.
Way to go for not making this game a farm fest.
Cheers once again.

Hermes.7014:

Random spawn timers? You really want people to camp the places all day so that they can obtain a some yellow drop? No thanks. I’ve had enough of camping mob spawns in FFXI, and that was the most annoying, frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced in a game.

That’s kind of the point – to frustrate camping people enough so they go and do something else, instead of congregating around the spawn point and causing overflows. Nobody’s gonna sit around for six or seven hours just to get one granted yellow.
Under current circumstances, people can use those timer websites and guesting to get yellows from all the bosses on every single of their characters in one single playing session, which would be largely prevented by randomizing the timers (because camping one event would prevent them from camping ten other events).

Desolation

Tried to catch each dragon twice yesterday and all but one time I ended up in an overflow server.
Just went to Tequatl this morning, 5 mins before his spawn window and guess what…….yep put onto an overlfow server :/

This is getting beyond a joke now tbh, home players should have priority over guests no matter what.

Dragon events farming is just the symptom.
The problem is that the residents of a server don’t have priority
log in over guests.
Guests should automatically loose their place on the main server when a
resident is trying to log in.
If playing with their friends is that important,residents should have the choice of
following their friends in the overflow.
But we all know this is not the case.
This is just farmers exploiting a flawed system.

I joined the SFR server when it was still in tier 6 as medium population server, now I cannot even attend any meta event because of overflow everywhere (now that we are in tier 1 since a few months, we got overloaded by bandwagoners too).

I’m on SFR since nearly the launch of the game and guests can take my rightfully deserved spot -_-’

Hope they either nerf the hell out of the chests or make it 1 per day per account.

ragscoon.3527:

Ok, I think I may have a solution for all the guesting issues going on. You see ANet want’s guesting because they are trying to make money out of having people switch servers. They put in place a system where a user from one server can “try out” another server to see if they like it there and if they want to make it a permanent home they buy a server pass from the gem store to transfer over.

The obvious problems this has made is the overflow issues, breaking of the Dragon events and Farming of events from one server to the next in a sense “Server leapfrog event farming”. Getting rid of guesting is not the solution, but if you limit guesting from server to server with an account based timer you can control all the chaos and the loads on the server.

Example: Each Account gets 1 hour of guesting time on any other server only once per day. They can guest to as many servers as they like within one hour on their entire account. The timer would start as soon as they start guesting and will continue even if they log off or switch characters. So if you want to guest to check out another server or play with friends guilds, once you decide to guest you get one hour total.

The hour of guesting can “re-set” much like daily’s do, at a specific time, usually the lowest load times. So say the timer can reset every day at midnight PST. Players in “Guest Mode” should have a countdown timer that they can see so they know how much time they have left before they get pulled back to their own server, it can warn them 10-5min before the time runs out that they will be pulled out of the guest server and back to their server.

I’m not sure if this is a great solution but it’s one that makes sense to me.

Feel free to comment and if you have any other suggestions on how to resolve the issues with guesting, chime in.

P.S. ANet please add a filter to the Auction house so you can sort Armor by Light, Medium or Heavy.

I doubt this is solving anything, but adding a huge problem for players who just come to a server to play together, rp or do whatever. A one hour time to guest is way to short for anyone who wants to play with people but short enough to farm some events.

I said some pages ago that I think a cooldown which should be nearly as long or longer than actual dragon spawn to go back could prevent serverhopping just to farm as well and would leave the guests who come there just to play nearly untouched. Maybe I’m thinking wrong but even an one or two hour timer for every servertransfer, would make the time-advantage you gain by guesting useless and therefore prevent serverhopping just to save time. If there is a mistake in my thinking please correct me.

But I would like to add that whatever solution prevents serverhopping, it will not solve the whole problem as it does not prevent farming from people who belong to their own server.

Underworld

Behemot – overflow
The Shattere – overflow
Tequatl the Sunless – overflow
Jormag – overflow
WvWvW – overflow

Always, everyday.
Please, correct this. It is imposibile to play.

They’re not going to prioritize home worlders and kick guesters because that would be griefing. The most they could do is give home worlders in overflow the priority. Now imagine if the guesters were in the middle of something, such as a guild challenge or open world dungeon. How would it be fair to suddenly kick them? They should have joined overflow to begin with? It didn’t exist of course. They should have guested on the other server? Now they’re complaining.

