Guild Wars 2

This would be a nice item to have after the feature pack goes live for a community discussion. It is hard to evaluate pros and cons of something that we haven’t been able to touch yet.

Thinking further on the flag or tags, we need to try and think about how can such a feature be best implemented to serve the whole community. A few posts in this discussion touched on hurt feelings about this segment, we do not wish that to occur with other segments of the community or the illusion of favoritism.

Also need to be aware of performance concerns and time to develop any addition. We are not aware of how this rating for which map best of a person is determined. It could be just something like a SQL statement, full blown search engine type engine with fuzzy logic, or trained neural network. They may have some sort of scoring system too for each map instance to help key against to not require comparing each player to another.

Possible pros for adding a flag -

• Would certainly help this particular portion of the community (role players)
• (Hopefully) would be faster logic to check against. Keep in mind this logic would be hit for every person loading into a map against all the other players or maps in the game at the time somehow!

Possible downside

• Very specific to this group. Others may take offense why they didn’t get their flag either.

Other solutions suggested are multiple categories allowed. This expands out to other groups, but then we encounter a more complex user interface. Do we implement this in a drop down, radio buttons, multiple check boxes if more than one is possible to pick?

Another possibility is multiple categories, with a free form field to enter personal keywords. This is an evolving community, and the game is always changing. Needs change and new types of meta pop up. A free form field would help with that change. However this probably is the most complex to develop in time and resources. At this point doing simple 1-to-1 matching for player to player is hard and is almost certainly fuzzy logic. Expensive in CPU to go for – would it be worth the additional loading time? Also how would folks, especially if they don’t visit the forums, know what free form words to enter?

All those considered, where would such a user interface flag be put? The guild screen, hero/armor screen, looking for group, or the settings in your client? This needs to be evident enough to new players that don’t know the game, but we don’t want to just jam it in a place that adds clutter.

Until we can touch the new mega server workings, we also don’t know how much this should be considered in the weights of things. The new system may be fairly good as is, so the weighting on such a flag would only need to be a small increment to fine tune the player match – which may also indicate we may not need such a feature to be added right away. Or it could be wildly off, which would indicate this is more urgent.

If checkboxes were implemented I’d love the option to be able to check more than one at a time, for instance [RP] and [PvE Missions] or [RP] and [Heart] to indicate that I’d like to do Roleplay Story Missions, or Roleplay whilst doing Heart tasks in a zone map.

Gonna hope guesting stays in, or Tequatl organization is gonna be a nightmare.

As little as my post is going to contribute or change, I’ll still give a +1 to the RP flag suggestion. Yes, being in a guild with people will help with the organized RP. But I for one just randomly bump into people and spontaneously start something more often than not, and the most interesting stuff has happened this way.

Ezekiel.1985:

Gonna hope guesting stays in, or Tequatl organization is gonna be a nightmare.

That’s the problem, with this change there wont be a server map to guest to. It would be a much more bearable change if we could see the map name and number so we could make a conscious choice to navigate to a particular one (which I think is how gw1 worked).

I don’t see how an RP flag can be viewed as favoritism. As it stands, there are in-game methods of tracking all other player activity EXCEPT for RP, because it doesn’t involve actual gameplay mechanics. All the flag would do is put us in line with everyone else.

Kudos on the new Megaserver System. Now, if you could just get eight player parties going, I’d be all set.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

I don’t see how an RP flag can be viewed as favoritism. As it stands, there are in-game methods of tracking all other player activity EXCEPT for RP, because it doesn’t involve actual gameplay mechanics. All the flag would do is put us in line with everyone else.

Yep. WvW has its own maps, pvp has its lobby, pve is everywhere, but roleplayers have no way to ID each other or be flagged for going somewhere specific. And yet, we are a bigger subset of the populace than folks want to think.

If you were a true RP you would adapt to a changing universe.

How will the new Megaserver effect RP?

Roleplay in a MMORPG (which namely IS a Role Playing Game) should be just as much respected as PvE, WvW, or sPvP. (PvPvE / RvR whatever else for other games)
It is just as essential as all the other playing styles. And this does not have anything to do with wanting a server for kitten-lovers, one for dog-lovers or Mommies and Daddies…

We only ask to be seen and being handled just as any other type of player, regardless of WHICH type he is (PvE, PvP, both… Some are even WvW#ers AND RPers.) We don’t want our own server, we don’t want special rules or benefits, we just want RP to be accepted as the 4th style next to PvE, WvW and PvP as it should be considering that kind of systems like the mega server.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.

Read this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-and-RP/first

spritefire.5234:

If you were a true RP you would adapt to a changing universe.

