Guild Wars 2

Ever since the megaservers it has become difficult to do timed events and occurences, like the 5 temples in Orr.
German and French servers are also thrown into the pool much to the misery of both parties.

So I think this would be a great time to re-introduce an old GW1 system that everyone loved and, as I see it, Anet would not have much of a counterargument for:

Instance Jumping!

Back in GW1, if you didn’t like a zone, you could jump to a different copy of the same map. Especially the capitals had about 8 instances you could choose from.
Now, if there were, say, more than one active megaserver of a zone, should it not be a normal thing that we can jump to one that has, either a different population than the one you’re thrown in, or you could toggle to see if one had a temple contested or not.

This could also help with world events, like the Triple Trouble that is often organized by a large crowd jumping. Instead of having luck and bottlenecking the server while taxi’ing, you could just toggle to the map and join. Full is still full, so if you jump and create a new map, and tell everyone which it is, you won’t have much trouble with outsiders jumping into your instance

Nice idea, although with instance jumping comes problems in GW2.

Consider resource nodes and (farmable foes), for example. This would probably crash the economy because most crafting materials would become easier to obtain in large quantities.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Consider resource nodes and (farmable foes), for example. This would probably crash the economy because most crafting materials would become easier to obtain in large quantities.

When people get tossed into another overflow of teh megaserver now, the nodes do not reset. They just change spots, but once gathered, they’re gone on all overflows.

And yes, many people have been asking for the ability to choose zones, as the megaserver utterly broke the game for players like me, who prefer moderate populations to the silly crowd we have now, basically turning Tyria into a huge, overpopulated farm, but the resources for such a feature cannot be spared, apparently.

I’d be happy if they just undid the megaservers. It might bring back some friends who haven’t played in a while because of them and it would help servers recruit and communicate for WvW and help role-players stick together, too. Since they can do them on a map-by-map basis, they could pick a few maps to keep them for so that the really big event like Taquatl get enough people. The starting area maps and cities should not be megaserver at all.

Asmodeus.5782:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Consider resource nodes and (farmable foes), for example. This would probably crash the economy because most crafting materials would become easier to obtain in large quantities.

When people get tossed into another overflow of teh megaserver now, the nodes do not reset. They just change spots, but once gathered, they’re gone on all overflows.

If you start in map server A (harvest), get into B (harvest) and return to A, no- the nodes won’t be there (unless you’ve waited an hour). However, it would still mean that you have many more chances to gather resources as you have the ability to instantly change to a new version of the map with fresh nodes.

It would also mean that you could farm particular foes very easily (e.g. Dust Mites in Dry Top) just by rotating which instance of the map you’re in- an easy way to increase your hourly turnover of whatever material you’re farming.

If Anet did decide to have changeable map instances, I can see how they would get around the gathering node problem (e.g. you have 30 tree nodes in one particular map, harvest 6 nodes and even if you move to a different map instance you will only have 24 left to harvest). However, it’d be difficult to limit farmable foes (unless they nerfed the drop rate of every material that is lucrative).

When you harvest ori/ancient in A and get moved into B, you do not get fresh nodes there, afaik. So it already works the way you picture it… Not sure how it works for other resources, though.

It wouldn’t really effect resource nodes at all. There is already a limited number you can harvest in a zone per day, and most people who farm these nodes harvest the maximum in an area whether they are convenient or not.

Back before the megaserver, resource nodes only changed when there was some sort of update and you could guest on other servers. So when one server had a good cluster of orichalcum or ancient saplings allowing you to harvest them quickly, people would just guest on those servers for weeks on end to grab them quickly. It didn’t change the price of orichalcum much, in fact they were far higher than they are now, because now most farmers still grab all the nodes they can from an area (in frostgorge there are two ori nodes and two ancient nodes, and you can only harvest those four nodes once a day whether you switch servers or go to different instances, it keeps track), it just takes a little bit longer.

It works like that for rich nodes and T6 materials (they also reset daily). All other nodes, if I’m not mistaken, reset hourly.

But as I’ve already said, that would be the least of their worries. You could kill the same enemies over and over, just in different map instances. This would lead to server-hopping for event farms, champ farms, T5/6 material farms, lodestone farms… you name it. It would effectively remove any cool-down for mob and event respawn.

The way it was pre-megaserver worked just fine. The nodes under T6 (ie. T5 and below) would respawn (hourly) in different areas of the map in a different instance. The T6 stuff is a once-every-24hr gather and so harvested instances of the nodes that you’ve gathered from would appear in a different map in different places.