If you’re going to kick guesters, you might as well kick everyone in the zone that’s not participating in the event. That’s what you want right? Or, you want it to be fair to all the home worlders? Then kick all the level 80s out of the low level zones in favor of the lower levels, so the fresh level 1 doesn’t have to deal with it.

The absolute simplest solution is to revert the chest loot. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that just to stop the whining, a lot of which is based on false information.

Aenaos.8160:

Since guesting I haven’t been able to finish a Jormag event, and before guesting there was never an overflow map in Frostgorge, on my server.

You haven’t been able to finish the Jormag event and Frostgorge has been in a constant overflow since… January 28th, 2013?

Surely you meant since February 26th, the day chests became worthwhile and everyone started to farm them.

Dont even get me started on the state of Desolation it’s just about unplayable.
Tried to get Shatterer dont last night not a chance, thought i would go to Fissue of Woe as a guest.
Its like a completely different game, no lag, no culling, no overflow, around 20 people only there, dragon lasted way longer than the 1 minute it takes on Desolation.
Overall a very enjoyable experience. Why cant we get back to this again!!

Another point guild bounties on Desolation if you have to go to a map with a boss on it forget it you will always be put in an overflow, this needs fixing.

deso has become un-enjoyable.
Remove guesting until the servers can handle the vast amount of players-
Desolation has become like the infamous karka event/s every single day
Totally agree that home worlders should get priority- also offworlders should have a totally reduced afk time limit as the amount of offworlders that are obviously afk waiting for the spawn is big cat annoying.

Pirlipat.2479:

ragscoon.3527:

Ok, I think I may have a solution for all the guesting issues going on. You see ANet want’s guesting because they are trying to make money out of having people switch servers. They put in place a system where a user from one server can “try out” another server to see if they like it there and if they want to make it a permanent home they buy a server pass from the gem store to transfer over.

The obvious problems this has made is the overflow issues, breaking of the Dragon events and Farming of events from one server to the next in a sense “Server leapfrog event farming”. Getting rid of guesting is not the solution, but if you limit guesting from server to server with an account based timer you can control all the chaos and the loads on the server.

Example: Each Account gets 1 hour of guesting time on any other server only once per day. They can guest to as many servers as they like within one hour on their entire account. The timer would start as soon as they start guesting and will continue even if they log off or switch characters. So if you want to guest to check out another server or play with friends guilds, once you decide to guest you get one hour total.

The hour of guesting can “re-set” much like daily’s do, at a specific time, usually the lowest load times. So say the timer can reset every day at midnight PST. Players in “Guest Mode” should have a countdown timer that they can see so they know how much time they have left before they get pulled back to their own server, it can warn them 10-5min before the time runs out that they will be pulled out of the guest server and back to their server.

I’m not sure if this is a great solution but it’s one that makes sense to me.

Feel free to comment and if you have any other suggestions on how to resolve the issues with guesting, chime in.

P.S. ANet please add a filter to the Auction house so you can sort Armor by Light, Medium or Heavy.

I doubt this is solving anything, but adding a huge problem for players who just come to a server to play together, rp or do whatever. A one hour time to guest is way to short for anyone who wants to play with people but short enough to farm some events.

I said some pages ago that I think a cooldown which should be nearly as long or longer than actual dragon spawn to go back could prevent serverhopping just to farm as well and would leave the guests who come there just to play nearly untouched. Maybe I’m thinking wrong but even an one or two hour timer for every servertransfer, would make the time-advantage you gain by guesting useless and therefore prevent serverhopping just to save time. If there is a mistake in my thinking please correct me.

But I would like to add that whatever solution prevents serverhopping, it will not solve the whole problem as it does not prevent farming from people who belong to their own server.

I’m not sure if I explained it correctly, I mean 1 hour countdown total per account, you could visit 1 server you could visit 5 servers but when your hour is up, you stay on your home server until the reset. Though it may be enough time to do the event on one guest server, it’s not enough time to leapfrog from server to server but it should be enough time to “Decide” if you want to make a guest server your permanent home.

