Guild Wars 2

Twyll Blackleaf.9641

Aww, you don’t run via Skype or Google Hangouts?

Not for pre-alpha testing, sorry. I’m still hammering out the core systems, making it truly feel like Guild Wars from the ground up instead of just being GW themed. That requires a hands-on, in-person approach for the time being.

Simply add a free “Change Instance” Function, so we can freely move from instance to instance and find our friends/guildmates, or select a much more/less populated area, with a let’s say 10 minute cooldown.

So, what’s going to happen if let’s say my instance is full, i’m already RPlaying with some friends, and others from a different RP guild decide to join in later on? Are they going to be able to do so, or they’ll get a “Sorry, better luck next time” treatment? In case you missed it, we do cross guild events, as we know they’re part of our “world”, and our “Community”.

I won’t go into the lag details for this change, nor how many people with low end machines will be affected from constant “out of memory” crashes. Yes, your memory leak regarding 32bit systems is still up and running, my dear ArenaNet, and instead of fixing that and many other bugs regarding the dynamic events, you simply throw the game to a grinder, mash it up, and hoping that stripping/altering core elements will do you good, and keep us playing.

This “Megaserver’s” only achievement will be a total mashup of the game’s entire population. Yes, implement the change if you want, but give us control over it, so we won’t be frustrated or even worse, separated from everybody we know and love to play and RP with.

But i have to ask, what’s exactly your ultimate goal here? Right now i find myself debating whether to log in and play or not, not knowing if all the effort (and of course real money) i spent in this game meant anything…

Gotta add, the fact the ANet team does not only seem to have no idea about specifics and needs of rp community but also seems very eager to dismiss us with a light hand, it irks me really.

Most of roleplayers i know, (myself included ofc) are adults with stable income they like to spend on their hobby. Most are dedicated to their hobby, which makes them dedicate clients. Most have very wide connections within the community and without.

I think we deserve to be treated like any other community within game, at least as much as Teq and Wurm killers (there is certainly many more roleplayers than tq slayers), not being dismissed out of hand.

If Anet made Tequatl easier for one reason or the other, World Boss community would raise hell and be listened to. Why are we, roleplayers, not entitled to being accommodated to, even in the least? Why are we the community not being cared about? Hell, they didn’t even think about roleplayers when making Megaserver plans until we we raised objections!

All we ask, is being taken into consideration, and given a way of staying together as a community and cultivationg the way we like to enjoy Guild Wars 2, instead of having to fight the system so that we can do it. Very good ways of making sure we can do that were mentioned already, my favourite being the RP tag…

I would think that it would be good for Role Players that had become invested on other servers from the days of release to be rolled into worlds with more of those that Role Play. The Megaserver from what I understand could do that for us. Sometimes I’ve been able to get on to Tarnished Coast but many of my friends and guild members are invested on Maguuma which is where I started when Tarnished Coast was so full you couldn’t get a finger in the door leastwise a foot. I was hoping that the Mega server would help me find more people to friend so that RP is not so hit and miss when I’m romping around Tyria.

RP can be found on any server it’s just harder to maintain consistency in the face of changing populations. What I am more upset with is the fact that we are not receiving any additions to the emote system for visual social cues, and we do not have social props (i.e. Chicken legs, ale mugs, goblets, chairs) An excellent point made in some fan forums for RP have wondered if such things could be incorporated within the ‘toy’ system where interacting with a certain object gives you skills that trigger different social animations. We had been told (maybe jokingly) at the beginning through the use of a funny comic strip that GW2 would be the first game where you could sit at a bar interact with a mug that would come with the actions of drinking the contents or smashing the mug over the “orc’s” head. We have the hero elixir where you can brain a man or drink it but by drinking it you magically siphon it out of your offhand as your bottle is still held as if to whack someone. This leads me to believe that the social side of GW2 for Rp’ers was unfinished and was hoping they would update something in the new update for April 15th. Emotes and Props. If the developers can give us flowers and dancing books, instruments and sonic diggers, how about some new emotes and social props like usable chairs, bars, drinks and food?

Most of my concerns have already been addressed multiple times upthread, but one thing that hasn’t been touched on much that worries me is that with the new map system, there will be a huge increase in trolling of RPers by people who aren’t used to seeing us around.

I’ve had some pretty bad experiences personally, with other characters running into a scene I’m involved in to disrupt things with spells/etc. but also with players intentionally flooding /say with emotes so quickly that it drowns out any attempt at talking over them. I’ve even seen them put special characters in their name to make it harder to block them. It’s for this reason that I’m extremely apprehensive to RP in overflow maps, and with this it feels like essentially every map will act like an overflow map.

Right now, generally speaking, people who come to Tarnished Coast (I can only speak for Tarnished Coast since that’s my home server) know what they’re in for and are fairly respectful towards the RPers that call TC home. My worry is this will no longer be the case when we’re thrown in with whoever happens to be populating the map at the time, and that there will no longer be any reliable way to find a safe space to RP with strangers in this new system.

Believe me I feel where you coming from on this. I friend people that RP with me when I find them. That fact may help you in the long run too. The MegaServer is going to take into account who your friends are and try to place you with each other as much as possible. If your friends are not active and you are placed in an unfamiliar surrounding that can lead to some very frustrating play. I have found however that even though you’ll get some trolling a little creative out of character response is usually enough to have them knock it off. I had one guy come after me during the Battle for Lion’s Arch. I made a Doctor Who reference and it was all over. After that he joined us for a makeshift game of Dwarves & Destroyers (on the fly d&d improv based on the EotN lore.) Some people troll but most will give you space. I think the hardest thing as you say is talking in the Say chat to RP. An InCharacter tab or the expansion of emotes and props would be a good solution to enrich RP interaction and ease congestion and reliance on the say chat line.

