Guesting and Overflow [merged]
People are starting to have to show up for events 30 minutes to an hour before hand and sit around waiting just to get a spot before the zone fills up and then goes to overflow. Then the event lasts about 2 minutes as the hordes of people slaughter the boss before any of the phases can even happen.
Those that don’t get lucky enough end up in a nearly empty overflow server having wasted money to port. They are typically not happy.
This is killing the game.
So anet limited the chests 1/ day to get people to go elsewhere. In my oppinion this is what cause people to go into a panic to find where the next boss is gonna spawn. Ill explain how it is actually affecting the fun i used to have playing.
Back in the day i was able to leave my lvl80 caracter in one zone and play my alts not worrying bout when a boss is going to spawn or not the thing was even if i miss a boss i was still able to get maby loot 2x from another to make up for the loss.
Now its completely different i cant even play my alts i have to keep jumping from server to server to find a event i havent done yet and its taking alot of time away from playing those caracters.
So in conclusion In my oppinion its not guesting thats the problem but the limit on chests. Don’t get me wrong there is not need to remove the limit completely just up it to maby 4 per day or so then i won’t have to jump around to other servers and take up space that might exclude someone on that home server to enjoy that same event.
Is not working. I have never had “overflow” issues until this. Now we can’t even run Dragons or Events because we are bumped to an overflow? And we are on the server! Makes no sense that “guests” bump actual server players. This has to be fixed soon. The game has become too laggy…and now we can’t do the content. Not sure we will be able to stomach this for another week.
The reason they’re limited is because it would be pretty overpowered to be able to loot all the chests every 3 hours, from a farmer’s point of view.
They could limit you to an X amount of chests per day, allowing you to farm whatever event you wanted, but that would be a nerf to people that actually do all the chest events and I doubt they’d want people to farm the same one over and over. It would also be very easy to get all your chests with the maw in its current state. It wouldn’t stop people guesting either, since if you were limited to 4 chests, people would still want to guest and get those 4 as fast as possible.
Now imagine if the events were on fixed, scheduled timers. You could play your alts without worrying about it, because you’d know exactly when the event would occur. When you ported over, it wouldn’t matter if you landed in overflow, because since it’s on a scheduled timer, it would also be happening there. It would also mean you no longer have to AFK ikittenone, waiting for the event to occur.
Is not working. I have never had “overflow” issues until this. Now we can’t even run Dragons or Events because we are bumped to an overflow? And we are on the server! Makes no sense that “guests” bump actual server players. This has to be fixed soon. The game has become too laggy…and now we can’t do the content. Not sure we will be able to stomach this for another week.
I’m so glad you posted this. I completely agree with this. At minimum, I would love to see a system in which actual server players were somehow given priority to stay before the guesters. Maybe there could be a warning system, to offer a heads up while you are teleporting. For instance, currently; you can teleport to a waypoint right next to another and be sent to overflow. If a warning message popped up such as, “currently this server is experiencing a high volume of traffic and may send you to overflow. Do you want to continue teleporting?” In this event, we could decide whether or not we wish to continue traveling with that risk.
Thank you for listening and hope you guys come up with something. Thank you ANET. Keep up the good work!
(edited by DavidCoppafeel.3816)
Sea Of Sorrows
Jormag Event
2013-03-08
07.00 Central
Large number of home server players were disconnected and pushed into overflow during dragon event disallowing us from participating. Even though we were on our map, our server, our event – before it even started – we have been turned into second class players while guests and port ins were given higher priority. Some players had this occur to them multiple times over the day.
Your fix is not working.
What about if guests want to guests fine, but what if they dont get META Event Chest, Why .. because they are not there home. This would be the best way to actually stop the guesting to server Abuse that every1 lives. No Loot, Not a farm, rather stay home. But if they want to help some1 fine wasn’t it the goal ?
Hey everybody,
We’ve made some changes that should improve overflow issues on most maps. The team is also investigating larger solutions to help in the long term.