In reading some of the other suggestions here I have to agree that “No chests unless you are on home server” is the best to solve the issue of server leapfrog. My suggestion is more of a “have your cake and eat it too”. I would be happy with either.

I got your idea but since I want guesting to play together with friends and also maybe to do some of those events, which at least my server hasn’t done very often, so a one hour time on whichever server for me is completely useless. I don’t want to guest on 5 different servers for 12 mins each. That’s completely pointless for me. I want to guest as long as I want together with some friends. One hour is very, very short if you spend some time together and you couldn’t reduce it only for a particular zone or event but for the whole server.

I do not want to do serverhopping to go here and there and do it on this or that server but I want to guest over to another server or my friends to come to mine. A one hour limitation would still enable serverhopping, maybe even worse if the serverlimitation isn’t there anymore because instead of 3 events you could maybe try to attend even 4 or 5 events within one hours time, if the spawning times are close to each other.

As for no loot for guests I would say, that sound good on paper but what I don’t like are two things: first of all I’m not ultimately keen on any kind of loot, but it would be pretty bad to be some kind of a second class player if you want to use guesting simply for attending one or two events in a weeks time. Or for your friends to come over to a lower populated server.

The second thing is that I fear that on lower populated servers events wouldn’t be up anymore at all.

Tbh: The idea that I from my point of view like best is to limit chest loot to one per account, event and day.

Edit: @ragscoon: Arg I think I got your idea just now, lol. So you mean that you can switch servers within an one hour time window and after that you have to stay on whichever server you are at the particular moment. I thing that wouldn’t be even necessary, like I said some cooldown on guesting to slow down the process of doing events one after another could be even enough to make guesting unattractive for pure farming.

I really dont get it. So many people want to remove a wonderful feature that helps people playing together, and for what? And un-proven notion that guesting is responsible for an issue that only started showing up after the world chests were buffed. So keen to protect the free loot at any cost that pointing fingers at guesting becomes the easy answer. After all, not like it would hurt anyone important to destroy it, right? (as opposed to nerfing loot or making chests per account which might actually limit the farm itself in some way. Gasp.) Wrong!

Removing guesting completely, forcing people to move servers to play with friends in not an option. People have different circles of friends, and unless ANet could collapse the entire game into one single server there will always be people with friends on more than one server and who cannot move without abandoning people they care about.

Making all guesting invite-only is not an option. There are other valid reasons to guest aside from playing with specific friends. Just one example; attending community events (Pink day etc.). How would that work in an invite-only system?

Finally, shutting down all loot from guests is a bad option too. Especially if you want to allow for casual players to be able to enjoy content during their play time, which may not overlap perfectly with their servers’ peak time. Even more so leveling casuals. Sticking them in thinning beginner zones without any way to go to another server to team up with others (and still get loot to gear them up) or conscript help from other servers (without said help running a loss) seems like a very poor way to keep them playing.

Healix.5819:

They’re not going to prioritize home worlders and kick guesters because that would be griefing. The most they could do is give home worlders in overflow the priority. Now imagine if the guesters were in the middle of something, such as a guild challenge or open world dungeon. How would it be fair to suddenly kick them? They should have joined overflow to begin with? It didn’t exist of course. They should have guested on the other server? Now they’re complaining.

If you’re going to kick guesters, you might as well kick everyone in the zone that’s not participating in the event. That’s what you want right? Or, you want it to be fair to all the home worlders? Then kick all the level 80s out of the low level zones in favor of the lower levels, so the fresh level 1 doesn’t have to deal with it.

The absolute simplest solution is to revert the chest loot. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that just to stop the whining, a lot of which is based on false information.

Aenaos.8160:

Since guesting I haven’t been able to finish a Jormag event, and before guesting there was never an overflow map in Frostgorge, on my server.

You haven’t been able to finish the Jormag event and Frostgorge has been in a constant overflow since… January 28th, 2013?

Surely you meant since February 26th, the day chests became worthwhile and everyone started to farm them.

I made a choice to play on a server.
I demand to have priority on that server over a player who has chosen
another server as a home.
It is that simple.
All the rest stuff you added about lower level players/zones etc are your suggestions,and assumptions.
As you noticed, guesting was not a problem before the chests.
Which is another fact that proves that currently the guesting system is
being exploited by farmers and should be removed until the devs can
improve the system and make it farm proof.

