Guild Wars 2

I mentioned this in the other thread, but I think it really applies here: allow us to override the automatic map instance selection and manually select which instance we want, as we were able to in GW1.

RPers could simply say “We’ll be meeting in Divinity’s Reach, District 5”. And assuming the map isn’t full, you can select “District 5” from a drop-down list and move there. That’s how we rolled in GW1 and it worked just fine for over 6 years.

Would work great for non-RP reasons too, for anyone wanting to organize an event that isn’t specific to a guild or home server.

“Guild Up” is a really poorly worded thing to say and points to a fundamental misunderstanding of the RP community, as well as an acknowledgement that you didn’t take us into consideration at all when developing this system. It’s not possible to include everyone from the RP community in a single guild, or a single friends list. And the community itself thrives on experiencing “random RP” throughout the world and cities. “Walk Up” was another term used in this thread. Basically, being able to see other people RPing in the world and joining them. If the only consistent way we’ll see RPers is within our own guild, that pretty much destroys the RP community as a whole.

Anet has never given a rats posterior for actual roleplaying, and now they are in a position to prove it.

I don’t want to ‘guild up’. I do not like feeling as if I have particular responsibilities in a group situation, and with the number of characters that I play/RP, no single guild (or even 3 guilds) would ever fully encompass the scope of my game play. I have tried guilds, they just aren’t for me.

Esya.3427:

Also I would like to ask the roleplayers to please give us non-roleplayers the benefit of the doubt. So far my experience with the GW2 community in game is that it is very mature and the majority of us is not out there to ruin your roleplay experience. Please give us a chance to play alongside you and have us exposed to your roleplay as well. We will not know how this new system will turn out without giving it a try. I will be happy to see a bit more of your roleplay and help report any troll I encounter.

It’s not really about us getting paired with non-roleplayers. I see non-RPers all the time, and for every 1 person that trolls us, there’s at least 5 or so more that are respectful. Most don’t feel the need to troll, and some are generally interested and even try to join in. This isn’t about us wanting to be separate from you, it’s about ensuring that we stay together. We’ve already formed a strong community within our own server and just don’t want people to be torn apart. Like I said in a previous post, our community relies a lot upon random RP interactions with people we run into in the world. If we get separated to the point where we’re only ever consistently paired with guild mates, it’s going to kill that level of interaction and severely hurt the RP community as a whole.

Dear anet, What you are seeing happening to this topic. Is why roleplayers are some what concerned about Mega servers.

Bioanian.7016:

Dear anet, What you are seeing happening to this topic. Is why roleplayers are some what concerned about Mega servers.

That’s one of many reasons, and why I’d like more of an answer than a simple brush off and a “wait and see” from ArenaNet.

How did this thread turn from RP into out of shape people and women RP’ing?

It’s not relevant here. Clean it up folks

I think we should wait for the next two blogposts before getting all antsy.

Enzo.3906:

How did this thread turn from RP into out of shape people and women RP’ing?

It’s not relevant here. Clean it up folks

I think we should wait for the next two blogposts before getting all antsy.

Second this. Lets all chill and get back on topic here folks. Lets not have anet lock this topic.

All anti-roleplayers, please just leave. It is a valid way of playing and enjoying the game, and no one has suggested anything that would effect non-rpers.

All concerned role players please ignore the insults so they have nothing to feed on. (I know I didn’t but I’ll be good and shut up now)

I believe a role play flag would be great, if I got thrown into an RP shard, I know I’d start rping.

Snow.2048:

I believe a role play flag would be great, if I got thrown into an RP shard, I know I’d start rping.

That really would be lovely.

Maybe it’s best if people don’t try to stir up inflammatory posts? The only main issue here would be people guesting over for roleplaying. Checking from what Colin said, the biggest problem to roleplayers would be that the communities are much more restricted, given the fact that while there are unofficially designated servers for RP, there will be outliers who would like to try and test the waters for roleplaying, so to speak. There’s also those who roleplay but have other home servers, so they will have lower priority in joining the world shard.

