Guild Wars 2

TJgalon.5012:

Yeah, it not like lots and lots of people trying to access the same thing at the same time, oh wait, they are.

Yeah, it’s not like lots and lots of money are invested in the game to give decent access to players. Oh wait, there are. So weird we can’t get access to the game then.

Seriously, stop white knighting Anet everytime, it’s getting just as old.

Yargesh.4965:

You would almost think a bunch of people where trying to access something at the same time.

You would almost think a bunch of devs in a working, wealthy company could afford decent servers for the mass of people playing their game and provide a decent service.

See, it’s quite easy to be sarcastic.

Surbrus.6942:

I too was annoyed about this most recent change, but upon hearing that we could now block players custom emotes… well I figured that it was a small price to pay for being able to simply block just a couple problem players, thus removing the lion’s share of public pseudo ERP from the chat window.

I agree that the ability to block the emotes would be helpful sometimes. However, I still do not get why they had to make the character’s name appear twice instead of just making the character’s name clickable in the emote.

Hystery: Hystery thumbs up this post and naively hopes it wasn’t an intended change.

(Sequel of the first part)

I know that for some people, this change is insignificant and won’t ever change their way to play the game. But to those, I would like to say that, if one day Anet drastically changed the way you play dungeons or PvP to something that completely ruins your gaming pleasure just by a single thing, wouldn’t you like some people to stand with you to talk about your unsatisfaction of this change? This change to the emote system, despite seeming trivial, is completely ruining the fun we, roleplayers, had in the game by breaking the immersion we want and need to actually enjoy the game in our way.

Some people could also think that the roleplaying community is expendable, as it doesn’t bring anything to the game. But a lot (if not everyone) of us are also doing the same activities as the others: PvE, PvP, WvW. More importantly, we also contribute like any other player to the gemstore, maybe even more, since our character’s appearance is very important for the said and repeated immersion. After all, who would believe that someone’s character is a commoner if he’s actually roaming around in a shiny armor instead of casual clothes.

Thanks to people who read this from the beginning to the end, and thanks in advance to people bringing some feedback or support, or their own opinion on the subject as long as it’s respectful and argumented.

Hystery, a hurt GW2 player and roleplayer.

(This post will be divided in two since it exceeds the message body length)

Hi to GW2 players, be it PvP, PvE, WvW or any other kind of community that might be on here. I’m here to address my concerns about a seemingly very very tiny change that actually wiped off a huge part of my interest into the game, you already guessed by the title of this thread: the changes that has been applied to how /emote, /e or /me works in game.

For the people who did not notice this yet, prior to the patch, when you were typing an emote with the commands above, you had something looking like this.

Hystery is posting a thread on the forums.

However, after the patch, the emotes appear as the following:

Hystery: Hystery is posting a thread on the forums.

As some people could think it’s a minor and trivial change which doesn’t need to be addressed as a “problem”, I would like to enlighten them to my point of view as a roleplayer on GW2.

As you may or may not know, the purpose of roleplaying is to make your character act as a sentient person into the game, to create a background to him or her, a storyline, and play your character as a puppet, or as another example, as if you were an actor playing your character’s role. It’s a way like another to spend time on a game and have fun, just like some people like to do dungeons or some others like to bash other players’ faces in PvP/WvW. Though, for the roleplay to be possible, we need to have an immersive universe that allows us to be wrapped into, to feel inspired and create great things. Guild Wars 2, until the April feature pack, wasn’t particularly roleplay-unfriendly. We had the possibility to emote like in any other MMO, the town clothes allowed us to cloth our characters properly with some mix and match, and some servers (Tarnished Coast and Piken Square for the US and EU) were even described as unofficial Roleplaying Servers.

After the April feature pack, the roleplaying community already had a huge kick in the balls. With the sudden and unprepared arrival of the Megaserver, a lot of us got spreaded up amongst plenty of different shards of the map, making the casual roleplay (aka starting to roleplay with strangers like someone would start to discuss with a stranger in a bar, a club, a gaming convention or any other public place) very difficult to happen, other people mocking us, trolling us and bullying us, forcing us to stop our activities. The sudden removal of town clothes also made our community wince with the abrupt lack of creativity and immersion in our characters’ outfits, making it difficult to have empathy towards the characters we created from scratch and love. After weeks of tweaking, the Megaserver eventually allowed us to be in the same instance as other people of our server again, making the whole thing a bit less hard to swallow despite a good part of the character customization was gone with the town clothes (RIP).

