Guild Wars 2

dronzer.8392:

I’m sold! though still on the fence whether to get it for my alt, one of the best products on the gem store! whoever came up with this idea, is a keeper!

I wonder how closely they’ll be following the sales from this pick vs. sales of keys from people searching for the weapon skins. While it’s not a straight comparison (a weapon skin is almost constantly shown off, where as a pick looks cool for a few moments while you mine) it’ll be interesting to see how many people are willing to pay a higher, flat fee for a cosmetic boost vs. how many people are willing to buy fistfuls of keys hoping for a winning ticket. Even though the convenience of the axe is small, and the particle effect is only seen when mining, I’ll be picking one of these up in a day or two when I have the gold – mostly to show my support of fixed rate vs. randomly obtained cash store goodies.

Edge.4180:

The events in the Monastery have their own chains, though, which are completely unrelated to the Secrets of the Swamp event. They happen when they happen, which is often based on when players happened to trigger and complete (or fail) some previous stage of the chain. There are no set times for those to fire off.

If they’re wholly unrelated, however, why not allow them to overlap, as the Veteran worm and broken armor events overlap freely with the Maw chain? This small change (granted, I have no idea how much a nightmare it would be to change in the code) would allow people to continue working on these unrelated chains while still having the Behemoth on a solid timer. I’m sure the Secrets of the Swamp isn’t the only situation in which this situation raises, but again, if there’s no actual link between the outside events and the meta event/prevevents, why not just change them to overlap?

Edge.4180:

Sure. On top of needing to be in the proper window, they very popular Secret of the Swamps event can not begin unless the Greatheart Weald and Eldvin Monastery are clear of events. This is because those locations are used as part of Secret of the Swamps event chain and, for whatever reason, the designers have chosen not to allow them to overlap.

Alright, I see what you’re saying now. How about Weald and Monastery events pop at 12:05, then, allowing players to know when to begin working on the pre-events for the Behemoth? That would then lead to the portal events, the disturbance in the middle of the swamp, and of course the big-ugly himself.

Edit: I totally understand that it’s not a one-off, quick fix that will wipe away all of the issues posted in this thread. That said, even though it might not work right out of the box “Stick it all on timers, fast!”, I think the idea is certainly workable, and a good starting point.

Edge.4180:

No. There are examples of pre-events that will not start until all other events in the areas used by the pre-event are clear and finished. It’s not possible to start all the pre-events at the same time without oddly and suddenly aborting all unrelated events in the nearby area (which is sure to annoy people who are working on those events).

Could you post an example of this, please? I’ll use Maw as my example:

Attack on the Homestead spawns at 12:05.
Giant worm can spawn whenever it likes! (I have seen this, personally, overlap.)
Broken armor can spawn whenever it likes! (Same as above.)
Escort pops after Homestead is clear. (Whenever).
Dragon totem pops after Escort. (Whenever).
Portals pop after Totem (Whenever).
Boss is killed (Whenever).

At 2:05, Attack on Homestead spawns again, regardless of what happened above.

Edge.4180:

You’re just not understanding that the timers can not all be synced. There are different pre-events for these events and when those events are completed depend entirely on when the players in each server completes them. You’re arguing for a change that can’t even work.

Then synchronize the starting of the first pre-event in each chain, to a given point on the clock. It doesn’t matter if Server A starts a t12:05 and finishes Maw at 12:12, and server B starts at 12:05 and finishes Maw at 12:15. They both start the chain at the same time.

Let’s now tear apart that idea and see how it helps elevate many of the above causes of player frustration:

Cause: Being added to an Overflow server because your home server is full.
Improvement: One of the primary complaints of being added to an Overflow server is that you are no longer waiting for the event you had timed, because each server’s events are slightly off from one another. If all events trigger at the same time, across all servers, being in Overflow means you’re just as ready as when you were on your home server.
Cause: The game server has become so lagged due to the large population influx that it cannot properly process a player’s attacks, and thus participation.
Improvement: By making Overflow feel less of a punishment – since you would still be able to enjoy your event – folks wouldn’t fight so hard to avoid it, meaning there will be fewer players crammed into each event’s area. Furthermore, players will be less inclined to Guest to another server to avoid Overflow, which means fewer people suddenly pouring into other servers as events approach.
Cause: Player generated timers are only as reliable as the players who maintain them; often more than half the timers are flagged as out of date on some servers.
Improvement: By implementing set launch times for events players will not waste time on incorrect or poorly maintained player-run resources. The folks who run the current timers do their best to keep them updated, (Thank you, player community!) but official timers would always be 100% accurate.
Cause: Players who choose not to utilize community timers could wait for several hours (stuck in one area, unable to do anything else) in order to catch a major event.
Improvement: With game-synchronized timers, no one has to cross their fingers and hope if they want to participate in a meta event. Gamers with limited play time could easily find something appropriate for their level range and plan to attend.
Cause: Players who are forced into Overflow on their own server may be using Guesting to access a server with an accurate player run event Timer.
Improvement: Because all timers would be the same across all servers (even the Overflow servers), the only reason to Guest to another server for an event would be to play with friends.
Cause: Players who are on a server where a given event is hours way may be using Guesting to access a server where the event is much more close to activating.
Improvement: As above, there would be no timing advantage to skipping from server to server, since the events would be going off on one’s home server at the same time.
Cause: Players may be under the mistaken belief that participating in an event with more people yields better loot.
Improvement: While I’m fairly sure this is simply not true, concentrating the number of players back into their home servers (since there would be no advantage to being a Guest somewhere else) should help appease players’ worries about not having enough numbers to take down bosses, to gain the best loot.
Cause: There’s no real way to tell who is a Guest in order to hit up an event vs. someone who is a Guest to spend time with friends.
Improvement: Being a Guest would, hopefully, stop coming with an ugly social stigma attached to it because folks would be running events on their home servers. This allows players to hang out with friends who play on other servers, as Guesting is supposed to help facilitate.

Would having all events on a set schedule, synchronized ac cross all servers instantly fix all of the problems that have lead to the hundreds of posts in this thread? Of course not. It would, however, go a long way to elevating a good deal of the current causes of frustration that many are experiencing, and set a precedent for further events that might pop up down the line. A few final thoughts:

• Have minor events (such as the Fire Elemental, Maw, Behemoth, etc) run every other hour, with the events staggered so something is always going on.
• Make sure at least two events are happening at any given time, so that players are split up between them, instead of forming one giant mass that leads to lag.
• Have major events (Temples in Orr, etc) run every three hours, with the events staggered so there’s always something happening for players to participate in.
• Make sure there’s a Major and Minor event going at the same time, so that if not enough players turn out for a Major event, they can swing by the Minor and still do something.
• Have all the events frequently enough that players in any given quadrant (0:01-6:00, 6:01-12:00, 12:01-18:00, 18:01-0:00) have a shot at them. IE: Temple of Zephyrs doesn’t just go off at 8 am and 8pm, shutting out the early morning and late night crowd.

After pawing through over seven pages of posts, and doing more than my share of grumbling with friends and guildmates, it looks like there are so many issues tangled up together that there simply isn’t a “quick and easy” way to fix them all. That said, if we try to pull apart this rat’s nest of problems, and tackle each issue one by one, it might be easier for the developers to understand our suggestions – and perhaps translate them into something that’s workable for the long term. First up, we need to examine what the root problems – and then the causes – that are upsetting so much of the player base:

Issue: Missing events that you have waited for is wasted time, and everyone’s time is limited, no matter how dedicated to the game.
Cause: Being added to an Overflow server because your home server is full.
Cause: The game server has become so lagged due to the large population influx that it cannot properly process a player’s attacks, and thus participation.
Cause: Player generated timers are only as reliable as the players who maintain them; often more than half the timers are flagged as out of date on some servers.
Cause: Players who choose not to utilize community timers could wait for several hours (stuck in one area, unable to do anything else) in order to catch a major event.
Issue: Players are using the Guesting feature to streamline their meta event farming, thus compounding the first issue.
Cause: Players who are forced into Overflow on their own server may be using Guesting to access a server with an accurate player run event Timer.
Cause: Players who are on a server where a given event is hours way may be using Guesting to access a server where the event is much more close to activating.
Cause: Players may be under the mistaken belief that participating in an event with more people yields better loot.
Cause: There’s no real way to tell who is a Guest in order to hit up an event vs. someone who is a Guest to spend time with friends.

Let’s just chew on these first two issues for now, because their causes (and unfortunate effects) are largely intertwined. While it will not fix all the major causes of people missing their events, or single-handledly make everyone packs up their bags and run events on their own servers, I think it would go a very long way toward redistributing populations to where they came from, and more importantly, help take away the perceived penalties of being tossed into Overflow:

Have all events trigger at a given time, and have that time synched up across all servers, including Overflow, so that they happen at the same time.