I can understand the counter argument against the “RP flag” but we already have people who SPVP and WvWvW because they have content for them already. Not everyone wants to do those things either.
RPers are not a handful of five people who might like a certain movie series. They’re a dedicated group who probably spend a good amount of money on the marketplace outfits just for RP alone.
Many host events that welcome all players. In a declining social atmosphere, there are RPers who still try and get others involved in the game world. It’s time they’re recognized as the large group they are such as PvPers and PvEers. I certainly think at least considering the idea is not asking much. And just because everyone else isnt getting something like it, they shouldnt have it, just isnt a good argument. PvPers have Mist Maps and and entire land full of towers and castles. PvEers have the story, cities, and entire world and living content. What do the RPers ask for… a check box.

But that’s just my opinion. lol

zwierz.9012:

Why are we, roleplayers, not entitled to being accommodated to, even in the least?

Because you, as an RPer, have an infinitely easier time adapting to changes. How? Discuss it with the community you RP in and suddenly everyone reaches the consensus that because these changes are ONLY IN CITIES AND WEENIE AREAS you can decide to move to SIMILAR areas, such as Ebonhawke, that is in essence a city that is not an instanced zone. Oh, there’s also a second benefit, it’s unaffected by the megaserver change.

Oh, also, have you considered asking for home instances to be shifted from a 5 person instance into actual zones? PS can stay instanced along with brand new “player’s home” instances in case you have mining nodes. Changing those areas into zones eradicates a large majority of the problems because it’s a zone within a zone. And unless you’re going to be there for RP, or causing problems, it’s going to be practically dead. The issues then really only come up if you’re in combat areas, but that can be dealt with separately at a later time.

I don’t know if this helps any of the RPers posting their concerns here. I know it doesn’t solve the problem but still it should be some kind of comfort in case the changes actually force you to play with “non-RPers”:

I’m not an RPer. Actually I would consider myself a “normal” player (not meaning that RPers aren’t, I just didn’t find a better word for the average player) who plays and enjoys each game mode more or less equally – and yet there is still an image of my character that I hold dear:

I know how my character would react to specific situations, would answer specific questions (like the one about Scarlet’s death), etc. I think every player has some kind of concept about how they want their characters to be. That is nothing else than RPing and I’m sure I’m not the only one who is RPing a bit every now and then, even if it is only in my head. We are all playing an MMO*RPG* after all…

However, if I were to encounter more RPers during daily PvE, it would add something to my gaming experience rather than be annoying. If an RPer talked to me and I noticed he/she is currently acting IC, I would definitely try to answer in an appropriate manner, even though I might not be as eloquent as a practiced RPer (also depending on the language used).

I’m sure that I’m not the only one who thinks that way. I even know of serveral guilds spread over other EU servers than Piken who RP a lot (especially those with a theme like e.g. Asura krewes). Maybe you will even find new fellow RPers you would have never met without the new system…?

There will always be trolls, sure – but you should not assume that all of the “non-RPers” are. If trolls wanted to get in your way while you RP, they could already do that by guesting to your server. As far as I know though, lots of people even guest to your servers to actually see your RPing in action, so it can’t be that bad, right?

As I stated some posts above, my issue is:

-Tarnished Coast is a FULL server at this point of time. It used to not be the case a few weeks back, but some WvW players migrated there recently, finally filling the server out (whether they are role-players or not.)There’s only one “unofficial RP server” for NA: the now FULL TC.

-Therefore, there’s no reason this change is worse than having it remain status quo, as no new role players are able to move to TC anyway-you will be able to meet new people who role-play from other servers. (I find it VERY condescending to think that only TC players, or players that know about the role players website role-play. Migrating to highly populated servers IS costly, and moreover, it can’t even be done at this point in time.)

-There’s no reason to take the stance of ANet not caring about (or having “agendas” against) role-players. It was made for the good of the game, not to inconvenience/“betray” role-players. (Non-RPers can similarly also say "ANet doesn’t want us to organize our Tequatl kills better! They didn’t think about us! The “baddies” will ruin our runs!" And they would be equally wrong-no offense intended.)

-Tagging players as “RPers” or “non-RPers” is a dangerous precedent. I don’t trust it will help other than further dividing the community. Leave discrimination for when you do your LFGs. This game wasn’t made for role-players or impersonal, serious business-like, “uber” speed runners only. There’s a middle-ground, and all have the right to play the game.

Again, my take is: ignore those that don’t RP-poof, problem gone. Making the game more universal doesn’t mean you must stop role-playing moving forwards (you shouldn’t if that’s what you prefer.)

(Further, not all tags must be universal all the time. A roleplayer may do light role play or serious RP, be a role player but not be roleplaying at the time, etc. Not all tagged “non-RP” will be anti RP, and not all tagged “RP” will necessary roleplay to your standards. In short, it’s not simple to work around, and thus the mega-server remains as a great idea despite these issues, in my view.)

Aidan Savage.2078:

zwierz.9012:

Why are we, roleplayers, not entitled to being accommodated to, even in the least?

Because you, as an RPer, have an infinitely easier time adapting to changes. How? Discuss it with the community you RP in and suddenly everyone reaches the consensus that because these changes are ONLY IN CITIES AND WEENIE AREAS you can decide to move to SIMILAR areas, such as Ebonhawke, that is in essence a city that is not an instanced zone. Oh, there’s also a second benefit, it’s unaffected by the megaserver change.