Then occurs the September feature pack. I won’t mention the several changes that have been discussed in the other threads, I have my opinion on them already. However, this change on the emote system is ruining once more our desire to roleplay within this universe we all love. As I said above, a succesful and enjoyable roleplaying session is all based on immersion, just like a good story is enjoyable to read if it’s immersive and correctly written. Though, with that change of the emote system, the name of our characters are appearing twice in the same sentence, ruining completely the atmosphere of the actual roleplay session, sending us back to our place of writter on a keyboard instead of actor in a fantasy universe.

I have read here and there that the reasons for those changes were to allow people to right click on the player’s nickname and be able to report them or mute them if they wanted to. To that, I would answer two things:

1. If someone wants to report a roleplayer, they’ll most likely be able to right click on te roleplayer’s green name in the chat when he’ll type a regular sentence, since we communicate via emotes for our characters actions, and via regular chat for their words.
2. If someone wants to report a regular GW2 player actually spamming the /dance or /scared emotes in the chat, well… It simply doesn’t work since those simple emotes are not affected by those changes to the emote system and remain as they were prior to the patch, as in you’ll be unable to right click on the emote to make the usual chat menu appear.

From there, I have two questions.

• Why this change? I actually would like a real reason, because so far, it is pointless, it is a feature that none asked for.
• Why simply not making the players’ name clickable no matter it’s an emote or not, instead of putting twice the player’s name in the chat?

(Second part following)

Those codes are out since a little while now. To be honest the first time I’ve seen those I was kind of amused.

Vayne.8563:

So you’re saying a mod removed it, instead of closing the thread like they usually do, when like well over half the first page is complaints anyway?

Based on what exactly? I don’t even think the mods are awake yet.

Copy/pasted from my PM box.

Forum Moderator
A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Trashcan’ with the reason:
The thread “One word to describe GW2 atm” was removed from the forum due to: User removed the original post. All posts responding to it have been removed with it.
Follow the new thread here.

Is that enough of a proof to you?

Where did this topic go, Anet? I got a private message saying the original poster removed his post and thus all the replies were deleted, but I heavily doubt they removed it on their own.

Already starting to remove any trace of discontent? Freedom of expression is not known from your team? Can’t we express what we feel about your work, considering we are customers?

I’m enjoying Anet’s communication politic more and more each day.

Kjeldoran.3849:

Really thank you ArenaNet this will make the pve content even more challenging.

Challenging? You mean, like in the 1-15 areas where they removed mobs applying conditions and forcing you to dodge?

Yes, what a great challenge it is.

Prior Feature Pack 1:

Yay, the leveling of this game is so awesome, it’s linear and entertaining, challenging without being hardcore, I’ll have so much fun leveling!

Post Feature Pack 1:

… I’ll have to spend ridiculous ammounts of gold and skillpoints to unlock my traits. Great, I totally needed to throw my gold into those instead of getting exotic gears and runes (FYI, I had to spend around 100 skillpoints and 80 gold on my Guardian to get the traits I wanted, good way to “help new players”).

Post Feature Pack 2:

… Downed skills not even unlocked?! WHAT?! Never gonna make an alt ever again outside of roleplaying purposes. Oh wait, you kittened up how emotes are working as well.

Anet, provider of middle fingers since 2012.

I’m here to actually talk about something I’ve noticed since exotic weapons hit the collection achievements. Their prices literally went through the roof, making it almost impossible to buy one of them now.

I’d like to clap my hands to that.

http://gyazo.com/36a72c1ad7c8073f08685748d9e7a880

… Oh.

Sheesh.

I could never have found it by myself, this one, completely forgot about the instance, since it’s not counted as Bloodtide Coast completion. I feel kind of stupid now.

