Guild Wars 2

Sakri.7234:

Stop being so negative, people! This is a good change and I can see no drawbacks to it. Sit back and enjoy the game!

If you can’t see them, you can’t see any situation but your own.

I meant that I see no problems that aren’t hugely compensated by the benefits of this change.

It is a good change for PvE unless you are on a top 3 server or in a raiding guild.

I for one am not in regards of both, so I am looking forward to the mega server. The boss schedule might be a bit tight but I do not think it is set in stone forever this way.

Honestly, I really do believe that the hand-wringing from those on high population servers won’t manifest the way they are afraid it will. I really don’t believe their experience is going to change much at all… but we shall see.

Cross-server guilds like TTS or TKS are no doubt going to have a big adjustment period if they want to continue as they are… if they even can… or if they even were to begin with.

For most players, it really will turn out to be much ado about nothing, I suspect.

Sakri.7234:

I meant that I see no problems that aren’t hugely compensated by the benefits of this change.

Oddly enough, I can’t see enough benefits of this change to compensate for the problems. Strict schedule for world bosses including making some of them all but impossible for working players to do them in a lot of timezones. There is a loss of transparency over the world status that this merge will bring; the fact that spontaneous groups that form for the Orr temples, for example, will lose one another if they change maps because the game will sort people into other instances. Larger guilds may end up scattering as they try to zone into certain maps, trying to find a server that can hold everyone may prove painful. They haven’t addressed any of these concerns yet.

The sole benefit is that more people will be around in each map. That’s a mixed blessing, especially while levelling, sure there’s people to play with but you will come across fewer events you can start off yourself (including fewer temple fights) and there will be fewer mobs in the world with less bonus XP for killing them. I remember being quite glad when the starter/levelling zones calmed down a bit; it made getting through them on alts a lot easier and more “profitable” from a levelling standpoint (as in more XP and more karma).

I have very mixed feelings about this Megaserver System, but mostly I am not a fan of it.

The server will be great when I’m making a new alt and leveling it up doing map completion. There are so many areas in the current system where I find myself alone doing the map. This is not all bad, though, it makes for developing better fighting skills. But when I hit a place where the boss or event is designed for a group, then the megaserver system will be great.

I belong to a great guild, HOME, on a small server, Ehmry Bay. We do missions regularly, and have a lot of wonderful social events. The new server system will be fine for this guild and all of the goals we have. However, this guild cannot do all of the battles GW2 throws at us. It is too daunting to try to organize our guild, let alone our server, for those mega-world bosses as Tequatl and Triple Trouble Wurm.

The saving grace for me to do these bosses, and the Marionette when it was a part of the Living Story, and get those achievements was finding the TTS guilds. This is a fantastic, beautifully organized group of people who have dedicated their time freely to organizing people who are serious about doing these fights. I thought I was just joining them for a few times to get my Tequatl achievements, but I ended up joining a guild for many reasons.

We do the Tequatl fight every night at 10:00 server time. This time works beautifully for me because it allows me to have my evening family/dinner time, then to spend a bit of time in my HOME guild and then to join this great group of socially zany and seriously organized folks to bring down the dragon in Sparkfly Fen. I really enjoy TTS’s emphasis on having fun, staying positive no matter what the outcome, and teaching anyone who wants to learn how to fight each position necessary to bring down Teq. They really do a great job at allowing new people to join, never assuming that everyone on the map already knows the fight, and keeping the chat away from negativity. It’s also lovely to work with a group that spans the Pacific Ocean and has so many countries involved. We have people in who just rolled out of bed and others who are doing this fight as their last thing before going to bed.

As I understand the Megaserver changes and the scheduling of boss fights, we will lose this time slot and the ability to pop overflows to do an event on our own without interfering with others who want to use a map. The 10:00 Tequatl (okay, the fight is at 11:02, but we gather at 10:00 and organize for a while first) fight has become my night time ritual and I’ve enjoyed gathering with this group of people. I will be quite sad to lose this for many reasons: the loot and karma help me to do other things that don’t make much loot such as leveling my own alts and helping guildies do theirs; hanging with the TTS crowd is where I learn a lot about the game by listening to discussions about builds, fighting strategies, and Tyria lore (or is it Tyra, hmm, can never remember – gotta ask Kenage Achalarus which it is).

I haven’t gotten all of the Wurm achievements, yet, because the time TTS does Wurm is one that I can only occasionally do. With the megaserver change and the elimination of overflows, I’m doubtful that I will be able to get these at all. The Wurm takes a full map’s worth of people, great organization, and concentration by all. If we cannot populate the map with only TTS people (which also means guests who may be new to the fight and not members of TTS, but are serious about wanting to do it), it will be extremely difficult to organize this and make it happen. The whole thing about having to have a guild “buy” the right to do the fight is silly. There are so few regular guilds who can do Tequatl or Wurm on their own.

The regularity with which TTS does these fights is what makes them possible. Not everyone makes it each night, but there are enough people who have done it recently that we’re able to teach the new ones or those who’ve forgotten how to fight the battle. Doing it once a week or less, it wouldn’t draw as many regulars, and it’s bound to conflict with some people’s regular guild missions time. I can’t imagine any regular guild doing a World Boss such as Tequatl or Triple Trouble once a week or every other week. Large guilds like TTS dedicated to organizing these fights are doing the regular guilds a service.

Please, ArenaNet, do your magic and help TTS and the other world boss guilds be able to continue doing Tequatl and the Wurm. They really are providing an add on service to regular guilds. My HOME guild council members work hard enough without having to try to take on the tasks that the TTS leaders do organizing these fights. I appreciate belonging to each guild for their different purposes.

