Guild Wars 2

Since the release of Heart of Thorns I have noticed something that I am thinking is not really a coincidence.

I’ve been in some pretty sparse maps and I get the volunteer window pop up a lot to switch to a more populated map. But when I say “a lot” I mean very very frequently. It was not uncommon to see this window pop up at the end of a meta event in base Tyria with the occasional more random pop-up but these happen all the time in the new maps.

Okay, well I will take the offer on the off chance I get moved to a map with an organized team doing the meta in Auric Basin or something. But I have not once been moved to a map that has made any more progress than the one I just left and very often it is less than the one I just left and it feels very barren.

I tossed this off for a very long time and just bad luck but the frequency of the pop-ups is very high and the number of times it has just put me on a map that feels equally barren accounts for 100% of my voluntary moves so far.

Is this really a problem or is my luck somehow that miserable? I have only see one barely successful octovine thus far… absolutely nothing for the Chak event which is a little frustrating in itself.

Just curious if there has been a change to the megaserver of some sort. :s I am on European servers. Gandara.

My guess is that if the number of players on a map falls below a treshold , the system automatically wants to transfer players on another map. Once the players on that map click ‘yes’ the system then transfers each seperately (or 1 by 1) onto another map.

Since the system recalculates it for each player, not all players end up on the same map, resulting in players often ending up in a map that is equal or less then the previous one they were in.

It happens very often because of 3 reasons :

1. you will find some populated maps where people are partaking in events (mostly VB and Auric basin)

2. most of the maps will be empty and only be filled with people switching maps often to find an event or when they are doing HP collection.

3. After the “hype” of the new HoT maps, most players who have already collected their hero points or done the map completion, will stay away from the maps because either the mobs are to numerous to take on alone, or they don’t need to run in there anymore. Best example is the Dragons stand and the depths map (a stupid map tbh).

You’re lucky to find an organized map of those 2 which you can join.

My personal opinion :

Verdant brink : great map, good events.
Auric basin : great map, awesome design.
Tangled depths : rediculous, hard to navigate. Events are quite good, IF you find an organized one. Finding your way is a nightmare.
Last Stand : not even worth a comment.

absolutely nothing for the Chak event which is a little frustrating in itself.

See my comment above, it’s rediculously designed navigation wise. Massive amounts of mobs that stop/stun/whatever you when you just wanna explore/reach a point.

Are you using the LFG? If you aren’t here is what is happening:

1) Everyone is zoning into the map.

2) several new shards or ip’s are being created for all the players zoning in. A new shard is created probably at about 50-70% max map compacity.

3) a lot of people are going for the meta event. To find a map that is actively pursuing the event you check LFG and join on that map.

4) Several shards are being maxed out and hard capped as they are advertising in the LFG. This leaves a bunch of shards “draining” because people realize the shard isn’t active enough or it isn’t a shard that’s in the LFG.

5) there’s a bunch of shards left that end up merging because most of the players in them moved to an active LFG shard and maxed that shard out.

These are all good points, I suppose. I would be surprised to hear of people being completely done with the maps and not wanting to return already. I’ve been having some fun but then I am only at 21 mastery points and have a long way to go to finish everything off. I am just working on completing all of my achievements for each map one at a time for now.

I honestly have not tried the LFG tool yet. That is a very good idea for finding maps. I suppose later maps like Silverwastes would also feel pretty barren but then if you use the LFG tool to find active ones, you can keep up a pretty constant farm.

Thank you both for your replies. I will try to use the LFG tool some more. It’s just a shame that the volunteer system doesn’t really work at all. What a terrible system that is. Even if I do ignore it, I see a lot of other people in my current map will vanish and that will pretty much be the end of any progress that has been made on the meta’s.

As for the later maps that don’t seem to have anyone in them at a regular basis anyway, I suppose I can always keep an eye out for organized runs by Teq Squad and such. Maybe it will be a little better when a large number of people get time to explore and learn these maps. I know it took me a good week to even learn all of Verdant Brink and all of it’s associated events and that is a pretty simple map in comparison.

OpLickem.8250:

These are all good points, I suppose. I would be surprised to hear of people being completely done with the maps and not wanting to return already..

I’m very far from being done there (haven’t even looked at the achievements), yet don’t want to return… I felt I was mostly alone on maps where you are punished if you’re alone. I actually prefer Orr over these maps and I’ve never liked Orr…