Guild Wars 2

15 characters?!
This could make gaming experience a lot better since ALL maps would be more then 49% populated!

Positive side:

• all maps would have +49% population!
• all maps would store progress
• all low populated maps would merge.
• no empty maps

Negative side:

• Worst case scenario in theory would be merging 8 times in first 2 minutes, but that would never happen due to 2 min head start. At most we would have 2 mergins of maps due to population is never getting lower then 10%.
  1+=1+=2+=3+=5+=8+=13+=21+=34+=55%

I simply want that those huge maps can have a higher population than 150 people or whatever ridiculously low pop it is. In most MMOs you have huge instances (open world usually interconnected zones, no loading screen, seamless) with several thousands players and GW2 can’t even handle one map with more 150+ players. Something is really wrong…

They had a higher cap for a while in game and it was impossible to play any time a large event happened. Somehow doubt other game handle the total population or even close to it. This is the number they feel is the most stable. If you want to get hired by the company to implement any ideas submit your cv and apply.

Yargesh.4965:

They had a higher cap for a while in game and it was impossible to play any time a large event happened. Somehow doubt other game handle the total population or even close to it. This is the number they feel is the most stable. If you want to get hired by the company to implement any ideas submit your cv and apply.

Nah i don’t want to apply for job, I have a dream job in small indie company
The reason i’ve made this chart is because I feel like we could have a lot better gaming experience with it. The way I would handle map management would give you constant feeling of a map being able to finish events and most important, ghost maps would be gone, no more empty maps, no more taxi required due to algorithm doing it for you, and NO more progress loss and most important? Not getting from better to WORST map ever again!

If you lock a full map and people then dc/depart, how do you refill it under your flow? Do the dc’d people still have a reserved space to which they can return?

Of course, Anet could have designed an expansion that is so fun to play, that they would have needed to ADD servers to handle the huge influx of new players. In which case they would then have had to manage how to keep maps from becoming too crowded.

But that’s probably asking too much….

It’s a flowchart, not a “chartflow”.

Firelysm.8190:

15 characters?!
This could make gaming experience a lot better since ALL maps would be more then 49% populated!

Positive side:

• all maps would have +49% population!
• all maps would store progress
• all low populated maps would merge.
• no empty maps

Negative side:

• Worst case scenario in theory would be merging 8 times in first 2 minutes, but that would never happen due to 2 min head start. At most we would have 2 mergins of maps due to population is never getting lower then 10%.
  1+=1+=2+=3+=5+=8+=13+=21+=34+=55%

Finally some one that really understood the map problem in HoT and come out with a solution.

I throw you all my money and cookies

I would like to see how easy this is to even put in. Not saying it’s a bad idea, but it irks me that it’s thought to be just that simple. It seems overly simplified for something that i think is way more complicated.

The problem you’re discussing is so much more complex than you think. You haven’t even started to think about network traffic and load optimisation, or language matching, to name just a couple.

Sketching an idea out is easy, implementing an instancing system dealing with thousands of players and doing so in a way that is both network traffic and processing efficient, is immeasurably more so.

The flaws that exist in the system as it stands are the result of compromises that you would only understand if you had a few days with the code and ideally the coder. I know it can seem obvious what needs to change from outside a problem, but it’s never as simple when you’re actually doing the work.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I simply want that those huge maps can have a higher population than 150 people or whatever ridiculously low pop it is. In most MMOs you have huge instances (open world usually interconnected zones, no loading screen, seamless) with several thousands players and GW2 can’t even handle one map with more 150+ players. Something is really wrong…

I can only think of WoW and it doesn’t handle that many visible people very well. Just 40 players in one raid bogs the engine down. Most of the rest of the maps are partitioned so it’s unlikely a large amount of players will be in a given area at the same time.

I see several problems with your flow.

Does a player get returned to the map they were on should they die? This needs to be addressed.

If a player leaves a map and then attempts to return, where in the algorithm do they enter; at the top? That might not be the where they would like if they want to continue considering HoT tracks advancement.

Speaking of HoT, how is map advancement tracked and return to a map instance afforded? It seems this algorithm simply ignores that.

What if a player is on a low population map, but the only other map instances available are locked? Your algorithm doesn’t place them at the top of the flow chart to allow placement in a new instance, but instead just endlessly recycles them at the midpoint decision box.

Why did you choose 5 minutes and 20% population to close a map. Many events can take longer than 5 minutes to complete and may only require a small population. Also, having less than 20% population probably occurs quite often, like today. Are you going to close all the maps because not even one has more than 20% population? Is this re-evaluated as players get bumped around from smaller population maps? If your cutoff is 20% population and none of the maps have this, like today, where does the player go?

If a player gets placed on a new map instance and it’s checked in 2 minutes, he’s gonna be kicked because the population is less then 20% in the new instance, most likely. Then he’s stuck and unable to enter that map at all.

There’s other problems, but you get the idea.