PinkAttitude.4967:

Please, ArenaNet, do your magic and help TTS and the other world boss guilds be able to continue doing Tequatl and the Wurm.

This and the other 1000 words are what MMOs are about right there.

The beautiful thing about all this is that we have been able to see all these excellent stories from people who care, the folk who are doing it right for a change instead of the usual moaning about zerker gear/not-zerker gear/Rangers.

Best Thread Ever.

I think the megaserver idea is fine with the easier world boss metas. It’s annoying when one server doesn’t pop a meta in ages. This will kind of solve that. I’m guessing that EOTM is an example of this idea put into effect and I love that every time I pop on there are tons of people running around. My concern however is in the bigger fights such as the big world bosses and temple runs. How are people going to plan doing temple fights when we have no idea which ones are actually open, which are contested etc, without popping onto the map itself. It leads to what many have already said is spending more money just to waypoint. It kind of negates the whole free armor repairs.

One suggestion would be to implement the waypoint system on every map that works in towns: Once you WP to a map it costs no money to travel to another waypoint in the same map.

Now regarding the boss schedule, the biggest problem for me is the lack of frequency of the major bosses. I’m fine with the schedule for the lesser stuff, although it makes me concerned when new bosses get added if were going to have to deal with a schedule reset for everything EVERY time a new world boss gets added into the mix. While it doesn’t happen super often, it would still be annoying. With a boss fight that requires tons of organization and potential for messing up, WHY decrease the amount of guaranteed times the bosses show up? The Wurm and Teq timers are perfect as they are right now. With a 24 hour time frame Teq shows up 4:30am (which I will never do), 10:00am (which I will most likely never do because work day/school day) and 7pm. That means for each time zone, theres’ realistically one chance to fight these bosses. They require way too much work to then be so limited on when they show up. There will be more fighting to get onto those and bring unnecessary drama and whining.

The guild “compromise” does not provide the freedom that I think was the intent in providing this feature. Will there still be a limit on the number of merits that can be spent a week? How much will this actually cost? Even if you pool a bunch of guilds together, be it TTS or otherwise, it limits the amount of times those fights will realistically need to be done. I don’t think the devs realize how many times these bosses get fought a day. I suggest making this unlock cost a huge amount of merits/influence but could be used unlimited amount of times and put some sort of cool down on it, like an hour or something. That would solve the problem, but still encourage guilds to cooperate with each other on the timing of those activations.

I do not think it’s being pretentious or feeling a sense of entitlement that people want to have as many chances fighting these bosses as possible. Even if you kept everything else the same with the megaserver features what is so bad about having those fights happen more than once every eight hours? It’ll just lead to more griefing, people whining, yelling at PUGs for messing up fights (instead of teaching, being reasonable and organized). Either that or maybe I’m a terrible cynic that is underestimating the community.

Finally, this isn’t clear to me, is this new schedule being activated on the 15th or when the megaservers get rolled out? I don’t see the point in this schedule before that happens but there seems to be some confusion. If there is still time I would strongly suggest against it.

Pifil.5193:

Sakri.7234:

I meant that I see no problems that aren’t hugely compensated by the benefits of this change.

Oddly enough, I can’t see enough benefits of this change to compensate for the problems. Strict schedule for world bosses including making some of them all but impossible for working players to do them in a lot of timezones. There is a loss of transparency over the world status that this merge will bring; the fact that spontaneous groups that form for the Orr temples, for example, will lose one another if they change maps because the game will sort people into other instances. Larger guilds may end up scattering as they try to zone into certain maps, trying to find a server that can hold everyone may prove painful. They haven’t addressed any of these concerns yet.

The sole benefit is that more people will be around in each map. That’s a mixed blessing, especially while levelling, sure there’s people to play with but you will come across fewer events you can start off yourself (including fewer temple fights) and there will be fewer mobs in the world with less bonus XP for killing them. I remember being quite glad when the starter/levelling zones calmed down a bit; it made getting through them on alts a lot easier and more “profitable” from a levelling standpoint (as in more XP and more karma).

This brings up a point I’ve wondered why hadn’t been said, and I had neglected to bring up. Medium to large (mostly large) guilds, doing bounties and other guild missions… will be likely to end up split across maps when they try to do their guild missions together. For some, it’s an inconvenience to get together, require the use of taxiing, but for bounties? Where time is of the essence? I can imagine this extra frustration. And it WILL occur at times. How often? Depends on zone.

edit to prevent inevitable ‘But megaserver will give preference to guild’: Sure, but there will already be people in that map, and if the guild fills it, the rest will get thrown somewhere. With the likely way some maps will be pretty full… I imagine it’s already a pain on some servers, especially the bounty in Gendarran… only worse. And the worst cases of this probably won’t even be an issue at first since only the lowest population will be done on the 15th. But it will happen.

I can usually complete all the world event bosses in about 2 hours currently by guesting to 2 other high population servers. I check gw2stuff for which events are going and hop from server to server and complete them quickly. The new schedule seems to revolve around a 5 hours rotation, which seems too long, and will make my daily routine longer. I’d like to see quicker times for those who don’t have much time to play to be able to get as much done as possible and have less time waiting around between events.

After reading all the concerns, I feel the new mega server system was neither wanted by the players, or needed by the players. I say to Anet, listen very closely or accept the full blame for this being a world class bad idea.

The focus of Anet should be increasing in game revenues, while maintaining the playerbase, and enticing new ones to join.

The more I read through people’s reactions, the more I feel like the Megaserver System is being implemented to fix something that isn’t broken.

