Guild Wars 2

I noticed something a few months ago and it led me to stop playing the TD meta because the players in-game ignored my pleas to stop doing something. Tonight I tried to do the meta for the first time in months and the problem is exactly the same.

The problem is that squads for full maps are left up on LFG 20 minutes past when they are full. The map will fill up by :10 or :15 and the meta starts at : 30. For any other map, for example teq or shatter, this does not pose a problem, since an overflow map fills and it’s business as usual on the new map.

Not in TD.

A few months ago, just like tonight, I’ll join one of these squads, notice its full, and try to organize a meta on the new overflow map. Standing around me are 30-40 players at the waypoint, and if you join any of their squads, you will notice they’re trying to get into the full map. There’s no possible way 40 players are going to get into a full map. Sure, one or two people might disconnect or change maps, but most of these people standing around the waypoint will not get in.

These overflow maps even fill up because my own squad gets players to taxi from a third map. There are plenty of players to make the second map successful.

But they refuse to try to organize the new map, when there are plenty of people to do the meta! Their best chance of success is to get into the full map and beat out the other 40 people trying.

The squads left up on LFG are left up for two reasons:

• Make it easier for people on that map to join the squads for organizational purposes
• Make sure the map stays full to give the best chance of success

But the side effect of this is that there will be a large part of the population that cannot complete the meta. And trying to convince those running the squads that what they are doing is harming other players are met with silence.

So unless I want to show up a half hour early and stand around, I am unable to complete one of my favorite metas. These groups organizing other maps are trying to help, but the way they do it is unintentionally toxic to the game as a whole.

So what do you suggest they do instead?

Perhaps disable hard-cap full maps from appearing on LFG?
A problem not exclusive to TD, having half the squads on LFG not actually permit joining kind of defeats the purpose.

You cannot post an LFG for a dungeon/fractal group that has 5 members (full), and notably the existing advertisement is taken down automatically when the group is filled. Something that turns off LFG for filled overworld maps would improve the LFG tool by quite a lot tbh.

KRERz.7304:

Perhaps disable hard-cap full maps from appearing on LFG?
A problem not exclusive to TD, having half the squads on LFG not actually permit joining kind of defeats the purpose.

You cannot post an LFG for a dungeon/fractal group that has 5 members (full), and notably the existing advertisement is taken down automatically when the group is filled. Something that turns off LFG for filled overworld maps would improve the LFG tool by quite a lot tbh.

I don’t own HoT and completely agree that this would be a huge QoL improvement. Having to manually join 10 different squads for The Mad King’s Labyrinth and finding that all of them are full maps was just a waste of time. I’d imagine the stakes are higher for maps with non-trivial events tied to specific timers.

Draziert.9508:

KRERz.7304:

Perhaps disable hard-cap full maps from appearing on LFG?
A problem not exclusive to TD, having half the squads on LFG not actually permit joining kind of defeats the purpose.

You cannot post an LFG for a dungeon/fractal group that has 5 members (full), and notably the existing advertisement is taken down automatically when the group is filled. Something that turns off LFG for filled overworld maps would improve the LFG tool by quite a lot tbh.

I don’t own HoT and completely agree that this would be a huge QoL improvement. Having to manually join 10 different squads for The Mad King’s Labyrinth and finding that all of them are full maps was just a waste of time. I’d imagine the stakes are higher for maps with non-trivial events tied to specific timers.

That would resolve the problem, but I think it would require some development work and might break other things. When a party hits 5 people, that’s the max party size so it is removed from LFG. When a squad hits 10 or 50 people it does the same.

So how would the squad know what map its on and remove itself? The game doesn’t currently work this way, so it’s not a simple fix. But it would fix this problem is a method were devised.

This is something that is sorely needed and I hope they can find a way to implement it.

@OP Have you tried putting up a tag and organizing the map? Its stupid but most people listen better to someone speaking with a tag up, especially for large meta events.

OriOri.8724:

@OP Have you tried putting up a tag and organizing the map? Its stupid but most people listen better to someone speaking with a tag up, especially for large meta events.

Yes, on a half dozen occasions I have tagged and pleaded with others to do the same. Usually I’m the only tag, maybe I’ll get one more. In last night’s example I was tagged for 20 minutes and one other person was nice enough to tag. The meta failed because the other two lanes couldn’t get past the first phase.

20 minutes is more than enough time to organize this thing and people would taxi to our map from LFG, leave squad, and continue to try to get into the full map while standing at the central waypoint.

I thought I included that part in the refusing to organize spiel I gave, but upon further inspection I missed adding the part where I have tagged with 15-20 minutes notice and could not get people to commit to the map. It’s a bunch of people trying to get their way into a full map.