I shouldn’t have to be placed in overflow on my home server just so people from other servers can get chests for all their alts.

Why not make it so that you don’t get a chest while guesting?

Aenaos.8160:

As you noticed, guesting was not a problem before the chests.
Which is another fact that proves that currently the guesting system is
being exploited by farmers and should be removed until the devs can
improve the system and make it farm proof.

The only facts you have is that there are a lot of overflows now, and there are (some undefined number of) guests doing chest events at the same time as a lot of home server players. Correlation is not causation though and you still have no proof that if there were no guests there would be no overflow.

Guesting is used for far more than just attending chest events, and you should not be so quick to throw it away just for your (percieved) farming convenience.

make all these events occur randomly with no respawn timer- just a set amount of times that the event will occur within a 24hr period (reset with daily)would reduce the overflow problem.
ie jormag occurs 6 times in 24hrs, whereas maw occurs 24 times in 24 hrs(i thought every half hour was too often)
That way timers are useless and its now down to being in the right place at the right time OR friends/guildies informing in chat.
If you want to ‘plan’ something go do a dungeon these meta events should not be ‘planned’ for farming

Aenaos.8160:

Healix.5819:

They’re not going to prioritize home worlders and kick guesters because that would be griefing. The most they could do is give home worlders in overflow the priority. Now imagine if the guesters were in the middle of something, such as a guild challenge or open world dungeon. How would it be fair to suddenly kick them? They should have joined overflow to begin with? It didn’t exist of course. They should have guested on the other server? Now they’re complaining.

If you’re going to kick guesters, you might as well kick everyone in the zone that’s not participating in the event. That’s what you want right? Or, you want it to be fair to all the home worlders? Then kick all the level 80s out of the low level zones in favor of the lower levels, so the fresh level 1 doesn’t have to deal with it.

The absolute simplest solution is to revert the chest loot. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that just to stop the whining, a lot of which is based on false information.

Aenaos.8160:

Since guesting I haven’t been able to finish a Jormag event, and before guesting there was never an overflow map in Frostgorge, on my server.

You haven’t been able to finish the Jormag event and Frostgorge has been in a constant overflow since… January 28th, 2013?

Surely you meant since February 26th, the day chests became worthwhile and everyone started to farm them.

I made a choice to play on a server.
I demand to have priority on that server over a player who has chosen
another server as a home.
It is that simple.
All the rest stuff you added about lower level players/zones etc are your suggestions,and assumptions.
As you noticed, guesting was not a problem before the chests.
Which is another fact that proves that currently the guesting system is
being exploited by farmers and should be removed until the devs can
improve the system and make it farm proof.

I understand the frustration but making demands isn’t going to further the conversation nor help you achieve your desired result.

The issue with giving home server players priority in the zone over guests, is that you might as well remove guesting altogether. You may say “Great! Do that!” but I am trying to be realistic and I don’t think something that was asked for by players and implemented by Anet is going to disappear so easily. Like someone said above if you boot guests into overflow while they are in the middle of something they are going to see no real purpose to even guest then, knowing you could lose any progress at any time and be kicked because too many people were in the zone.

If guesting is the issue, and we still haven’t seen proof that it is, then I would hope they are working on a solution as we speak. They do read these threads obviously. So if we can keep this to being constructive we may actually have a voice in promoting changes.

Sionelle.8214:

My recommendation is to either roll back the loot changes to the world bosses, or to change it to a “once per account per boss per day” and then scale the loot to reflect that.

My personal preference would be the former – we don’t need swathes of rare items from world bosses. There are more than enough other avenues for acquiring rare+ quality gear.

What logic states World Bosses shouldn’t drop loot better then a Risen Chicken? People should have a reason to want to fight a World Boss and that reason is solely loot based. What now has to happen is a mechanic where 1000’s of players don’t become a slave to farming them on alts and different servers. Some way, some how loot has to become balanced throughout the game. Any place it shows up top heavy there will be 1000’s rushing to it to farm non-stop. Fractals sucked a ton of people out of the open world, then hid the issue because everyone was ikittenman instance. My guess this is way way up there on their list of things to do, figure this loot/mob thing out.

