Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed this just yesterday when using shatters against doors or siege equipment: if I have all 3 illusions up, 2 of them run to the target properly while one stands in place. A few seconds later (usually after the other two reach the target and shatter), the remaining one will shatter as well (still in the same spot). I don’t know if it was a terrain issue or what, but it was happening pretty consistently.

Xar.6185:

They really should just sticky a thread about

• Mounts
• Duels
• Cantha
• Elona
• New Race
• New Class
• New Legendarys
• Precursors (Crafting & Scavenger Hunt)
• Guild Vs Guild
• Guild Halls
• Player Housing

After that just merge all the threads that pop up about those topics into the corresponding one or delete the new thread while giving the “A discussion already exists about <InsertTopicHere> post your thoughts / concerns here <ProvideLink>”

Why? It’s just as easy for them to ignore multiple topics as it is for them to ignore the one.

Vayne.8563:

They’ve said they’re working to fine tune the mega servers. They said it’s only the beginning and they’ll continue to monitor and adjust. What exactly what you want them to add to that.

It’s been said before, but they need to explicitly identify the issues that they’re “tuning” because they haven’t made it clear at all whether any of our concerns are things they want to consider. Tuning the current system as it is isn’t going to satisfy most of the people that have posted to these threads because the system itself wasn’t designed to satisfy the needs that were brought up during the announcement. What we NEED is some clarity. When people are complaining about “devs not responding” or “devs offering generic ’we’re working on it’ responses”, what they’re referring to is this lack of information. We need to know whether or not the system is being tuned to address our issues, or if they’ll never be addressed at all. After all, the whole contested waypoint thing was described as an unfortunate side effect of the new system and was determined to be an acceptable loss by ArenaNet. There’s nothing telling us that our concerns aren’t going to be treated in the same way.

Phoenixlin.8624:

Because they did not think about whole megaserver idea more than 1 week. I believe that internal conversation was like that “-Oh people are whining about empty maps. What should we do? +Why don’t we merge all servers and name it megaserver? -The best idea ever!”

While that’s clearly an exaggeration, it’s true that ArenaNet didn’t properly think the implementation of this feature through. The fact that so many of their players were able to identify glaring issues in the system before it even went online (which proved to be true once it got released) and that ArenaNet had no good answers to them is proof enough of that. The “Guild Up” comment is going to be a permanent stain on Colin Johnson’s reputation in the eyes of the RP community, simply because of how out of touch he was with how such a system would effect their players.

@Shorok:
It sounds to me like you’re just confirming what I said. Megaservers allow for random people to experience more RP when they wouldn’t have initially, while making it harder for organized guilds and those that have established a community already. What you do works as a single detached event in which people meet, but a lot of the “Level 8-10” RPers (as you call them) prefer to work with larger story plots and inter-guild events. Telling them they have to adapt and instead RP your way isn’t much different than what you’re criticizing them for (ignoring you for not RPing their way). The game needs to be supportive of both for the community to thrive, and currently it’s not.

GuzziHero.2467:

Seraphina.6859:

Honestly, this thread should have been stickied already along with the feedback thread about the new trait system.

They won’t do that because Anet wants the criticism to die, they don’t want to know what we think. I think that by this stage they want all the critics to give up and slink away from the forums (maybe the game, too).

For me, the most telling part was when the deleted the Facebook post about the Megaservers. FB is far FAR more public than the forum, and more likely to be the first impression of the game for new players.

Yeah, the deletion of that Facebook post (and the post itself), was a pretty big indication of ArenaNet’s opinion of critics towards this system.

Halcyon.7352:

I am not a fan of megaservers. But I can’t help but noticing more and more roleplaying in the open world again.

The last few nights, the plethora of emotes in Divinity’s Reach and even in non hotspots has been seemingly inescapable for me.

I know that they made the home realm shard more prioritized in the days after the initial megaserver rollout – whether it’s this effect, or some shift in the population and/or my friends/guild list that’s causing me to end up in more RP friendly shards, I can’t say.

It’s nice to see roleplay still exists though.

That’s the intended effect. Just like its effect on non-rpers. Megaservers makes it seem like more is going on, it allows more players to see eachother, it makes events have the maximum number of participants possible by maxing out server shards. And for RP, it creates a situation where maps are full of people which means that for an average non-rper you’re more likely to see RP than before when you were not in an RP server.