Unsure of what point/sense you are making. RP is not about game mechanics, by and large, and particularly the macro-mechanics, such as this megaserver concept. We adapt to changing in-game universe and lore very well.

Also, raising concerns that could negatively affect us =/= not adapting. I’m sure given some thought and willpower the community can overcome some of these obstacles. But then if a community has to overcome obstacles like that to survive and thrive, that would be an indication that changes to supposedly improve community cohesion weren’t that effective.

ColinJohanson.2394:

(so guild up RP folks!)

I don’t think you quite understand how RP guilds work. I already have 5 guilds— TTS and four small guilds for roleplay purposes. Unless you increase the cap on the number of guilds you can be in (which would be REALLY NICE if you’re going to mess with RP in every OTHER possible way), there would be no way for me to associate myself with almost every single other person in Tarnished Coast; and as was previously mentioned, a lot of RP guilds are themed (House guilds, Seraph and Peacekeeper and other law enforcement guilds, Inquest and Nightmare Court and other villain-themed guilds… the list goes on and on), so you can’t just group everyone all together. I’m not going to be IN a law enforcement or military guild, but it’s amusing to be able to find an “officer of the law” should you require one.

I think you also don’t understand exactly how annoyed some people get with RPers, which is just one of the reasons we all group to the same servers— so if someone complains, we can say, “Well you ARE on the RP server, and there are plenty of places to go where you don’t have to listen to us.”

Each server has its own personality, if you will, and its own cast of characters. I enjoy watching the antics of some of them but I’m not going to go around friending every single person on my server— and I’m definitely not joining a guild known for really, really bad RP just so I can continue to watch their really bad RP. (I’m addicted to horrible things, I admit it.)

One of the great things about an RP server is that you can go somewhere people are RPing, chat with someone, and then leave without having to form any sort of semi-permanent association with that person.

Seras.5702:

Initially grouping up with fellow RPers and joining their map will help to consolidate RPers into one place. Might take a bit of community cooperation but that’s the essence of RPers right?

Also, pick a location that is ideal for hanging out. Major cities might not be a good place anymore, but perhaps one of the larger outposts in a lesser explored map might be appropriate. Stormbluff Isle in Bloodtide or Ebonhawke in FoR.

Community cooperation is… very much not the basis of RP. RP is having a community around you without having to spend time organizing it, letting things flow naturally instead of literally everyone planning things out. There are some guilds that do plan large RP arcs, and they are generally specialized and centralized around a single theme, like “Seraph” or “noble house.”

Going to non-city maps is also a problem because you have to be very sensitive to what’s going on around you if you RP in combat zones, or you just end up as a jerk. Being present in an area scales up any events taking place nearby— and if a bunch of people are standing around RPing and don’t pay close attention to events near them, that’s suddenly making things a lot harder for the folks who are doing the events. Also they’re just not really suited to a lot of RP. Divinity’s Reach is full of bars and houses, great places to meet; Bloodtide Coast is not. Plus, it’s where Wurm happens; and unless you are an “active” RPer who reacts to things that are happening and participates accordingly, a map full of RPers is no better than a map full of AFKers (and I say this as an RPer myself— I don’t want to get a bad reputation because other people were scaling up events and not participating).

spritefire.5234:

If you were a true RP you would adapt to a changing universe.

As other’s have pointed out, game mechanics =/= story changes in most cases. I’ll give you instances like The Elder Scroll’s universe with Oblivion, where they changed Cyrodil from a tropical forest to a traditional medieval setting for the sake of being easier to work with, but in this case the mega server is going to have no impact on the lore. Ergo it will not, as you say contribute to a ‘changing universe’.

Y’know despite their track record of nothing working right, maybe Arenanet will get it right this time and everything will be gravy?

I mean it can’t possibly end up like all the living story releases full of bugs that get hot fixed into new bugs right?

Aidan Savage.2078:

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

That’s pretty much it. Especially when people are flipping kitten over something that isnt even in the game yet. People need to wait until the 15th to flip out after they log into the game.

And I suppose you need to hit the brick wall whilst going 70mph before complaining to the driver that the wall is in your way?

Elbegast.6970:

Aidan Savage.2078:

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

That’s pretty much it. Especially when people are flipping kitten over something that isnt even in the game yet. People need to wait until the 15th to flip out after they log into the game.

And I suppose you need to hit the brick wall whilst going 70mph before complaining to the driver that the wall is in your way?

Because more people together on maps is totally a speeding vehicle about to hit a brick wall.

MrDmajor.7084:

Elbegast.6970:

Aidan Savage.2078:

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

That’s pretty much it. Especially when people are flipping kitten over something that isnt even in the game yet. People need to wait until the 15th to flip out after they log into the game.

And I suppose you need to hit the brick wall whilst going 70mph before complaining to the driver that the wall is in your way?