Sorry but that is easy. Take away the incentive to just do boss events, by massively improving loot from other things in the game world. Pay attention please I said game world so not dungeons/fractals.
When doing one thing doesn’t give an advantage over the others it will spread out people again.
Sea Of Sorrows
Jormag Event
2013-03-08
07.00 CentralLarge number of home server players were disconnected and pushed into overflow during dragon event disallowing us from participating. Even though we were on our map, our server, our event – before it even started – we have been turned into second class players while guests and port ins were given higher priority. Some players had this occur to them multiple times over the day.
Your fix is not working.
I was guesting there at that time, it… felt… so… goooood!
Not really, but wished I’d been, must have been glorious. Sea of Sorrows living up to it’s name. Best news I can give you… it’s not Sim City.
The reason they’re limited is because it would be pretty overpowered to be able to loot all the chests every 3 hours, from a farmer’s point of view.
They could limit you to an X amount of chests per day, allowing you to farm whatever event you wanted, but that would be a nerf to people that actually do all the chest events and I doubt they’d want people to farm the same one over and over. It would also be very easy to get all your chests with the maw in its current state. It wouldn’t stop people guesting either, since if you were limited to 4 chests, people would still want to guest and get those 4 as fast as possible.
Now imagine if the events were on fixed, scheduled timers. You could play your alts without worrying about it, because you’d know exactly when the event would occur. When you ported over, it wouldn’t matter if you landed in overflow, because since it’s on a scheduled timer, it would also be happening there. It would also mean you no longer have to AFK ikittenone, waiting for the event to occur.
I actually like your idea makes sense to be honest i dont really like jumping around having to wait for loading times and events to start is annoying as heck
Sea Of Sorrows
Jormag Event
2013-03-08
07.00 CentralLarge number of home server players were disconnected and pushed into overflow during dragon event disallowing us from participating. Even though we were on our map, our server, our event – before it even started – we have been turned into second class players while guests and port ins were given higher priority. Some players had this occur to them multiple times over the day.
Your fix is not working.
because disconnecting mid-event means a guest stole your spot.
LOL nice logic.
I’m sure it’s a bug that guesting gives you another chest. Once that bug is fixed, this won’t be an issue anymore.
Though until then it sure is annoying. But don’t implement a change in mechanics to fix a bug, just fix the bug.
If people are jumping servers to get a second chest they need to be perma banned. It is a clear exploit and no way you could say…oh I thought that was what they intended guesting for.
The thing is most people are not jumping to get a extra chest they do because they want to get it over and done with asap. I for one really would like to go play my alts not having to worry if ive looted a certain boss. the sooner i can finish all of em the sooner i can get to actually playing.
because disconnecting mid-event means a guest stole your spot.
LOL nice logic.
With the current situation, at least this isn’t less likely than a player from the same server taking it.
What about if guests want to guests fine, but what if they dont get META Event Chest, Why .. because they are not there home. This would be the best way to actually stop the guesting to server Abuse that every1 lives. No Loot, Not a farm, rather stay home. But if they want to help some1 fine wasn’t it the goal ?
I think so too. Nobody can tell me playing with your friends equals attending those open world events.
Iruwen Evillan, Human Mesmer on Drakkar Lake
Mm. Wonder what those changes are indeed. It’s not even midday, and there’s overflow in Frostgorge Sound, on Seafarer’s Rest. kitten but I’d been trying to get the dragons out of the way in the morning so I didn’t have to think about it for the rest of the day.
<_>And in shock! other news: Kittens destroy grammar.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Steve R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Man, it’s real empty on our server, only like 10 people per event
I think so too. Nobody can tell me playing with your friends equals attending those open world events.
Well, the problem is, it could equate to playing with friends.
A proper root cause analysis backed by ANet’s own statistical quantifiable data around server population, guesting data, looting data and so on — this would answer questions such as who was guesting to loot Meta chests. Who was playing with friends (in a party or not?).