Additionally, it feels like the idea DID come from player feedback…a long time ago. Feedback from early players frustrated with overflows, frustrated with not being able to complete world events, etc.

But since then, the community has adapted. Event timers, guilds focused on large boss events, guesting, and more, has caused us to work within the game and the community has evolved into something that has been fun for a lot of players. It must be, right(?), or TTS wouldn’t even exist.

Now a new system is coming in, and it’s going to create a lot of change. Change can be good, but in many cases this system is going to be greatly disruptive to how folks play GW2. And, what, exactly, is this system going to bring that outweighs the negative (or perceived negative) impact? The ability to see more players on less populated maps? The ability to set your clock for certain bosses? Neither of those things really appeal to me, but I, and anyone who plays GW2 the way I do, might be impacted. I:

- am in a tiny guild
- value being able to easily play with a few close friends without having to constantly right-click and say “join friend in map”
- value a consistent, realistic world where switching to an alt would reveal a map the same as the one I just left
- desire dynamic events to impact the world I’m in
- have limited play time
- generally only play during specific hours
- play during non-peak times
- enjoy quiet times on my server and use them to uniquely challenge myself
- have a fair amount of “server pride”
- enjoy unplanned, spontaneous events
- enjoy map chat collaboration

This new system doesn’t “fix” anything in GW2 for me, and seems like it will reduce some of the things I enjoy about it.

Based on what I’ve read, this system also seems like it might be frustrating for very large guilds, guilds spread across many servers, people who like to know where they will end up, people who enjoyed farming nodes, people who enjoyed farming the world bosses, and more.

So…in all seriousness…what benefit will I see from this system? What is this bringing to the community as a whole that justifies ending all the cool community creations that have sprung up over the past few years to collaborate and play the way we like?

Curse Drew.8679:

Why make all players dependent on some stupid kitten guild?

Because for the content guilds like TTS does, you cannot take 120-150 completely random people with no organization beforehand, no ability (or very little of it) to communicate, and too few people willing to follow commander calls, and do the likes of wurm and tequatl.

Granted, until TTS is able to test it out, it’s not the megaserver they have issue with (aside from the potential risk of completely throwing out the idea of Wurm raids), it’s that kitten able schedule Anet’s trying to throw at us as “this is how we’re doing it and you can just deal with it.”

If people dont understand just why a change like this can affect TTS adversely regarding the schedule, go take a look a the raid schedule on their site (TTSGamers.com). They run the 5am, 7am, 3pm, 5pm, and 11pm teq runs (times on site are for setup purposes) every single day. Almost every pm run reaches OF capacity at least once, which ends up an average of 8 teq kills a day. And these are just the scheduled runs. They can and will run other teq spawns if they’ve got the numbers for it. This also usually depends on the population of the guested server at the time because they can, and have, asked locals to help fill out the map to get the kill.

Now, after this “schedule,” a lot of that may end up going away for a couple simple reasons: Primetime only spawns means increases importance placed on TTS members getting in first, leaving others to fend for themselves, and the cost of maintaining that constant running of teq means it’s going to cost thousands of gold and thousands of merits a month just to maintain the current amount of raids. Sure there’s the “ask other guilds for help” (not)solution, but do people realize just how quickly that’s going to end if TTS is attempting to maintain their current raid schedule? ~250 consumables a month. Assuming a rather generous (and probably low) estimate of 25 merits and 25k influence per consumable, that’s a minimum of 6.2k merits and 6 million influence (~12.5k gold). How can Anet, and anyone else saying “just use the consumables like anet says” believe that ANY guild can maintain such costs before it fails apart because members are unable contribute enough?
If anet reduces the schedule to a loop of 5 hours, it cuts down the need on consumables drastically, as well as opens up more of the public spawns up for people who cant necessarily be there on primetime spawns.

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

Although I Like the set times on events very much, I am going t miss playing on my home world. I like my home world. I’ve lived there a while now and was thinking of buying a home and putting down roots as my apartment is getting crowded and I might need a pool.

I enjoyed the Marionette very much, you can keep Tequatl and the Wurms as they too boring. Once through that content was enough. However you had a hard time stopping me doing the Marionette. I really enjoyed the schedule. But after every battle someone or other was always yelling out to ask how we did on Home Server! We cared. I think this is going to make a sense of loyalty to a home server redundant. And It’s going to make it harder for the WvW to recruit or get help in LA. No point of going to LA and asking everyone to come help if your bad guys hear you.

With guesting enabled as it is now, how can you tell it’s your home world? When the new servers go live, how can you tell you won’t have the same percentage of your people from your home world in those servers.

More to the point, I’m on TC. Every time I go to DR lately, I’m in an overflow. Every time. I can’t even get into my home world.

After the patch, there’s more chance most of the overflow will be from my home world (or there would be if they allowed cities to be part of it at start).

In fact, that’s another thing RPers aren’t really considering. Those who want to RP who can’t get into the main server are basically screwed now, and with the megaserver technology, you can fill multiple mostly-server zones, so that MORE people can RP without having to be left out on a randomly mixed overflow.

The whole WvW “argument” doesnt have any weight to it. What’s to stop people from guesting on servers specifically to gather that information now? Or those who have a second or third account homed on those servers?

I’m on TC too and yes theres an overflow all the time – now wait till we’re mixed with blackgate and jade quarry as well. I for one will be amazed if I ever see any familiar names again in a main area.

Direksone.3867:

Well. It has been your choice to run things the way that you do. It is up to you to come up with solutions. ArenaNet does their best to improve upon the Guild system, which is there to bring people together. Now you expect them to cater to something that you have made yourself that falls outside of this system. I’m not sure I find that reasonable. Good luck.