Regarding map instancing and jumping, it can only be a good thing from my perspective. If you have a bugged event and you can’t get it to activate on one instance, then getting it to work on another (fresh) instance is the only real way to work it. With events like Foulbear and the Commisar consistently bugging, I can’t see how this instancing is bad; and now that they’re consistently farmed for their boss loot drops/chest (thanks to collections), it’s even more paramount.

As it is, the only way you can get another instance to spawn is if the map hits the hard-cap for players. Without any significant events like triple trouble or tequatl going on, this is kind of hard to get to happen.

Bring back those instanced maps!!

I loved it pre-megaserver. With so many level 80’s I could send each of my girls out on a gathering run and be assured that the nodes were in the same place (but not on overflow). It made the runs for mats and Empyreal easy, rather than hunting on whatever MS map one happened to zone in on. There was a website at that time which showed the nodes for upper items in every map. Life was good…

dkspins.4670:

I loved it pre-megaserver. With so many level 80’s I could send each of my girls out on a gathering run and be assured that the nodes were in the same place (but not on overflow). It made the runs for mats and Empyreal easy, rather than hunting on whatever MS map one happened to zone in on. There was a website at that time which showed the nodes for upper items in every map. Life was good…

The website is still there and still in operation. Just get into a zone, use the /ip command to find your server IP got to the website and farm.

That at least hasn’t changed.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Nice idea, although with instance jumping comes problems in GW2.

Consider resource nodes and (farmable foes), for example. This would probably crash the economy because most crafting materials would become easier to obtain in large quantities.

Have nodes synchronise through all instances of the map? They do something similar with the nodes in our home instances and how its once/acc/day.

I’m sure they could figure something out, change for the nodes should be of “average” complexity if things have been done right. (/points at the programmers)
basically, its doable (in theory)

Megaserver is here to stay, those of us that didn’t like it already did all our kittening when it was first introduced and were ignored. Get used to all events being completed simultaneously instead of in an efficient loop, get used to other people constantly being in your solo farming spots, get used to all world bosses having lagfest zergs with a healthy amount of condition and healing power builds, get used to not being able to tag mobs during popular events because they vanish the second they spawn, get used to not being able to gather materials as efficiently. Thousands of usability tests show that new players don’t understand how to use a guesting system to find higher population maps, and don’t like figuring out efficient ways to make the most out of low population maps. Also, they tend to pee all over the toilet seat.

Let’s make Guild Wars 2 seem dead again? What exactly is the benefit here? I have never had trouble getting the Temples done since the Megaserver implementation. I have never had trouble getting the World Events done. The only one that does not get done, which would very unlikely change, is Triple Trouble. So what is the tragedy here? What is the horrific thing to the Megaserver system? Prior to it, I would run around on alts leveling up, not seeing a single person for hours. I’d say the system is doing what it set out to do.

What rose-tinted glasses are you wearing, saying Guild Wars’ District instances is such a great system? It is for the towns and outposts only, and it was pretty much a fact that everyone gathered in North America – District 1, regardless of where you were from. That happens to this day, just that today there’s barely anywhere that has more than one district (Spammadan only maintains two). The system as-is in Guild Wars 2, does have the similar underlying mechanic of automatically allocating new instances of the maps, so technically, there could probably be a list implemented, but for what? Everyone would end up flocking to the same maps anyways and they’d be frustrated when they can’t enter them since they are always full.

I’ve seen complaints of all sorts about the new Megaserver hindering the ability to do x, y and z. All it does, is on the bottom line of things, hindering laziness. “Oh, I can’t do my Daily, because..”, shut it, yes you can, there’s numerous other locations than that one freaking guide you read on how to do them. Good for you, you can read, but stop being lazy and blaming the Megaserver for you not being able to easily complete something, learn where things are. You can’t use a 3rd party map to go gather nodes, but it takes no time at all to run around and look for nodes. You’re being lazy. (Also, you can, use /ip if that’s what you really want to do.) If you want a “Karma-train”, go to EotM, that’s the PvE’s choo-choo map these days. Otherwise, don’t expect every event to be done on a rotated cycle just for you and a few other players, that is so stupid, dare I say, lame. Let people freaking do events when they see them, without you going all haywire on their faces for just trying to play the game as intended. The insults you sometimes see because someone has done an event before the train gets to it.. some people in this world baffles me, they disgust me.