It is weird, and unfortunate. It could be though that no one else there knew enough about the meta to be willing to put up a tag and help organize. Not many people do the TD meta compared to the other 3 maps in the first place, and of those that do, very few would be able to effectively lead a group.

This is honestly one of the biggest downsides of HoT for me, was the entire TD map and its meta. Its much more difficult to coordinate than the other 3 metas, requires more commanders on the map to be successful (since people seem so clueless without a tag to follow), has a much smaller margin of error, and yet is still the least rewarding meta.

Both VB and AB can be finished without a single tag up (though VB usually needs a tag or 2 to hit T4, still not 4 tags required though), DS only has 3 lanes, so 3 tags up. TD is the only one that almost requires 4 tags up. I really wish it could be reworked somehow to make it easier to complete successfully with a less organized group

That doesn’t sound like a toxic situation. It sounds to me as if some people have irrational confidence in a map that started organizing earlier and aren’t willing to try on another map.

I disagree with the suggestions to date in this thread: I want the option to join a PUG squad late. It might have my friends in it, I might recognize the commander. Plus people come & go.

Instead, it might be useful to show in LFG for how the map has been hard capped, so that people can choose to try or not based on a better understanding of the circumstances.

That said, I’ve been in several recent TD maps. One that was organizing early failed, because the commanders weren’t explaining the meta to newbies. And a successful one that formed at the last minute, because commanders did explain what was going on and made sure each lane had enough people (and that not too many people defended vs the rush). In other words, this really depends on who’s in the map and which commanders are organizing. Just like most of the less-understood metas in the game.

Just increase the kitten population per map. It’s ridiculous how fast they fill up. Compare it to WoW where you have hundreds and thousands of players in the same instance and then look @GW2 where the servers are full with 100-200 people. It’s kitten ridiculous in 2016.

OriOri.8724:

It is weird, and unfortunate. It could be though that no one else there knew enough about the meta to be willing to put up a tag and help organize. Not many people do the TD meta compared to the other 3 maps in the first place, and of those that do, very few would be able to effectively lead a group.

or the effort simply isn’t worth the reward

depending on what the person is after it might be better for the meta to fail ASAP

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just increase the kitten population per map. It’s ridiculous how fast they fill up. Compare it to WoW where you have hundreds and thousands of players in the same instance and then look @GW2 where the servers are full with 100-200 people. It’s kitten ridiculous in 2016.

I don’t thing the engine is optimized enough to allow this without completely destroying itself and our computers in the process. Never mind how trivialized the actual events would be with three or four times as many people doing them.

I would rather they deal with TD’s specific issues, as mentioned above. The map itself needs to be more appealing and more rewarding, and the meta needs some leeway so that it’s not so sudden death.

Batelle.1680:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just increase the kitten population per map. It’s ridiculous how fast they fill up. Compare it to WoW where you have hundreds and thousands of players in the same instance and then look @GW2 where the servers are full with 100-200 people. It’s kitten ridiculous in 2016.

I don’t thing the engine is optimized enough to allow this without completely destroying itself and our computers in the process. Never mind how trivialized the actual events would be with three or four times as many people doing them.

I would rather they deal with TD’s specific issues, as mentioned above. The map itself needs to be more appealing and more rewarding, and the meta needs some leeway so that it’s not so sudden death.

Exactly. TD suffers the same problem that TT does. It requires far more coordination from people who know what they are doing to finish it, and its rewards are on par with or worse than the other metas (or world bosses in TT case). The meta needs to be reworked, and the rewards should probably be increased a bit.

At the very least it should be updated so that a single lane failing is not an immediate failure for the entire meta event.

OriOri.8724:

Batelle.1680:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just increase the kitten population per map. It’s ridiculous how fast they fill up. Compare it to WoW where you have hundreds and thousands of players in the same instance and then look @GW2 where the servers are full with 100-200 people. It’s kitten ridiculous in 2016.

I don’t thing the engine is optimized enough to allow this without completely destroying itself and our computers in the process. Never mind how trivialized the actual events would be with three or four times as many people doing them.

I would rather they deal with TD’s specific issues, as mentioned above. The map itself needs to be more appealing and more rewarding, and the meta needs some leeway so that it’s not so sudden death.

Exactly. TD suffers the same problem that TT does. It requires far more coordination from people who know what they are doing to finish it, and its rewards are on par with or worse than the other metas (or world bosses in TT case). The meta needs to be reworked, and the rewards should probably be increased a bit.