Because more people together on maps is totally a speeding vehicle about to hit a brick wall.

I see you’re not accustomed to metaphors.

Elbegast.6970:

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

The option to toggle walk on/off wouldn’t even be in game if people didn’t voice their opinion before the game’s release. There is merit to voicing concerns prior to a release.

The mega server seems to consider factors such as home world, guild, friends, activity of preference in assigning a map. RPers are not represented in this system.

Colin’s response shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how RP works (“guild up”). Thus, since the Game Director doesn’t understand, it is a safe bet that the system will work well for everyone but RPers.

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” is pithy fun until you’re one of the few. I am not Vulcan, so you’ll pardon my concerns. Furthermore, this thread has been extremely levelheaded. The only ones kittening are the ones who don’t care about RP. That’s fine. That’s why there’s another thread about the mega server. This one relates to the mega server as it affects RP.

edited for clarity

I don’t RP at all but a quick suggestion would be a small check box at character select that says Role Play and if you click it it’ll prioritize you into a server with other people who have clicked that box too.

Might be a little off-topic but…
If everyone ever wanted to know how much we can scale up queensdale champions, and how much time it takes if 80+ people are after them to kill only one of them, how much people are kicked from the game because of older computers and massive effectshows in an starting area, and how much people will still find that funny, here’s our chance to find out.

Might as well be some little fun in all of this… And no one can tell people with older or weaker PCs to leave game, the because their frames are down to zero because of a massive train. After all, it is a starting area, and things like this are no good advertisement for starters after all.

We could as well take it as granted to have champions that are harder than actual worldbosses like Behe or the great Jungle Worm, or quit farming them because the reward we get would never pay off the effort. May also be just another way to stop people from farming champs. XD

As to being a minority: I know people who have spent anywhere from $2000 – $8000 on this game who are roleplayers over the past few years. Multiple people from Tarnished Coast. I know I’ve definitely spent more money in GW2 than I did in seven years of WoW.

It’s an MMO*RPG* and RPers tend to blow more money into the game than most other groups, because they’re crazypants about the kind of things that we can get for gems. Characters need NPCs for a story? Buy another 10 slots, buy all the XP, buy the skins, buy dye packs.

There’s an entire community of people who behave like this; their online website has nearly 10,000 RPers alone, and for every one of those, there’s likely one-or-more on the server who don’t actually use the site to RP network.

TC and PS aren’t really that tiny, RPers do not make up a small group, and they tend to have a heck of a lot of money that they want to invest into the game for story reasons.

So, I don’t think that laughing concerns off about RPers being the “minority” holds any real sense when they’re a) paying customers; b) consistent communities in every MMO out there; c) …MMORPG stands for massively multi-player online role playing game eeeesh.

Anywow: I’d looooove an option to flip on RP tags somehow! Even if it doesn’t come with this feature pack, maybe something for May for the RP community would be great? It might even interest other people in getting involved if it was acknowledged strongly as an option the way that RP communities are acknowledged in many other games and flourish because of that. =)

An RP tag also would be easier to implement than a specific RP server, too, and not require them to feel like they need to enforce special rules on an RP server (which is why there wasn’t one at launch).

Sorthvania.9351:

As to being a minority: I know people who have spent anywhere from $2000 – $8000 on this game who are roleplayers over the past few years. Multiple people from Tarnished Coast. I know I’ve definitely spent more money in GW2 than I did in seven years of WoW.

It’s an MMO*RPG* and RPers tend to blow more money into the game than most other groups, because they’re crazypants about the kind of things that we can get for gems. Characters need NPCs for a story? Buy another 10 slots, buy all the XP, buy the skins, buy dye packs.

It’s the same over on The Old Republic. I can almost guarantee that the people buying the item packs in bulk over on that game are by and large the role-players because most of us can and WILL go hog wild if we see a specific set of armor or weapon that suits our characters just so. I had friends over there that would drop $50 dollars a month easily on packs just to ensure they can get the full set of the items they want, then put down another $50 to unlock it all so that each outfit is available to every character they create. Tack on the subscription fee, extra character slots, name changes and appearance changes, and you’ll find that many role-players drop an immense amount of money simply to feed their fix.

Even if the role-playing community was truly niche both there and here, the sheer amount of coin each spends to ensure they have the best experiences with the game should not be understated or ignored. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should be placed above the rest of the community, and I don’t know a single role-player who would argue as such. But rather that our opinions should at least be considered, because if the role-players start to leave, A-Net probably will eventually feel the loss in their wallets.

Just adding my vote for some kind of flagging / checkbox system. I think it would be a good idea for rpers and for anyone else who just wants a little more control over where the placement system is likely to send them.