Well, thank you kind sir, I bow humbly to you for your great help.

Hello to all GW2 players and forumers passing by. Here’s Hystery, humble GW2 player since almost a year now.

I’ll go straight into my question. Lately, I decided (to my great despair) to finally finish the map completion at 100%. I already had the whole PvE maps, but I was missing the WvW. After efforts and struggling through zergs and roaming groups, I finally managed to get the last Vista I needed. All happy to see the chest of completion shining at the bottom right of my screen, I clicked on it. But it was only the map completion one.

A bit puzzled, I opened my map, and noticed with horror that I had actually one single Point of Interest missing. Frowning at that, I passed my mouse over all the PvE and WvW areas, only to note that all maps had 100% completion, with all the PoI discovered.

So, now, I am quite… frustrated. I actually have no idea where this 727th PoI is coming from. I suspected the Living Story ones, but as I said, all maps are fully discovered. What should I do? Keep searching through each single area to see where it is missing (which will take forever, above the fact that I could actually miss it), or should I ask to some kind of support to have a proper answer?

EDIT: edited to had a screen of my map IG.

Asacledhae.2650:

Lately it feels a lot easier to go on foot from Europe to Japan, than organize a proper RP event in the game…

My feelings exactly. I’m running a guild with a political theme, making us signing treaties around the different areas and between races and tribes, and it’s a real pain to manage to meet the other guilds/people involved.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Also where is GvG in so called “guild wars”? I can continue but its pointless.)

Yeah, okay. I see a lot of people saying that. But with a bit of researches you would know that the title Guild Wars actually comes from the lore of the game itself. After the fall of Orr, humans gathered in guilds, and fought each others, this period of the time line called the Guild Wars. You are welcome.

Otherwise, I agree with the rest.

Simon.3106:

You know… a company of 300 people cannot test a build that is suppose to provide a service for 1 million + (around there) people right? I know what they said; I read it since the day they posted it. You can’t expect everything to be perfect. Once you get older (I’m only in my mid 20 so I’m not that old), you might understand that. 300 people testing something that was meant for countless people is illogical. They put it out here for us so we can test it, send feedbacks, and they’ll look into it. Give them… a year to reply. Lol! Or at least several of months, I’m sure based on what I’ve been seeing with their progress of resolving issues.

That’s how all companies work, you know. A hundred of people for thousands/millions of customers. Every game company works that way. Oh, and, by the way, we are not supposed to “test” their new alpha stuff, they should have a PBE or a Test server to do this kind of thing instead of flipping the table like they did.

Just saying.

Oh.

My.

Goodness.

Someone answered.

Champagne, everyone!

Meanwhile, still no official answer from Anet in what… 2 weeks now?

lordkrall.7241:

Hystery.8415:

What about merging servers with the lowest population together first to reach a decent ammount of people instead of merging everyone randomly?

Just saying.

Because of WvW.
In order to merge servers in GW2 currently you need to merge them three at a time.
What if there isn’t three servers that have that little population? Or what if one of the servers is a German server?

And the fact remains that even those very high servers still had plenty of more or less empty areas, merging servers wouldn’t really address that issue

Megaserving the lowest populated servers together while leaving the most populated ones alone would solve everything. The ones complaining about empty maps would be served with plenty of laggy/full of random people maps, and the most populated servers would be left quiet and have no big change. Besides, megaserver = server merging, just without the WvW, so no need to play on the words.

Still willing to defend the megaserver? Check my attachment. I’ve a high-end computer, and I was still below the 5FPS because the screen was full of green names and special effects. Yeah, it definitely improved the game and its gameplay.

EDIT: I won’t even mention that it seemed like I fell into a german shard of the megaserver when I come from an international server with english as main language, showing how the sorting is wonderful.

lordkrall.7241:

pallantides.2653:

Hi my dear Anet!!!! need more evidence that megaserver was bad idea???? forget the megaserver, it is quite simple: “we were wrong, sorry. We will back to the previous server method”.
Think of the players (customers) and dont destroy the game

What about those players that have been complaining about empty maps for almost two years then?
Should they not think of them? Why are you more important than those people?

