Guild Wars 2

Is that a joke? Due to the notes moving to a more populated map copy was supposed to be an OPTION. And now I’m getting kicked from a map every time it actually becomes possible to have pleasant run there? Every time there appears some breathing space?
Dear Anet, please tell me, why are you so desperate to do everything exactly opposite to what we ask for?

I’ve been happy as a child whose toy has been given back when I could roam the underpopulated map for a longer time. Being kicked out of it straight into the zergfest was a sad moment. Hasn’t happened to me since. I would love an option to stay there for as long as I friggin’ want.

I do miss being on a quiet map.

They are obviously testing out the new “volunteer” move feature with some stricter numbers on closing and rotating maps. I got the Volunteer thing yesterday but have yet to be “kicked”…..are you at least getting a warning in chat (like when they force an update log out)?

Their goal to consolidate lower population maps is in direct conflict with the minipet culling fiasco, so I’m interested to see how they plan to handle this situation.

Go back to single player games is my advice.

Seriously…? You guys are never happy,sheesh

Sorean, this argument is the single most irritating thing people like you use in these discussions.

MMO is NOT supposed to be overcrowded. You are supposed to be playing with people, not be SMOTHERED by people.

You should be able to fail events. You are supposed to use mechanics of your character in order to achieve success.

Do you seriously consider the stuttering world boss light shows something this game should be proud of? Do you enjoy loot tagging race as the only form of challenge? If so, gg, discussion over.

They are attempting to save on server resources. My guess is that they are out of money and can no longer afford to keep multiple maps open so they close as many as possible. This also hides the population problems.

I can safely say I’ve never been kicked out of an unpopulated map (even after the volunteer option disappears after the hour or so it was available). So maybe there’s something else going on with your end?

Also, your comment on them doing the exact opposite of everything we ask for is clearly false. If you don’t believe me, look at your wallet and at the crafting stations with bank access for starters. (Not to mention loads of other stuff.)

I’ve yet to be kicked out of a map. Just offered the choice. Maybe you could wait until the patch next week which is to address many issues. You know, before commenting in such a fashion?

Good luck.

Sorean.5379:

Go back to single player games is my advice.

Seriously…? You guys are never happy,sheesh

How does this comment in any way benefit the discussion? You are simply saying “Shut up!”. If you have nothing to contribute constructively to the topic I recommend you say nothing.

“Better to be thought”…….you can google that portion of the famous quote.

I haven’t been kicked out after refusing to go to another map, even after an hour or more.

Were you DC’d? Went to character select? Forced to go to another map? Your post isn’t clear about what happened.

Well I think what OP is talking about just happened to me.

I was playing on a map that had emptied out (I had gotten the invitation to leave an hour previous) when suddenly I was moved to another map.

The maps do open and close as needed for the population. Presumably if the numbers drop below a certain amount the map closes automatically. No doubt this saves them money. (Shrug).

Edit: got another notification of a low map. On the side, it said I have 59 min until the map closes.

I just think people are spoilt now.
If you play a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game,you must have in mind that you are going to play with…well…a lot of people.
If you dont want to,you shouldn’t play it,its simple.
In the last 2 days people are picking every single reason to complain on the forums,you know…“just because”.

Also,I can’t think about any MMORPG that let the player be alone in a instance,GW2 and GW1 are the only games where you actually have an option to play alone.

I repeat,I can’t think of any other MMORPG that creates a instance for the player and actually give him an option to play alone if they want to (even if for 1~ hour before they move you to a more populated server,and even so you actually don’t fight for mobs or KS,maps rarely have people in the same area as you,unless you are doing an event.

I am out of this discussion btw,there is no point,I already gave my opinion on this subject.
“MMORPG” and “I want to play Solo,I can’t breath with players around me” just don’t fit.