Oh, also, have you considered asking for home instances to be shifted from a 5 person instance into actual zones? PS can stay instanced along with brand new “player’s home” instances in case you have mining nodes. Changing those areas into zones eradicates a large majority of the problems because it’s a zone within a zone. And unless you’re going to be there for RP, or causing problems, it’s going to be practically dead. The issues then really only come up if you’re in combat areas, but that can be dealt with separately at a later time.

First off: The majority of RP happens in the cities and low level areas exactly to help new characters be part of it. Be it new players with new characters or veteran RPers who create a character just for the sake of a plot they are playing.
Second: The popular non-rp suggestion to “adapt or leave” makes perfect sense, but i have the feeling that A-net is not in the favor of losing players who are feeling alienated enough already with all the thoughtless restrictions put on us. Saying “adapt” to us is the same as saying “adapt” to every single pvp-er who complains about condition damage. It makes sense, survival of the fittest and all, but i dont play a game to be alienated. I have reality for that.
Third, a question: Do you think your suggestion regarding home instance expanding and whatnot would take less time to code, implement and test, than a single manual RP tag put into the many automatic variables this new system handles? I would love to see how it would be simpler.

@Star Ace
I think you are misunderstanding. Most of us (at least I am) are worried about losing the RP communities by all the players being flung to various servers against their will and receiving people who don’t really care for us in their place. I would welcome new people on my server who wish to RP on our server as long as their aren’t pushing out other people. I am sure this could be said for people who wish to do World Bosses and the Such not wishing their place in a ‘sure thing’ Tequatl kill to be taken by a casual who is just there because they happened to be bored at the time.

lakdav.3694:

Third, a question: Do you think your suggestion regarding home instance expanding and whatnot would take less time to code, implement and test, than a single manual RP tag put into the many automatic variables this new system handles? I would love to see how it would be simpler.

Yes, I do. Why? Because Anet would have to figure out how to weight such a tag for starters. Does it take primary precedence? Secondary? Tertiary? Or does it come aaaaaaaall the way at the end as an afterthought (yes the dig is intentional)? Oh, and then they’d have to track all of that information on god knows how many characters. It isnt as simple as adding the flag either. The server databases would need that flag added into them first. Plus it’d be far easier to allow players to use the “join in” feature with players in your guild (if repping) as well as your friend list (if mutually listed), not just your party. Yes, it means you actually need to do work, not ask for anet to implement an easy button.

Converting home instances would take less time to implement or test because they’d essentially recycle code from other zones. It would not surprise me if there’s a specific isolated (relatively speaking) block of code for each server to dictate how zones are created, their capacity, and how the zone will recycle. As it stands now, home instances are ALREADY a zone. They’re simply capped at 5 players (I’m making an assumption as I’ve never seen another player in a home instance), and the zone collapses once the last person leaves.

I’m not saying anet should ignore the RP community, though I cant exactly blame them if they do. It’s simply that asking for you to get a group-targeted function before you actually SEE how this change affects you is kinda…..playing chicken little. Think about it for a moment. RP communities arent the only group affected by this. The TTS Community spans TWELVE GUILDS. At max capacity, that’s 6 thousand people who participate in large-scale raid content. How do you think we feel with this change? You think you’ll have a hard time getting 50-60 people onto the same map just to RP? Imagine trying to get a FULL MAP to do raid content.

10+ man parties would solve almost all the problems.

I vote for the RP flag.

@Aidan Savage
Since the flag/tag would be triggered or put up manually by the player who wants to actively RP, it would stand to reason that it takes high priority. Taking down the tag, it no longer counts into the equation (otherwise full of other, well-measurable, automaticly counting variables).

Home instances and even Personal Story instances are fully developed but usually closed off areas of the real maps. When you do the instance be it a PS step or just your home instance, it gets filled with your personal stuff, like nodes and the NPCs required for the scenes. Otherwise its empty and free of NPCs, since players are not supposed to be there, seeing the ghost-town.

Incidently, that is perfect for player-driven RP, since there is the full setting and furniture, more space and little to break immersion (NPCs tend to repeat their lines every minute which gets a bit annoying.) Some such places can be reached via bugs or terrain exploits, up until Anet fixes those without a second thought, and you are no longer able to get in via the more convenient paths used. Why Anet doesnt have those areas opened since launch, dont ask me, i dont know.

Thats just some filler info for you. The point stands though, that instances with whatever party size require invitation and prior organizing. While such is needed for the more heavy content in the game like raid content, and the planning and organizing is part of the fun of raid content, it is not necessarily so for casual, relaxed and spontaneous Roleplaying.

What would serve the other communities as a whole the best would have the already developed automatic measurements and ranking of activities in place, but have an upper layer that is fully player-controlled, that would take top priority when the megaserver system decides where to put you. Have a list of activities to choose from, Roleplay just one of them, raiding another, non-group Dynamic Events a third and so on.

Want to do raid content, choose it from the list and map to Sparkfly, get together with folks who are there for Sparkfly’s raid content, Teq. Done with Teq, and now want to RP in Queensdale? Choose RP on the list, map to Queensdale and continue the plot you are part of with the other RPers who are specificly there to RP.

It doesnt get any simpler than that.

Aidan Savage.2078:

lakdav.3694:

Third, a question: Do you think your suggestion regarding home instance expanding and whatnot would take less time to code, implement and test, than a single manual RP tag put into the many automatic variables this new system handles? I would love to see how it would be simpler.