I really don’t think it’s asking too much to ask for an RP flag. It’s not as if we’re asking for an official rp server we’ll never get. Just a way to keep the community together better, even for guildless RPers or those who haven’t chosen a guild.

Right now I see a lot of RP guilds recruiting players out of panic because they don’t know how the megaserver will or will not accommodate them. Anet should know they’re a favorite target of trolls. If you have new or lost rpers being harassed at every opportunity because they happen to port in on the wrong map and ask where to go, the retention value of that player goes down. Sure you can keep the current rpers who are already set in game, but it will not help any of the new ones find people.

Even Tarnished Coast has it’s share of trolls and people who hate the RP community, but choose to play there. The Megaserver will just open the RP community to the hostility of all servers combined. PvE wise the megaserver is a great idea, but if you really want to accommodate the rper’s in some way that they can choose to keep to themselves, a flag or check box would be the smallest thing to ask for.

I don’t want to be that guy playing devil’s advocate, but you took away our town clothes, you took away a lot of customization with outfits, and now it seems like you’re trying to break the community up. The game director himself said “Guild up” which, to me, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how Roleplay works. Do you ask the entire WvW community to guild up? Do you ask the entire sPvP community to guild up?

The least you could do is give us a way, other than some undisclosed “weighted” values, for us to ensure that we can stick together. The RP flag/toggle seems like a really good idea, and I’ve seen it in other games, most notably Everquest 2, but it was present in WoW as well (Dedicated RP servers, no less) in the form of FlagRSP, which was a popular addon.

Also, with the influx of new players to our RP locations, could the ignore feature also block emotes? I’ve been trolled enough on TC by non-roleplayers, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when we can no longer say “Well, you’re on a roleplaying server.”

TL;DR: You’re doing a lot in this update that seems to spite the RP community, please get this one thing right.

They could always remove limits on how many people can join a guild. Of course, that guild might have like 10k members…

Some folks have mentioned multiple checkboxes for helping to specify what type of gameplay community they want to be mapped with.

Specifically, if you had to, what are the options you would deem complete and sufficient for the entire gaming community? Why? Given how many you list, where in the user interface would this be implemented and how (such as dropdown, checkboxes, radio) that would be elegant and intuitive to use/find?

Also if you allowed multiple checkboxes, would you want them to all weigh equally, differently? If differently how would that work – hard set in code or allow the player to give weights? Would you be upset if you were matched to a map that you gave low priority to and would it have been preferable to have only a single select (like a radio button) instead?

The more specifics we can give on such an option the more confident the developer is in implementing something that the community would be happy with. Generic statements “I want that!” is not as constructive and less likely to be taken note of.

For what it’s worth, I’m in the early stages of homebrewing a GW tabletop RPG from scratch. (I have some experience with this.) If anyone in the Seattle area wants to have a little fun helping test the gears out, flash me a PM.

(Devs are welcome, too!)

Zine.2136:

Some folks have mentioned multiple checkboxes for helping to specify what type of gameplay community they want to be mapped with.

Specifically, if you had to, what are the options you would deem complete and sufficient for the entire gaming community? Why? Given how many you list, where in the user interface would this be implemented and how (such as dropdown, checkboxes, radio) that would be elegant and intuitive to use/find?

Also if you allowed multiple checkboxes, would you want them to all weigh equally, differently? If differently how would that work – hard set in code or allow the player to give weights? Would you be upset if you were matched to a map that you gave low priority to and would it have been preferable to have only a single select (like a radio button) instead?

The more specifics we can give on such an option the more confident the developer is in implementing something that the community would be happy with. Generic statements “I want that!” is not as constructive and less likely to be taken note of.

I’d suggest two drop down boxes with a list of choices. Top one gets the most weight, bottom one gets secondary consideration.

• Roleplay
• Dynamic Events
• Dungeons
• Map Exploration
• Gathering
• Solo Play
• Group Play
• Crafting
• World Bosses

I’m sure a couple other entries could be thought of, but that covers a lot of the options. I’d put it in the hero panel somewhere, in theory on the first screen it shows when you turn it on.

I know RPers aren’t the priority but I don’t think Anet would like to lose these players either because people cannot find other players who have the same interests. I’d like to +1 all posts suggesting a ‘tick box’ for the type of players they are be it RP, PvE, PvP, WvW etc and matching all players with the ticked box taking priority. This would definitely solve any issues regarding the megaserver dispersing the already small RP community.

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

Kirk

…or the one.

Cactus Brawler.7415:

MrDmajor.7084:

Elbegast.6970:

Aidan Savage.2078:

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

That’s pretty much it. Especially when people are flipping kitten over something that isnt even in the game yet. People need to wait until the 15th to flip out after they log into the game.