I love being in a empty map (though I only got in one the first day after the patch and I wasn’t really playing, just chatting about the changes).
And with the current problem of 10 or more players (not counting the lvl 80s who never leave the lvl 1-15 areas) trying to kill 2 or 3 extremely weak mobs, you really wish to end in one of those maps :/

However, you can’t expect them to run a whole server instance just for you or a couple of players.

Elsdragon.5109:

Also, your comment on them doing the exact opposite of everything we ask for is clearly false. If you don’t believe me, look at your wallet and at the crafting stations with bank access for starters. (Not to mention loads of other stuff.)

I admit i haven’t a clue how’s that related to overpopulation problem. Please elaborate.

Sorean, what if I told you that the whole original content for this game has been balanced for groups of 5? Because it has. Including condition dmg limitations etc. And at some point the developer kind of forgot about it and went full corpo. Never go full corpo.

They removed the point of doing events, except loot. And loot is utterly meaningless. Loot is pointless. Loot does not exist. After you stop playing the game, the only thing that’ll remain with you is fun you had. Not what you grinded, you’ll be sorry about that. Unless for you grind = fun. You might be among their new target group, I admit that. I also feel sorry about that.

Asmodeus.5782:

After you stop playing the game, the only thing that’ll remain with you is fun you had. Not what you grinded, you’ll be sorry about that.

/clap Q_Q

Sorean.5379:

I just think people are spoilt now.
If you play a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game,you must have in mind that you are going to play with…well…a lot of people.
If you dont want to,you shouldn’t play it,its simple.
In the last 2 days people are picking every single reason to complain on the forums,you know…“just because”.

Also,I can’t think about any MMORPG that let the player be alone in a instance,GW2 and GW1 are the only games where you actually have an option to play alone.

I repeat,I can’t think of any other MMORPG that creates a instance for the player and actually give him an option to play alone if they want to (even if for 1~ hour before they move you to a more populated server,and even so you actually don’t fight for mobs or KS,maps rarely have people in the same area as you,unless you are doing an event.

I am out of this discussion btw,there is no point,I already gave my opinion on this subject.
“MMORPG” and “I want to play Solo,I can’t breath with players around me” just don’t fit.

So every time I go play a MMO I have to expect to play in a map crowded with people, laggy, cluttering and low fps? No, thank you, but no.

People are spoiled because they want to actually be able to play the game?
Well I will tell you that between been impossible to play in map because of lag and low fps, encounter zergfests everywhere spamming 1111111 and not being able to enjoy my game play, I’d rather quit the game. What is the point of keep playing like that?

World Bosses are terrible enough as they are now. What is the fun to be part of a zergball auto attacking while your fps drops to 20 or lower and you have no clue of what is going on? Is that what we should expect from all MMO’s as well?

It was never stated that it was optional. It was stated that you could volunteer yourself and get a boon.

Sorean.5379:

Go back to single player games is my advice.

Seriously…? You guys are never happy,sheesh

Geesh, the “white knights” fav suggestion—Leave.

Just to let you guys know, closing empty maps doesn’t save Anet money. Think about it. That nearly empty map is running on a server that will still be running even after that map closes. It’ll still be running even after 5, 10 or 20 maps close. If somehow they do have it programmed where certain servers shut off when no longer needed, the most it will save is electricity. Do you have any idea how little energy computers use? It would be more cost conscious to shut off the lights in the server room than all the servers. On top of that a shutdown server takes a while to boot back up, which is not something you want for an action mmo.

What closes maps does do is exactly what anet said it would. It opens up server space to do things that more players would be involved in. That could be a pvp map, dungeon instance, story instance, more bank space or simply allocate more resources to computational-intense situations like Tequatl. Even if they don’t do any of that, all computers naturally run smoother when there is more memory available! This is a GOOD thing!

Except that events are still not enjoyable in the enforced crowds.

Sorean.5379:

Go back to single player games is my advice.

Seriously…? You guys are never happy,sheesh

No, we are not happy.

Kind of difficult to farm mats from mobs when there are 10 other people trying to do the same thing.