Absconditus, for me the problem is that now you do not fight the monsters. You fight other players in a race to touch and tag the monster before it dies. Instead of utilizing your character’s skills to be efficient in combat, you use them to be efficient in farming. As stated above, with those populations mobs evaporate as soon as they lose their ‘invincible’ status. Maybe the megaserver was a good idea, but its implementation is such a kittenty work, its sad. Much too high map caps, completely bugged orrian statues, destruction of the server communities (why do we need this kitten in towns, again?).

I, and many other people, would not ‘flock’ to full population maps. The gameplay there is terrible. Tiring. Pointless watching how the numbers grow, instead of, you know, playing a fun game GW2 used to be.

On Piken Square there was always more than enough people for everything. Maybe not in the middle of the night, but it was the time for solo players to shine. And, if you wanted, you could always find somebody in LA, so there was never a problem with population. From the point of view of larger servers, the MS was rather pointless. And for the smaller ones, like yours? The mergers would pretty much do the work. And maybe reworking the mid-level areas to be a bit more attractive to the playerbase. But no, the easier way was to just forcibly clump everybody together. kitten that kitten.

Asmodeus.5782:

Absconditus, for me the problem is that now you do not fight the monsters. You fight other players in a race to touch and tag the monster before it dies. Instead of utilizing your character’s skills to be efficient in combat, you use them to be efficient in farming. As stated above, with those populations mobs evaporate as soon as they lose their ‘invincible’ status. Maybe the megaserver was a good idea, but its implementation is such a kittenty work, its sad. Much too high map caps, completely bugged orrian statues, destruction of the server communities (why do we need this kitten in towns, again?).

I, and many other people, would not ‘flock’ to full population maps. The gameplay there is terrible. Tiring. Pointless watching how the numbers grow, instead of, you know, playing a fun game GW2 used to be.

Mostly if you’re doing popular and meta events this is true. I don’t limit myself to those and there are plenty of times I’m doing an event alone or with just a few people.

There are 1500 events in this game (more actually) and I’m willing to bet that 1400 of them are not crowded.

Absconditus.6804:

Let’s make Guild Wars 2 seem dead again? What exactly is the benefit here?

It was preferable to having creatures die before they are even fully rendered because there is a zerg at every event. Would simply lowering the megaserver population cap help? Yes. But if my choice is between 5 people doing The Frozen Maw or 100 people doing The Frozen Maw, I’ll choose 5. It was a much better play experience. Recently I wound up on a megaserver map with about 30 people on it and it was a good experience. I wish I knew how to replicate that experience deliberately.

Absconditus.6804:

I have never had trouble getting the Temples done since the Megaserver implementation. I have never had trouble getting the World Events done. The only one that does not get done, which would very unlikely change, is Triple Trouble. So what is the tragedy here?

The events that I could once count on starting are now almost always partially or wholly done and the big events are done by such large mobs of people that it can sometimes be hard to tag anything before it does, especially if you are not familiar enough with the event to know where things are going to spawn? (I’d hate to be a starting player wandering in to The Frozen Maw with a 13th level character and trying to do the pre-events because I doubt they’d get any credit for them.) An event that’s already completed or that I have trouble getting credit for because it zips by some quickly is a pretty crummy play experience and not a lot of fun.

And when events are done regularly and predictably, there is nothing really special about completing them. Completing The Frozen Maw with a dozen people was challenging and fun. With 80 people? Not so much. When something is routine, it stops being special. That’s a big part of why the champion trains never interested me very much.

Absconditus.6804:

What is the horrific thing to the Megaserver system?

I used to recognize familiar people and guilds when I did events before the megaservers. Now I don’t recognize anyone. I’ve even had trouble getting on the same map with someone I was in a party with. And that’s not even going into the trouble it causes in WvW when it comes to recruiting or asking for help from PvE.

Absconditus.6804:

Prior to it, I would run around on alts leveling up, not seeing a single person for hours. I’d say the system is doing what it set out to do.

There were times when I enjoyed relatives solitude. It made wilderness and remote areas feel like wilderness and remote areas, not urban environments full of people. Yes, it’s legitimate to argue that there really were too few people on some maps and some servers, but they’ve traded one extreme for another that’s even worse. It’s like assuming that just because farmers sometimes get lonely and can’t find anyone to help them that everyone should be forcibly relocated to a high-density city.