Of course some of this could be worked around; anyone who wants to hijack a system can eventually do it. But if a “friend invitation” status could be added to “open guesting” then ANet could distinguish different guesters. Those who came to play with friends (or at least went to the trouble to get an invite), and those who came by for an event. They can look to see if they just came by for a chest. Etc.
They can take a server and add logging at a performance hit; the data is needed, collect some carefully if they don’t have it already.
Perhaps imposing the equivalent of a deserter debuff that says you can’t loot a Meta event chest for 15 or 30 minutes while guesting to help prevent exploitation. Along with adding a friend status, or open visitor. Different privileges.
If the game continues to get successful, the problems will only grow in size if proper measures and proper analysis/solution are not implemented now.
It is obvious though that a root cause is the loot/min mentality of some players, adjustment of loot mechanisms in such a way that does not penalize players who do not farm (eg, who play the game in a more well-rounded fashion as opposed to farming) is one of the ways to go. You can’t stop people from wanting to farm; at one time or another everyone will want or need to (money for something or another).
I really hate to bring it up, more directly, but also trying to herd players to places. Whether it is by fractal loot, meta event chest loot, or daily mechanics — is always a dangerous proposition. Everyone defines fun differently. Each time a new hurdle is put into place, whether it is kill in Kryta instead of just plain kill — this takes away from the game, it does not add to it.
I half find myself wanting to say this: Go back and talk about how originally this was more of an unfettered sandbox without boundaries and it’s becoming more an antfarm with the mad scientists performing experimetns. Or whipping out a magnifying glass. Perhaps hyperbolic, but it’s what comes to mind. You built a great sandbox, but some of the structures being added don’t fit right.
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…..
They talked about guesting before the game was even released. They allowed free server transfers until they got guesting in place. The intention is for friends on different servers to be allowed to play together. Guesting should be allowed for that reason.
Rather than destroy features that are important to people who want to use them in the spirit intended, why not go after the root problem.
The problem = the loot chests that people are overloading zones to get. Even if you remove guesting, your own server will overload the zone.
I have not guested anywhere. I am rarely at any of the events because I have limited time to play and use that time to do the daily and then a little time in wvw. The only time I am at one of the events is if I am doing the daily in the area and the event happens to pop up.
However, I think many solutions suggested will not work. Somehow they need to spread the populations out across the entire server. Having predictable good loot in one place is always going to be overloaded.
As much as I hate to suggest a nerf to the chests, I think that the bosses that can be completed by people at level ikittenone should be adjusted so that people in that zone can experience an exciting first boss event WITHOUT a bunch of level 80’s being there to overpower the boss. I remember encountering the shadow behemoth when leveling my first character. It was exciting with all of us (at the level of the zone) desperately fighting that boss. That experience is ruined now for others, new to the game, leveling in Queensdale.
Only Anet knows which potential solution would work. I wish them luck with their solutions.
Edit: ikittenone =
in
a
zone
It’s a kitten conspiracy. Kittens gonna be kittens. All is vain!
Were the improvements in the patch today?
Because nothing improved.
Just checked Shatterer and Tequatl shortly before the events started, no queue for me.
Iruwen Evillan, Human Mesmer on Drakkar Lake
Our problem has been, on our server half of our guild does not get influence points for doing events. Yes they are representing, yes they are online, yes they are in guild groups. But the influence gain has been so bugged lately, The ONLY time we get influence points is when we guest to another server and play there, not just for chest farming but for everything, I have and will continue to encourage them to guest to other servers until this bugged is fix. If other people don’t like it. Take it up with anet. Btw, I could care less about dragon farming, haven’t bothered with those in several months.
to hell whit overflow, i have too little time on the game, i no seen drake several day and after i quit in overflow. .super
please expand your server :C)
sorry for eng . .
czech rep. greeting bb
Sorry if this was asked before, but is it possible to lower the re spawn timer for these events on the overflow servers? At least then if someone gets booted to one there is a good chance that an event will be in progress, or it wont take long to be up if there isn’t.