Now, what this also does is make it more difficult for people who were initially set up to do these activities (before the megaservers). Organized guilds attempting to do world bosses now find it extremely difficult to get organized. People running champ trains are now constantly disrupted and often have a hard time even getting a single hit on a mob before it dies. People trying to do guild missions or organize inter-guild events can’t even get in the same map. RPers who originally joined RP servers specifically for that purpose now find themselves split among multiple shards. Cross-guild RP events are difficult to organize and many of the RPers who were originally able to enjoy themselves in peace are now swamped by additional non-rp players that very often troll and try to disrupt them. So yes, looking in from the outside, you probably see more RP than you initially did. But for players who initially joined for that purpose, and really guilds in general, the Megaservers have been incredibly disruptive to their experience. I guess the question is whether or not it’s more beneficial to ArenaNet to have these random experiences for new players coming in, or to cater towards guilds. So far it seems they’re more interested in the random/solo player.

It should be noted that any changes people see towards the system specifically involving getting paired with your server should be taken with a grain of salt. Like all of GW2’s update cycles, player counts seem to drop towards the end. If it looks like you’re seeing more people with your server now, I’d be very interested if you see the same results on the week of the next Living Story release.

I’m sorry I can’t answer your question though. I log on every Monday for my guild’s scheduled RP and occasionally on Sunday for our missions, which are now small enough where getting everyone involved isn’t a big issue. There have been a few cases of us getting split up into separate shards. Honestly though I don’t log on enough to give any worthwhile results.

Autumnmane.3574:

Came back to check this thread again after a few weeks, still no acknowledgement from devs? Wow…

Also, am I right from what I saw in previous posts, to assume that emotes can be spammed more than 5 times without being subject to chat spam restrictions? That seems like one hell of an oversight that could so easily reduce harrassment and improve the quality of life of roleplayers.

That’s really just more of a placebo effect, and one that could be damaging to RPers considering they also make use of emotes a lot. I could see that becoming an issue of someone was “DMing”, or if two characters were emoting combat RP.

Yargesh.4965:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Purple Miku.7032:

^ Yeah that’s pretty much what I mean.

If you’re still on the forums, you haven’t quit this game.

Some players still watch the forums because they want a reason to come back, because they like the core game. But the updates and “features” added to the game since launch have shown them that the devs intend to go in a direction that is very clearly against what they wanted the game to be. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of something you wanted to believe in, so you check from time to time to see if anything changed. It hasn’t? Well maybe in another 2-3 months.

If the game has not gone in the direction people enjoy in more than a year and a half chances are incredibly high that they will continue not to change in the direction they want. Reading and posting on the forums then is kind of counter productive for everyone involved.

Abusive relationships are tricky business.

Purple Miku.7032:

^ Yeah that’s pretty much what I mean.

If you’re still on the forums, you haven’t quit this game.

Some players still watch the forums because they want a reason to come back, because they like the core game. But the updates and “features” added to the game since launch have shown them that the devs intend to go in a direction that is very clearly against what they wanted the game to be. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of something you wanted to believe in, so you check from time to time to see if anything changed. It hasn’t? Well maybe in another 2-3 months.

Asacledhae.2650:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

You probably just forgot to Guild Up™, it’s an easy mistake to make. But don’t worry, once you do it’ll solve ALL of your issues.

You’re absolutely right, I’ll get right on it!!!
……no wait, i’m already on a guild since i started playing the….. * Head Explodes *

Ahh, the good old A-net’s solution which obviously dug a huge hole in the water with a driller made of tissue paper(!)…

I wonder, do they even bother playing the game anymore, or are they even aware that even “guilding up” is almost impossible to do now? Even if you find willing participants, eventually Skynet will tear you apart from them. And also imagine trying to RP with people who accidentally have the language plug on and God forbid, they use a different language client than yours! Ohh, how beautiful that would feel…

Things are bad enough for US servers. I don’t even want to think about what the EU players are going through, even though I’ve got a pretty good idea based on the comments in this thread. Tarnished Coast has been mostly picked apart but it sounds like Piken Square is in much worse shape.

Asacledhae.2650:

Then again, i doubt i’ll be placed on TC anyway, as Skynet thinks i’m French, and it keeps dropping me to French instances…..9 times out of 10, every time i log into the game, since last week… O.o

You probably just forgot to Guild Up™, it’s an easy mistake to make. But don’t worry, once you do it’ll solve ALL of your issues.

steviej.5768:

The problem isn’t “zerging” either, the problem is that the game hasn’t been optimized for a megaserver atmosphere. There should be over 100 players trying to take down world bosses! Bosses and events just need to be changed to accommodate this but that takes time to do and patience on our part.