If they dialed back the population caps to a smaller number and did a better job of grouping people together so you’d see the same familiar faces somewhat reliably, the megaservers might be more palatable to me. But whatever problems I had with not being able to get events done (which I could solve by guesting if it was really important to me) were far less annoying than not being able to get away from commander tags and zergs everywhere I look. I see more commanders leading zergs in PvE now than I see in WvW.

Absconditus.6804:

I’ve seen complaints of all sorts about the new Megaserver hindering the ability to do x, y and z.

It’s no different than the complaints of all sorts that empty servers hindered people’s ability to do x, y, and z. That was simply laziness, too. Figure out when the big events were done or go guest to a server that did them. There were web sites that would tell you which servers had temples open, for example.

Ultimately, it’s a matter of personal preference, like whether one prefers to live on a farm, live in the suburbs, or live in a city. If you like the megaservers, that’s great. Other people don’t. So much so that the person who got me interested in playing GW2 because he spoke so highly of the game, played daily, and has over 10,000 achievement points, and has something like two dozen character slots filled, hasn’t played in 2 and a half months. It wasn’t because he was lazy or couldn’t do it dailies. It’s because it replaced an experience he enjoyed with one he didn’t.

Yes, it’s nice that I can reliably hop into a map that can do Taquatl (as long as I show up 20 minutes early) and I get some fine loot in the process. But it stinks that I can have trouble getting bronze in some of the Frozen Maw pre-events because everything goes down so quickly and that I have to endure the final battle at 1-2 frames per second while the shaman melts before the zerg without doing much of anything (which isn’t how it works with only a handful of people doing the event). What’s the entertainment value of that supposed to be?

Absconditus.6804:

some people in this world baffles me, they disgust me.

And some people in this world who confuse their personal preferences in a game that’s played for amusement for moral superiority over others amuse me.

Vayne.8563:

Mostly if you’re doing popular and meta events this is true. I don’t limit myself to those and there are plenty of times I’m doing an event alone or with just a few people.

There are 1500 events in this game (more actually) and I’m willing to bet that 1400 of them are not crowded.

None of them were crowded on my server before the megaservers. So why is having 100 (of the most rewarding) events taken off the table for me to play because of the poor quality of the events when the are mobbed an improvement over what I had before?

And what kind of experience is a new player in Guild Wars 2, who creates a Norn supposed to have if he wanders into The Frozen Maw with his 13th or 14th level character and can’t even get credit for any of the pre-events because all of the creatures die before they are fully rendered and what kind of experience will they get out of the final encounter where they can’t even see the shaman because he’s surrounded by a zerg and the whole event is probably displaying at a few frames per second for them? This is fun or good for GW2 because, why, exactly?

Berk.8561:

Vayne.8563:

Mostly if you’re doing popular and meta events this is true. I don’t limit myself to those and there are plenty of times I’m doing an event alone or with just a few people.

There are 1500 events in this game (more actually) and I’m willing to bet that 1400 of them are not crowded.

None of them were crowded on my server before the megaservers. So why is having 100 (of the most rewarding) events taken off the table for me to play because of the poor quality of the events when the are mobbed an improvement over what I had before?

And what kind of experience is a new player in Guild Wars 2, who creates a Norn supposed to have if he wanders into The Frozen Maw with his 13th or 14th level character and can’t even get credit for any of the pre-events because all of the creatures die before they are fully rendered and what kind of experience will they get out of the final encounter where they can’t even see the shaman because he’s surrounded by a zerg and the whole event is probably displaying at a few frames per second for them? This is fun or good for GW2 because, why, exactly?

Yeaah, we’re talking about the precious few events that have been designed to pose a modicum of challenge for an 80 lvl player and provide appropriate rewards for the said challenge. The rewards are still there somewhere, the challenge remaining is to tag things in time and to have a good enough PC to support the lightshow.

Asmodeus.5782:

Absconditus, for me the problem is that now you do not fight the monsters. You fight other players in a race to touch and tag the monster before it dies. Instead of utilizing your character’s skills to be efficient in combat, you use them to be efficient in farming. As stated above, with those populations mobs evaporate as soon as they lose their ‘invincible’ status. Maybe the megaserver was a good idea, but its implementation is such a kittenty work, its sad. Much too high map caps, completely bugged orrian statues, destruction of the server communities (why do we need this kitten in towns, again?).