“Caithe, someday you’ll see, Tyria needs me. -Scarlet”
I don’t usually post in the forums. But this overflow and guesting is getting out of hand and extremely annoying.
Was fighting Jormag on my server Darkhaven, he’s down to 1/4 health and i get the stupid sound issues that GW2 always has had since launch of the game and crashed the game, relog in and in overflow, joined a guild member in party and still could not get back out of overflow.
Did all the hard work of fighting the dragon and miss out on the chest because the game crashed and i get into overflow.
My guild is getting really annoyed about this overflow, our server and we can’t even play on it. We don’t guest and yet we get penalized for not guesting by missing out on the dragons. People on there home server should get priority over guests. This was never an issue before they changed the loot for the dragons and other world events.
I get a limited amount of time to play because of work. Can’t always do the dragons when they are up.
Once again why should people on their server home be punished for people that are guesting onto it.
Make the dragons spawn randomly so they can’t be predicted, or give home server people preference over guests, or make that you only can do world events on your own server, something needs to be done.
Congratulations arena net all what you currently doing with your updates is kitten people off, with guesting, small guild unable to do guild missions, ascended items, etc, etc. Not a smart way to keep your customers or keep them happy.
Still love the game, but every new patch i seem to loose some of that love and eventually will drive me away and to another game, like so many of my friends and guildies have left already.
No game is perfect and hopefully arena net are listening to there customers and trying to figure out what they are going to do and how to make most people happy. I still have faith in them.
everything is an illusion
I think they may have increased the population cap in these zones, because the performance seems even more ridiculous now.
Last days it is great problem. Aurora glade server is so much overflowing that is almost not possible to try kill group bosses like dragons. If you really want kill some dragon for example you must stay on spawn place about 1 hour before spawning time/window or you will be redirected to overflow. Last time some group of maybe 10 ppl said that they are guesting here from another server and my friend wasnt able to join me on normal server and was on overflow only coz some groups of ppl was occupying our home server. And I ask why? Why ppl from another servers should be able to occupy our server and cause that our ppl must stay on overflow????
Most necessary thing is increase population cap of maps and repair lags which are unbelievable during bosses. Other solution is kick and redirect players which entered world as last to another world. I know that its seems to be hard solution, but if Anet doesnt find some way how allow more ppl to stay on map without horrible lags, its only one possible solution. Every day there are more and more players on worlds and servers are overloaded and “veteran” players cannot go bosses coz 90% of time finish on overflow. Another good solution is maybe some option on settings which allow player to off visibility of other players (only on PvE). Last time I was on dragon and it was all ok without any lags but when all textures of another players was loaded, all horrible lags was back. Its simple, only give there option on settings to off another players textures on PvE and for example allow only party or guild players textures visibility. I bet that this option can help fix lags.
May be we can use the dr system to inhibit those abuse using guesting players.
For example, the respawn time of shatterer is 3hrs. Base on the same account, each player do not have chest if repeat doing it in 3hrs.
Pros: Guest abuser cannot fast farming all the world boss chest in the short time
Cons: Home server players may do not have chest when server reset; need to notice all players do not have chest in the time limit even if server reset (Or official can erase the dr record if server reset)
(edited by HelloKitty.4613)
Hey everybody,
We’ve made some changes that should improve overflow issues on most maps. The team is also investigating larger solutions to help in the long term.
I noticed the difference right away yesterday. Thanks for all your hard work!
Hey everybody,
We’ve made some changes that should improve overflow issues on most maps. The team is also investigating larger solutions to help in the long term.
I noticed the difference right away yesterday. Thanks for all your hard work!
I only hit overglow on Jormag yesterday, I’m not sure why Jormag seems to be different. There we so many in the overflow I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a secon overflow.
Fix the loot all over the rest of the open world and Dungeon chests not just in world events and people wont need to guest all over the world events..