What about merging servers with the lowest population together first to reach a decent ammount of people instead of merging everyone randomly?

Just saying.

XanBie.3675:

This leaves me with 2 options: Delete one to get all starter skins (would suck tbh) or not get the skins at all (also sucks haha xP).

Or the third, the prefered of Anet: spend more gems for a character expansion slot. Have fun.

It’s actually one of the rare websites that are updated pretty quickly compared to the other. Or well, pretty quickly, that’s a matter of speech, but you know.

pdavis.8031:

There are not any build generators that are up to date following the patch. You can still use the “old” ones for now, the prinicple is still the same. Just factor that 1 trait point now is equal to 5 of the old ones, and crit damage % is now ferocity. 15 ferocity is equal to 1% crit damage. You’ll have to convert the numbers yourself, and ignore the new GM traits and you shouldn’t have a problem.

Wrong.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

You’re welcome.

Frithjofr.2631:

<snip>

I love you. Marry me.

Feycat.4370:

Wasbunny.6531:

Thank you for the update kuscheldrow, I think this is very encouraging.

I really do think it’s important for anyone that had formed an impression of the megaserver prior to Divinity’s Reach being taken into the fold to spend some time in DR and objectively report your impressions. I know it’s really hard to qualify what (if anything) has changed but try to note guilds you recognize and the general nature of the chat & emotes.

If we are going to be constructive and help ArenaNet to dial in the right algorithms to protect our communities in the new megaserver system we need to be objective and reevaluate as changes are made.

I’m on TC and was on for most of the day & evening yesterday and DR seemed the same as it always was. If anyone is having a radically different experience than what they are used to in Divinity’s Reach please post your impressions and server name.

We’re all in this together in order to stay together.

If you want folks to stay together, you might want to try it yourself.

Not all RPers want to sit in DR all day.

Some of us want to be in The Grove/BC/RS/Ebonhawk where it’s appropriate for our characters to hang out.

Some of us want to be RPing our adventures out in the world.

Saying “I spent all day every day in DR and it was fine” only works for a portion of RPers, and leaves a lot of the rest of us in the dust. And doesn’t conform to the experiences of even every people who DOES want to sit in DR all day. Please recognize that.

I feel you. I actually don’t really like how DR became the central RP HUB of the game, I wish I could meet as much people in other cities. Filthy humans.

It was announced?

Too bad I got rid of all of them.

Though some races have a serious lack of decent hairs.

/cough Charr /cough

kuscheldrow.6415:

They are still monitoring the Megaserver and keeping an eye on map population. They are tewaking the algorythm and are still on it to keep the feeling of a ‘home-comunity’, especially in cities.

Well, easy. No need to tweaking an algorythm or whatsoever. They remove cities from megaserver and the problem is solved.

I’ve the feeling Anet always seeks the most complicated path to solve the simplest problem.

anzenketh.3759:

Hystery.8415:

Isaac.6041:

Megaserver is here to stay imo the reason why they have been mostly silent is PR dept taking sweet time to craft delicate responses to very angry customers. The business decision was made and to make an about-face on megaserver now would be sending too many mixed signals. So therefore, let’s all learn to live in the new state of megaserver bliss and happiness…

I don’t want to learn to live in this new state. If I do, Anet will say ‘You see, you can get used to it, so we won’t do anything about it’. There is NO WAY I’ll learn to live with that.

If the system was working 100% as described in the blog post and had a 100% success rate could you live with it?

If not why?

If the system actually allowed me to play with my friends, my guild mates, if the system actually allowed me to do events properly without crossing my fingers to be able to hit the boss at least one time to get the participation while my FPS drop below 10, if the system actually allowed me to find my community back, my server people I used to play with and talk to, if ALL OF THAT was actually working 100%, yes, I could live with it, because my way to enjoy the game (as well as the majority of the players) would be preserved despite Anet’s wish to use this megaserver stuff.

But it is NOT working in any way. Nothing of all this works. They just gave us something in alpha process, without testing anything, even making myself wondering if the +225% they told us is not a number they picked from their magic hats just to make us think they are actually working on something stable and useful.