This. One of the primary design goals of Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be that no player should ever be unhappy to see another player showing up to help them out. That’s why resource nodes are shared and not gathered competitively. That’s why loot is shared and doesn’t go to whoever lands the killing blow. The megaservers have turned PvE in Guild Wars 2 into a game where I wish most of the other players would go away and not be there. I know people who loved the game who have stopped playing because of it. I’m sure some people feel differently, but for a lot of people, the megaservers turned something fun into something that’s not fun. At the very least, they need to lower the population caps on most of the maps.

Asmodeus.5782:

Yeaah, we’re talking about the precious few events that have been designed to pose a modicum of challenge for an 80 lvl player and provide appropriate rewards for the said challenge. The rewards are still there somewhere, the challenge remaining is to tag things in time and to have a good enough PC to support the lightshow.

I no longer get the champion loot chest out of the Frozen Maw because I think having to party with random people just to get it is absurd, so I don’t and do without it. Again, I can only imagine what a beginning player with a low level character gets out of it. Even before the megaservers, I saw friends having trouble getting credit for the event with low-level characters. The Shadow Behemoth works a bit better in that regard.

A simple summary of the problem I have with the megaservers:

I traded a familiar community of people who would struggle together to complete interesting events with maybe too few people for a faceless zerg led by a commander that can’t lose where I have to hope I do enough damage to creatures that die before they are finished rendering and to a boss I can sometimes barely see to get credit for the event.

Not. An. Improvement.

Berk.8561:

A simple summary of the problem I have with the megaservers:

I traded a familiar community of people who would struggle together to complete interesting events with maybe too few people for a faceless zerg led by a commander that can’t lose where I have to hope I do enough damage to creatures that die before they are finished rendering and to a boss I can sometimes barely see to get credit for the event.

Not. An. Improvement.

As time goes on, server pride will be replaced by guild pride. It’s going in that direction and has been for some time.

Guilds are just like what you describe…my guild is still a group of people I see all the time.

I never have trouble tagging enemies, and I play a freaking Mesmer. I don’t perhaps tag every enemy, but I never have problems tagging into an event. Why should I expect to tag everything anyways? I have never had problems getting the “Gold” reward for completing an event unless I reached it late, I participate easily, achieving that and getting any associated reward chest from it. I get my bonus chest(s) without any real effort needed at every larger world event I go to. I’ve never had a problem tagging Champions to get a bag (if they drop one, not every Champion in the game does after all). The problem here isn’t necessarily that the events are done quickly, is it, it’s seemingly more so that you can’t tag every little thing, and as such, the horror, you have a little bit less chance at loot from trash mobs. There’s also still a need to avoid incoming damage, regardless if you’re 30 or 100 players at an event. At easier ones, this is trivial, but it is regardless of how many players are there..

There’s a large number of events I run by that has nobody doing them, so I do them, I get to do a load of events on my own or with a few other players around, it’s just not the very few specific “farming”-events that players seem to love and choo-choo around the map in circles to do.

I tend to see a plethora of the same people on the maps I travel to, because you know, the system actually works like that. It will pool your server together as much as it can, your friends, your guildies, other players you’ve been playing with a lot. My map chatter is often by/with the same people. My Lion’s Arch is a Seafarer’s Rest dominated map (yeah, it’s not a small server is it), I see the same guilds, the same players. Such is the case for other maps I go to as well. Sure, at large events, that’s not always the case. But on the notion of large player counts, I have my character culling settings set to Low and Low, and while I see a lot of nameplates, I still see a few well dressed characters in my closest vicinity, and I also have no framerate issues from the large player count. Imagine that. Lower your settings if you do, I get a stable 60 fps and this PC is about 5 years old now. It doesn’t mean it has to look disgustingly bad, I’m fine with how my game looks. I’m dominantly a WvW player, I need my performance to be there in large scale clashes, but I sure wouldn’t want to run around with everything on the lowest settings. Strike a balance and play with the settings a bit. The engine isn’t bad. Tab-target to the bosses if they take a while to load for you, you can still attack and deal damage to things that are not shown on your screen as more than a nameplate. It’s not like you’ll tab target to your allies.

Temples, again, are pretty much guaranteed to be lost within 3 hours. Sure, after about 1h 30m give or take, the first defense event isn’t all that difficult and some players will enjoy doing those for whatever reason, and I think we should all respect that, but the one that follows about an hour after that, are pretty much guaranteed to be failed. Also, really.. The Frozen Maw.. challenging? I’ve done that with 3 people in the past with how it currently functions, without it being what I’d call challenging. I solo’d Tequatl, at night, before its changes for that matter.