Yes, I do. Why? Because Anet would have to figure out how to weight such a tag for starters. Does it take primary precedence? Secondary? Tertiary? Or does it come aaaaaaaall the way at the end as an afterthought (yes the dig is intentional)? Oh, and then they’d have to track all of that information on god knows how many characters. It isnt as simple as adding the flag either. The server databases would need that flag added into them first. Plus it’d be far easier to allow players to use the “join in” feature with players in your guild (if repping) as well as your friend list (if mutually listed), not just your party. Yes, it means you actually need to do work, not ask for anet to implement an easy button.

Converting home instances would take less time to implement or test because they’d essentially recycle code from other zones. It would not surprise me if there’s a specific isolated (relatively speaking) block of code for each server to dictate how zones are created, their capacity, and how the zone will recycle. As it stands now, home instances are ALREADY a zone. They’re simply capped at 5 players (I’m making an assumption as I’ve never seen another player in a home instance), and the zone collapses once the last person leaves.

I’m not saying anet should ignore the RP community, though I cant exactly blame them if they do. It’s simply that asking for you to get a group-targeted function before you actually SEE how this change affects you is kinda…..playing chicken little. Think about it for a moment. RP communities arent the only group affected by this. The TTS Community spans TWELVE GUILDS. At max capacity, that’s 6 thousand people who participate in large-scale raid content. How do you think we feel with this change? You think you’ll have a hard time getting 50-60 people onto the same map just to RP? Imagine trying to get a FULL MAP to do raid content.

Think of it. “your” maps like Bloodtide Coast or Sparkfly Fen aren’t changed on April 15th. They’ll only be if the Megaserver system works as intended. As a roleplayer who kills Tequatl at least once per day, I can perfectly understand your concerns. I do have the same. Buuuut…

As Anet is starting with the starting areas AND cities, which are each highly populated by RP’ers for reasons that have already been mentioned, we’re the first ones to be thrown into cold water.

I can only hope that this systems produces that much server crashes and disconnects that it has to be taken off again, because I don’t even want to know HOW you’re supposed to organize a Worm-Kill, if you can’t produce an overflow on purpose to gather your people on TS there. I wonder how this will end up if there are 3 servers that get posted and 15 Comanders of 3 guilds, each one wants to lead etc… Not to mention potentionally different languages, if map copies are full. Yes, that won’t be funny too, but this will only happen if the system is marked “working as intended” after the TEST. And we roleplayers are the first who suffer from ‘testing’.

I don’t understand why the thought of having manual tags instead of letting algorithms sort people is getting such negative press.

Surely, this would be a way of doing things which would be simpler for everyone? Rather than trust to an automated system to weight things correctly and guess how we want to play each day, why not leave it up to players? Add a bar in F11 for sorting filters, and let the players choose what’s important to them.

When I’m playing casually, do I particularly care if I end up with other people from TC? Not really. I’m more or less soloing. When I want to do boss chains, do I want to be stuck in an instance with people who, sure, are on my server, but are standing idle at WPs, or pottering around on the other side of the map, soloing? Again. Not really.

Grouping with guildmates is fine, and grouping with friends list people is fine, but as many people have pointed out, just because you friended someone doesn’t mean you have the same playstyle. If I’m in DR to craft and I’m not RPing tonight, does it help to take up a “space” in the instance that someone else could use for RPing? There’s no way for the game to tell what the RPers are doing. According to the metrics they’re just idling.

If we could select how we wanted to be sorted, this would almost certainly fix 99% of the problems everyone has with the system. Yes, we’re asking for it for RP reasons because there’s no way for the game to identify who is RPing and who is loitering by the TP chatting about random stuff. But it’s not something which just benefits RPers.

The fact is, TC has a high population, and often has overflows. Currently, if you’re on an overflow you get a notification, a queue, that stuff. You know when you’re in one, and that you’re not on the “main” version. You know you have to wait or ferry people.

What way will there be to tell with the new system? How will we know which is the “extra” version of the city? If I walk around DR post-patch and see no one RPing, is that because the version with the RPers in is full, or because no one’s around? At least with a filter you would have the knowledge that the game is attempting to match you with like-minded individuals. At the moment, the only hope we have is “Guild up”, which is spectacularly unhelpful to new players, and very limiting to existing players as no guild will be large enough to contain every RPer, even on the assumption that people even have an extra space to join an additional guild.

With TC full, no one else can join the server to get that metric. How then, are new players to find RPers, and how are existing RPers to know whether anyone else is around or not?

I’m focusing on the issues as they relate to the RP community here because this is the purpose of the thread. But it goes beyond that. I don’t always want to do boss events, but when I do, I don’t care which server people are from so long as they want to do the events as well. If there were a system of tags, then people could manually select their filters: “RP”, “Casual Play”, “Meta Events”, “Guildmates”, “Server Community”, “Friends List”. Which one or three are you focusing on today? The system as described seems to assume people always have the same goals when they log in, and that simply isn’t true of a lot of players.

If the default was for “Guildmates”, “Server Community” and “Friends List” to already be selected, but players had the option to select or deselect alternatives, the system could be implemented in a later patch, as it is clearly too late to change for the 15th April update. This way, it would leave players happy with the changes pretty much unaffected, but would allow players who have concerns to get the additional functionality they would like.

(Of course, I would far and away prefer a GW1-style system where you could select your district via a drop-down menu, but I accept that this isn’t happening any time soon.)

@ Aidan Savage.2078 – Others have already replied to Your post saying same things I would have, so I won’t repeat same arguments except for adding a line or two:

So we roleplayers adapt to changes in game that are made without any thought about us. Does that make it alright to pile up more difficuilties against us, and making it harder and harder for us to play the game how we like?