I’ve been put on the overflow for most of the events now. I do not mind so much if this just happens during European prime time, as I’m on a European server, but now it also happens during the day… It really restricts me in playing the game, as I liked doing the events before the loot of the chests were improved. I still think that guesting is a good thing, and chests should also be available for guests (otherwise it impairs this feature of the game). However, I do think that kicking guests to the overflow is the best idea (even though they can be impaired in their activities). Perhaps a warning can be displayed if the server is getting too full? Friends can indeed join them to the overflow, or decide to avoid the event zones if they’re annoyed by the kicks. Another solution would be to limit the chests to the account rather than per character. At this point, I’ll take anything above the constant overflows.

BurnWeed.5902:

make all these events occur randomly with no respawn timer- just a set amount of times that the event will occur within a 24hr period (reset with daily)would reduce the overflow problem.

That would only encourage people to AFK in the zone until it occured or rely on scouts to inform them. If only a few people happened to be there and then completed the event, everyone would complain about it and some would probably even harass those that finished it. The dragons would have to take at least 30 minutes to kill, to allow people to show up. On the other hand, people might decide they’re not worth the wait, then no one will really do them anymore.

After the last server reset, I watched maybe 100 people sit and wait for the shadow behemoth to spawn, which took around 3 hours, since the reset apparently also resets the timer (it was scheduled to spawn around the time the server reset). So people will AFK it.

The timers should be fixed. That way everyone knows exactly when the event will occur and it won’t matter what server you’re on or if you’re in an overflow. This is the only solution that won’t ruin something for someone.

Healix.5819:

The timers should be fixed. That way everyone knows exactly when the event will occur and it won’t matter what server you’re on or if you’re in an overflow. This is the only solution that won’t ruin something for someone.

Uh, I would still be annoyed if I was constantly in overflow. I had the same complaint when they introduced Fractals to Lion’s Arch, or with the starting zones close to launch. I want to play alongside the community I chose to be around when I picked a server, not with a bunch of strangers from other servers.

If people are being pushed out of their chosen server onto an overflow server because guests are taking up available slots, there’s still a problem, regardless of whether there’s a world event going on or not.

oruma.4092:

just disable it= more gemsales for propper transfer anything else is useless anyway

Nope. I have friends on other servers that I like to play with when they are on, but they aren’t on much so I want to stay on my home server.

Guesting has it’s practical reasons and needs to stay.

Again, why not just disable chests when guesting?

Edge.4180:

Uh, I would still be annoyed if I was constantly in overflow. I had the same complaint when they introduced Fractals to Lion’s Arch, or with the starting zones close to launch. I want to play alongside the community I chose to be around when I picked a server, not with a bunch of strangers from other servers.

If people are being pushed out of their chosen server onto an overflow server because guests are taking up available slots, there’s still a problem, regardless of whether there’s a world event going on or not.

Then you would be annoyed simply because there are too many people on your server, in which case, they might as well remove the overflow feature and introduce queue times so that you may avoid them. Would you really want to wait in a queue like WvW rather than be given a chance to play while you wait? You can’t fit an an entire server’s worth of players into a zone.

If all the timers were fixed, there would no longer be a reason to guest to other servers, since all servers would have the event starting at the same time. You could guest to another server after yours finished, in an attempt to find a server that’s slower at completing it, but by that point, you should have already joined the event, so unless your server is overpopulated, you wouldn’t have been in an overflow.

Ethics.4519:

Again, why not just disable chests when guesting?

The recent change to chest drops changed the whole dynamic. Prior to this, many are tied up in dungeons going for the best loot. The open world on several servers had a dead type feel to it, because of that. So people asked for underflow instances. Where if for exampled all servers in Queensdale each had 10 people running around, that they would all come together since it is very low pop and 250 people would be in the entire zone.

Guesting was to make servers with empty areas to allow players to move to another hopping server to feel like they are in a mmo. And that was working as planned, and these people have to get the rewards to otherwise that negates the whole reason to even venture.

It’s when we got world boss drops on timers that this whole new level of zerging kicked in. Now people are jumping in mass all over to the same places.