At the very least it should be updated so that a single lane failing is not an immediate failure for the entire meta event.

o_O?

TD doesn’t really need much coordination beyond “my lane is almost done, who needs help?” and maybe making sure Nuhoch has enough people to stomp.

The one lane failing it for everyone thing does render it pointless to even try to do the event unless you are pretty much sure that you will be able to pull it off.

A possibility:

Lane event’s first tier to draw the chak out require significantly less. Essentially making it almost impossible to fail to draw the chak out if there are people attempting all four lanes.

it would still require some effort to get to t1 ( even if its only a 1-2 people, for example stomping 2-3 mushroom nodules each).
This gives room for people to show up to a map a little late and get a successful kill, or for lanes to assist much more easily. Or for players to redistribute if the burns are uneven across lanes.

Having some npc audio dialog explaining what to do, at the start of the phases & “draw out” events might help those who (still) don’t have a clue what to do. But this may not be needed if more people do the event tbh.

Khisanth.2948:

OriOri.8724:

Batelle.1680:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just increase the kitten population per map. It’s ridiculous how fast they fill up. Compare it to WoW where you have hundreds and thousands of players in the same instance and then look @GW2 where the servers are full with 100-200 people. It’s kitten ridiculous in 2016.

I don’t thing the engine is optimized enough to allow this without completely destroying itself and our computers in the process. Never mind how trivialized the actual events would be with three or four times as many people doing them.

I would rather they deal with TD’s specific issues, as mentioned above. The map itself needs to be more appealing and more rewarding, and the meta needs some leeway so that it’s not so sudden death.

Exactly. TD suffers the same problem that TT does. It requires far more coordination from people who know what they are doing to finish it, and its rewards are on par with or worse than the other metas (or world bosses in TT case). The meta needs to be reworked, and the rewards should probably be increased a bit.

At the very least it should be updated so that a single lane failing is not an immediate failure for the entire meta event.

o_O?

TD doesn’t really need much coordination beyond “my lane is almost done, who needs help?” and maybe making sure Nuhoch has enough people to stomp.

The one lane failing it for everyone thing does render it pointless to even try to do the event unless you are pretty much sure that you will be able to pull it off.

Other than DS (which I’ve only done once, so I can’t speak for it), TD remains the only meta I’ve participated in where commanders can spend 30+ min explaining what to do throughout the meta to everyone involved and it will still fail because people didn’t understand well enough in a different lane. I take that to mean that this meta requires a significant amount of coordination. Though you are right, coordination is probably not the correct word here.

OriOri.8724:

Khisanth.2948:

OriOri.8724:

Batelle.1680:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just increase the kitten population per map. It’s ridiculous how fast they fill up. Compare it to WoW where you have hundreds and thousands of players in the same instance and then look @GW2 where the servers are full with 100-200 people. It’s kitten ridiculous in 2016.

I don’t thing the engine is optimized enough to allow this without completely destroying itself and our computers in the process. Never mind how trivialized the actual events would be with three or four times as many people doing them.

I would rather they deal with TD’s specific issues, as mentioned above. The map itself needs to be more appealing and more rewarding, and the meta needs some leeway so that it’s not so sudden death.

Exactly. TD suffers the same problem that TT does. It requires far more coordination from people who know what they are doing to finish it, and its rewards are on par with or worse than the other metas (or world bosses in TT case). The meta needs to be reworked, and the rewards should probably be increased a bit.

At the very least it should be updated so that a single lane failing is not an immediate failure for the entire meta event.

o_O?

TD doesn’t really need much coordination beyond “my lane is almost done, who needs help?” and maybe making sure Nuhoch has enough people to stomp.

The one lane failing it for everyone thing does render it pointless to even try to do the event unless you are pretty much sure that you will be able to pull it off.

Other than DS (which I’ve only done once, so I can’t speak for it), TD remains the only meta I’ve participated in where commanders can spend 30+ min explaining what to do throughout the meta to everyone involved and it will still fail because people didn’t understand well enough in a different lane. I take that to mean that this meta requires a significant amount of coordination. Though you are right, coordination is probably not the correct word here.

going clockwise:
lane 1: smash eggs, smash chak, smash big chak
lane 2:jump on mushrooms, press f. smash mushrooms, chak, & big chak.
lane 3: smash energy collectors, throw energy thingies at big golem. Smash chak & big chak.
lane 4: smash chak.. lots & lots of chak.

The funny thing is, if commanders were to keep it as simple as spam that in map chat, the zerglings would follow along a LOT better than the convoluted BS explanations most will try to give (it should be like 20s, not 30 mins of instruction giving…).

That is literally all there is to it.