With the way Anet are doing things, there’s hardly any options. The late NA and early OCE players, not just including TTS, will have problems catching bosses and raids because of said schedule. It just doesnt’ fit for them. While the schedule may work for others, it’s quite apparent to someone who does metas daily that currently we can do all the metas within 3-4 hours, while the new schedule requires us to be on for 5 hours atleast, not including any we might miss from setting up at a bigger boss, such as Teq or Wurm.

Fact of the matter is, the current system works for most people, while the new system is drastic change that has a high probability of not working for a LOT of people.

Aidan Savage.2078:

The whole WvW “argument” doesnt have any weight to it. What’s to stop people from guesting on servers specifically to gather that information now? Or those who have a second or third account homed on those servers?

The WvW comments I saw, which I may have missed the ones you are referring to, were saying that they would now have a harder time putting out the call for needing help if say your Borderland was suddenly under attack.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

I’m on TC too and yes theres an overflow all the time – now wait till we’re mixed with blackgate and jade quarry as well. I for one will be amazed if I ever see any familiar names again in a main area.

It doesn’t work that way though. We aren’t going to be mixed with Blackgate and Jade Quarry and if that’s your understanding of the mega server system, no wonder you’re worried.

As Anet has said, this isn’t to make servers overcrowded. It’s to make less populated servers more crowded. They said if you’re on a busier server you may not even notice a difference.

So will the maps not being rolled into the Megaserver be forced to use this new boss schedule, or will they continue with the server-based timers until their maps are added to the Megaserver? I can’t find this confirmed anywhere.
SB for example will without question, but what about Tequatl?

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

After reading all the concerns, I feel the new mega server system was neither wanted by the players, or needed by the players.

Now, now, let’s not go that far. The system was both wanted and needed. It’s basic idea is sound. It’s just that the implementation is completely broken and instead of helping, will make things worse.

Laurent.8930:

So will the maps not being rolled into the Megaserver be forced to use this new boss schedule, or will they continue with the server-based timers until their maps are added to the Megaserver? I can’t find this confirmed anywhere.
SB for example will without question, but what about Tequatl?

Teq and wurm as they are now are basically an example of the system Anet wants to put in for the spawns. Main map or overflow #92348756932847659238475692348756, those bosses are guaranteed to start on their respective hour.

Basically, Anet needs to tighten up the schedule a lot. I’d get into more detail, but I’ll simply link an example of the schedule I’m talking about. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwkJPRmocYDIeTlDNGZjbjRZUnM/
Basically it’s simple: blue means it’s spawning, otherwise it’s not. (No idea if the link is working)

Astralporing.1957:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

After reading all the concerns, I feel the new mega server system was neither wanted by the players, or needed by the players.

Now, now, let’s not go that far. The system was both wanted and needed. It’s basic idea is sound. It’s just that the implementation is completely broken and instead of helping, will make things worse.

The implementation of it may be better than people expect. Most issues that stem from the megaserver isnt with the construct itself. It’s with Anet trying to assert “this is when you will do bosses and face the wrath of the gods if you want it another way.” A slight exaggeration, but that’s definitely the feel a lot of guilds are getting with this “schedule,” the true fiasco of the megaserver. 8 hours to complete all the meta bosses even ONCE is a gross abuse of the players.

“Dynamic Events” – Pre-Events = Timetable Events
…
= Grind-Train
…
=/= not what this game was supposed to be about, not what we signed up for

despite the near unanimous hate for these changes, Anet seems bent on moving forward with it.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

After reading all the concerns, I feel the new mega server system was neither wanted by the players, or needed by the players.

I fully agree with you.

They are trying to provide a radical solution for problems that already had a less radical but friendlier solution in guesting, and that nobody asked.

Personally (and I’ve been saying this for a while now) I consider the megaserver system as ANet’s way of concealing a server consolidation because GW2’s PVE is dwindling. Don’t forget they have access to statistics we can’t see.

What led them to introduce a system named after Zenimax’s Elder Scrolls Online Megaserver System, and that will go live exactly eleven days after the Elder Scrolls Online launched? Coincidence? I seriously doubt it.

Such a defensive move done towards a company that is boldly adopting a subscription business model (going against which was one of the foundations of ANet’s manifesto) I think doesn’t suggest a rosy outlook for GW2’s western players.

I think ANet should finally PROVE that their buy-to-play business model is sound, and start delivering REAL content, instead of wasting work hours on systems nobody asked like the megaserver.

Otherwise the annoying trend of quoting GW2 as the proof that you don’t get AAA content unless you pay a subscription will continue and expand, and the loss of players won’t diminish, even though it will be hidden by the megaserver system.

Subscription model is bold? Backward maybe. This game made 116 million dollars last year i think.

The whole “megaserver” reeks of propaganda though. Rather than reworking tequatl and 3-headed wurm encounters in such a way to make them puggable or organised groups able to access the same encounter at the same time. The heart of the dynamic events system is being ripped out.

The most important events will be static, repetitive and heavily regimented. Rates that we do events will be slowed down and player choice severely limited.

The dynamic events system was one of the primary appeals of the game for me.

Just to voice my opinion. I am happy with every part of this mega server other than the boss schedule. My play time every day is limited to between 2300 and 0400 EDT. This completely excludes me from meta bosses seeing as how I do not belong to a large enough Guild to coordinate such events. I believe it should be left just the way it currently is and the time starts over when the first mega server makes the kill. All servers can have the same timers so the bosses still spawn at the same time no matter which version you are on.

village idiot.1436:

Subscription model is bold? Backward maybe. This game made 116 million dollars last year i think.