Nothing changed on Gunnars, still getting into overflow…
My suggestion would be that native players have advantage over guests. The reason why guesting exist is that you can join and play with friends across servers and not farm world events. So if I enter Frostgorge, I want to kick guest to overflow and enter.
Gunnar’s Hold
It’s hit and miss today. I guested just so I could some done. I can definitely see the attraction, logged into another server, pre event was up, killed dragon got loot.
Can a dev PLEASE PLEASE explain the logic of guesting if it hurts and blocks the play of origin server players? I have missed out on countless dragon chests because of guesting. I would really love to hear this from the mouth of a dev because this is exactly how I feel and a multitude of other plays feel….“WE COULD CARE LESS ABOUT SERVER LOYALTY AND COULD CARE LESS IF YOU ARE ABLE TO DO CONTENT OR NOT”
Can’t even get into events on my own server because of guesting. I was on for quite a while today. 3 cycles of Shadow Bohemoth and several of the dragons went by with me not being able to do them because I’d be put in overflow when getting to the zone.
Are you JOKING ME? I can’t get into the events on my server because of GUESTING ABUSERS? Great. So now because tools who don’t know how to play the game correctly found an abusive exploit, I’ve not been able to do any meta events on ANY of my characters for the last week.
Oh but the Megadestroyer and Giant Worm (outside of TA) are available. Know why? The loot in their chests suck and nobody does them. Shadow Bohemoth just dropped 3 Final Rests. Everyone from other servers guesting there said “I’m never leaving this server! LOL!”
Seriously. This is messed up. PLEASE make the loot account wide and 1 per chest per day! This is ridiculous how people are getting several rare items a day by abusing guesting. The fact that I can’t even play the events on my server is really getting old and I’ve about had it with this crap.
Guild leader of Insert Catchy Name Here – (US) Darkhaven
twitch.tv/mdogg2005
twitch.tv/mdogg2005
I mean I spend real kitten money every time I get paid…I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO EVERY KITTEN DRAGON EVENT ON MY OWN KITTEN SERVER!
So much anger over just a few pixels and dear lord the entitlement of most. No one has more right to do an event over some one else be they native or guest. It does not matter is you agree with that or not. These are not YOUR events to be done. If you want to do them than be prepared to sit on your kitten and twiddle your thumbs for long periods of time as you will be waiting and waiting. Time which could be better spend actually doing “minor” content which in the end will get you more profit.
But of course greed is what motivates people here. Eventhough it is only perceived higher loot and due to all the waiting not really more gold earned. You know who the real people are that should be mad. It’s the people who want to actually do stuff ikittenone other than boss events. They get a desolate zone for the most part or are in overflow, because greedy players are taking up spots. Yes the people native are not better than the people they want removed for guesting.
So now players are sauggesting to “stand in line” to wait to kill a boss?
I am sure I read some place, some time, some where, that some dev said that would never happen. It seems the more they do, the worse this game gets.
So much anger over just a few pixels and dear lord the entitlement of most. No one has more right to do an event over some one else be they native or guest. It does not matter is you agree with that or not. These are not YOUR events to be done. If you want to do them than be prepared to sit on your kitten and twiddle your thumbs for long periods of time as you will be waiting and waiting. Time which could be better spend actually doing “minor” content which in the end will get you more profit.
But of course greed is what motivates people here. Eventhough it is only perceived higher loot and due to all the waiting not really more gold earned. You know who the real people are that should be mad. It’s the people who want to actually do stuff ikittenone other than boss events. They get a desolate zone for the most part or are in overflow, because greedy players are taking up spots. Yes the people native are not better than the people they want removed for guesting.
Greed? You know the only reason I am forced to do these kitten dragon events is because of greedy people, due to the stupid price of precursors I am doing these events in hopes of getting one. I am not going to pay some greedy person an insane amount of gold for it.
But wait, you have all the answers don’t you…you should think about starting a cult of something..at least that would be more productive then you kitten answers.
