Guild Wars 2

The other day I was playing in VB, doing an event chain with about 5 people. Suddenly I get the message the map is “empty” and would you like to go to a more populated map cluster. I thought, sure let’s give it a try.

Started to do the same event from the beginning as no one was doing it, after about 5 min I received the same message again. Would you like volunteer to go to a more populated map cluster?

How is this possible? Volunteered 2 time to go to empty maps.

Anet you should maybe look into this.

Has anyone else experienced this ?

Well not really broken is it. You are the population and you keep leaving. When you get to a new map, rather than staying to build a population, you leave. Then you arrive at a new map and.. well, you get the picture. The first people into a map (you in this case) have to stop leaving it.

Why not then, implement a mechanic in which the message does not appear ?

This will stop you leaving in the first place.

Because then you’d end up with hundreds of maps with just 5 people on them.

khul.7692:

Why not then, implement a mechanic in which the message does not appear ?

This will stop you leaving in the first place.

Yes, it is broken – Anet acknowledged that mega servers were not working about 12 months ago.

Still waiting for a fix.

General Health.9678:

Because then you’d end up with hundreds of maps with just 5 people on them.

Exactly the problem !

When you volunteer it’s to go to a more populated map. Not an empty one.

But when you get to that map its also empty….

Your suggestion is to stay on the empty map in hopes that people fill the map. Does this not make the volunteering system then null and void?

Again : you will still be stuck on an empty map cluster.

The megaserver does have some problems and they seem to be noticed more on the HoT maps. Theories vary but I suspect it is something to do with more folks using the LFG tool in HoT to taxi to busier maps.

So the megaserver is trying to entice you to switch to another non-full map and in the meantime some of that map are trying to LFG to a fuller map. I can’t believe the megaserver makes any distinction between HoT and non-HoT so I guess it may be the nature of the timed HoT events that makes it worse, and maybe the fact that you really do need decent map populations in HoT.

You do occasionally get a similar thing on core maps after a world boss has been defeated. Lots of fairly full maps emptying in a short space of time with the megaserver trying to merge ever-shrinking populations together.

So, yes, it is a known problem and I think the devs have it on their TODO list but don’t hold your breath. In general, it seems to be best to ignore the prompt to move maps and just carry on.

Happened to me too earlier today. I was in Verdant Brink when the meta event hit. I took a chopper up the the Wyvern Matriach and waited a few minutes to see if enough players would show up to fight the boss. Then suddenly I get hit with the volunteer thing. I waited a few more minutes and it seemed like nobody was going to show up, so I volunteered. Naturally I lost whatever map progress I had and there were maybe 4 or 5 other players there to fight that boss. We did manage to defeat it, but, none of the other bosses were defeated. It just seems like VB has been dead for quite some time now. I almost never see all bosses killed. I’m lucky if there’s ever enough players to kill 3 at best.

Edit: The megaserver is broken, or at least not working as it should be.

Tell me, why is it that whenever I waypoint into the Silverwastes by myself, I always end up in a map with only a few players and almost no map progress? And yet, I can open the LFG tool and see people taxiing into a map that is 80% complete. Why the hell does the game always insist on putting me in a dead map when there is obviously room in a more populate map where people are actually doing the events?

Ironically, SW is the opposite of the HoT maps, and by that I mean I almost never get the volunteer message. I can run around there for 2 hours doing what little I can when the progress gets close to the Breach event then suddenly all hell breaks loose and tons of players show up to do the events. Then of course after the Vinewrathe event is complete, almost all of them get taxiied into another instance that is close to the breach.

It really is aggravating and is why I don’t spent much time in the Silverwastes or HoT maps anymore. It comes down to either waiting who-knows how long until enough people show up, or the game telling me there map population is empty when clearly there are players doing the meta events.

This is interesting, I noticed this too. I joined a taxi for event chains in VB with a pretty decently sized commander group while a few minutes later in we suddenly get the map change popup, but we ignored it, so that was kinda weird, I never saw this before when taxing into an event map, more often is that these get full. And this wasn’t the only time it happened, too.

khul.7692:

When you volunteer it’s to go to a more populated map. Not an empty one.

You’re just volunteering to move maps. The map you move to isn’t empty. After all, you are there. The population meets the “is too low” criteria as the one you moved from. So you get another chance to move.

There are various scenarios that mean ultimately you’ll end up on a map that doesn’t close. One option is not moving in the first place and people will end up joining your map.

Charrbeque.8729:

Tell me, why is it that whenever I waypoint into the Silverwastes by myself, I always end up in a map with only a few players and almost no map progress? And yet, I can open the LFG tool and see people taxiing into a map that is 80% complete. Why the hell does the game always insist on putting me in a dead map when there is obviously room in a more populate map where people are actually doing the events?.