The whole “megaserver” reeks of propaganda though. Rather than reworking tequatl and 3-headed wurm encounters in such a way to make them puggable or organised groups able to access the same encounter at the same time. The heart of the dynamic events system is being ripped out.

The most important events will be static, repetitive and heavily regimented. Rates that we do events will be slowed down and player choice severely limited.

The dynamic events system was one of the primary appeals of the game for me.

There are still plenty of dynamic events in the game. I would not necessarily call the world bosses the core of dynamic events. In addition to that even if they were on a schedule you likely would not notice a difference as you enter/leave zones at varying times. Thus you would not notice that a boss comes around ever 1-2 hours.

To solve the WvW problem and levitate the server identity problem, I propose this:

Along with map, say, team, party, whisper, squad, and guild chats…

have a server chat

there, calls for help can be requested and like-minded people can voice their needs.

The current system includes over a dozen world bosses that can potentially spawn anywhere from over 24x/day to at least 8x/day. The new system substantially reduces these numbers to 6x/day for the smaller/medium bosses and only 3x/day for those with the largest rewards. This results in fewer opportunities for those on a tight schedule, substantially reduced rewards for farmers, and a more regimented world (in contrast to the dynamic system currently in place).

I’d like to see this modified in two ways:

1. Some bosses should spawn more often, simultaneous with other bosses of their equivalent level. For example, the “baby” bosses (Fire Ele, Shadow Behemoth, Maw, and Caledon Worm) could spawn at the same time once per hour (24x day, slightly less than current rate and twice the current plan). Similarly, the “mediums” (Megadestroyer, Covington, Ugloth, and Golem MII) could also spawn together every other hour (12x/day, about twice as often as the new plan and overall less often than currently).
2. The boss rewards should be substantially rebalanced, both to make up for the reduced number of event chains leading up to the boss’ appearance and also the amount of chest drops, including Dragonite. Perhaps the automatic character & account DR (Diminishing Returns) could be removed, since the feature patch will substantially remove the reasons for its introduction, i.e. since the number of times you can fight each boss will be limited by the clock, there’s no reason to maintain the limits on the number boss or bonus chests one can receive (per character and per account, respectively).

The above proposal and analysis doesn’t account for one of the best aspects of the new patch: guilds of sufficient size are going to be able to spawn events at will, limited only by influence, merits, and build times. Unfortunately, this won’t apply or appeal to a substantial portion of the player base. Additionally, even with a guild popping events faster than a kid snaps the bubble wrap, the new system will see a marked reduction in the number of potential bosses seen each day.

Comparison of Potential Spawns Before/After Patch

• New Bosses : from a potential of 12x/day down to exactly 3x/day (Karka Queen, 3-Headed Wurm, Tequatl)
• Original Dragons: 8x ? 6x (Shatterer, Claw)
• Baby Bosses: 36x ? 12x (Fire Ele, Maw/Shaman, Shadow Behemoth, Caledon Worm)
• Medium Bosses: 12x ? 6x (Megadestroyer, Taidha Covington)
• Old Style Bosses: 36x ? 6x (Modniir Ulgoth & Golem Mark II)
• TBD: 0 ? 5

For each category, the first number is the current estimated theoretical number of times the event can spawn per day. The second number reflects the chart published on the official site.

Razor.9872:

To solve the WvW problem and levitate the server identity problem, I propose this:

Along with map, say, team, party, whisper, squad, and guild chats…

have a server chat

there, calls for help can be requested and like-minded people can voice their needs.

yeah i was thinking along these lines as well, they should probably change the term from server though, because its meaningless as a server now.

*chat gets a filter or special color for when server member is talking, that only server can see (like you said)
*your server gets an icon or some means of visually identifying who is in your server by looking at them (icon next to name is good)
*server is called mist allegence
*new players dont select it at start up, they talk to new npc who explains it, or when they first try to enter wvw

These would make server more centered as being what it is going to be now, WvW and creating a filter for similar player types.
they could have some charts giving people data on what type of WvW server people are joining, Comparing average queue time, population during key time frames, and how much the map fills on average and or how competitive it is.

They could add some small pve info for some, like RP, general language, unfortunately, not many servers have a strong idenity pve wise.

I’m on the bandwagon for loathing this idea. It feels like it’s going to just be one big mess and in all honesty, i like my server being separate. Simply removing the guesting limit and making it simple to join players on other servers through the party UI would really be all that anyone would really want or need. I’m really not a happy camper with this change.

I too see this as a problem for players trying to acquire enough materials for their crafting of ascended gear. The trains shouldn’t have been affected by this. I just the time differential between the low level events and that seems a bit drastic and it would harm progression for ascended and even gold farming (which is terrible as it is at this point).

I think they will definitely have no choice but to address the RNG/nodes problem (as the only source of income outside of dungeons) and I think that they will have to adjust what’s needed for making ascended gear in order to not make it even more of a grind for new players.

Nodes will be a big problem as well. Nodes are the only consistant means of gaining gold outside of dungeons. If you make nodes contestable you will be disrupting the economy in an even worse way than the day you introduced DR.

Until you fix these problems with progression you’re not going to reduce the grind at all, so I hope you guys have a system of progression that removes all of this gathering of materials and gathering of gold in order to do anything meaningful coming down the bend to help with these issues otherwise you’ll not only be helping the grind, you’ll be extending the amount of time the grind takes for everyone.

This would be a great idea if you didn’t already have huge holes in the system you use for your economy and progression.