“Just move to a new location.”

All the other locations are trash, or have been nerfed to trash, besides, there aren’t many places to farm t6 mats anyway.

Anet made it so we didn’t have to fight over gathering nodes because they felt that would be bad for the game, well now you’re going to have tons of people in zerker armor fighting over mob tags.

edit: with that said, I haven’t been on in a while, so I have no idea if OP was kicked for being inactive or not since he didn’t say.

The system seems to forcibly kick you when the hour-long volunteering counter reaches 0.

Asmodeus.5782:

The system seems to forcibly kick you when the hour-long volunteering counter reaches 0.

the term is “volun-told”.
usage: “You have been volun-told to leave the map. You have one hour to comply.”

Brother Grimm.5176:

They are obviously testing out the new “volunteer” move feature with some stricter numbers on closing and rotating maps. I got the Volunteer thing yesterday but have yet to be “kicked”…..are you at least getting a warning in chat (like when they force an update log out)?

Their goal to consolidate lower population maps is in direct conflict with the minipet culling fiasco, so I’m interested to see how they plan to handle this situation.

I did receive the pop-up notice of the dwindling population and the offer of gaining the buff if I choose to “volunteer” to leave some time before the end of the hour, at which time the map will auto close.

There was no message in chat regarding the pop-up, just the pop-up.

I chose to select the “later” option and it was minimized down to the chest area above my minimap.

Hovering on the icon would say I have 56 minutes (or however much time) remaining to voluntarily leave the map and receive the buff before it is automatically closed.

5 minutes later I was forcibly kicked out of the instance to another copy of the map.
Not 56 minutes later. 5 minutes.

And there was also no message in chat about my being kicked immediately.

I figured I would wait until the last few minutes left on the timer so I could enjoy the time in the empty zone. If I’m going to be kicked to a more populated version, might as well grab the buff at the last minute since I’m getting booted under protest and it’ll soften the blow slightly.

Having been forcibly kicked out to another instance of the map after only five minutes, I did not receive the buff due not actually selecting to leave the map.

I’m not too pleased with how that is functioning currently.

Two things.

1. Overcrowded? lol
2. Being kicked earlier than the given time limit sounds like a bug. This is clearly not intended.

sazberryftw.3809:

1. Overcrowded? lol

Yeah, hilarious that you can’t see Frozen Maw shaman under over a hundred players, spamming all skills at random.

Asmodeus.5782:

sazberryftw.3809:

1. Overcrowded? lol

Yeah, hilarious that you can’t see Frozen Maw shaman under over a hundred players, spamming all skills at random.

“1111111111”
is not random :P

Sorean.5379:

If you play a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game,you must have in mind that you are going to play with…well…a lot of people.

And by your impeccable logic, you must also expect that everyone has to expect to ROLE PLAY, right?

Brilliant.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

They are attempting to save on server resources. My guess is that they are out of money and can no longer afford to keep multiple maps open so they close as many as possible. This also hides the population problems.

This seriously made me laugh. Usually before a company runs out of money they lay off people and stop hiring.

They made plenty of money according to the last quarter. It almost definitely has more to do with efficiency than it does to do with money.

So, people want anet to have their systems holding multiple servers at once, running multiple calculations, etc etc, because they don’t want overcrowding. And this isn’t a problem because…?

Think about it. For example, 10 or so people stay after in an underpop server, ignoring to go over. OK, so the next one fills up, another 10 stay, the next one fills up, 5 stay, etc etc….

Let’s face it, there is a limit to how much data can be transfered properly at a time. Machines do have limits. So anet consolidated. This also helped some maps where people COULDNT complete events because there wasn’t enough people.

Anet always seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place when they try something.

As for the ‘being kicked after offered an hour to stay’, that sounds like a bug. Report it as such. If you receive no warning at all, that may be a bug too. You don’t know if don’t report it.