You got your answer?

Isaac.6041:

Megaserver is here to stay imo the reason why they have been mostly silent is PR dept taking sweet time to craft delicate responses to very angry customers. The business decision was made and to make an about-face on megaserver now would be sending too many mixed signals. So therefore, let’s all learn to live in the new state of megaserver bliss and happiness…

I don’t want to learn to live in this new state. If I do, Anet will say ‘You see, you can get used to it, so we won’t do anything about it’. There is NO WAY I’ll learn to live with that.

I gave up on 100% map completion when I saw I had to do thrice the same WvW map with the same skillpoints/PoI/Vistas at the same locations.

I like to explore, not to grind.

Nick.6972:

Why all the complains? Help me to understand.

Personally, for me the game finally feels alive, there are people on all zones, unlike before when I could have played for hour on FA and not run into a single person.
Server communities? I don’t care for them, I have my guild, that’s my community.

The only issue I have is that major cities have way too much people and it slighly affects my frame rate. Then again, it’s nice to finally see people in DR, it was always better than LA in my opinion.

If you actually read some of the posts above, you would know what are the complaints.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Astralporing.1957:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

This thread is so huge, i can’t read it all to find out if this has been asked already but, my question is: how do i know on which server I am at any given time? is there option to find out that i’m unaware of?

You are not on any server. All the previously existing ones were removed and every zone is now an overflow (they call it Megaserver). The only place where server specific areas still exist is WvW.

Oh ic, tnx, wonder why that guy was saying we were on SoR then?

He probably just thought he was still on his server, but no. A lot of people are confused and have a hard time understanding what’s happening.

Kanto.1659:

I am leveling a new thief to try this system. My experiences so far:

I’m level 31 atm, at level 36 I’ll buy my first adept trait. Thinking ahead I decided to work towards my new traits so that when I hit level 36 I can buy one of the three traitlines I picked.

- One trait asks me to go, at level 36, to Iron Marches, a level 60 are, and kill a champion.

- Another trait on a different line asks me, at level 36, to go and finish a level 59 storyline mission.

- The third adept trait I want from a third line asks me, at level 36, to do a 100% map explore of Mount Maelstrom, a level 44-55 area.

The saving grace is that the build uses two adept traits, so I can go fetch that second adept trait instead. It asks me to do a 100% map complete of Fields of Ruin, a level 30-40 area.

I feel you. I’m trying to level an engineer, but hell, it’s a mess.

I noticed that indeed. That’s… quite a shame. Especially for people (like me) who don’t give much of a kitten about PvP/WvW.

Asacledhae.2650:

• Cities do NOT have PvE content, why are they added to the megaserver?
• Low level areas were ALWAYS full of people, why are they added to the megaserver?
• Guilds kept people together, why are they chopped to pieces by the megaserver?
• Friends lists kept friends together, why are they crippled by the megaserver?
• RPlayers chose a world to be able to safely and freely RP together, why are they torn apart by the megaserver?
• World and Dynamic Events were enjoyable, why have they’ve turned into a collection of zerg swarms by the megaserver?

I’ve been wondering that since this stuff came out, and I’m still confused by the lack of answer.

I remember another MMO where people were organizing Costume Contests with prizes at the end for the most beautiful costumes in different categories. It was fun, made by the community, and thanks to a large possibility of customization.

Something we lost with this system, for all the reasons quoted in the 15 other pages of this thread.

And Anet is still ignoring, or refuse to reply because they have their feelings hurt. It’s time to move on Anet, being kitten for too long is never good, do something.

Behellagh.1468:

Hystery.8415:

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

Automatically blocking languages other than the one used for your client without even warning players that this feature went live, nor saying them how to disabling it if they want to is fixing the language issue to you?

Except they did announce it in the forums before the patch hit and the patch notes after.

Yeah, because everyone knows that 100% of the players check the forum, right.

Another sign that they actually do not care much about their player base.

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

Automatically blocking languages other than the one used for your client without even warning players that this feature went live, nor saying them how to disabling it if they want to is fixing the language issue to you?

eisberg.2379:

FrozenStarRo.7240:

Wanze.8410:

I think its good that Anet actually waits a bit to collect enough feedback before deciding to react on it.