Well the answer is probably soft and hard caps on maps. You will move to an available map due to the map being at the soft cap but can join your team mate via taxi if the hard cap hasn’t been met. I suppose the question if you turned it around would be why aren’t you using the LFG tool to get to an event. And why didn’t you get there a bit earlier?

One thing that I have seen said a few times but I don’t know whether it is true: If you ignore the prompt to change maps then the map may never close if enough others join it in the meantime.

If that is true that it seems a little strange to me. I would have thought that once the megaserver has deemed a map to be too empty then it should block any new players from joining it. But, whatever, there is a problem and I’m sure it will get tweaked/changed/fixed eventually.

General Health.9678:

Well not really broken is it. You are the population and you keep leaving. When you get to a new map, rather than staying to build a population, you leave. Then you arrive at a new map and.. well, you get the picture. The first people into a map (you in this case) have to stop leaving it.

You risk the map closing. Even if it fills up to cap the population the map can still close. I believe that once the message appears, it will close in an hour regardless if it fills up. Unless this was recently changed that is how it works.

DS closes because of the event.
I don’t think every map closes whilst there are people on it.
Could be entirely wrong but the times I’ve said “later” I’ve managed to stay on and play without the map closing as far as I’m aware.

I have this issue a lot in HoT maps as well.

My husband and I will get the pop ups, over and over again, and if we opt to take the thing, we end up on a map with fewer people. So, typically we ignore it and just continue playing. I don’t think any of the maps we were on ever actually “closed,” but they did seem to end up with fewer and fewer people, so we eventually gave up and left anyway.

My husband is extremely frustrated with the HoT maps. I have a lot more patience, but I understand his frustration. He just wants to “play the game” and in the HoT maps, that’s very hard to do if you aren’t on a populated map. He doesn’t like having to jump through a crap load of hoops to just play, and for someone like him…watching timers, finding lfg taxis, etc etc, are annoying hoops. He doesn’t play a lot, or for long hours. He just wants to log in, play a bit, and then go about the rest of his day. HoT is super unfriendly to these types of players, and is drastically different than what the core game was (or even what the game is advertised as being to this day).

I usually don’t bother moving unless I am trying to instance hop on purpose.

General Health.9678:

DS closes because of the event.
I don’t think every map closes whilst there are people on it.
Could be entirely wrong but the times I’ve said “later” I’ve managed to stay on and play without the map closing as far as I’m aware.

Other maps do close. I have had TD close while in a squad doing hero challenges. I have also stayed behind in Frostgorge Sound after Claw of Jormag to farm grawls and that closed too.

Anet claimed they were going to fix mega servers, it was supposed to come with the April patch but then Mike took over and we never heard anything about it again.

It probably got canceled, but they do know it is broken and not working. Hopefully the fixes make the next patch cycle.

The idea is that it takes 2+ mostly empty maps and combines them into a single map which then gets more populated. However right now it takes 1 empty map, opens a new empty map and then you have 2 mostly empty maps and the new players are split over both these maps. This then triggers it again, opening a 3rd new map and now you have 3 maps that are useless.

khul.7692:

General Health.9678:

Because then you’d end up with hundreds of maps with just 5 people on them.

Exactly the problem !

When you volunteer it’s to go to a more populated map. Not an empty one.

But when you get to that map its also empty….

Your suggestion is to stay on the empty map in hopes that people fill the map. Does this not make the volunteering system then null and void?

Again : you will still be stuck on an empty map cluster.

It only becomes an issue when it’s TWO mostly empty maps for a zone. I’ve noticed this in AB for the last week, with the two maps you bounce between being maps that have existed for probably over a week now.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anet claimed they were going to fix mega servers, it was supposed to come with the April patch but then Mike took over and we never heard anything about it again.

It probably got canceled, but they do know it is broken and not working. Hopefully the fixes make the next patch cycle.

The idea is that it takes 2+ mostly empty maps and combines them into a single map which then gets more populated. However right now it takes 1 empty map, opens a new empty map and then you have 2 mostly empty maps and the new players are split over both these maps. This then triggers it again, opening a 3rd new map and now you have 3 maps that are useless.

Quite why Anet haven’t worked out that this issue is the reason that so many players do not enjoy HOT maps is frankly quite astonishing.

Had they resolved this months ago, HOT maps would be a joy to play because they would always be full and there would always be something to do.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

However right now it takes 1 empty map, opens a new empty map and then you have 2 mostly empty maps and the new players are split over both these maps. This then triggers it again, opening a 3rd new map and now you have 3 maps that are useless.

Do you have a reference for this?