Asmodeus.5782:

Sorean, what if I told you that the whole original content for this game has been balanced for groups of 5? Because it has. Including condition dmg limitations etc. And at some point the developer kind of forgot about it and went full corpo. Never go full corpo.

They removed the point of doing events, except loot. And loot is utterly meaningless. Loot is pointless. Loot does not exist. After you stop playing the game, the only thing that’ll remain with you is fun you had. Not what you grinded, you’ll be sorry about that. Unless for you grind = fun. You might be among their new target group, I admit that. I also feel sorry about that.

Seconding. I felt more immersed as a new player when I was in caledon and mostly alone- sure I was lonely, but it was like being the first person to ever see those sights and do those tasks. Making it up to a hard to reach vista or completing a big event has a lot of punch taken out of it when there are seven people hanging around afk in that spot.

I was almost finished a collection event…a couple of more pickups and returns and I would have finished. Then…blink…I was popped to a new, more crowded map and the event wasn’t there. I didn’t get credit for it…no XP or karma. So…that’s fun.

eyestrain.3056:

Asmodeus.5782:

Sorean, what if I told you that the whole original content for this game has been balanced for groups of 5? Because it has. Including condition dmg limitations etc. And at some point the developer kind of forgot about it and went full corpo. Never go full corpo.

They removed the point of doing events, except loot. And loot is utterly meaningless. Loot is pointless. Loot does not exist. After you stop playing the game, the only thing that’ll remain with you is fun you had. Not what you grinded, you’ll be sorry about that. Unless for you grind = fun. You might be among their new target group, I admit that. I also feel sorry about that.

Seconding. I felt more immersed as a new player when I was in caledon and mostly alone- sure I was lonely, but it was like being the first person to ever see those sights and do those tasks. Making it up to a hard to reach vista or completing a big event has a lot of punch taken out of it when there are seven people hanging around afk in that spot.

I would like to counter the idea that the game was balanced for groups of 5 originally. You have to remember that there wasn’t a 5 target limit on aoe skills for a long time. That was changed for a few different reasons. I believe the term opportunity cost was one they threw around when they made that change. There were some pvp instances where the teams were 8v8. That got changed eventually too. Open world bosses certainly are not balanced for just 5 players. They’ve said that they designed bosses to scale according to the number of participating players, often well above 5. Scaling for just 5 doesn’t make sense in group events. The condition limit isn’t primarily a player population balance issue, they’ve said quite explicitly that it’s primarily a financial issue related to server side number crunching. Your issues with overcrowding are worth exploring as mmos are constantly working to make a digital world that is rather small seem larger than it is using smoke and mirrors. But, I do not think your perspective on player population as it relates to game design is as informed as it could be.

Lambent.6375:

Sorean.5379:

Go back to single player games is my advice.

Seriously…? You guys are never happy,sheesh

No, we are not happy.

Anet made it so we didn’t have to fight over gathering nodes because they felt that would be bad for the game, well now you’re going to have tons of people in zerker armor fighting over mob tags.

This.
And really, is actual gameplay really so much to ask from, well, a GAME?
I wouldn’t mind being kicked from an instance megaserver wants to close if only there was any other way of escaping giant zergs of people trying to tag one mob. A simple choice of joining a map with higher or lower cap would solve it all – strange people who are all about loot would have their zergs and those looking for gameplay would have a chance too.
Since I know how this works i will repeat: LOWER CAP DOES NOT MEAN PLAYING ALONE. Noone ever asked for single player instances. But even MMO isn’t about clusters of people.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

Hi guys,

The current setting is to close the map one hour after the call for volunteers. When this happens, everyone still there gets redirected to another map copy.

I understand that this one hour period might be frustrating to some players. I’ll be discussing the option of increasing that time to something longer with the team.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Definitely better than nothing. Thank you very much.

You get a popup you gonna be moved to another map in one hour – you can opt to move when the popup shows and receive a buff or you can stay on your empty map and play with yourself (pun intended) for 1 hour.