Its a Problem,
I am all for people guesting on my world,
Even don’t mind those people helping on Dragons,
However somehow precedence needs to be given to server natives, i dont know if its a overflow at 80% zone population for all guesters, reserving 20% for natives.
OR increse zone cap by some server/client voodoo we know it some some of that love anyways.
Why don’t they just link up all Dragon Events on ALL servers to the same time?
With the restrictions on rewards they probably should do this.
Jade Quarry [SoX]
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro
Far as I am concerned, if a player from the particular world which the dragon event is on joins the area, a guest should be removed. First in, first out.
For someone to be a ‘guest’, there is usually an ‘invitation’. Noone invited these people onto the other servers.
Why don’t they just link up all Dragon Events on ALL servers to the same time?
With the restrictions on rewards they probably should do this.
Than the need to implement a timer in which you have to kill it otherwise you will never be able to keep them synched as different servers will have different kill times, that is why they don’t line up in the first time. This timer can affect the ability for certain servers to actually kill the boss or the boss can become an even bigger snoozefest. 1 Timer for all is not the answer.
Either remove the timers entirely and make them spawn random or improve the loot enough for people to spread out instead of waiting for a certain event.
Removing DR might already be enough incentive for people to start spreading out again and it will be 2 birds with 1 stone in my opinion.
People can guest over to another server to loot chests which makes people from that server bounce into overflow, but I can’t guest back to my original server to get my stuff out of my guild chest there. Awesome.
Far as I am concerned, if a player from the particular world which the dragon event is on joins the area, a guest should be removed. First in, first out.
For someone to be a ‘guest’, there is usually an ‘invitation’. Noone invited these people onto the other servers.
You don’t need an invitation when it’s an open invitation.
If you’re going to kick people, why stop with just guests. Why not just kick everyone not participating in the event? Since there’ll still be overflow, why not just kick everyone but you. Since the dragons are so easily zergable, let’s just put them in personal story instances and force you to solo or up to 5 man them and allow you to start them whenever you want or just keep it the way it is now and allow everyone to see it in the open world, but make you enter the instance to fight it. At least then, it would take you 30 minutes or so to solo it, making the loot actually equal to the time and effort.
Than the need to implement a timer in which you have to kill it otherwise you will never be able to keep them synched as different servers will have different kill times, that is why they don’t line up in the first time. This timer can affect the ability for certain servers to actually kill the boss or the boss can become an even bigger snoozefest. 1 Timer for all is not the answer.
Either remove the timers entirely and make them spawn random or improve the loot enough for people to spread out instead of waiting for a certain event.
Removing DR might already be enough incentive for people to start spreading out again and it will be 2 birds with 1 stone in my opinion.
The scheduled timer concept and how it would work has been suggested many times. The concept is that the dragons would spawn maybe every 2 hours and you’d have 1 hour to kill it before the dragon wins and you fail. Personally, even when doing the dragons in a small group (2-3), I’ve never seen one last longer than an hour or if they can even fail. I don’t see how it would make it a bigger snoozefest for populated servers though. Currently, you’re encouraged to AFK for 30 minutes, then press 1 for 2 minutes, then collect your loot. If the timers were scheduled, you could show up just before it spawned, press 1 and collect your loot, giving you that 30 minutes to do whatever you wanted.
Having the timers random could go a couple ways. Either people would scout, then announce it, causing everyone to flock to that server or people would feel forced to AFK for them, since it could spawn at any moment. I could even imagine paid services to get informed, since all you’d need is a bot constantly standing in the zone waiting for it. Even if the timers were random, they would be something like a 1 hour downtime with a 2 hour window. Most of them are already basically like that, but with a shorter window.
If by remove the DR you mean to remove the daily limit, you’re crazy. That would greatly increase the problem.
Far as I am concerned, if a player from the particular world which the dragon event is on joins the area, a guest should be removed. First in, first out.
For someone to be a ‘guest’, there is usually an ‘invitation’. Noone invited these people onto the other servers.
You don’t need an invitation when it’s an open invitation.