So our money and voices are worth less because we’re resilient and will adapt?

Hey, what would YOU say if suddenly it would be imposed on EVERYONE in the game to roleplay their characters, and people who would refuse would be baned or there would be obstacles piled in their way? And when you would complain you would hear “adapt of gtfo!”??

Not a very comforting scenario, right? And we face it everyday and the Megaserver update has the potential to make it near impossible to play together and enjoy our community without finding some backdoors alowing us to work around the system.

So basically Megaserver impose danger that roleplayers will be forced to cheat the game in order to play it. Sounds fair to you?

As for the RP tag, it can be simply treated by the system as “guild” or a step below, and prioritize tagged people accordingly.

ps. This whole situation wouldn’t take place if our needs would be taken in consideration without us rebelling. We don’t ask for privileges that other players do not have. We ask to be taken in consideration on equal footing as other players, as a community same as pvpers, pvers and what have you.

Instead we’re being marginalized and ignored, because “we can giuld up”.

I am no avid RPer but I chose Piken for a reason. (Partially because I play GW constantly since 2006 and have learned by countless encounters that the non-RP community of this game in general is much more insufferable than in others, probably because the lack of payment invites more teenagers.) Just to add to the number of voices I’m going to voice my concerns which reiterate points repeatedly made already.

1. RP relies on random encounters with strangers which must be facilitated by RPers being in the same map.
2. RP guilds are content-restricted and most RPers already have the maximum number and could easily pick 5 more to accomodate their characters. (ps.: And given the specifics of the situation situation is just a general insult to RPers to tell them, who are several hundred/thousand people, to guild up.)
3. There is more than one RPer who does not play the game at all and solely uses it for RP. Those people also have a habit on making Gems rain for the fancy skins that Arenanet likes to put out.

So I concur that they should add an “RP”-tag which overwrites every other number when it comes to map assignment.

My guess is that you will still be able to get into their “version” of the map by right-clicking their portrait.

If the system works the way I think, after you do that enough times, the megaserver system should give weight to the people that was in that map for you, and start doing that for you whenever the people you travel to is in another shard.

Aidan Savage.2078:

[…] Because you, as an RPer, have an infinitely easier time adapting to changes. How? Discuss it with the community you RP in and suddenly everyone reaches the consensus that because these changes are ONLY IN CITIES AND WEENIE AREAS you can decide to move to SIMILAR areas, such as Ebonhawke, that is in essence a city that is not an instanced zone. Oh, there’s also a second benefit, it’s unaffected by the megaserver change.

This idea doesn’t work in the slightest. As RPers, our characters – that many of us have been playing as, fleshing out and developing since release – have homes, jobs, families and so on. One character might be a Noble who’s part of the Divinity’s Reach elite, another a guard in the Ministry, and another yet a member of the crime syndicate that lurks in the Ossan district. Whole areas of the city itself have developed personalities and histories – the Maiden’s Whisper is considered a reputable inn for well-to-do folk, the one in Ossan is more of a seedy Mos Eisley Cantina, and so on. Just upping and leaving to another zone and being told “well, go do your weird RP thing over there instead” makes zero sense for our characters, and zero sense for us as players.

Star Ace.5207:

-Tagging players as “RPers” or “non-RPers” is a dangerous precedent. I don’t trust it will help other than further dividing the community. Leave discrimination for when you do your LFGs. This game wasn’t made for role-players or impersonal, serious business-like, “uber” speed runners only. There’s a middle-ground, and all have the right to play the game.

This is very, very wrong. There is no discrimination going on here; you don’t get told to bugger off by roleplayers just because you are doing it casually. The system is already going to tag people with what it thinks they want to do anyway; it has been described as specifically keeping metrics on player activity and then sorting them by those metrics. How, exactly, is allowing players to set tags for what they want to do at that time in any way a bad thing? We’re not just talking about roleplaying here.

Let’s say you have just one character; it’s your first character, you have spent your time leveling up and doing heart completion. You have saved your monies up and bought some crafted exotic gear from the marketplace, and now you really want to try that Tequatl encounter you keep hearing about. Oh, wait, whoops, your entire play time to this point has been concentrated on doing leveling; now the system believes that’s all you want to do, and so every time you go into an instance for Teq, half the zone is low-mid levels that are just questing, making the encounter literally impossible.

Like any automated system, it will have flaws. Without any user-side ability to counter those flaws, they will be far more glaring.

A tagging system doesn’t need to be hugely complex; it could quite literally be just four different things: 1) Leveling 2) Raiding 3) Event (Champion) Farming and 4) Roleplaying. Everyone would then still be using the system to enter fuller, more alive areas but would be doing it with people who are also looking to play the game the way they want to. There is no drawback to this.

Remember, the basic zone layout is such that it limits each one to what, about 150 people? That sounds like alot… until you have to fight the wurms, or Teq, or the now-gone Marionette. This system will further hose any similar content as it stands now, much less screwing with the roleplaying community.

And also I can’t even begin to think how will the system sort people who like to do different things, many people enjoy EVERY aspect of the game. How will the system sort let’s say hypothetical Johnny B., a guy who is a roleplayers, also does jumping puzzles, map completion, hearts, event chains, and big world bosses, but usually focuses on one aspect for some time, then moves to the other as the previous one becomes stale for him?

Will he be forced into the crowd doing whatever activity he was endulging when the update hits him in the face like a big bag of “nope”? Or just get assigned totally randomly by a system who doesn’t know what to make of him and bugs because of wide variety of the mans activities?