And empty maps, I also can agree that the solitude of certain areas was nice, and it still is. It’s not like there’s 10 characters packed into every inch of a map here. It’s just much more populated, so you’ll run past 4-5 players doing their thing, every so often, instead of running around doing a full map completion, not seeing anyone. In the past, it was just a sad empty state some months past the games launch. Players were to be found in just a few maps and a few maps only. Also Orr, the Waypoints were always contested.. annoyingly so. At least they’re not contested all the time now.

And on my note of disgust towards certain people, that is the people who go crazy and yell out the nastiest things at people for simply having done an event when the choo-choo train wasn’t there. As if it was some of the worst crimes one could do to play the game, like intended, doing events as you see them, should you so choose.

Vayne.8563:

As time goes on, server pride will be replaced by guild pride. It’s going in that direction and has been for some time.

My primary guild has 2 active players in it. I have another one where I’m really the only member. Honestly, I like it that way because if I want to guild claim something in WvW or run or fire off a buff, I don’t have to worry about other people approving or not.

With guilds come hierarchies and I’m not really all that interested in joining someone else’s army, having another job, or taking on mandatory obligations to do things with the group. I know some people seem to enjoy the structure and focus but I really don’t.

Server groups me with other people without a hierarchy. I consider that a good thing.

Vayne.8563:

Guilds are just like what you describe…my guild is still a group of people I see all the time.

I hang out with people from several guilds, depending on the day and what I want to do. There are some WvW guilds that I hang out with in WvW but sometimes I hang out with other guilds or roam on my own or with random people. Sometimes I hang out with friends in TeamSpeak who might all be representing different guilds.

I’ve never been one to join structured groups because I never really found them appealing. Didn’t belong to clubs as a kid. Didn’t belong to a fraternity in college and belonged to a few clubs only casually. Don’t belong to any clubs or organizations now. Not a huge fan of structured fun or friendships. I know other people enjoy that, and that’s great. Not what everyone is looking for. Not what I’m looking for.

And note that I’ve been invited to join several guilds and did join a few, so this is not a complaint that I can’t find a guild to join or that none will take me. It’s about making something important that I don’t want to have to care about and doesn’t match how I want to play the game.

Absconditus.6804:

I never have trouble tagging enemies, and I play a freaking Mesmer. I don’t perhaps tag every enemy, but I never have problems tagging into an event. Why should I expect to tag everything anyways? I have never had problems getting the “Gold” reward for completing an event unless I reached it late, I participate easily, achieving that and getting any associated reward chest from it. I get my bonus chest(s) without any real effort needed at every larger world event I go to. I’ve never had a problem tagging Champions to get a bag (if they drop one, not every Champion in the game does after all).

I’m not expecting to tag everything, but there are pre-events at the Frozen Maw and elsewhere where everything dies before it is even done rendering because there are people waiting to kill it. If you know where to stand, you can usually hit one or two before they die to at least get a bronze or silver for it, but if you are new to the event, I can easily imagine it whizzing by in a flash before the person even realizes what’s happening. I frequently don’t get gold on at least half of the Maw pre-events, despite knowing where all the mob are going to appear and I’ve recently played with a new player who had trouble getting any credit for any of it with a lower-level character. You may not have any problem. Other people do.

I get the bonus chest but I have gotten the actual champion box once from the Frozen Maw since the megaservers started, the day I wound up on a half-empty megaserver that wasn’t packed. I’m rarely in a party, so that’s part of the problem, but why should I have to be? A new player that I recently played with had trouble getting anything from the events with a lower level character. When was the last time you played The Frozen Maw or the Shadow Behemoth, events that happen in starter areas, with a 13th level character that’s not optimized, like a new player might? What kind of experience do you think beginners have?

Absconditus.6804:

The problem here isn’t necessarily that the events are done quickly, is it, it’s seemingly more so that you can’t tag every little thing, and as such, the horror, you have a little bit less chance at loot from trash mobs. There’s also still a need to avoid incoming damage, regardless if you’re 30 or 100 players at an event. At easier ones, this is trivial, but it is regardless of how many players are there.

Nice try with the straw man. I don’t care about the loot from the trash mobs. Some events seem to have done away with most of that, anyway. The problem is exactly what I said it is. The event is done too quickly.