That being said, guesting COULD be a solution, given that there is already implementation to it beforehand, but it could also be disabled in weighting when you move to the home cities, and the starter zones.

Edit 1 (Mostly technical notes)
Given that the mega-server can be thought of changing the behavior of the servers from hosting a singular shard regularly maintained and then adding once the population skews, to serving shards on demand, initial seed shards will be likened to the previous implementation, with the added functionality that gives priority to connecting the same people from the same home server. This partially solves the issue of people connecting to shards with lower initial population, and also gives the game’s servers less static overhead to account for. The problem, then, lies in people connecting to the older shards on demand. Any organized effort that has filled up one server, but not fully filled a majority to it, will have their movement split in different shards.

In all fairness, this is not just an ‘RP’ problem, but more of organized movements problem. You -could- game the system by using the join method in parties, but since shards will be served on-demand, there will be issues, especially with connecting to shards with much more active population than lower population, because at those times the incoming traffic to a shard might be more than the outbound traffic to it, not to mention that the easiest solution to use – moving people not of the same population/scan type with most of the people – will be irritating to the player.

Bioanian.7016:

Dear anet, What you are seeing happening to this topic. Is why roleplayers are some what concerned about Mega servers.

Quoted for truth.

Enzo.3906:

How did this thread turn from RP into out of shape people and women RP’ing?

It’s not relevant here. Clean it up folks

I think we should wait for the next two blogposts before getting all antsy.

That’s just because some people believe RP is stupid. And because of that they believe no one should do it and everyone should play like them.

Why call it Mega Servers? it is basically Cross Server instances and it is nothing new, it exists for many many years in older MMO’s

Mega Servers give players the impression they will all be in the same server (server merge) which is not the case.

just a note :P

guildwars2roleplayers.com has guild recruitment forums for Piken Square, which is the main RP server over there. (There’s another one that was mentioned higher up for the… german speaking community?)

As that seems to be somehow relevant to the topic: I’m a roleplayer for many years, I’m married, have a child, and having trained martial arts, working out etc. most my life by no means I am living in my moms basement, thank you very much.

Also, rper haters, and as it seems others as well often choose to forget that MMORPG was created as a platform for roleplay, so my only reply to those people can be “we are playing the genre as intended”.

However, playing on Piken Square and now on Tarnished Coast I can’t actually remember when was the last time a non roleplayer tried to troll me or my friends, hell some non roleplayers joined us in rp!

I absolutely don’t mind having more out of character people running around, I don’t think I’ll even notice them personally, since anyone I don’t interact with is just a person running by and doing things, mostly I don’t give them a second look.

My worries, just like many others are simple – I do PvE, WvW, PvE, and I’m good at it, and I like it. Now I’m afraid that it will make it harder for me to find other roleplayers, OR make it more of a pain to enjoy the rest of the game.

I am afraid that Megaserver will be yet another difficulty for us, roleplayers to enjoy the game how we like (among, chairs, emotes, no rp tag and so on), and thus taking away my big chunk of motivation to play the game.

Also, even though not as numerous as other communities, we also should be heard and accommodated to even if just a little I think, after all we also bought the game, and spend money on gems (I’d risk assumption that we probably spend disproportionate amount of gems to our numbers).

And yeah I blabber – shortly put, I’m afraid that the update will bring little aid, and many troubles for roleplayers, and hope that it will not be so.

I do sincerely wish ANet would just commit, and actually label TC & PS as roleplay servers…. or maybe just as ‘roleplay friendly’.

I understand this is a mixed blessing, and a potential pain for them, but roleplayers stick with a game for a LONG TIME. And they buy lots of gemstore items.

It’d be nice to have a ‘roleplay’ tag … or add ‘roleplay’ to the LFG tool.