Is Johnny playing the game wrong suddenly because he likes to enjoy the WHOLE game, not just a select aspect?

Now… This is something, great job Anet!
Just make the enemy AI better and make the zones lil harder so it make sense to run with fellows?

zwierz.9012:

And also I can’t even begin to think how will the system sort people who like to do different things, many people enjoy EVERY aspect of the game. How will the system sort let’s say hypothetical Johnny B., a guy who is a roleplayers, also does jumping puzzles, map completion, hearts, event chains, and big world bosses, but usually focuses on one aspect for some time, then moves to the other as the previous one becomes stale for him?

Will he be forced into the crowd doing whatever activity he was endulging when the update hits him in the face like a big bag of “nope”? Or just get assigned totally randomly by a system who doesn’t know what to make of him and bugs because of wide variety of the mans activities?

Is Johnny playing the game wrong suddenly because he likes to enjoy the WHOLE game, not just a select aspect?

Okay, so you know how this system is supposed to sort you by the activities you do? Like dungeon running and world events? As you do more of them, the system recognizes that and adds a weight to those activities. So it will more likely pair you with people who do those things. The RP flag is just another weight. It gets weighted against everything else, just like any activity. The difference being that this flag doesn’t dynamically change (cause there’s no way to track that). Therefore, the flag itself would have a high weight, likely close to the server/guild weight. And you can turn it off an on at will, so if you’re in towns looking for RP you’d turn it on. If you’re going to dungeons or open world stuff, you turn it off.

I think I replied to the wrong post. But whatever, this is how I’d expect the RP flag to function anyway.

Yeah, the only potential problem with a single virtual server is the loss of whatever culture was able to emerge on the various servers. However, with guesting, that was problematic to begin with. A single virtual server simply reflects the capabilities of current IT architecture, the same way that realms reflected the then current limitations of IT architecture.

Edit: of course it’s always possible to do it wrong. you should never know you are on a megaserver or a realm. it should be completely transparent. you should just be playing the game.

Zwierz… More people in a zone=More people who wants to do same thing as you!
You probably done all those jump puzzles, map completions, hearts alone so far, thought you gona be very excited about this?

Raine… Nothing cultural running around alone in an empty map!

Trueflight.9058:

Aidan Savage.2078:

[…] Because you, as an RPer, have an infinitely easier time adapting to changes. How? Discuss it with the community you RP in and suddenly everyone reaches the consensus that because these changes are ONLY IN CITIES AND WEENIE AREAS you can decide to move to SIMILAR areas, such as Ebonhawke, that is in essence a city that is not an instanced zone. Oh, there’s also a second benefit, it’s unaffected by the megaserver change.

This idea doesn’t work in the slightest. As RPers, our characters – that many of us have been playing as, fleshing out and developing since release – have homes, jobs, families and so on. One character might be a Noble who’s part of the Divinity’s Reach elite, another a guard in the Ministry, and another yet a member of the crime syndicate that lurks in the Ossan district. Whole areas of the city itself have developed personalities and histories – the Maiden’s Whisper is considered a reputable inn for well-to-do folk, the one in Ossan is more of a seedy Mos Eisley Cantina, and so on. Just upping and leaving to another zone and being told “well, go do your weird RP thing over there instead” makes zero sense for our characters, and zero sense for us as players.

And, this is most certainly why it will be so. The implementation of a single virtual server architecture requires, more than any technical aspect, an ability to reality test. What do you imagine will be the likely results, within GW2?

Prefect.3681:

Raine… Nothing cultural running around alone in an empty map!

No but some servers likely feel that they had a distinctive culture among servers—TC for example. This would represent a net loss in this sense. I don’t argue at all with going to a single virtual server—it solves a myriad of problems and is the current best practices in IT architecture.

Prefect.3681:

Zwierz… More people in a zone=More people who wants to do same thing as you!
You probably done all those jump puzzles, map completions, hearts alone so far, thought you gona be very excited about this?

Oh I absolutely do not oppose to more people being grouped in zones doing same activities.

I’m simply voicing my concerns about:
A – how the system doesn’t recognize roleplayers at all from what we’ve heard so far, and may split the community, destroying what we have worked so hard to build.
B – how people who enjoy doing a wide variety of activities might face obstacles in what they are doing (for example I would be doing hearts to get map completion an one of my alts, and then I’d want to do kill Tequatl, but system may group me still with heart completion folks)
C – how without any control by the player of what WE want to do at the moment, the system basically causes danger of stripping our abilities to CHOOSE who we want to be around.
D – possible destruction of server wide communities and identities.

The flag system proposed many times in this thread would be a perfect solution, simply prioritizing grouping of people with similar goals, be it RP, map completion, picking our noses or whatever.

I probably sound really bitter about the problem and overhyperbolize, I have a tendency of sounding like that when I write in english (my seventh language, I tend to create convoluted sentences).

However simple response “Get used to it or wahtever” we have gotten so far seems to indicate that mine (and other players’) worries have in fact justification!

With any luck, the second blog post is meant to address feedback to the initial announcement. I’d like to think this thread, as well as the comments made in the general feedback thread, have made it clear that Colin’s initial suggestion (Guild Up) isn’t a sufficient solution to the problems being created here. So maybe they’ll have an actual solution that can be implemented. Or maybe they’ll ignore it and let the system ride until the problems become apparent.