A little positioning, dodging & melee for better dps would help. A couple of PS wars and quickness chronos would help immensely also. AKA, more people need to bring support classes/builds.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That doesn’t sound like a toxic situation. It sounds to me as if some people have irrational confidence in a map that started organizing earlier and aren’t willing to try on another map.

It’s toxic because those organizing full maps know full well how many people are in other maps (they can see, for example, 15 out of 40 people in the squad are in their map and are told their map is full), but choose to leave it on LFG anyway. This, being one squad of 4 (each lane does it) and each squad having over a dozen players not on their map indicates to them there is enough interest to support at least one more map doing the meta.

But since the optimal move for the organizing map is to try to stay full and the individual player to try to get into that map, and that leads to a worse outcome to the players not on the map, it becomes toxic to the game. It lowers interest in at least that one HoT map, and for players who spend 20 minutes trying and failing to get into a full map leaves them dejected and soured on the game.

It’s like a modified version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

Hesacon.8735:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That doesn’t sound like a toxic situation. It sounds to me as if some people have irrational confidence in a map that started organizing earlier and aren’t willing to try on another map.

It’s toxic because those organizing full maps know full well how many people are in other maps (they can see, for example, 15 out of 40 people in the squad are in their map and are told their map is full), but choose to leave it on LFG anyway. This, being one squad of 4 (each lane does it) and each squad having over a dozen players not on their map indicates to them there is enough interest to support at least one more map doing the meta.

But since the optimal move for the organizing map is to try to stay full and the individual player to try to get into that map, and that leads to a worse outcome to the players not on the map, it becomes toxic to the game. It lowers interest in at least that one HoT map, and for players who spend 20 minutes trying and failing to get into a full map leaves them dejected and soured on the game.

It’s like a modified version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

You’re getting angry/irritated at the stubborn nature of humanity itself, not the game, you realize that right?

Draziert.9508:

KRERz.7304:

Perhaps disable hard-cap full maps from appearing on LFG?
A problem not exclusive to TD, having half the squads on LFG not actually permit joining kind of defeats the purpose.

You cannot post an LFG for a dungeon/fractal group that has 5 members (full), and notably the existing advertisement is taken down automatically when the group is filled. Something that turns off LFG for filled overworld maps would improve the LFG tool by quite a lot tbh.

I don’t own HoT and completely agree that this would be a huge QoL improvement. Having to manually join 10 different squads for The Mad King’s Labyrinth and finding that all of them are full maps was just a waste of time. I’d imagine the stakes are higher for maps with non-trivial events tied to specific timers.

Having a listing expire in some way would be ideal. For example, I lead squads in the lab. Usually when someone whispers to me that the lab is full I am busy doing a dozen things at once already (I like it when I can just join another cmdr’s squad but will command if nobody is already there) so even pressing a button in lfg will not get done.

This is needed for all maps. So sick of not being able to join anything because of continuous “map full” notifications. If the map is full, REMOVE THE GROUP.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

This is needed for all maps. So sick of not being able to join anything because of continuous “map full” notifications. If the map is full, REMOVE THE GROUP.

Terrible idea, in my opinion: map populations aren’t anything close to static; they are constantly evolving.

I’ve only once encountered a Dragon Stand that I couldn’t get into before the pre-Dragon fight finished and I’ve never had trouble getting into any other LFG… as long as I was patient enough. That’s because there are always people leaving. Maps get full because more are entering than departing, but that changes, too.

Rather than cancel the LFG, ANet could introduce something similar to what call centers do: offer an expectation. Call centers will say things like, “due to increased customer interests, the current wait time is about 2 minutes”. The equivalent for GW2 could work like this:

• People are still getting in via LFG: no status change, i.e. how it works today.
• After one person fails to reach the IP via “join in,” the LFG text changes color to orange and the mouse-over would include something like, “map has reached capacity; be patient or try another”
• If several minutes go by without anyone successfully getting in, the text changes to red and the mouse-over changes to “map is full; you aren’t likely to get in soon.”
• Once someone gets in, change it back to orange.
• When several people are able to transfer, change it back to the original status.

In other words, provide data to the player and let us choose how we want to deal with it. Don’t let the game decide for us whether LFG should remain up or not; that won’t end well.

The whole thing is void, you can’t give a 1:1 relation map to squad, since there are people from other maps also in the squad.
The majority wouldn’t work, as you’d need 26 people to make sure it stays a majority.
The map of the commander might work, but then you leave the squads without any commander helpless.
And any solution you give will probably break AB multimap squads, which may be a good thing, but given ANet past behavior around it, won’t happen.