The closest solution that I can think of that -might- even work, is to have ANet think about what community labels to put on each and every server. It will be harder work, but it might help a lot. Making it official, on the other hand, will put flak on them with regards to how they would label the communities.

It seems to me the easiest way to accommodate everyone would be to allow players to set an RP tag and then to have the system prioritize throwing people with that tag into the same instances.

I like doing a little RP, but I don’t really want to join a guild for that specific reason and also I enjoy bronze league WvW better then megablobbing up in Gold, which I’d have to do if I transferred to TC. When I feel like RPing, I just guest over.

If there are still concerns once the system is rolled out a check box could be added to the contacts panel to “Prefer Roleplay” maps. It could factor a player wanting roleplay maps into the aggregated load balancer the article mentioned. This might be a decent compromise.

I like the RPers in this game, I think it adds life to the game. At first I thought it was kind of odd some of the the chat was a little strange but after I figured out what was going on I would hang out and just watch and read along, some of the stuff you guys come up with is some of the best reading, it’s like a living book. I hope they get this all worked out and the new changes don’t kill the RP community in this game. Good stuff that needs to stay in this game. More people need to just check this out, just stand back, stay out if their way, and read the chat.

ColinJohanson.2394:

To maximize your odds of running into other RP players more often, you’ll want to make sure you’re on the same world (generally TC and Piken are viewed as the RP worlds), and in guilds with other RP members also on that same world. For example, everyone from TC currently will be set to high priority to sort together, same thing goes with people who are all a part of the same guild (so guild up RP folks!)

We’ll continue to monitor, adapt and update the system as we go forward as well, for now I’d suggest seeing how it works once we enable the mega server system across all maps and then giving comments and feedback when you see it in action!

(edited to add Piken!)

“Guild up” is not a viable option for the Charr community. Our entire RP scheme is separated into various groups – that’s how the Warband system works. The way the changes sound right now, this is not an adequate answer. Part of the RP experience is running into people you don’t know at all. That’s very unlikely to happen in the new megaserver system.

RPers are among your most dedicated fans, and I have yet to see anything indicate Anet cares about that at all. “Wait and see” has never turned out anything good for this game. The RP community wants assurance that our very niche and delicate community isn’t going to be destroyed by these changes. Specifically:

1) RP needs to be able to function even when players do not know each other or group together (if RPers are placed in different megaservers, this can’t happen).

2) RP is delicate and immersive, and easily destroyed by non-RPers (in the new systems, the popular RP spots of cities and level 15 zones are going to be filled with non-RPers).

Even if the “preference” system answers problem one, it doesn’t answer problem two.

About: Mega Server and the increased population

The load time for each map gets ridiculously long most of the time even with the highest speed connection.

Right now, loading time to Gendarran Fields from login screen ranges between kitten – 75s.

Switching maps averages of 30s – kitten load time.

Even waypoint in the same map has loading time.

Purchasing an SSD is not an option.

How are you planning to speed up the load time to ensure that we spend more time on playing than waiting on the loading screen?

I play other MMO games with the same mega server technology and I hardly experience any extended load time extending longer than 10s-15s. As a basis for using the same technology, will GW2 make any improvement on the load time with this similar server technology?

I don’t understand what the problem is, and why RP’ing trumps the overall health/population of the the games thinned out areas.

MrDmajor.7084:

I don’t understand what the problem is, and why RP’ing trumps the overall health/population of the the games thinned out areas.

The two are hardly mutually exclusive. If they had gone with a district system such as GW1, rather than arbitrarily assigning people based on metrics, they could have had players combined to increase the population of most zones while still allowing other instances to be used for organized events and things like RP.

MrDmajor.7084:

I don’t understand what the problem is, and why RP’ing trumps the overall health/population of the the games thinned out areas.

That’s not the issue, so much as allowing folks who are community-oriented to be able to find each other. This is a problem for anyone wanting to host community events, boss-killing guilds, etc. There are some possible solutions, but who knows what ANet will implement.