I don’t believe we’ll see the issue of RPers suddenly getting scattered immediately. When this system goes live, there will likely not be any additional weights factoring into player placement. So everyone will be grouped first and foremost with their server. The problem will come later on down the line when players start doing other activities that will inevitably draw them further away from that initial placement. So I really REALLY hope everyone here is smart enough to recognize that it’ll take time before we see the full effects of this system (good or bad). The purpose of the thread was to identify potential issues ahead of time so that maybe they could be accommodated before the system goes live. But neither side is going to be justified based on the results of the initial release.

15 charrs riding quaggan steed and holding banners saying “+1!”.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

With any luck, the second blog post is meant to address feedback to the initial announcement. I’d like to think this thread, as well as the comments made in the general feedback thread, have made it clear that Colin’s initial suggestion (Guild Up) isn’t a sufficient solution to the problems being created here. So maybe they’ll have an actual solution that can be implemented. Or maybe they’ll ignore it and let the system ride until the problems become apparent.

I don’t believe we’ll see the issue of RPers suddenly getting scattered immediately. When this system goes live, there will likely not be any additional weights factoring into player placement. So everyone will be grouped first and foremost with their server. The problem will come later on down the line when players start doing other activities that will inevitably draw them further away from that initial placement. So I really REALLY hope everyone here is smart enough to recognize that it’ll take time before we see the full effects of this system (good or bad). The purpose of the thread was to identify potential issues ahead of time so that maybe they could be accommodated before the system goes live. But neither side is going to be justified based on the results of the initial release.

Well, I was mistaken. Those new posts didn’t address these issues at all. Soooo… maybe tomorrow they’re planning on addressing feedback (and maybe that’s the reason they moved the third part of the blog post to today)? Am I just grasping at straws here?

Yeah I think you are, VoiceOfUnreason. Sorry.

I am still wondering how Arena-Net could dismiss such a big player base, by just ignoring them at all. They do not even grasp the idea of what RolePlaying in GW2 is actually about! No one wants to just “guild up” with people they do not know. In “our game mode” different guilds are different organizations. Splitting us up will do neither you nor us good. The RP playerbase is HUGE and it is a playerbase WILLING to PAY for a LOT! How can they be so ignorant and blind to just not care about them? This is ridiculous. I transferred to NA’s Tarnished Coast in order to be around roleplayers. This is suppressing my already muzzled motivation for this game.

Aidan Savage.2078:

zwierz.9012:

Why are we, roleplayers, not entitled to being accommodated to, even in the least?

Because you, as an RPer, have an infinitely easier time adapting to changes. How? Discuss it with the community you RP in and suddenly everyone reaches the consensus that because these changes are ONLY IN CITIES AND WEENIE AREAS you can decide to move to SIMILAR areas, such as Ebonhawke, that is in essence a city that is not an instanced zone. Oh, there’s also a second benefit, it’s unaffected by the megaserver change.

Oh, also, have you considered asking for home instances to be shifted from a 5 person instance into actual zones? PS can stay instanced along with brand new “player’s home” instances in case you have mining nodes. Changing those areas into zones eradicates a large majority of the problems because it’s a zone within a zone. And unless you’re going to be there for RP, or causing problems, it’s going to be practically dead. The issues then really only come up if you’re in combat areas, but that can be dealt with separately at a later time.

Those cities and weenie places, as you call it, will by the end of the year include, if my read is right, every map in Tyria. Those adaptations (if that is what they can be called), will be workable for as long as the rest of Tyria remains unchanged. Which won’t be long. basically you are saying we should move our RP away from the affected zones. Do we abandon RP when it is all done?

Again it comes down to what is meant by a community. It is more than a friends list, more than a guild tag. Our home worlds are far greater in scope with that, and thus far our option is to narrow what we do. That is understandably something we will not do and will kick up a stink to avoid as best as possible. Again, inter-guild projects and spontaneous RP, two aspects of RP that in my opinion are some of the most rewarding, are potentially under threat. We dislike that uncertainty, or Anets seeming ambivalence towards us. A lot of this is also part of a wider discussion about how supported RP is in the game. Yes, some aspects of progress have been made. We are sorta acknowledged as a group of players, our main homeworlds are sorta recognised as the RP destinations (tho the Anet guy in this thread who forgot there was an EU RP place in addition to his slightly narrowminded advice about how to work within thise new constraints didn’t do much impress upon us that Anet considers us anything). But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try for greater considerations. Just because some don’t see the point of RP or have negative views of us, doesn’t mean we aren’t deserving of some concessions, like the other playstyles are.

As an addition, the guy who commented that it is easy to just ignore the non-Rpers, that is not the concern at all. Non-Rpers are potential RPers who might get try to ge tinvolved, or might just like the atmosphere. Both are great. And by and large, the non-RP elements of the community I have seen on PS, are great and sociable people who are very respectful of us. If they do think us sad, or view us in contempt, they are polite enough not to express it. The issue is not about more non-RPers we meet on our travels, it is the potential of less of our community. To many, there are many unanswered questions, and that causes concerns. Ad just because many don’t RP, doesn’t mean that the RP community (that isn’t by any means a minuscule community) doesn’t deserve some attention.

“With megaserver technology, there are as many copies of a map as are needed to comfortably hold the population of players in that map at a given time. Rather than having a separate map copy for each home world and artificially limiting the amount of fellow adventurers you see, the megaserver system brings players together and dynamically opens up new map copies as necessary.”

Is this as a return to “Districts” like there are in GW1? I hope so.

An RP tag (and those for other ideas) is a great idea, and one I support.

The downside to this is still not really knowing where you’ve actually landed. Are you on the shard with a bunch of TC people, or did you get shuffled somewhere else because that one was full?