Mobs die before they are fully rendered. The boss gets pinned by a zerg and goes down in minutes. And, no, I don’t have to avoid incoming damage. I never had to with an 80th level character at the Shadow Behemoth, but at the Frozen Maw, I’ve found that I can park my thief right next to the shamen in the zerg and never dodge or fire off a heal and not go down. That was not something I could do with 5 or 10 or even 30 people. I can with the commander-led zergs, though. If you’ve played the Frozen Maw with three people, you must have seen the shaman actually walk around and follow people when there isn’t a zerg pinning him.

Absconditus.6804:

There’s a large number of events I run by that has nobody doing them, so I do them, I get to do a load of events on my own or with a few other players around, it’s just not the very few specific “farming”-events that players seem to love and choo-choo around the map in circles to do.

Absolutely, but that’s the problem with the megaservers. The concentrate the zerg on those farming events. And when that doesn’t happen, the results can still be pretty silly. See farming for resource nodes in Malchor’s Leap and the karka killing trains on Southsun Cove for examples of more spread out mobs of players.

Absconditus.6804:

I tend to see a plethora of the same people on the maps I travel to, because you know, the system actually works like that. It will pool your server together as much as it can, your friends, your guildies, other players you’ve been playing with a lot.

Maybe it works for you. It doesn’t work for me. I don’t belong to a large guild and guild seems to matter a lot. If my friends are representing a different guild, I don’t wind up in the same map with them and there was one case where we couldn’t get on the same map even when we were in the same party, despite both of us trying to leave and come back to the map.

I play primarily on laptops. They have decent capabilities (one is a high-end gaming laptop) but I don’t see anywhere near the framerate you are seeing, even on low. I didn’t have to play on low settings before the megaservers. I’m also predominantly a WvW player but I want to see the character models of the people I’m fighting. I play on a low-tier server so until they give us the megaserver treatment in WvW, it’s still rarely a problem there. I have dialed my settings down a bit, but I’m not happy about it.

And if you didn’t find The Frozen Maw challenging with 3 people or soloing the old Taquatl challenging, then you are really a far better player than I am and I play with a lot of people who aren’t that good. If you did find that challenging, well you can’t get that challenge anymore because there will be a zerg there waiting to speed kill it.

It’s fair enough that you have some anger toward players that abuse other players for interrupting their train. I’m not one of them, nor are my friends who have stopped playing (it was their praise who brought me in to GW2) because they hate what the way the megaservers changed the way the world boss events play and feel. Nor are the casuals that I’ve helped that I’ve seen having trouble getting credit for the Frozen Maw events. In fact, most players would probably consider me a casual, too, especially if they’ve seen me in a dungeon.

Vayne.8563:

Berk.8561:

A simple summary of the problem I have with the megaservers:

I traded a familiar community of people who would struggle together to complete interesting events with maybe too few people for a faceless zerg led by a commander that can’t lose where I have to hope I do enough damage to creatures that die before they are finished rendering and to a boss I can sometimes barely see to get credit for the event.

Not. An. Improvement.

As time goes on, server pride will be replaced by guild pride. It’s going in that direction and has been for some time.

Guilds are just like what you describe…my guild is still a group of people I see all the time.

I have to disagree with server pride being replaced with guild pride. It might work this way for pve but not wvw. I like the people on my server. I know who most everyone is and what they are capable of. I don’t want to be forced to join a large guild because that just isn’t me. I have both guild pride and server pride – I shouldn’t have to choose between the two.
Mega servers ruined calling for help in the cities when you needed it or recruiting for your wvw guild.
I agree with Berk. Not. An. Improvement.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Mega servers ruined calling for help in the cities when you needed it or recruiting for your wvw guild.

And simply just WvW related chatting in /map was also destroyed by Megaservers. As I’m on TC my server still has a large presence on some of the megaserver overflows, but the only server-related chat that happens in /map since the megaservers is people complaining about how much megaservers kittened up our server and sense of community, with a couple people from other servers piping up to say how they like being thrown into our instances (you could have just guested or got a server transfer).

I think the megaserver system is a nice concept, but feel like it was implemented horribly. The game’s population is too large to have a single server+overflows (which is almost exactly what megaservers are). The lower pop servers may benefit from this server merge, but the high pop servers (especially Tarnished Coast) have only suffered because of it.