I’d also like to suggest an autoparty button/function for joining events so that your restrictions on loot won’t affect new players who don’t know that there’s a rule that requires be in a party in order to receive a better chance at great loot.

ExAstris.8527:

AcidicVision.5498:

pulseunit.8296:

This feels a bit like tearing down St Paul’s Cathedral and replacing it with a Christian Processing Mega-Facility.

Sure you get to process a lot more Christians, a lot more efficiently but you can’t quantify what you have lost. So it’s impossible to argue against, it happens, we all deal with it and two years later no-one can remember what it was like before.

Stupid progress.

This assumes people are so apathetic towards the changes that they stick around for two years. This is a consumer market. People demonstrate displeasure with their wallets. There happen to be two new high-profile contenders for our money.

And as someone noted in a meeting I was in last night “its really easy to spend more for gems in a month or three months than you would on three months of time in a sub game. This is the first time a subscription could end up saving me money”.

This just makes no sense at all unless ANet just really really misunderstand player needs. In which case we are here to bounce these sort of drastic ideas off of. Does this just demonstrate to us that the CDI is all bread and circuses?

Holy kitten! I’d gotten so used to my monthly gem allotment that I hadn’t really considered that a sub would actually save me money! Well, hell—since the communities I chose are being overruled by communities chose for me by mega server… I’ll be right back. Hitting up Amazon and some review sites.

I think they do have the tendency to forget what they promised as well as genuinely not remember the history of mmo development, this combined with the problem of being a bit ADHD about which audience they are trying to hold onto is a big problem.

You see, first they appealed to the casuals about the open world and used the manifesto to attract us all here. Then they jumped on the dungeoneering bandwagon leaving a less than stellar approach to updating and improving the open world with LS (until recently) , then they went on and tried to improve the PVP aspects of the game.

I am beginning to think they are spreading themselves too thin. I think they need a separate team for each so they can actually focus, and I think they should continue the CDI’s, however, these shouldn’t be limited to just 1-2 people talking to the public.

As far as the last part of this post, casuals had to be the most patient with everything that’s happened to this game. Many of us outright left and I see some cursing the names of the devs and of NCsoft every chance they get on every website. Forgive me if I’m not concerned at all if the PVPers and the Dungeoneers have to wait for them to fix the glaring problems that all of the casual open worlders have had to endure.

Anybody else think of Godzuki when they read “Baby Bosses”?

Am I mistaken or does the MetaServer project seem to address the vast majority of these ?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

….. substantially reduced rewards for farmers…..

I think this is what Anet is trying to accomplish, to stop players farming through degenerative gameplay. And i second that.

I made the same suggestion in the appropriate Megaserver thread that this one will either be merged into or redirected to when it’s closed.

Wanze.8410:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

….. substantially reduced rewards for farmers…..

I think this is what Anet is trying to accomplish, to stop players farming through degenerative gameplay. And i second that.

I think boss trains are probably the most generative type gameplay they have. Basically people are grouping together, and traveling the world and doing big events. This is supposedly the thing anet most wanted.
the major reward of benefit is limited to one per boss per day, and a champion chest isnt much better than a champion bag, but takes more time.

So yeah, i dont think this is about degenerative play. I think they believe they have too many events compared to the number of people interested in them. They want it on a slower schedule so that everyone who wants to do it is doing it at the same time, and there is a lot of people around.

A better solution IMO is have a low base amount of World Boss spawns, and have it increase with population actively killing things. This way when there isnt that many players, you dont have a lot events with no people, but when there is a lot, you have more events to choose from.

Its a logistics thing, maybe they figure if they have multi events they wont get as much population per event.

Considering the work that Anet has done behind the scenes to make these changes possible makes it clear to me that these changes WILL go forward. This will allow Anet to lower their server load and save money. This is a huge win for them and nothing we say will make them change these plans.

As a player on a low pop server (Anvil Rock) I don’t see the advantages that are supposed to be here for me. We are PVE players primarily. A high pop server does not interest me. Would it be nice to have more people around in some zones to do some of the tougher events? Sure. Do I want those people around for world bosses? In general no. With scaling the way it is large numbers turn world events into a massive zerg where you cannot see the boss and are left autoattacking for 15min waiting for the chest to pop.

Nearly everyday our guild goes to Orr and does a temple run of all the temples. We usually get 15-25 players and we have no issues with any of the temples. Do we need more players for this? No. Is there anyway we will be able to do this under a megaserver system? No. We will never know when the temples are up or when they are open. There will always be more people around scaling up the events, spawning Champ risen Gorillas that one shot everyone. Will I be able to see the Dwayna to actually dodge her attacks? No.

In terms of the schedule, with a world event popping every 15min, how can that turn into anything other than a zerg from boss to boss? With timers on every event of this type there is no way to solo, or low man them. All world events are now DPS checks and require a large number of people to complete.

The questions I have for the dev’s as well as my fellow players, working within the megaserver system, since we know it is coming, are:

1) How do we keep control for players that do want to run the world event chain?

2) How do setup a schedule that is flexible enough to allow players, on every concievable schedule, the possibility of taking part in all the world events.

3) How do we keep numbers in check so that is possible to low man these events to challenge players? (This could also be solved, through changes to scaling and/or visual spam)

4) How will event chains run with the new schedule system?

5) Will all server shards continue to fill until they are full and then spawn a new one, overflow style or will there be a number of partially full shards?

Many of these question cannot be answered until the new system is in place and we see how it works. Anet could probably answer some of these questions now if they wanted. I would like to see the community come up with some ideas that can be used with this new system. We all know it is coming the question is whether we can come up with something that will make both Anet and the community happy.