A better solution to me is the aforementioned ability to SELECT which instance you are in once you arrive at a map. I would take this a little farther so that:

When you arrive at a map, you can check which instances/shards which are currently running. When you look at them, they will also list the number of players from each home server in each shard. This way, players can make sure they are in the shard with most of their fellows, or at least queue for it.

Furthermore, this allows people outside TC to track down the TC population without guesting. As an extra measure – the population from each server could be shown based on “effective server” which would list you as the server you are currently guesting to.

And finally, this allows for large events whether RP or PvE based to manually pick a shard with a low population.

Seems to fix a lot of issues really.

Nexxius.6017:

10+ man parties would solve almost all the problems.

I would love to see even 8 man parties at this point….Certain dungeon bosses at 5 man are really difficult for casual dungeon spelunkers.

Yes it does, and this, or any other solution would surely calm the nerves of mine and probably other people as well.

I guess we will have to see how it will be, but I fear that it will be the same situation as with “walk” button toggle. Roleplayers were trying to get action throughout betas about that (you used to have to hold the walk button to walk), with no effect whatsoever, until someone noticed that toggle walk will help in sticky situation in jumping puzzles. Bam – instant fix. At least that is how it looked from my perspective, I’m not sitting in ANet developers’ heads.

I think the biggest fear of the MegaServer by what I’m reading here is that the continuity of stories and groups will be effected in a negative way causing members to become frustrated and far flung and disrupting the consistent permanence of having a single server system. It definitely will make the world more voluminous but the system should aid in wading through the expanded population using your friends list, guild list, and other weighted factors. The most adjusting I think would be required is for the sudden influx of people who will like to participate or who would take up the say channel. I posted earlier a few solutions to this in a previous posting on this thread. As an Rp’er from Maguuma I’m hoping that by A-net creating the Mega Server I’ll be able to meet more people who love to play in character as I and expand my role playing. Oh and emotes and props (see previous post)!

I personally don’t RP that much (if at all) but I transferred to TC because I really appreciate the added level of depth and immersion that those RPing around me creates.

That being said I don’t support any system that would isolate RPers away from non-RPers, since this would either remove me from being an appreciative ‘audience’ for RPers or ‘flag’ me as an active participant.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel the same way, and for many was a major reason for transferring or choosing TC/PS. A lot of people are interested/entertained by RP but are a little tentative about jumping right in. Thus being flagged as either an active RP participant or segregated away from the RP community would be really unfortunate.

I do support a further evolution of the proposed system to include playstyle preferences when weighting which map to be added to, and this should include an RP friendly option. Something like…

• Role Play (like/dislike/don’t care)
• World Bosses (focus on major world bosses & events)
• Champion ‘Hunting’ (enjoys champ trains and other group farming)
• Casual Exploration (does not enjoy ‘skip-n-stack’ dungeon tactics for instance)
• Hardcore (enjoys speed run dungeons using any means necessary for instance)

These further weighting refinements would of course be at the bottom of the sorting list when choosing the map. It would just weight the chances of people with similar playstyles to have improved chances of being on the same map.

Helequin.2608:

An RP tag (and those for other ideas) is a great idea, and one I support.

The downside to this is still not really knowing where you’ve actually landed. Are you on the shard with a bunch of TC people, or did you get shuffled somewhere else because that one was full?

A better solution to me is the aforementioned ability to SELECT which instance you are in once you arrive at a map. I would take this a little farther so that:

When you arrive at a map, you can check which instances/shards which are currently running. When you look at them, they will also list the number of players from each home server in each shard. This way, players can make sure they are in the shard with most of their fellows, or at least queue for it.

Furthermore, this allows people outside TC to track down the TC population without guesting. As an extra measure – the population from each server could be shown based on “effective server” which would list you as the server you are currently guesting to.

And finally, this allows for large events whether RP or PvE based to manually pick a shard with a low population.

Seems to fix a lot of issues really.

Very nice idea. That could help a lot, not only for roleplayers but for people who seek to kill Teq or the Worm or whatsoever.

Yes, please give us RP’ers a way to stick together. While I don’t actively take part atm I chose PS for exactly that reason. The random RP adds quite some depth to the game for me.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Is this as a return to “Districts” like there are in GW1? I hope so.

Yes, but in a gutted version (seems there will be no option to choose the “district” at all). Which, basically, is the same as already existing overflow mechanic if you take the main server instances out.

I was really hoping to come back and at least see another dev post at least acknowledging that our posts were read. :/ This is disheartening. I know we have Anet employees who have roleplayed on TC! I’ve (quite literally) run into them before. Someone over there knows, without a doubt, that we exist. That sort of makes the thought of us getting the shaft here even more bitter.

Actually, I think Anet have become masters of the responsive. Not that they do it well, but that they do it only.

Wasbunny.6531:

Maybe this will help clarify what this new system will mean.

Example:
Currently~50 players from TC in the map. After map population is capped others go into random overflows.
New System~50 players from TC in the map, as well as 4 players from other servers. After map population is capped (preference given to TC players zoning in) others go into another map. This new map will group players from TC as first priority.

As you can see the real change is the 4 additional players from other servers when the map is not full, and that ‘overflows’ will have a greater chance of being mainly consisting of players from the same server.

The whole point of megaservers is to reduce the number of maps that Anet has to spawn. Unless there are only 54 total people on that particular map across all servers, your example won’t be how it happens.

More likely: the 50 TC, 10 NSP, 20 BP, 10 GoM, 10 AR, 20 YB, and 10 CD that are now spread on 7 copies of the same map will all be put into one map of 130 people.

I don’t RP, but I can see how this would be an issue. In the end though, the RP community is not large enough for Anet to really care about.