If you’re going to kick people, why stop with just guests. Why not just kick everyone not participating in the event? Since there’ll still be overflow, why not just kick everyone but you. Since the dragons are so easily zergable, let’s just put them in personal story instances and force you to solo or up to 5 man them and allow you to start them whenever you want or just keep it the way it is now and allow everyone to see it in the open world, but make you enter the instance to fight it. At least then, it would take you 30 minutes or so to solo it, making the loot actually equal to the time and effort.
Than the need to implement a timer in which you have to kill it otherwise you will never be able to keep them synched as different servers will have different kill times, that is why they don’t line up in the first time. This timer can affect the ability for certain servers to actually kill the boss or the boss can become an even bigger snoozefest. 1 Timer for all is not the answer.
Either remove the timers entirely and make them spawn random or improve the loot enough for people to spread out instead of waiting for a certain event.
Removing DR might already be enough incentive for people to start spreading out again and it will be 2 birds with 1 stone in my opinion.
The scheduled timer concept and how it would work has been suggested many times. The concept is that the dragons would spawn maybe every 2 hours and you’d have 1 hour to kill it before the dragon wins and you fail. Personally, even when doing the dragons in a small group (2-3), I’ve never seen one last longer than an hour or if they can even fail. I don’t see how it would make it a bigger snoozefest for populated servers though. Currently, you’re encouraged to AFK for 30 minutes, then press 1 for 2 minutes, then collect your loot. If the timers were scheduled, you could show up just before it spawned, press 1 and collect your loot, giving you that 30 minutes to do whatever you wanted.
Having the timers random could go a couple ways. Either people would scout, then announce it, causing everyone to flock to that server or people would feel forced to AFK for them, since it could spawn at any moment. I could even imagine paid services to get informed, since all you’d need is a bot constantly standing in the zone waiting for it. Even if the timers were random, they would be something like a 1 hour downtime with a 2 hour window. Most of them are already basically like that, but with a shorter window.
If by remove the DR you mean to remove the daily limit, you’re crazy. That would greatly increase the problem.
DR = Diminished Returns. How you can even get to the conclusion I meant daily limit is beyond me when I talked about increasing gains elsewhere just above.
Random timers would still be better, Your fixed timer doesn’t take away the problem infact it might even make it worse as people for sure will be waiting for them. It will spread them out a bit more but will not make the problem go away. With random timers you will have a few who twiddle their thumbs waiting, but the vast majority will not as they won’t profit from it. That’s the key here, people are doing the events en masse as they think it gives the highest income for the least effort, which is debatable to begin with of course. It would return it more or less to what is was before the increase in rewards. Guilds and people giving a shout out in chat that something is up.
The only thing that will fix the problem is by removing the incentive to just do these events and ignoring the rest. Removing the incentive can be done by removing the loot, which is a bad idea. Making the timers random, which will lead to less people camping the events and do them as they pop up. Or increasing loot elsewhere to give people choice on where they want to make a profit.
Far as I am concerned, if a player from the particular world which the dragon event is on joins the area, a guest should be removed. First in, first out.
For someone to be a ‘guest’, there is usually an ‘invitation’. Noone invited these people onto the other servers.
Riiight… do you even realize the amount of complaining that would occur if that happened.
You realize that people from your own server are off guesting on other servers as well right? The population at the events won’t change, they may actually be worse since it’ll actually be more difficult to do the events at times that are convenient for you with the ability to guest.
People will show up at events even earlier because without guesting, they lose 66% of the ability to do the event when they want.
What I’ve found to be successful is to do the easier and more frequent events like Maw and Fire Elemental and dailies during primetime when it’s busy, and do the other events in offhours when the gameworld isn’t so populated.
~Tarnished Coast~
this overflow to stop people from getting dragons is kitten I don’t personally know how hard it is to program dragon timers on the overflow maps in consistency with the timer on normal maps but I really believe this is necessary as soon as possible.