Which part of the text displayed on the popup have you trouble comprehending? Although I am not native english speaker I am more than happy to try and explain to you meaning of the words that confuse you.

Charleston Chew.1209:

You get a popup you gonna be moved to another map in one hour – you can opt to move when the popup shows and receive a buff or you can stay on your empty map and play with yourself (pun intended) for 1 hour.

Which part of the text displayed on the popup have you trouble comprehending? Although I am not native english speaker I am more than happy to try and explain to you meaning of the words that confuse you.

Please, if you don’t have anything useful to say, just don’t say anything. Trying to intimidate other people by ignoring 90% of what they said to make them look stupid will not make you look smarter, it’s the other way round.

Yenrah.8532:

My conratulations on understending the popup! You’re certainly unable to comprehand anything else, so it’s nice you know how to be proud of small things. They say it’s the key to happiness.

Small things – it’s what life is made of ^^

Yeah, sorry for that, you quite kittened me. You cant say you didn’t mean to.

Well yeah but in all fairness I really do think the 1 hour limit is enough. And I’m slowly learning that there might be others of another opinion, but it’s a process Though I wouldn’t support the increase to limit should it affect optimization (if that was the initial reason for the map popup).

It would be enough if it wasn’t only way to play with people instead of competing to tag a monster.

You are supposed to be playing with people, not be SMOTHERED by people.

Do you play on a super populated server or something? I mean, I know, megaserver kinda interconnects them, but I think being on a lower pop one to begin with has some affect on the individual experience. I have never had a problem finding a map with a relatively small number of people on it, personally. Usually it happens to me accidentally, because I’m late for a boss event, or some such thing.

I envy you. Really. For me megaserver has been a nightmare since the introduction.
What server are you on?

I like this feature in theory, but one problem I have with it is how certain events unlock various areas of the map, and how if you get booted to a new copy of the map, it might not have those areas unlocked. I got “volunteered” to two different maps in the span of about fifteen minutes, meaning the map that the first pass dumped me on was almost empty itself for some reason. In each case the meta events had rebooted. There needs to be a better mechanism for putting you on a map where the metas are in the same state you left them.

I really think that you guys need to move to a system of FULL map choice to the player, where they can see the full selection of active maps and pick one. At minimum you would need to be able to see the IP of the new map, or some unique identifier, so that you could use communication to find a specific map without having to join in on a taxi (ie “Hey guys, map #5 has the boss active, come on in!”), but ideally you could get more info when choosing, like some indication of the map’s population, and maybe even some indication of the meta state, for example a line that reads “Malchor’s Leap, Temple of Dwayna was last completed five minutes ago, Temple of Lyss is in progress.” That would be AMAZING, since the non-scheduled meta events have been a huge pain to find since the megaservers were added.

Yenrah.8532:

I envy you. Really. For me megaserver has been a nightmare since the introduction.
What server are you on?

Sorrow’s Furnace. Looks like it’s listed as a high pop at the moment, next to others that are very high, full, and medium. So it’s not the lowest pop of the lows, it seems.

I can’t say for certain whether the server pop has a notable impact though. My anecdotal experiences only mean so much. Intuitively, it seems like it would have some kind of impact, but I’m not too clear on how their system matches people.

Well, this is a world boss “experience” from my megaserver overflow IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT (4:19 in the morning to be precise, check the clock). You can hardly call that a ‘fight’. On Piken (a high pop server) it used to be groups of 30 people max. At night you could kill the guy just with your party of 5.

One of mine characters casually located in Mount Maelstrom, because I usually run with this character CoE dungeon. This map also known for World Events, so… then this system came out in the next day I was asked 5 times in row to change my map, even so I was just standing in the camp doing nothing – even so there is somewhere else on the map events going on, but I assume it rather frustrating to be asked to change map every 5 or less minutes, I not sure that even once a “Volunteer” buff reached point “8 minutes left” before next message pop-up.