MrDmajor.7084:

I don’t understand what the problem is, and why RP’ing trumps the overall health/population of the the games thinned out areas.

It’s not about trumping anything I reckon. Most of the RP crowd just voices their usually valid concerns and a lot of them are offering possible solutions that would benefit both sides.

I -really- miss the district system from GW1. I assume there are reasons why it can’t be implemented, but I miss it. Obviously there would still be separate regions because this is still a much bigger game, but I think that players should be able to have some choice in finding each other.

I wonder if some sort of free tagging system could be added to this. Then on top of the other metrics it could help accommodate other on the fly communities that may not be easily represented in the game engine. Then the community could help self organize around those tags.

For example in your lfg interface, a text field. Enter space separated key words. Then players with similar words are weighted higher to be placed.

Some tags that could be used may be:
Roleplay
Zerg
Events chain
Living story achievments

Today was the first time I heard about role playing. I wanted to try it out, so I went to the Piken server but wasn’t sure what to do. Is there a specific city that’s commonly used for interaction?

I have slight concern as well being a pretty focused RPer. While I see that perhaps RP events held by a guild or a few guilds may not be effected that much, what will be effected will be the general interaction between RPers. What I mean by that is RPers that, for instance, walk around DR and simply RP their characters out. They go to taverns, markets, etc. and RP. They may have not even met before out-of-character, but they still have this level of interaction that is very unique. That is what may be hit the hardest.

As far as the comment about guilding up, I believe many have responded to this pretty soundly. Those in Charr warbands have separate guild to keep that warband mentality. This goes for mercenary companies( like mine), Asura Krewes and Inquest Divisions, various Orders divisions, and other groups of RPers. To have these various groups try to join one guild while maintaining that separate unique setting, would be difficult.

To switch from that perspective for a moment, overall I do believe this system will be healthy for the game. In terms of getting extra population in areas that seem to be lesser, it seems to be a really good system. I would also like to note that, they mentioned that this won’t go for every single area in the game when this is launched. They will be doing this in small bites taking data as they go. This is the best way to give feedback and make changes if need be. So, my fellow RPers, when this rolls around make sure we do give that feedback when this is launched. It’ll be important for not only our side, but for Anet’s side as well.

MrDmajor.7084:

I don’t understand what the problem is, and why RP’ing trumps the overall health/population of the the games thinned out areas.

No one is saying this. People in the roleplay community are just pointing out that they are, like PvErs, WvWers, and PvPers, a large & active part of the playerbase, and as such would like to be considered when systems that restructure how players interact are put into play.

This update, from Anet’s POV, is supposedly about bringing players who enjoy the same parts of the game together. Right now it doesn’t much look like we’re included in that. We would like to be. That’s all.

Zine.2136:

I wonder if some sort of free tagging system could be added to this. Then on top of the other metrics it could help accommodate other on the fly communities that may not be easily represented in the game engine. Then the community could help self organize around those tags.

For example in your lfg interface, a text field. Enter space separated key words. Then players with similar words are weighted higher to be placed.

Some tags that could be used may be:
Roleplay
Zerg
Events chain
Living story achievments

That seems like the solution that’s most like to fit into their system. Though I think it would be smoother if they added specific categories of their own, rather than having players fill in the blanks. Ideally it would simply be another variable that weights which instance you end up in, though how simple it actually is, I have no idea.

Speckly.3729:

Right now it doesn’t much look like we’re included in that. We would like to be. That’s all.

It might look like it, but we can’t be sure. So instead of worrying your brain’s out for the next two weeks about something you cannot change, why not simply wait and see how things turn out? Nothing is as bad as it looks =)

bhagwad.4281:

Today was the first time I heard about role playing. I wanted to try it out, so I went to the Piken server but wasn’t sure what to do. Is there a specific city that’s commonly used for interaction?

Divinity’s Reach is most commonly used. Try the Taverns there, there’s usually people about.

There’s plenty of RP elsewhere, but it’s harder to direct you towards.