Yes, they’ve collected dozens of threads, hundreds of pages and thousands of posts with feedback, and they decided to continue rolling Megaserver onto all maps, without as much as an official announcement of this change. Color me impressed they’re collecting all this feedback.

What? they already said they would be rolling out the Mega Server to other zones as they continue to monitor things, they said this before the Mega Server was even rolled out, and eventually the MegaServer will in all zones.

They may have said that, but they also said it would be a slow process. Not something rushed in a few days. That, coupled with the fact the megaserver is just completely broken, makes the whole thing look like they just tossed it without really knowing how to make it work, and hoping it would fix itself.

Bad guess.

New game.

mjhungness.8059:

I had a problem with SB last night (see post a few pages back) but no biggie. I like seeing a lot of people in-game and I like having the dynamic events populated again. This is preferable to server merges, in my opinion. Once they work the bugs out of keeping parties together, my particular gameplay will be improved. I can’t speak for the other complaints but I’ll take this over empty maps.

This IS servers merging. Even if not physically, the result is identical. The thing is they didn’t give two kitten about why players chose X server over Y server. And now, it’s a huge and total mess.

I approve. I logged only to do a couple dungeon runs, got whispered by god sellers, including not bots but really accounts. That’s annoying.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

I hate the megaserver update, ever since it went live all I see in game is whining. I think it’s putting me in the whining server. That’s weird, because (current post aside) I don’t do a lot of whining. I think Anet needs to check its whining logarithms. I’d much rather play with people who enjoy the game.

Whining : people complaining without giving the reason of their complaints nor suggestions to improve the situation.

AKA, the opposite of what we are doing here. However, you are actually whining about people complaining because a feature they loved in the game simply got completely removed, without even talking about how it is screwing half of the mechanics of the said game.

So, as I said earlier in another post, and if I may, the door is over there. If you have nothing to bring to the conversation besides “Omg bunch of whiners, me wants to be elsewhere”, please step through it and close it behind you. Thanks.

I simply don’t feel comfortable anymore when I’m playing. I’m like, lost in a bunch of people I don’t even recognize, and surely don’t want to talk to because I don’t share the same interest of the game as them. I had my friends, my guild, my server people, now it’s just as if I landed on a different planet.

EDIT: without talking about the incredible increase of gold sellers whispering about how awesome their website is.

Hold on, they are busy merging the servers to give the illusion the game isn’t sinking, they’ll probably look for smaller features later.

Now it is strange. Did you try to check the key it’s been configured on, just to see if the key itself isn’t bugged?

Kallandra.2610:

I logged in to Divinty’s Reach this morning. I was representing my guild, and originally from Piken Square.

My friend, also representing the same guild, from the same home server, and on my friend list, also logged in, and was placed in a different instance.

How is this ‘working’ ?

It doesn’t. I feel you, I had the same a few minutes ago, on Piken as well.

I’ve logged into DR, and the first thing I’ve seen are people arguing and insulting, while prior to this the map chat was always calm and polite. I’m from Piken Square.

I asked in the map chat who was from there, only three people answered me ‘Piken’. What happened to the ’You’ll be merged with people of your server/friendlist/guild’ thing? I can’t recognize a single name or guild name, all those people I’m crossing the path of are people I never met, and surely don’t want to considering their animosity or trolling level. And it’s only early noon in Europe, I can’t imagine what will happen during the evening.

I actually can’t understand WHY cities are megaserved. The megaserver was the excuse to make the game feel more alive, for world bosses and game content. I can agree with that, I don’t mind at all crossing the path of other players when I’m leveling. But why, in the name of God, why the cities have to be megaserved? They have no world event, no world boss, no skillpoint. There’s NO REASON for them to be megaserved other than for Anet to say ‘Look, our game is full of players, come and join in!’ to lure naive customers in and rob them from the content of their wallet.

Give us back our cities at least, and stop steamrolling the whole world map into this megaserver stuff that you obviously never tried to fix.