12 pages in this thread so far, and I have still yet to see one person…
ONE
…say anything that attributes the overflow servers at world events to guesting.
High home server population will produce an overflow without any guests at all.
Why do you blame guesting as if it is the issue here?
You are still going to get an overflow, guests or not.
Blame the dragon timers, blame the new loot from the chests, blame the size of the map population cap…. but for crying out loud….
STOP BLAMING GUESTING!
(or at least prove to me guesting is the culprit)
(edited by TheBlackLeech.9360)
DR = Diminished Returns. How you can even get to the conclusion I meant daily limit is beyond me when I talked about increasing gains elsewhere just above.
I assumed you were referring to the DR on dragon events, which is of course the daily limit. The other DR on dragon events makes it so you can’t camp them by just logging in, barely doing anything and collecting the loot, but that restriction doesn’t really make sense now that the daily limit is in place.
Removing DR on mobs wouldn’t really change anything, except open things up for exploitation, especially if dungeon DR was removed. It’s the overall drop chance on mobs that is a problem.
From the casual majority perspective, DR has no effect because grinding isn’t really something they do. Dragon events are currently the most rewarding activities in the game due to how little effort is needed and much time you have to personally put in, which is around 1 minute if you’re an abuser. With the way they’re setup, you can be rewarded where normally you wouldn’t be playing. For example, if you would normally be watching TV, meaning you wouldn’t be getting anything in-game, you can now keep the game running in one of the zones, get a little program to watch the screen to detect when the event starts so it can alert you, and then walk over and do it, getting loot you otherwise would not have gotten.
Giving an incentive for other players to not do the dragon events may help to reduce the problem, but it might not change anything at all, depending on how many people want to be rewarded by doing nothing.
Your fixed timer doesn’t take away the problem infact it might even make it worse as people for sure will be waiting for them.
It depends on what the problem is. If the problem is simply that you can’t do the event because you got into an overflow, then a fixed timer fixes that exact problem since the event would start for everyone on all servers at the same time. If the problem is that you don’t want to see an overflow at all, then nothing will completely fix that problem, since somewhere, there’s going to be an overflow. If the problem is that the loot is too good, then they’ll have to nerf it or buff everything else up to a point where if you miss the event, you no longer care, since it would have only been a minor bonus, say 10 minutes of grinding mobs.
Plus, my original suggestion for an officially scheduled timer had all dragons starting at the same time, forcing the population to split up, since I assumed they would want to reduce stress on the server.
The only thing that will fix the problem is by removing the incentive to just do these events and ignoring the rest.
The only way that would happen is by reverting the loot, increasing the difficulty or by making something else in the game so much better that you wouldn’t even want to waste the few short minutes to pop in and do the event, which would just create another problem.
ArenaNet needs to decided on what is an acceptable level of loot, if these events are supposed to be rare or farmed and then balance around that and additionally create a system that doesn’t create such a large gap between small groups and zergs. Reward-wise, the dragon events are fine if they were limited to say 10 people, as in each set of 10 people would have to fight their own copy. It’s too difficult to just say uncap scaling and scale dragons for 200 people, since you would just get 1 shot without seeing what is happening.
I assume by now they’ve already decided what they’re going to do.
this overflow to stop people from getting dragons is kitten I don’t personally know how hard it is to program dragon timers on the overflow maps in consistency with the timer on normal maps but I really believe this is necessary as soon as possible.
An overflow is the combination of multiple servers. Even if the overflow was in sync with the server that originally caused it, chances are when you got into the overflow, you wouldn’t be the first person, so the server would be in sync with some other server, making the whole idea pointless.
@Healix.
All a fixed timer will do is make it easier to schedule it. It will do nothing to fix the problem which is everyone flocking to these events which in turn causes overflows. Guesting is not what causes overflows a servers own population does. You are under the impression that people will spread out. Well the opposite will happen people will do them even more, which will make the problem even worse. People will be able to run even more characters through these events than they do now. So again I only see this idea failing badly.