Well sadly this just makes me even less inclined to return. They effectively put a knife in what was left of a living world. Events on demand is absolutely counter to what a living world is. The timers and API’s were bad enough, but at least there still was some randomness. This just made GW2 the MMO equivalent of McDonalds.

Sorry, but The Brass at Anet is utterly clueless, as far as I’m concerned, to what makes a great MMO.

• The fewer map instances the more money Anet saves.
• The more predictable server loads are, the more money Anet saves.

Thus:

• Megaservers, which is just a fancy term for “server merge.”
• Scheduled bosses.

This isn’t much different than the way GW2 has always handled things. It’s just a much more aggressive form of Overflow, where each server no longer has it’s own primary instance of each game zone.

Before, unless you were in overflow, you knew that everyone in a given zone that wasn’t guesting there was from your server. With this change, even if the system is weighted to try to increase your odds of being in the same zone instance as others from your server, or your guild, or your party, the people you run into will be a mish mash of people from every server. Essentially, every zone instance will be in what used to be called overflow.

This allows them some of the benefits of server merges in order to try to make game zones feel more populated, while avoiding the headaches and bad press that server merges often entail. However, it really destroys any sense of server community outside of World vs. World. It also makes it extremely difficult for guilds to recruit players, out in the world, that play on the same server. Will guild mechanics change so that there is no longer any sense that a guild, it’s membership and functions, are tied to an individual server? If so, good luck with that, if not, guild related headaches will be severe with the coming changes.

I saw ESOs mega-server strategy as one of the last nails in the concept that MMOs should be about community. GW1 has guilds, but one of the biggest reasons it was, for most, a single player game, with almost no social element, was due to the lack of server based communities and the random nature with which you were grouped with people into town and city instances. In GW2, game play zones are not individualized instances, but with this change, any sense that the people you run into are part of the same community as you are shattered.

There are short term benefits for those who lament how empty many of the game zones often appear, but it’s just an outgrowth of the reality that the game is failing. Losing players in general, while also embracing “Adventure by Checklist” content strategies that have done nothing but destroy exploration of the vast game world and amplified the population issues for the game zones.

The game isn’t dying because game zones feel empty; game zones feel empty because the game is dying. It’s dying because of the horrible Living Story strategy and the way it sucked up all the development resources that were supposed to go into providing a flow of fresh world content that would have given players a reason to keep revisiting the zones in the greater game world.

Megaservers are a further symptom of the game’s woes and a band-aid for dropping world populations that may just accelerate the loss of players, while trying to hide those losses by pooling people together on as few instances of each zone as possible.

I would like to offer up a solution to the proposed Megaserver System’s World Bosses and Events schedule that the community (myself included) has spoken out against and has been so opposed to over the past week.

Before I get started, I would like to take a snippet from The Megaserver System: World Bosses and Events blog post:

The megaserver system is a weighted load balancer for players. It aggregates data about you, like your party, guild, language, home world, and the map copy where people you like to play with can be found. Using this data, it ranks all possible versions of a given map by attributing a score to each. You’re placed in the map with the highest score, which is the one with which you have the most affinity.

I completely agree with grouping people together based on the above criteria for a specific version of a map. I think that there is one very important piece missing from the equation that I am going to call Event Affinity.

Event Affinity – The likelihood that a player will enjoy a specific dynamic event.

This term is used in parallel with the Map Affinity used from the blog post, but they are different in how each of the two operate:

• Map Affinity – The player has already decided that they want to go to a specific map, and the game will now determine what version of the specific map to place the player
• Event Affinity – The player may or may not know yet that they want to do a specific event, but based on previously gathered data about a player and other factors, the game should have an understanding of what events the player would like to do

I think the best analogous examples for Event Affinity I can think of is Netflix’s Recommendations or YouTube’s Suggestions; you don’t know you will like it, until you try it.

If the game is now keeping track of Event Affinity for all players,

• Would it not be possible for the game to determine when it makes sense to kick off a new dynamic event for the players and even new maps to support the dynamic event?
• Would it not be possible for the game to partition players and give separate notifications for when an event is about to begin possibly through an improved World Map?
• Would it not make sense for players to have the ability to set their own Event Affinity to the highest value when they are looking for a specific dynamic event possibly through the Looking For Group tool?

I invite others to reply with comments, and I will try to answer any questions that come up. I don’t want a schedule!

[Suggestion] Linear Open-world and MegaServer
Most open world maps are designed around a permanent instance which people can join and leave at any time. As a result, the same dynamic events spawn cyclically, over and over, inhibiting players’ suspension of disbelief and sense of accomplishment.

With the new Megaserver system, it will be more feasible to design open-world map instances that have well-defined starting and ending points (including multiple endings).

Take as an example a modified version of Harathi Hinterlands — when the map spins up, the Seraph are on the defensive. As players complete events, they will take Centaur camps (and Centaurs will continue pushing back and trying to undo progress). The map can go back and forth like this for a while, but if the players finally push deep enough to draw out and defeat Modniir Ulgoth, the map is complete. Alternatively, if the Centaurs capture the final Seraph camp, the map is complete.

The Megaserver ranking system could avoid placing players into completed instances, and spin the instance down after it is abandoned or after some reasonable amount of time has passed. It should probably also bias players toward newer or less complete maps.

The typical open-world map could become a complex state machine of related DEs that progress the map eventually toward some sort of climactic encounter like a World Boss.

Doing things this way could also help reduce the problems with synchronization — whenever you join a map, you know that you are going to be making headway toward completing the big world event, not sitting around and waiting on a timer to trigger at some unknown point in the future.