And I suppose you need to hit the brick wall whilst going 70mph before complaining to the driver that the wall is in your way?

Because more people together on maps is totally a speeding vehicle about to hit a brick wall.

I see you’re not accustomed to metaphors.

Some metaphors are appropriate. Some are off base. Of course opinions may differ, but mine is, yours is off base.

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

And do you remember what Spock said after that?

Nothing, because he was dead. He died, cut off from his friends and anyone that might even try to help him. His flesh burned and irradiated, quite literally cooked alive. If he had been human, he would have been screaming in agony.

You want to sign up to be one of the few sacrificed for the many? Be my guest. Personally, I didn’t support this game just to be tossed under the bus when there’s a better option that could make everyone happy.

Also, I wish Spock had grabbed some bags of microwave popcorn before going in there. He could have saved the ship AND prepared a tasty snack at the same time!

I don’t see Anet making special concessions for the RP community. Doing so would tacitly support RP in GW2, which Anet does not do. And they won’t because to do so would mean that they would have to go all in on making GW2 an RP-friendly game. Just a little change to support RP would encourage further demands from the RP community. For example, even the mention that there were paintings of horses got the mounts community in a tizzy.

I feel bad for the RP community, but it will adapt. The megaserver is a good idea for GW2 as a whole and won’t be demolished to appease a small number of players.

As a part-time RPer myself, I understand the RP community’s concerns, although I’m willing to wait and see how this turns out. It sounds as if priority for map space will be given to players in this order:

1. Is this your Home Server?
2. Are your party members in this server?
3. Are your friends/guildies in this server?

As such, RPers probably won’t be too adversely affected since most of them are already home on TC/Piken anyway. Those that aren’t can guest to the servers, then party up with RPers who are there and hotjoin the server, similar to how organised guilds operate for more difficult World Bosses.

If things really don’t work out, then we can come back and provide our feedback to ANet, who I trust will look at addressing our woes if it’s reasonable to do so.

DaShi.1368:

I don’t see Anet making special concessions for the RP community. Doing so would tacitly support RP in GW2, which Anet does not do. And they won’t because to do so would mean that they would have to go all in on making GW2 an RP-friendly game. Just a little change to support RP would encourage further demands from the RP community. For example, even the mention that there were paintings of horses got the mounts community in a tizzy.

I feel bad for the RP community, but it will adapt. The megaserver is a good idea for GW2 as a whole and won’t be demolished to appease a small number of players.

When the new system takes into account home server, guilds, friends list, and activities you enjoy (PvE, PvP, WvW, etc), it could be argued that allowing RP’ers to find each other isn’t a special concession. RP is an activity. The system is purportedly designed to foster community. RP’ers are asking for a way to make sure they can find each other under the new system. That’s not a concession. More like a nice gesture to a group that doesn’t feel particularly welcomed but tries to persist despite having taken its share of blows (most recently with town clothes, etc).

Allowing RPers the single facility to play as they wish wouldn’t be a crime. I’d like a way to find other RPers if I have to have a whole new pool of people who don’t RP to fight through as a consistent basis. I wouldn’t mind -something- to make sure we’re all still together and not just luck because your guild happens to do other things too.

Gulesave.5073:

For what it’s worth, I’m in the early stages of homebrewing a GW tabletop RPG from scratch. (I have some experience with this.) If anyone in the Seattle area wants to have a little fun helping test the gears out, flash me a PM.

(Devs are welcome, too!)

Aww, you don’t run via Skype or Google Hangouts? With the Google thing you can even play an incredibly buggy version of Cards Against Humanity when the session’s over! …Man I miss tabletop gaming in meatspace. The sound of a single d20 rolling with nobody but me to hear it is a lonely thing.

ExAstris.8527:

When the new system takes into account home server, guilds, friends list, and activities you enjoy (PvE, PvP, WvW, etc), it could be argued that allowing RP’ers to find each other isn’t a special concession. RP is an activity.

I think this is a good way of seeing it. I like to do events and world bosses, which are activities, and my participation in those can be measured by the game itself. I also like to roleplay, which is also an activity, but the game can’t directly measure it. (I even like to RP while doing events and dungeons! …Not during combat of course.) Would you measure time spent not moving? That puts RPers and frequently-AFK people together, which I suppose might work; someone who idles a lot would make good enough scenery; but some RPers like to walk and talk. Or would you measure words in /say per minute? That makes Commanders giving instructions to a localized group look like they’re RPing! Measure emotes? Tonic usage? Everyone in TTS who dances or uses tonics while waiting for a boss to start gets tagged by the game as RPing. And I know of at least one guild that does a weekly combined RP/trek across the map/complete events/gather things/get levels/get loot event; no metric the game uses could account for the fact that people are RPing while doing that.