It’s not hard to get involved, just take a look at what others are doing, decide how you’re going to play your character and jump in!

Feothyr.6072:

Speckly.3729:

Right now it doesn’t much look like we’re included in that. We would like to be. That’s all.

It might look like it, but we can’t be sure. So instead of worrying your brain’s out for the next two weeks about something you cannot change, why not simply wait and see how things turn out? Nothing is as bad as it looks =)

Because wait and see rarely works, especially without providing some feedback in the interim. This isn’t to bash Anet or this mega-server thing; it is a good idea on the surface. The RP community just wants to make sure they can continue to exist after the changes; running into random non-RPers isn’t really the issue here, the issue is that RPing is more or less restricted to one server per region; suddenly those people are going to be tossed into the same pool as people from 26 other servers with very little control, meaning the only people you are going to be able to RP with are people you are guilded with or friends with, which ruins the thing to an extent.

Half the fun of RPing is meeting new people. Trying it out randomly on people who have zero interest won’t get you far.

Feothyr.6072:

Speckly.3729:

Right now it doesn’t much look like we’re included in that. We would like to be. That’s all.

It might look like it, but we can’t be sure. So instead of worrying your brain’s out for the next two weeks about something you cannot change, why not simply wait and see how things turn out? Nothing is as bad as it looks =)

I sort of feel like my worry is justified. I’ve spent several hundred dollars on the game to facilitate roleplay—gem store armor skins, character slots, gems to gold, achievements for titles, even farming a legendary for in-character purposes. I understand that it was all voluntary on my part, but that’s my preferred style of play. The idea that all of that even might mean less than someone else whose preference is map comp or LS chaining is disheartening. Telling me ’don’t worry’ doesn’t do much to alleviate that.

Speckly.3729:

MrDmajor.7084:

I don’t understand what the problem is, and why RP’ing trumps the overall health/population of the the games thinned out areas.

No one is saying this. People in the roleplay community are just pointing out that they are, like PvErs, WvWers, and PvPers, a large & active part of the playerbase, and as such would like to be considered when systems that restructure how players interact are put into play.

This update, from Anet’s POV, is supposedly about bringing players who enjoy the same parts of the game together. Right now it doesn’t much look like we’re included in that. We would like to be. That’s all.

Pretty much that, +1

Hmm, another potentially heavy hit to the RP community with this Feature Patch. First the eradication of town clothes, and now this. I’ve never formally RP’d before, but I’ve made Tarnished Coast my home server because I like the ambiance much better there. It feels like a living world with more people doing more things. At least I can see that this is best for the majority (as opposed to the changes to town clothes).

Unfortunately, all I see with this update is: If you are a RPer, get out.

There is always the chance that the megaserver won’t create a problem for the RP community, and like some people suggest, it could help in some regards. However, if anyone is concerned and would like a bit more “insurance,” there’s a guild starting up that, whose sole purpose is to harbor as many RPers as needed/desired, so that when the update hits, you have a guild that contains many members from the RP community.

From what I understand, EU and NA servers are not to be combined, therefore this guild is for those not only in the Tarnished Coast server, but any other role-players spread across the NA servers.

If this guild proves useful after the update, great! If the update has no effect on the community, also great! But if you think “guilding up” is the way to go, join TCRP: http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/mobile/forum/viewthread/m/2737230/id/12005375-mega-guild-tarnished-coast-role-players-tcrp

Please officially label Tarnished Coast and Piken as official roleplaying servers BEFORE you implement this Megaserver system. It would go a long way in acknowledging the roleplaying community despite this coming server change.

Speckly.3729:

I’ve spent several hundred dollars on the game

So have a lot of other players as well

Speckly.3729:

Telling me ’don’t worry’ doesn’t do much to alleviate that.