As a working player, I do not like this change. Before this goes live I am able to do all the regular world boss events in under 2 hours. Now I have to sit for a 5 hour standardized rotation. This update basically will patch out a good chunk of the most enjoyable content of the game for me. You need(read “have”) to start doubling or tripling up on boss spawns in the schedule to hold my interest in these events.

With the unbalanced nature of WvW, if you remove half of these events from my play window, you seriously promote the possibility that I remove this game from my play rotation and my credit card bill.

Of all the things announced in the April content release pack, this was the only thing I frowned at. This fundamentally changes how I play (or won’t play) the game. This schedule is almost as significant for casual players as Ascended Equipment being added into the game. It locks us out of content because we don’t have the time to play 24/7.

The gorgeous art of Guild Wars 2 isn’t enough to keep me playing forever.

perilisk.1874:

The Megaserver ranking system could avoid placing players into completed instances, and spin the instance down after it is abandoned or after some reasonable amount of time has passed. It should probably also bias players toward newer or less complete maps.

The typical open-world map could become a complex state machine of related DEs that progress the map eventually toward some sort of climactic encounter like a World Boss.

I think that we were thinking along the same lines as we were each typing up our suggestion.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-The-Megaserver-System-World-Bosses-and-Events/page/18#post3868456

I had a full post in this thread with my opinion, but I’m going to expose it right in. Topic-problem-why the solution given by Anet is bad-my suggestion of the better and simplest solution

Big Bosses

The Problem

• Very low frequency. Impossible to choose hours, need to adapt to a very strict schedule.

The Offered Solution in Patch

• Big Guild activation. Bad for people who don’t want to be in a big guild. Bad because taxi will still be required to travel to right map, very difficult when the party is only of 5 people. The same problem exists now with full servers and full overflows making MegaServer useless or worse, for this content.

The Easy Solution

• Increase the frequency. make Tequalt, Karka queen and Evolved wurm appear each 4 hours instead of 8

Regular Bosses

The Problem

• Very strict schedule.
• Lacks variety.
• Players who can play only in the same hours won’t have access to some bosses, plus it will be repeating and boring.

The Offered Solution in Patch

• None. It is a problem created by the patch.

The Easy Solution

• Make bosses more frequent and always overlap some of them.
• Scramble/randomize the bosses that appear at certain hours, keeping them worldwide/regionwide.
• Adapt de API so it can inform of what events are active in a certain moment worldwide

Low level areas bosses

The Problem

• I can’t see any, since there are only 4 and will spawn continuously.

Waypoints

The Problem

• Impossible to inform the player if the WP he is traveling to is contested.

The Offered Solution in Patch

• All time contested waypoints, with required double travel if possible. This is bad because you have to pay twice, which is worse when we will earn less money, and, worst of all + you have to load twice + which will cost the player his playtime. This is absolutely no solution. This is the opposite to User Friendly

The Easy Solution

• Make all the WP available, but inform the player that it may be contested before the waypoint. If the player accepts and the WP is contested, two options.
  • The system detects in travel the WP is in conflict and teleports him to the nearest no contested WP. This solves all the problems.
  • Or the player appears in the contested WP anyways. If dead, bad luck, he have to choose another WP. If alive, the player will be right where he wants. This solution is not optimal but at least lets the player decide.

Dungeons

The Problem

• Can’t tell if the destination map will have the entrance open
  The Offered Solution in Patch
• Go to the map, see if open. If not, open it. This is not a solution. This is the opposite to User Friendly

The Easy Solution

• Make all dungeons accessible at any time or a system to go right into the dungeon (Can be with the LFG tool)
• Or remove opening events

Temples

The Problem:

• Can’t say if there will be available or not before going.

The Offered Solution in Patch

• Go to the map and see. This is not a solution.

The Easy Solution

• Honestly, I can’t imagine any easy solution for this. :S

You know, I would post all my problems with this part of hte patch, especially that Tequatl, for example, only spawns:
1. At 7:30AM, I am asleep.
2. At 1PM – I am working or taking a nap if it’s a day off.
3. At 10PM – I have other engagements this late in the evening, including going to bed for work.

But given ANet has taken a complete f*** you, we’re putting this patch in whether you like it or not to cater to an extreme minority that wants the game fundamentally changed, as opposed to a large, large number of people who like the game as it is….type approach.

Whatever. I wish I could unsub from this game. But I guess that’s one disadvantage of so much being free. You can’t really unsubscribe to show them how asinine they’re being.

Ezekiel.1985:

You know, I would post all my problems with this part of hte patch, especially that Tequatl, for example, only spawns:
1. At 7:30AM, I am asleep.
2. At 1PM – I am working or taking a nap if it’s a day off.
3. At 10PM – I have other engagements this late in the evening, including going to bed for work.

But given ANet has taken a complete f*** you, we’re putting this patch in whether you like it or not to cater to an extreme minority that wants the game fundamentally changed, as opposed to a large, large number of people who like the game as it is….type approach.

Whatever. I wish I could unsub from this game. But I guess that’s one disadvantage of so much being free. You can’t really unsubscribe to show them how asinine they’re being.

Why not make this post Constructive.

Suggest a rotating boss schedule so that different bosses are available at different times during each week.

There, a constructive post.

Why not? Because I did that with the town clothes and their response was ,|,, too bad we’re not doin it period this is impossible (it actually isn’t).

They’ve been completely bold faced, deliberately ignorant, and completely disjointed from their product, and this is the extent to which they seem to care:

Maybe if they had met us with something constructive of their own instead of “Sorry, but no means no and we’re doing it our way, nevermind if people liked the way it already worked.”