Eladriel.7295:

JK Arrow.7102:

I bet this gets merged somewhere but the best solution to guesting I’ve seen is that you actually need to be a guest. Someone from that server has to actually invite you there. I mean, isn’t that what guesting is supposed to be about anyway?

Nope, you don’t have to know anyone to guest on any server. I guest on Tarnished Coast and don’t know not one player on there.

I realize that. I said it is a possible solution to the issues at hand if guesting were limited to being invited to play on a server.

JK Arrow.7102:

I realize that. I said it is a possible solution to the issues at hand if guesting were limited to being invited to play on a server.

I think some of the point was that if you are in a dead zone and you wanted it to feel more like a mmo, you could jump out and try a more populated one. Friends or not. If it was what you suggest, then that feature would be dead to me, I have no friends on other servers. Ok.

It’s actually quite interesting to note that Lion’s Arch, which used to almost always kick you into an overflow, has been suspiciously free of them lately. Almost as if all the people who used to be there doing fractals and dungeons were off somewhere else in the game.

Gestankfaust.4216:

I love the people who just have it in their head the guesting has nothing to do with it. IT DOES…PERIOD! Might not be THE reason. But it has never been a problem before guesting and the new patches. The new loot from chests or whatever, coupled with guesting is the reason.

Get over yourselves and think for a change

Guesting had been implemented for a month with no issues, while everything’s gone to hell within a week of the chest buff causing people to hit world bosses like a swarm of locusts every time they appear. Seems like the culprit is pretty obvious to me.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

It’s actually quite interesting to note that Lion’s Arch, which used to almost always kick you into an overflow, has been suspiciously free of them lately. Almost as if all the people who used to be there doing fractals and dungeons were off somewhere else in the game.

Gestankfaust.4216:

I love the people who just have it in their head the guesting has nothing to do with it. IT DOES…PERIOD! Might not be THE reason. But it has never been a problem before guesting and the new patches. The new loot from chests or whatever, coupled with guesting is the reason.

Get over yourselves and think for a change

Guesting had been implemented for a month with no issues, while everything’s gone to hell within a week of the chest buff causing people to hit world bosses like a swarm of locusts every time they appear. Seems like the culprit is pretty obvious to me.

Makes sense to me.

I really do think the overflows have way more to do with the servers’ native populations. Guesting isn’t the problem in my opinion. I just think it’s frustrating that people are going “Oh well, ya know, it’s not fair cuz like…someone might want to guest to another server to like, try it, or kill bandits in Queensdale with some friends. What will they do if they can’t guest? WHAT WILL THEY DO?!”

It just seems insanely disingenuous. I have yet to see a single post in all of these threads saying “I regularly guest on 1-2 additional servers to play with other guilds/friends as intended.” Unless you’re new to the game in the past few weeks, everyone has had MONTHS of free transfers to play around and figure out which server they wanted to end up on. I find it extremely hard to believe that just since the implementation of PHAT CHEST LOOTZ people are suddenly starting to question their choice of guild/server and are guesting around to sample other communities with a move in mind. Especially since it would always be free to them anyway.

I think most of the people whining about guesters know that they’re probably not the primary issue. But after seeing countless people say “this feature is important, it’s not being misused, they have just as much a right as you, etc. etc.” it starts to wear on you. We all know why they are there. They know why they are there whether they admit it or not. It’s really ridiculous to see “natives” being called selfish given this context.

Screw this, I’m out.

I don’t believe guesting is the cause of the overflow issues, but it’s not helping either. In most cases that I have seen ppl guest for these events because of convenient timing.

If someone only has a certain amount of playtime available and their home server is on cool down for a particular event, then guesting becomes the solution. The level of which someone regards server population prior to guesting, I would assume becomes a secondary consideration, if considered at all.

To me the major issue here is server efficiency. We know that the servers/client perform/s substandardly (don’t think that’s actually a word) when filled. We also know that they lowered the capacity on each server to combat the performance issues. That imo is a “band-aid fix”.