“Optimized” is not the word to use here. The games has not been DESIGNED for a megaserver atmosphere. Hence why rushing out such a system that was undeniably incomplete into the game was not only a terrible idea, but also incredibly negligent of ArenaNet. Work should have been done to shift the game’s design to support megaservers BEFORE it was implemented, so that the transition could have been as smooth as possible. Instead, we have a system rushed out that thoroughly breaks many features of the game and causes drastic changes to the way that it’s played. And now we get to wait until they rebuild the game around it.

And I’m going to reiterate this as many times as a kittening have to, in as many threads as I have to. We were told to “wait and see” when we brought up major concerns about the megaservers at the very moment of the announcement. Players, who were not working on the system and likely are not familiar with game design were able to almost immediately identify the core issues that would arise from this system. But they were told to wait and see. And what happened? Every concern was validated. The players were right. But no acknowledgement from ArenaNet. Everything’s going smoothly says their Facebook. Full kittening steam ahead on converting those zones. Flat. Out. Ignored. They’ve worn out their player’s faith, so asking us to be patient now is a joke. How long until they admit their failures, own up to the system’s shortcomings, and give some kind of insight as to how they’ll fix it? It’s already been 2 months too long.

Lanhelin.3480:

• The Additional Crafting License is now available in the Gem Store. This license allows players to have up to three active crafting professions on all characters on their account for the low price of 800 gems in the Upgrades category.

From the latest patch notes. Why else should ANet do a thing like this, if there is no new crafting discipline coming soon? What discipline could that be? Fishing?

Because they’re testing the waters for additional things to monetize. Something that was probably low-risk to implement. It really doesn’t imply any sort of additional content coming.

Asmodeus.5782:

This is a standard popular event now. A swarm of people standing around, waiting for three to four (GASP) trash mob to appear. Maybe even 10 of these players will manage to get their loot from the aforementioned trash. If they play zerkers. No, really, if the megaserver is here to stay (and it is ;/), we need a massive scaling rework.

So we’ve basically now reverted to the greatest flaw in WoW’s (and those games like it) questing/PvE design. Camping a spawn in order to be the first to tag a rare/quest mob. It was something that GW2 originally prevented just by the very nature of its design. That alone proved to me that the game was a natural advancement of the MMO genre and that other games needed to follow by example. And now… it’s devolved into this. I feel like this game is going to go down in history as the biggest waste of potential.

And to reiterate, the issue is not whether or not the Megaservers are being “improved.” It’s whether or not the player concerns brought up in these feedback threads are actually things that the devs consider worth addressing. Because for all we know, the plan is NOT to support RPers or large guilds. In fact, with further updates they may be making it harder for such things to exist because they want players to instead be in multiple smaller guilds. Who knows? But until someone gives real information, the assumption is that these things are not being addressed. Why is that assumption valid? Because they were brought up at the exact moment the megaservers were announced, a month before release. There was no dev response properly explaining whether or not those concerns were valid, instead opting for a “wait and see” approach. Well, release day happened and all those concerns are still there. And no response happened. And they continue to be issues for players even now. BUT, whether or not those are issues to developers is unknown. It could be the intended effect, and things like RP could simply be an “unfortunate but necessary sacrifice”, much like contested waypoints were. So that’s why we need an actual statement of dev intent regarding the future of megaservers. Those blanket statements made by PR just don’t have any real effect anymore.

Star Ace.5207:

CC Danicia is most probably not on the Megaserver team, and whatever she knows, I am sure she ‘s not freely allowed to share. Rather than hating on her as if she was ANet’s Avatar, think about all she’s doing: her job.

The hate she got from unreasonable voices in these forums is why I don’t mind when ANet is silent about issues-as soon as anyone replies, they just get some hate and “your comment isn’t enough!” Yet these very people tend to complain about ANet’s supposed “perma-silence” which obviously (to them) means ANet doesn’t care about “the playerbase” (which is usually a community among players, and not really “the playerbase”.) Under these circumstances, I would actually post less than they do (ANet is hardly silent-and not only about the gem shop, as is often stated-but many people just want to hear what they want)

In that regards, they are kinder than I am-stating an “official” response in these forums is bound to be unsatisfactory and irrationally hated upon by many. Ultimately I believe it’s a pointless exercise for them to try to convince haters that the megaserver is good for the game, if the latter have already made up their minds about it. “Inconsiderate”, “lacking in foresight” ANet just wanted to destroy their community and gaming experience in their minds, rather than helping to further develop the game.