I can understand your concerns very well, but personally I just think “not worrying” is a healthier approach. The patch isn’t even live yet and we do not know all the details about the megaservers. What we do know is that ArenaNet is constantly working on improving the game.
Why not simply wait for the patch and see how things turn out? The problems you keep predicting might not exist at all I’m pretty sure there is going to be plenty of time to give feedback and voice concerns, once the patch is live and the problems do actually exist in the game.

I honestly thought this was supposed to be an MMORPG – massively, multiplayer, online roleplay game. Whilst I support the idea of less populated servers getting more people to play with, I really wish that people could choose their own tags instead of some algorithm putting them where it thinks they should be put.

I would welcome having a [RP] tag I could tick for when I wanted to roleplay, or perhaps even a [map] one for when I just want people to help me go around a map.. perhaps even combinations of tags so I can do roleplay whilst I’m wandering around. I just want to be able to roleplay with not only my friends, but random strangers that also roleplay.

Craywulf.5793:

Please officially label Tarnished Coast and Piken as official roleplaying servers BEFORE you implement this Megaserver system.

They would never do that. Officially labelling those servers as “RP” might cause problems – namely the “RP or GTFO” mentality some people would show then (thinking they have Anet backing).

Dont want to divert the topic of the Megaservers effect to RP too much, but i have to say. Its long past due that the RP community gets something without two other things taken away from them. Still waiting to hear hopelessly about any solution to that fateful decision about blocking off uninstanced Salma for example, and that was almost a year ago now, even though there was a show of dev understanding of the issue it caused.

Just saying that looking at this thread, i have a dreadful deja-vu.

Astralporing.1957:

Craywulf.5793:

Please officially label Tarnished Coast and Piken as official roleplaying servers BEFORE you implement this Megaserver system.

They would never do that. Officially labelling those servers as “RP” might cause problems – namely the “RP or GTFO” mentality some people would show then (thinking they have Anet backing).

Could take the LotRO approach and label them “RP encouraged.”

Feothyr.6072:

Speckly.3729:

I’ve spent several hundred dollars on the game

So have a lot of other players as well

Speckly.3729:

Telling me ’don’t worry’ doesn’t do much to alleviate that.

I can understand your concerns very well, but personally I just think “not worrying” is a healthier approach. The patch isn’t even live yet and we do not know all the details about the megaservers. What we do know is that ArenaNet is constantly working on improving the game.
Why not simply wait for the patch and see how things turn out? The problems you keep predicting might not exist at all I’m pretty sure there is going to be plenty of time to give feedback and voice concerns, once the patch is live and the problems do actually exist in the game.

The smileys are starting to come off condescendingly. I’m voicing valid concerns, and so are quite a lot of other people.

Yes, plenty of other people spend money on the game, I’m aware. But my money has been spent on roleplay, and so has plenty of people’s. That being the case, there’s nothing wrong with making sure our stance on things is known, and with Anet’s track record in regards to roleplay, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being wary, either.

I do a lot of roleplay in the zones that are going to be hit by the test run. I’ll have plenty of time to actually get a feel for things once the patch hits. In the meantime, what’s wrong with pointing out potential problem-areas so that they’ll already be on the dev radar when it comes time for launch? No one’s launched a witch hunt and no one is crying ‘doom.’ We’re just being (rightfully) skittish.

I’m in complete support of the ability to tag yourself with different play styles such as RP. There’s no reason to stop there either. Tagging yourself “casual, heart quester, boss farmer, event chaster ect” would be wonderful. The players should have more control over how the system sees us rather than everything being in the background.

Seems to me that a lot of people have the same idea of a tagging sort of system that would help players (not just RPers) better specify how they want to be grouped. Seems like a valid solution to me; I hope the devs are still looking at this thread as it would be interesting to hear their thoughts on the matter. Really, the system they described in the blog post should cover most player types. People that run dungeons will be recognized as dungeon runners and people doing world bosses will be recognized for that. So we really only need the tag for RP, as there’s no way for us to represent to the game’s code that we’re RPers (unless it wants to check for people who hang out in one of the main city bars for upwards of an hour).