This is why an RP tag is more necessary than a tag for other activities. Most activities can be directly measured by the game (accidentally getting event credit for killing something vaguely within the area notwithstanding) and taken into account within the system automatically, but RP is harder to get a computer (or, perhaps, a dev…? :P) to recognize.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

MrDmajor.7084:

So RP’ers DON’T want to be grouped with their RP’ing friends and guildies on maps when population is being distributed? I’m ignorant of how this concept hurts anybody.

The current system people end up by themselves on maps either because of overflow or a combination of server population and map popularity. If anything this will allow RP’ers broader options. You have a better chance of being in the same instance as your friends or guild mates + surround by more players who could also potentially be RP’ers.

How is this worse than what is currently in play? I can understand wanting a feature to role play better. What I’m not getting is how this MegaESOserver is hurtful.

Nobody loses their server, it’s just an option better than the 2nd class citizen “overflow”.

Let me be clear. This does NOT create a ‘better chance’ than what we currently have. Tarnished Coast, as one of the unofficial RP servers, ALWAYS had us grouped with fellow RPers. So long as we were on the same server, every player around us was potentially an RPer. And more specifically, most of the players hanging around in capitol cities (not LA, where most normal players gathered) were all RPers. This new system isn’t adding more chance to us, because we’re the main RP server of this region. What it’s doing is actually splitting us up, and potentially filling our server with non-RPers while at the same time sending some of us to other servers due to overflow.

They talk about servers being weighted so that fellow Tarnished Coast players would be theoretically put together, but what does that really mean? It’s not a guarantee. The guarantee is the current implementation. When I log on, I’m guaranteed to be on the Black Citadel in Tarnished Coast. With this new system, I’d be very likely to log on to the Black Citadel with Tarnished Coast people, but the possibility exists that I won’t. And the more I do other activities, like dungeon running and world bosses, the more the system will try to push me towards servers doing that instead of specifically focusing on Tarnished Coast. Because again, there is nothing in that system to represent RP as one of the weighted options. That’s what we’re asking for.

I do not mean to offend, but I RP and have never been part of TC nor the “official” GW 2 RP players website. I actually belong to a “bad” RP server. Moreover, TC is recently full, because of some WvW migrations. New RP players wouldn’t be able to join your “select” and already established role playing group (which ironically has plenty of non-RP players as well.) Which ultimately ends up with many of you appearing quasi-elitist, and “no longer accepting applications” for other role players. This change WILL make it easier for you to discover role players from other servers who never had TC as a home server-it may have never occurred to you that there were such players in the first place?

This is a perceived inconvenience for RPlayers, not a true one. People just afraid of change. It comes off as arrogant, and may even turn off some other players from role playing in the first place (note that I am also very adamant against people mocking/ridiculing role players, so I stand with you-just not in the often negative way seen on this thread, as in “ANet never cares about RP”, which sounds very immature.)

Not sure i like the use of “odds” and “likely” in the chances of being on same map as friends.

Looked at the main Megaserver feedback thread, noted a dev answer that gives more useful information than just “guild up” that I think merits a double-post on my part:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

A few more important points to be made here:

• If your world usually has a comfortable population on a given map, you’re unlikely to see much of a difference here until the map actually starts getting full. We’re not going to toss a bunch of people from another world into a comfortably occupied server and make it uncomfortable.
• But some worlds do fill up all on their own pretty regularly. The improvement from this perspective is that if you try to join a very full map, the system will find another instance which also contains people from your world rather than the old overflows which were much more of a mixed bag.

From the language here, it seems that we only need to worry about being sorted away from other TC/Piken/etc. members in the case of very high server populations (like TC Divinity’s Reach filling up every night), in which case the priority will be to place people from the same server as a block on another server instead of mixing them up in overflow; other measurements such as preferred activity and guild seem to be secondary to original server and probably only used in very high-population circumstances (Lion’s Arch for the past few weeks?), and so aren’t quite so important as it initially appeared (especially given the “guild up” quote— so hopefully the one I’m quoting now is the more accurate one). And, should a TC-dominant map be severely underpopulated, the TC players would be moved as a group to another server with room, giving us strength in numbers and allowing us to meet new people who don’t normally RP or aren’t members of the RP servers for whatever reason.

So, a group of Piken players trying to do a big fight like the Watchknights who couldn’t get into Piken “main” (the predominantly-Piken map that would be created if there are more Piken players on the map than there are places on the map for them) gets combined maybe with another world’s population because that world doesn’t have enough people on the map to fill it up; server has better population, Piken folks get to stay with other Piken folks and not end up in a completely different map from each other or a completely empty map, nobody calls them names for being roleplayers because they’re there helping to win fights, everyone wins.

