Guild Wars 2

Hi I just wanted to address something that probably everyone has encountered more than enough times: the disconnection issue, or dc in short.

Now normally getting a dc in for instance a dungeon, or during your personal story would be inconvenient but not really a big deal since you can pick up where you unintentionally left off. Okay you would have to replay the personal story instance, but even that is not a real problem in most cases. So nothing really upsetting there.

In the case of Open World Events (bosses/temples in particular) or a WvW battle or even a PvP instance it is an entirely different matter. When you dc you will be punished! Now that does not really seem fair, does it?

What then is the punishment you might ask? Well here are some examples:

- Even though you just disconnected 15 seconds ago, your instance slot is gone, and even though you were just playing in WvW with your guild, you have to wait in line again to enter EB. Hey, YOU left!

- Event though you just disconnected 15 seconds ago, you are unable to rejoin the map instance you just played that awesome open world event in, denying you any rewards or participation.

- Even though you did wait 20 minutes for the ‘Tequatl’ event with your guild and actively played through 60% of the entire event, after a dc you managed to reconnect to your previous instance using your ‘anti dc party’ (after clicking 9999 times on join … in …) but according to game logic you did not participate in the entire event, so no reward for you.

- You just played through 25 minutes of the new world event ‘Mordrem Invasion’ and you just disconnected like 10 seconds, bye stacks of ‘invasion Defender’; Game logic, you did not participate @all, Ouch!

Of course you could just try and do the events another time, most open world events cycle within a few hours and you can do them again right? And that is absolutely true, except for PvP and WvW of course. But that is a bit besides the point. In the end, if you get enough dc’s you will start thinking differently.

For me, these ‘punishments’ after a dc take away from the fun you have playing the game, and I often find myself not playing that content anymore that day.

Now for PvP I don’t really see a quick solution to make dc’s less problematic, since it is really fast paced gaming, and one minute is like an eternity in there. For open world and WvW however it should be quite simple to tackle the dc problem in most cases. Or at least soften the pain.

Solution to make a dc not such a big deal for WvW and open world events:

- Always being able to rejoin your map instance within a certain period of time:
After the disconnect you have 60 seconds to rejoin in your spot in the map instance, after that it is lost to another player.

- Always be able to rejoin the WvW map within a certain period of time:
Instantly rejoin your borderlands map instead of waiting In cue again when you reconnect within 60 seconds.

- Always be able to pick up your loot or reward within a certain period of time:
After you disconnect you have 60 seconds to rejoin the map and collect rewards that you have played for in the event.

It is my experience that after most dc’s you can get back in the game within one minute. So that should be more than enough time to get back into the action.

I hope you can use this idea and if you have any thoughts on this please share them

The haven’t addressed this in 3 years and they never will. Deal with it.

I am trying to deal with it by trying to come up with ideas how to fix it

This issue has been brought even more to the forefront by this recent event. Until now, a DC might mean you miss out on a World Boss chest or being able to farm the sandstorm, but at least you still had the drops, gold, xp and karma from stuff you’ve already done. At most, you lost a few minutes of “work.”

In this event, individual sub-events apparently give no rewards. Mobs give no xp, and no drops. You could spend 25 minutes killing Mordrem, DC, and get exactly nothing for your time and effort. It’s… well, it’s just really poorly designed, especially since ANet has to know the constraints their system has with DCs.

Yes, and that is exactly my point, I do like that Anet is experimenting with new ways of earning loot. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that we are in the real world also where you can disconnect from the server for any number of reasons.

Therefore the game should incorporate some kind of protection against that in the way of protecting your progress in game rather than completely avoiding these new ways.

Disconnects are very annoying and I agree that many of the circumstance you’ve outlined can be infuriating and disappointing.

When DCing from a world-boss such as Tequatl, the hope and possibility that you might be able to rejoin through a party taxi is probably the worst thing about it for me. If I DC-ed and knew I didn’t have a chance of getting back in, I’d feel a bit more relaxed about the situation as I wouldn’t have to do the desperate amount of clicking to try and re-enter, especially if the event is near finished.

There needs to be about a 5 minute window where your spot in the map is saved for you if you do DC. However, I do see some negative implications for this- if there was a mass DC at Tequatl, the map will refill pretty quickly (or people can be taxied in) and the remaining people can still have a chance of completing the event.

I think realistically, the best thing A-net can do is to reduce the likelihood of DCs on their end as much as they can. Of course people will still encounter DCs, but most of it comes down to internet connection/network and their computer.

Pino.5209:

The haven’t addressed this in 3 years and they never will. Deal with it.

No. No more time and effort wasted.

With disconnects and lag spikes happening extremely frequently now on EU servers, this has started to become a real quit-point for my small guild.

This week, every time we want to do something in WvW, in each fight we’ll have at least one person lag out or DC. This is a GW2-only issue, our connections are fine (We’re all on TS), it’s just the game.

ArenaNet has shrugged this off as a routing issue for over a year now, but when so many people got problems only with GW2, from all over Europe, then this ’routing’ issue must be 5 meters outside the EU server office.

I remember getting DC’d during the southsun event seconds before the ancient went down. All that for nothing as I didn’t get anything from the event.

I got DC’d 3 times during the invasion with 10+ stacks each time, I just gave up on it and logged off.

I think it should not be a difference to taxi to my group (working) or “taxi” to my last map instance (not working). Like a global map group.

But obviously it is.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Disconnects are very annoying and I agree that many of the circumstance you’ve outlined can be infuriating and disappointing.

When DCing from a world-boss such as Tequatl, the hope and possibility that you might be able to rejoin through a party taxi is probably the worst thing about it for me. If I DC-ed and knew I didn’t have a chance of getting back in, I’d feel a bit more relaxed about the situation as I wouldn’t have to do the desperate amount of clicking to try and re-enter, especially if the event is near finished.

There needs to be about a 5 minute window where your spot in the map is saved for you if you do DC. However, I do see some negative implications for this- if there was a mass DC at Tequatl, the map will refill pretty quickly (or people can be taxied in) and the remaining people can still have a chance of completing the event.

I think realistically, the best thing A-net can do is to reduce the likelihood of DCs on their end as much as they can. Of course people will still encounter DCs, but most of it comes down to internet connection/network and their computer.

Yes, i agree on reducing the likelihood of the disconnects, but that is just part of a complete solution.

I think 5 minutes is too long, and it probably will cause some implications, 60 seconds however or maybe even 90 should not be that problematic I think and should give you more than enough time to get back on in about 90% of the time. Most disconnects just happen very shortly and almost never at the client side, speaking from my experience.

I never understood why MMO’s are supposed bear the burden of players being disconnected and why it should factor into game design. Is it really such a significant issue that game devs should think of ways to ensure DC’s are rewarded in some way?

Be nice if they didn’t backload all the rewards at least.

Obtena.7952:

I never understood why MMO’s are supposed bear the burden of players being disconnected and why it should factor into game design. Is it really such a significant issue that game devs should think of ways to ensure DC’s are rewarded in some way?

No, rewarding would take it too far, and is not the intention of this post. Mainly to take away the sourness by letting players go back to what they where doing in the 1st place, that is all.

On the other hand, I would really like to hear why you think the player should ‘bear the burden’ instead of developers creating something that is real-world proof? As you probably know, a disconnection is not a client-side only issue perse;

It’s like accepting that cars break down when it is starting to rain and say; Why would we burden the manufacturer with the problem?

Pino.5209:

The haven’t addressed this in 3 years and they never will. Deal with it.

This.

Thank you for your valuable addition to this dialog.

This thread is what I can do to ‘Deal with it’. Maybe you have something to add in the line of improvements?