Best of luck to all ANet employees as you try to move the game forward. The Megaserver needs refining, not removing, and I am glad you are taking that stance rather than letting yourselves be intimidated by all the hate-which as we all know, is hardly universal. No one should admit to a crime they didn’t commit.

(The above is not meant to mean that it’s “wrong” to dislike the megaserver-like what you like-but as my own lamenting about how people often choose to voice their dislikes; intolerance, lack of compromise (other players are important , not just my point of view), etc. Additionally, many people who have voiced their concerns AGAINST the megaserver have done so rationally and maturely, so disliking it is certainly no indication of someone necessarily being like the haters I alluded to above.)

If you can’t agree to disagree, and are just going to reply with more hate, just ignore my post altogether. I care not for unnecessary debates about games, and there’s no reason to expect we must always agree or otherwise hate each other.

We need to know whether our concerns about the megaservers are actually being addressed, or if ArenaNet is not interested in addressing them and is instead just working on improving their own design. That’s the point of all of these feedback threads. And simply acknowledging that it’s being worked on doesn’t say whether or not it will improve our situation at all. As the community coordinator, it’s part of her job to communicate our needs to the team, but at this point what the community itself needs is a member of the team to explain the future of the Megaserver system. And because no such person has made an appearance in any of the feedback threads, CC Dancia serves as the only line of communication we have with ArenaNet. So, maybe it’s unfortunate that she has to bear the brunt of the player’s dissension, but at the very least that means she can communicate that to the dev team. And until some level of clarity is given to us about their plans for Megaservers, she and any other moderator are going to have to continue to be a target of player dissension. Does that mean she should post nothing? Probably. Like I said, at this point posts like “We’re working on it” and “Wait and see” aren’t good enough and serve as a placebo for maybe a day or two (if that). When talking about “ArenaNet doesn’t communicate with players”, we’re specifically referring to developers or a developer representative. Obviously PR talk and generic statements aren’t going to solve the issue.

Talonblaze.3175:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Fight the good fight buddy. Though, if they don’t respond to a 1,000 reply post with major concerns about the game, I sincerely doubt they’re going to reply to this one. ArenaNet seems to have adopted the policy of brushing things under the rug in hopes that people eventually forget about them.

You’d be surprised what may get a response. If you look at the game bugs forum you can see that certain developers are active in their areas. (For example, an audio developer obviously won’t comment on this or on megaserver problems, but is extremely vigilant for audio bugs and problems). It just depends on whether the right developer sees it.

Looking at the “Watchwork Pickaxe” thread, which is still being constantly revived with no response, doesn’t give me much hope this will ever be looked at all that seriously. It’s Charr, they already said they don’t care.

Charr female cultural T2 Heavy Helm caves in and clips with itself near the center while the male version does not. It’s been that way since release. So… yeah. If they won’t even bother getting at least their cultural armor looking right, there’s no hope for anything else. Like you said, they don’t care. Not worth the time.

Almoryk Kane.6085:

So no update till July 1st for the next part of the living story. So dose that mean that we have to wait another month before any fixes come to this system? It seems that all this discussion and something, SOMETHING needs to be fixed.

Well they haven’t even spoken up as to whether ANY of our concerns are actually issues they’re addressing. All they’ve said is that they’re improving the system. But we’ve had major concerns about the very design of the Megaserver since it was first announced and so far none of them have really been addressed or acknowledged. So I would not expect any “fixes” in the sense that you might be thinking to come to the game, ever. If anything, they’re probably working to fix the increased disconnects happening. But they’ve made no indication that they’re in the wrong as far as the design and implementation of the megaservers so I’m inclined to believe they plan to do nothing about it aside from polishing the kitten that they already have. And from the way they’ve handled the situation thus far, I don’t see any reason why anyone should put their trust/faith in them otherwise. They’ve done nothing to deserve it.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

You know as well as we all do at this point a post like this isn’t good enough. “Wait and see” stopped being a valid response when the system was implemented and every single one of the concerns brought up since the announcement were validated. It was obvious then that you had no plans to address the concerns and you’ve continued to demonstrate this behavior for over a month since the release. “Improvements” on “issues” doesn’t tell us anything. Are any of the RPer’s concerns part of those “issues”? Do you intend to actually compensate for them or should they just be expected to deal with it? Do you have actual plans for allowing large guilds to gather again? These are issues to US. But you’ve made no indication that they’re also issues to you. For all we know, your only concern is bug fixing the Megaservers based on their current implementation when pretty much all of our problems are based on the design/implementation of the feature itself.

