Why not go back to the GW1 Districts system?
It’s been brought up now and then over the years. I’ve never see a detailed answer by a Dev. Just a general statement that something about this game’s design is a problem. /shrug
For the ‘what it’s worth’ department, here’s a quote
Is there a reason why the District system wasnt adopted from guildwars 1 and used for the instances in GW2 map zones instead of the original overflow idea.
Guild Wars 1 is a very different game both in design and implementation. That’s all I can really say here.
ANet may give it to you.
The biggest obstacle is how do they sort out resource nodes? If you could visit any and all megaservers they’d have to sort out not getting too many (if any) duplicates that if everyone guested to a guaranteed new shard, the economy would likely be affected.
But I agree that choosing which shard you go to instead of having to beg and grovel via whisper for a taxi would help many players, especially PvE and RP players. A system with a drop down menu that could show you how many of your friends are in each of the shards would make a big difference.
There was an update a while ago from the team which may or may not be helpful
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-8/first#post6019618
I wish they’d find a way. GW1’s system was far superior to the hope and pray a taxi squad shows up in LFG we have now. :P
Not to forget… in gw1 you could actually switch between regions… that’s something that have always kittened me off with gw2, I’m originally from Europe and living in the US now and Id like to play with all my friends… welp can’t.
Still trying to understand what’s technically that hard to host instanciated stuff like fractals for two regions at the same time.
The old district system was a total mess specially when there was any kind of event.
As example you can take any Christmas event. If you were early or just persistent enough you could get into a low number district like 1-10, there you could do the event with hundreds if people, then just when it finished you jump to another district, for some reason there was always a time difference between them, so in half of them the even was not finished. You jumped there, finished the event again, jump further and so on a view time.
On the other hand, if you were a little to late there was no chance to get into the high populated district and you had a chance to end up with like 20 other player, doing the even and that is just sad.
In GW2 I never had such problems or saw such exploits.
GW1 actually did a lot of things better than GW2. It really shows that the team that ended up building GW2 had nothing to do with the original team that started on it. They completed disconnected from GW1 and ignored everything that was good about it.
A lot of missed opportunities and this is one of them. Seeing more and more stuff from GW1 seeping into the game makes me kinda smile because it proves to me that maybe they finally start realizing how good GW1 was. Don’t get me wrong, GW2 has some things it does really well also, but I just can’t understand why they just completely ignored GW1 and build on what worked really well in there. It would’ve made GW2 so much better even.
I wouldn’t mind just having and indicator which squad is in which district in the LFG. Then if Dist Y is full then we can start a group in Dist X astleast.
There was an update a while ago from the team which may or may not be helpful
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-8/first#post6019618
It is useful because it clearly illustrates how despite the fact that over 6 months ago Anet was clearly aware that the mega server set up is a total mess, like so many other issues, they have done absolutely nothing about it.
Good suggestions always bear repeating OP. I have suggested this a few times over the years. Even before the mega server. I can’t understand how GW1 can have better instancing and skill templates and not have them in GW2 where they are just as important and I would contend, that the instancing is way more important because it isn’t just hubs.
Given that some maps are heavily meta-dependent, especially the HoT zones, it’d be a huge boon to the players to be able to re-sort themselves into maps that are doing them. Megaserver does a fine enough job on low-pressure sorting, but the moment a guild wants to organize Teq/TT/Shatterer or someone wants to participate in Dragon Stand without getting dumped into an abandoned map, the whole thing falls apart.
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632
There was an update a while ago from the team which may or may not be helpful
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-8/first#post6019618
It is useful because it clearly illustrates how despite the fact that over 6 months ago Anet was clearly aware that the mega server set up is a total mess, like so many other issues, they have done absolutely nothing about it.
Megaservers succeeded in its intended objectives: getting guilds and friends together on the same map, giving everyone a chance to join successful meta events, and ensuring that people would be mathematically less likely to encounter low-pop maps during non-peak times.
We have since encountered some issues which couldn’t have been easily anticipated (and a few that perhaps should have been been). And ANet has been addressing them, albeit more slowly than we would like. Why? Because balancing instance populations is complicated, when people are coming and going constantly and folks aren’t all there for the same reasons.
ANet’s definitely made some major mistakes in their history, but megaservers have been an amazing success for what they were designed to do; we remain dissatisfied because there’s a lot more we want from instances.
As much as I would like this change, whats stopping me from being able to gather the same nodes over and over again by switching districts on just one character? And then switching to my other characters and do the same thing over and over again? I feel as though something like that could easily be exploited and prices for things like iron and wood, would tank unless the system gets restrictions on when you have the option to change.
Because they would have to completely revamp nodes and rewards.
People would have an easier time to server hop for loot. People already do this for auric basin, and districts would only make it easier.
Even if they did the whole “one chest per account”, that wouldnt still work with harvesting nodes, since they spawn differently.
Then there’s holiday events, and events with large amount of mobs for loot…etc.
You see how this can be exploited?
There was an update a while ago from the team which may or may not be helpful
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-8/first#post6019618
It is useful because it clearly illustrates how despite the fact that over 6 months ago Anet was clearly aware that the mega server set up is a total mess, like so many other issues, they have done absolutely nothing about it.
“Megaservers succeeded in its intended objectives: getting guilds and friends together on the same map, "
You are indeed correct, Megaservers are currently set up to reserve space on the map (which prevents too many other players from joining) to accommodate guildies and friends who may or may not turn up later.
After a short time, when the (may or may not guildies and friends) don’t turn up, the system decides that the map is underpopulated and tries to send everyone off to another new or underpopulated map – rinse and repeat.
End result is lots of underpopulated maps constantly being created and closed and player frustration as they are shunted around.
This was NEVER The Megaserver objective – It’s original objective was to increase map populations as the named original server populations fell, however (as I’m sure you know) one of the (minor) problems after launch was that it wasn’t correctly configured; particularly for guild missions, to ensure players (even if they were partied) ended up on the same map.
So; after a quick fix we got to the situation we are at now. In the meantime though, HOT launched; where the success of every map is reliant on full maps and group events – not surprisingly the ‘empty maps/HOT is not solo friendly/DS is dead’ threads (which all stem from Megaservers not working) started to regularly appear since.
Quite why, No one at Anet is competent enough to make the connection between the way Megaservers are set up and how they relate to the majority of the complaints about HOT gameplay is extraordinary.
The solution is quite simple – Fill one map at a time and let the minority who want to join other players already in maps, taxi in.