Anywho without addressing the underlying problem of server efficiency, I guess they could dress the wounds a bit better than just with the current “band-aid”. Some ideas off the top of my head would include:
*Randomizing the events so timers would not funnel populations
*Have guests require invites (easy work around for not knowing players on a particular server would be a thread on these forums)
*Keep current lower server capacities but allow home buffer capacity.

But, ofc the main solution would be for them to improve server efficiency.

personally i would like to see better balance on all the events in gw2. the main reason why we have an overflow issue is because dragon events are incredibly easy to do and still offers good rewards. why go to a different map and do a different event there when all i have to do is wait for a dragon, get few hits in, and collect a chest with yellow and sometimes exotic pieces.

most players are ignoring other maps/events and focusing only on farming dragon chests and that’s why we have overflow issue.

I have not weighed in on this topic since the first few days after the last content patch. The only reason I am doing so now is because there was actually a dev post noting that they were ‘tracking the issue.’ So I’ll weigh in one last time on the forums and then go back to (largely not) playing.

TL;DR :
The combination of change to loot mechanics, guesting behavior, and server structure results in “broken” gameplay. The “quickfix” which has apparently been to reduce the zone cap before shunting players to overflow is a tourniquet-type fix, strangling the game rather than actually addressing any root cause to the problem. ANet, you have killed your game, and I am voting with my wallet in the gem store (and with my time) until you fix this.

Long version :

• Prior to the changes in loot mechanics at the last content patch, I (and my guild) regularly participated in dragon and other world dynamic meta-events. This happened organically. A few of us started the trend, we started showing up as a guild, had fun, and then many of us began to keep track of these events. We would characteristically show up en masse, often 10-15 individuals sporting our guild tag would appear at an event. We would have spontaneous guild camaraderie and events. Those who enjoy roleplay would strike up in-character conversations with people hanging out, and gaming would happen. Community would happen. Those of us who might not be roleplaying ourselves could still watch, or run around and kill things, work on dailies, or tease people in WvW to join us. It was, in other words, fun and team building.

I could go on and on about how it “used to be.” The way we would troll each other about what loot we would or would not get. Sure, some would gripe about the quality of the loot, but we turned out in droves not for the loot. For the fun of it. It was not about loot per minute. The ubiquitous chance for a precursor remained, but some of us would attend these events all day long, stopping our other activities (much to the irritation of others, especially when some people would hop out of dungeons to run and participate “really quickly,” heh), but the bottom line? Our net fun was very high.

• Enter guesting and changes to loot. Almost immediately there was a change. Not just the lag, not just the inability to always get to the events themselves, but the temprament changed. The pace changed. Not so much gathering and having fun, the community around these events changed with the hurry-up attitude and the every-one-for-themselves attitude. People stopped sharing so much because your “spot” at the table was being squeezed out. Those who would do it for fun had their fun changed or taken away and the people who feel ‘entitled’ to their share of loot and fun began to show up.

My own personal experience has been largely a spiral into decay. Lag, more lag, unplayable lag, untargetable bosses, not seeing damage, the whole kit and kaboodle… then overflow and nothing. Not even the lag. No chest, no fun, no playing with friends, and worst of all? Being told to go guest if I wanted to participate. By whom? By people who were guesting on my server for their own convenience.

Of all the hours I had waited, or worked on zone completion or simply farmed, or hung out with roleplayers watching, or just waited those last fifteen minutes, for months, now it’s as if that investment in building community over that time frame, the actual playing of the game with guildmates on the same server, that convenience, has been undermined by people chasing timers and watching the clock.

Rather than openly admit it is an exploit of the ‘spirit of guesting,’ they tend toward the ‘the game is built to allow me to do it, it’s for my convenience, so therefore I CAN do it, so go do it yourself if you want anything.’ They do not seem to care about my community, my enjoying an hour or three of fun with twenty guildmates, not to mention those who are not in my guild but a part of my community who have also been showing up to these event for the last three or more months.

Loot is great, but it’s not the game. All those discussing the lack of impact studies and so forth are obviously aware of the short-sightedness of ANet’s implementation. ANet may have actually tried to be “nice” to players or reward them, or draw them to world meta-events, but it’s time for them to admit that they failed in their implementation if we assume even remotely that they want to maintain their core philosophy of making this game fun to play, and making it so that we are happy to see another player come along.

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