I hope this is indeed how things will work, because if so, it could actually make popular RP locations going into overflow a lot less annoying. The problem would be figuring out if there were an opportunity to zone into “main,” since Main technically won’t exist any more but theoretically people will still enter and leave the server that filled up in the first place, so it’ll all have to be about hopping in and out of a map until you get in if you really want to be in “main” (which you might, if you were only put on another map because the one with people from your server filled up). That’s a problem there. But considering how overflow queues and hopping in and out of maps work now, it’s probably honestly not much worse.

EDIT: Of course, no matter what, this still leaves people who would normally guest to TC to RP screwed over, because with no actual Main there can’t really be guesting. So unless there’s an RP tag or similar system, people who aren’t on the RP servers are going to have trouble finding other RPers. So… people on TC and Piken and such probably can’t really complain but this IS a huge problem for the RPers who aren’t on those servers.

Is there any concrete word on whether guesting is staying in? I occasionally like to guest to TC to RP, and I would really rather not have to transfer servers (AGAIN) just to appease the almighty megaserver algorithm.

I can see this system backfiring for highly social people or RPers who enjoy spontaneous interactions with new people; i.e., people who are NOT in their guild or party.

Star Ace.5207:

I do not mean to offend, but I RP and have never been part of TC nor the “official” GW 2 RP players website. I actually belong to a “bad” RP server. Moreover, TC is recently full, because of some WvW migrations. New RP players wouldn’t be able to join your “select” and already established role playing group (which ironically has plenty of non-RP players as well.) Which ultimately ends up with many of you appearing quasi-elitist, and “no longer accepting applications” for other role players. This change WILL make it easier for you to discover role players from other servers who never had TC as a home server-it may have never occurred to you that there were such players in the first place?

This is a perceived inconvenience for RPlayers, not a true one. People just afraid of change. It comes off as arrogant, and may even turn off some other players from role playing in the first place (note that I am also very adamant against people mocking/ridiculing role players, so I stand with you-just not in the often negative way seen on this thread, as in “ANet never cares about RP”, which sounds very immature.)

Technically, with some servers established as unofficial RP servers, you know where to guest if you want to find RP and your own server is dead. With the removal of any sort of official “main” for a world and instead just making servers into groups of people from the same world that spill over if those servers fill up (which is what the post I linked above implies), it might actually be harder for people who aren’t on RP servers to find RP at all outside joining a guild— because the game won’t have a way of measuring the fact that you do RP in order to group you with other RPers, and will still prioritize grouping you by server. If RP tags are implemented, this might be avoided, but otherwise it seems likely that you’d have to fill your friends list up with roleplayers and join a roleplay guild to get any benefit out of the new placement system if you’re not on an RP server.

My tuppence worth:

Yes, we need RP flags. Desperately. But more than that, we need an absolute guarantee that the megaserver will find the RP instance for us. And/or (preferably And) we need the option to manually select which instance we go to. A system that maybe sometimes prioritises grouping players by its own internal logic is no substitute.

The reason – for Colin, or others who might have spectacularly missed the point here – is spontaneous RP. At the moment on Piken – the closest thing we have to an official RP home world – I know that any zone I go to, I’m going to meet other roleplayers. They’re not necessarily “in character (”IC)" or “acting” when I encounter them, but they’re members of the same community as me. This means that if I do an event in a far-flung zone and then slow to a walking pace as I’m leaving, odds are they might do so too, switching to being “in character” and striking up spontaneous RP.

In short, we already have this close, friendly community that Anet are apparently trying to make standard across the board – but its fragile existence only continues because a) we have a persistent home to connect it to and b) meeting each other is guaranteed, not just ambigiously “likely.”

So in short. We need an RP flag for the megaserver’s search engine, but it needs to be absolute – i.e., we can tick the RP flag and set it to “only find other RPers,” and it will do exactly that.

Twyll Blackleaf.9641:

Looked at the main Megaserver feedback thread, noted a dev answer that gives more useful information than just “guild up” that I think merits a double-post on my part:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

A few more important points to be made here:

• If your world usually has a comfortable population on a given map, you’re unlikely to see much of a difference here until the map actually starts getting full. We’re not going to toss a bunch of people from another world into a comfortably occupied server and make it uncomfortable.
• But some worlds do fill up all on their own pretty regularly. The improvement from this perspective is that if you try to join a very full map, the system will find another instance which also contains people from your world rather than the old overflows which were much more of a mixed bag.

I’m seeing this differently than you are. I’ve broken down my logic elsewhere, but I’ll just say this: Words like "usually"and “unlikely” are not very reassuring at all, especially when they have to use them together to describe something.