Charrbeque.8729:

Ironically, SW is the opposite of the HoT maps, and by that I mean I almost never get the volunteer message. I can run around there for 2 hours doing what little I can when the progress gets close to the Breach event then suddenly all hell breaks loose and tons of players show up to do the events. Then of course after the Vinewrathe event is complete, almost all of them get taxiied into another instance that is close to the breach.

That’s because the map isn’t empty — it’s just that the players are ignoring the events.

More specifically, the players are probably doing a chest train, so they are in the map, but not doing the events.

In general, it doesn’t seem broken so much as difficult to come up with an algorithm that works well. Just before a big map event, a number of people join the map all at once, spinning off a large number of new maps. After the event, people leave the map, leaving a bunch of near-empty maps. That’s unavoidable. What could change is it being smarter about what map it is putting you in after you volunteer, though it could put you in a map that is actively shrinking but isn’t below the threshold to close the map yet, but a few minutes later it is.

Also, if you stay in a map, sometimes it doesn’t close because new people do join it — I’ve seen the volunteer window go away when this happens.

Finally, they did address this issue in the Spring patch — they increased the timer from 1 hour to 2 hours to leave the map, though for the life of me, I don’t see why that would be any better, and it could possibly be even worse.

This will tell you how well it works.

Wife and I are on the same map of VB. Kid wakes up so wife goes to check on her. I get the volunteer message so I move to another map, figuring she can join when she gets back. Over the next 5 mins I get 3 more map closing volunteer requests. I take them because I’m not doing anything. As my wife walks back in and gets ready to sit down, I get another map closing message and take it. It put me back on her map where I started.

I am really hoping they just add the GW1 style districts we can just join. That way you know if you get into district 1 of a map, it will NEVER close.

ekarat.1085:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

However right now it takes 1 empty map, opens a new empty map and then you have 2 mostly empty maps and the new players are split over both these maps. This then triggers it again, opening a 3rd new map and now you have 3 maps that are useless.

Do you have a reference for this?

John Smith.4610:

I’ve recently seen quite a few posts mentioning megaservers. As per standard business, I can’t say anything about release dates or future content, but I can say that we recognized that megaservers were a problem quite some time ago. At that time my squad joined up with the deific ~Susan and her team to begin work on the system. I wanted to tell you that we know there are problems and we’re fixing them. We’ve released some very minor changes already and there will be several phases of fixes applied over the next few months.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-8/first#post6019618

That was the last update back in March. I guess I assumed there would be something in the April patch, but like I said, guess it didn’t make it.

Megaservers were probably built on top of the old overflow system and as such, fill linearly in a chain. When prompted to volunteer, you’re sent to the map ahead of you. The problem however is that people constantly joining, leaving and especially taxi’ing, which allows people to skip the chain, creates chaos for the system. The map ahead of you should have been more populated for example, but people taxied into the map after you. The entire chain tries to collapse down, which causes multiple partially filled instances.

Alternatively, when prompted to volunteer, everyone is actually sent to a more populated instance, but it filled up, causing you to be redirected to the next available one which may have even been newly created. Additionally, the idea could have been that they could close down multiple smaller instances to create a bigger one or even shave a little from the more populated instances to create another one. If you split a full instance in two for example, there should be enough people to actively do 2 maps, even 3 if they’re good.

If all events simply scaled down for 3 people like they used to, this wouldn’t even be a problem. Trying to split the zerg up is what killed the less active maps, whereas, for example, I used to be able to solo world bosses. Now it’s choose 1, but there’s no point in even trying as the others are a guaranteed failure. If they want to keep up with this design, they should simply split the larger events from the maps. Instead of having the assault on Tarir in the open world for example, put it in its own sectioned off instance like the personal story. Similar to volunteering, when the event is about to start, people are prompted to join. That way, everyone who joins is there to participate and the population can even be controlled if they wanted to, like a 40 person limit rather than the ~100 it currently is.

They need to make it so that if a map populates again after the empty notification flags, it cancels the closure of the map. Just adding more time on the end of the closure can still screw a bunch of people over doing events etc as it ultimately will still close :/.

I was just in Verdant Brink and here is what happened:

Nightfall came.
About a minute later “Miniatures hidden due to rising player population”.
A couple minutes later I get the volunteer message and there were only a few players that I saw anywhere in the map.

I didn’t volunteer at all. I stayed.

Daybreak came.
Canopy threats neutralized: 0/5
Several minutes later I get the volunteer message again.

So WTF happened? The map instantly fills in about a minute with players then a couple minutes later almost all of them are gone?

Either the megaserver is broken, or everyone immediately went to the LFG tool to join an instance that was organized.

This taxi into maps nonsense is really starting to get on my nerves. Even with a full map, nobody wants to stay and do the events. They’d rather go to another instance.