Palador.2170:

Twyll Blackleaf.9641:

Looked at the main Megaserver feedback thread, noted a dev answer that gives more useful information than just “guild up” that I think merits a double-post on my part:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

A few more important points to be made here:

• If your world usually has a comfortable population on a given map, you’re unlikely to see much of a difference here until the map actually starts getting full. We’re not going to toss a bunch of people from another world into a comfortably occupied server and make it uncomfortable.
• But some worlds do fill up all on their own pretty regularly. The improvement from this perspective is that if you try to join a very full map, the system will find another instance which also contains people from your world rather than the old overflows which were much more of a mixed bag.

I’m seeing this differently than you are. I’ve broken down my logic elsewhere, but I’ll just say this: Words like "usually"and “unlikely” are not very reassuring at all, especially when they have to use them together to describe something.

Hm, I see your point, although I think the use of “usually” there is actually in our favor— say, if Tarnished Coast usually has a sizeable population in Divinity’s Reach but doesn’t at 4 a.m on a particular weekday., then the game will still consider Tarnished Coast to be a world that fills up DR and not “change its mind” based on what time it is. So it essentially establishes that for worlds that have high populations in certain places, there will be a sort of “main” if they “usually” but not always fill up those places. Of course, “unlikely” to see a difference could very well be weasel words (I feel like we need a term for weasel-words-that-exist-because-of-weird-legal-bullkitty-that-happens-in-the-game-industry-and-limits-what-people-can-say) that would completely negate that, but I think it’s probably necessary to see all 3 days’ worth of post to draw a conclusion regarding the weaseliness of them. (Is ANet getting into the Easter season— three days of torment?)

I suppose the point is that the situation isn’t nearly as hopeless as the Town Clothes thing, because they have outright declared an intention to monitor things very carefully with the Megaserver system— so we can actually hold them to that, whereas with Town Clothes they won’t even say they’ll consider fixing them. (Much speculation about why they refuse to say anything about Town Clothes is that they’re afraid they’ll be held to whatever they say and have to plan very carefully first; if they’ve taken that step already, to say “we are monitoring and will adjust and fix problems” right to start with, that’s a more hopeful sign, then.) And if they’re monitoring things, and if we discover that “usually” is not usual enough… well, at least we’ve got more hope of them listening to us than if they refuse to admit they’re taking any feedback at all.

You’re right that we can’t just assume this will work out well, but we can at least be merely cautiously optimistic instead of the desperate against-all-odds sort of optimism we seem to have to muster to deal with the Town Clothes mess.

I, too echo the concerns of the OP. Walk up RP is a huge part of the experience to me, and I think that the new load balancing system is seriously threatening that experience.

I’d like to offer a couple scenarios to illustrate:

1) I log in during peak hours, so I get placed onto a server that has a low population of people who are “related” to me. I now have no means of reaching that core community if none of my friends are on to “join” or if the server is totally full. With the overflow system, I was at least placed into a queue so I could reach that community by waiting my turn.

2) “Shard A” is at 50% capacity when my home server peak hours begin. In just a few minutes, “Shard A” is at 100% capacity having been filled with players from my home server. “Shard B” is created to accommodate the influx of population, and fills to 50%, again mostly with players from my home server. Since foreign players are not being transferred off (“kicked”) of “Shard A” and “Shard B” players are not being transferred to “Shard A,” the community has now been cut in half. 50% of the players are now sharing an instance with people who have nothing (or very little) in common with them and the other 50% of them are alone on their own Shard. This scenario can be expanded to 3 or more servers depending on the order that people log in. Sure, you’re more likely to be paired with people from your server, but you’ve just been split into isolated groups among a populace of other isolated groups. Small cliques does not a community make.

Your playerbase as a whole, and RPers in particular, need a place to congregate en masse and take part in the community we’ve all worked to create since launch. To that end, we need tools that can ensure that we see the people we choose to be with. In my opinion, a load balancer cannot be trusted to make this decision for us.

I like the idea of the RP tag, but I can’t help but think that most of us have already “tagged” for RP by joining RP servers. We’ve already chosen the community that we want to build, and we should be allowed to participate regardless of what others have chosen. By “load balancing” us across multiple instances, you violate the choices your playerbase has already made to be a part of a common group.

I regret that we don’t have more detailed information on how this system works. Perhaps more details would help assuage some of our concerns by dispelling our collective assumptions.

On a technical note:
What Anet needs has not changed: Larger server nodes for high population servers and smaller server nodes to accommodate low population servers.

The “one-size-fits-all” approach can only lead to infrastructure waste unless you have enough abstraction to dynamically scale your infrastructure on the fly. Load balancing like this is a band-aid that will not address player isolation and will not address the root of your infrastructure waste.