Fight the good fight buddy. Though, if they don’t respond to a 1,000 reply post with major concerns about the game, I sincerely doubt they’re going to reply to this one. ArenaNet seems to have adopted the policy of brushing things under the rug in hopes that people eventually forget about them.

viralthefrog.6130:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

viralthefrog.6130:

If you think this game is the grindiest in western AAA MMO’s, you have probably not played many western AAA MMO’s.

Edit: Just saw your second post.
I see your previous experience and raise you two years in EVE Online.
Two years down and nowhere near the skills I needed to play how I wanted.

You mean you found a game that is grindier than GW2, and think that I am impressed?

EVE Online is a sandbox game, with a fully player controlled economy and universe. And it is surely not designed around one player being the hero.
Comparing this to the GW2 theme park, where everyone is second in command after Trahearne is a bit of out of place.

And please show me, where EVE Online was ever advertised as not being grindy, thx.

It seems that you’re miffed that I pointed out a great example of a game that is grindier than GW2.

I’ve never been interested in the ascended “grind”, but after researching the exact process for the ascended grind, and hearing personal testimony from numerous guild mates, I have no doubt in my mind that GW2 is nowhere near the grindiest of all western AAA MMO’s.

I played WoW (vanilla to WotLK, and a month of Cataclysm), EVE, SWG (with a Jedi during permadeath era), WoW, RIFT, RO (not western, but still much grindier), RuneScape, and a few others that escape me at the time.

Every single one of those are so much more of a grind than GW2 that I cannot even begin to comprehend how someone could feel that GW2 is the grindiest game out.

Not trying to “impress” you. Just pointing out that there are plenty of games that are much more of a grind.

Honestly, I don’t care much for either side of the argument. But no, you can’t compare EVE, which is a sandbox MMO with a player-based economy, to a theme-park MMO. There is almost no valid point of comparison between the two. Completely different designs, from the ground up. The other MMOs you listed work perfectly well as examples as they follow similar design schemes.

Unfortunately I don’t have a link to the post regarding that. However, he wasn’t implying that the Megaservers wouldn’t save on cost AT ALL. Just that it was not the biggest, nor even a major, factor in their decision to go this route. It seems very likely the purpose was to fill maps to the brink to make the game more “alive” for new players, as they were launching in a completely new market. Having Megaservers ready for China prevents the game from entering that lull state after the initial rush, which is what we saw with the game here (lower level zones becoming empty). And while the massive player counts and zerging of events can arguably be seen as a negative here, a mob/event grinding-based PVE game will work incredibly well for the Chinese market.

Puffy cheeks, baby doll eyes, huge eyelashes, blush, pouty face… it should be pretty obvious. People weren’t exactly fooled by Tera’s “thousands of years old” Elin. They shouldn’t be fooled by these faces.

The asuran faces were made to allow our new asian friends to have the same lolicon style they’re used to from other MMOs.

So is the more frequent disconnect thing some result of increased server load from new players or something? Is it because the existing tech wasn’t actually meant to consistently have the player counts per-instance that’s been achieved with Megaservers? Or is there something inherently wrong with the Megaservers which is causing a new issue to appear?

MatthewMedina.5419:

Hey guys,

• The “usual suspects” who you would typically get answers from on this front have unquestionably been super busy getting the game out in China. A number of our devs were in China for the launch this past week, so I imagine that in addition to the hard work they put in over there to get the game launched, they’ll be returning home, getting over jet lag and catching their breath. I hope you can all understand that, and we appreciate your continued patience. We’re all as excited to share with you what’s coming next, as you are to hear it.

“Excited” is a little strong of a word. Many of us are… concerned. Nervous maybe. A lot of what needs to be said by developers isn’t “what’s coming next”, and more of “how we’re going to address issues with what’s currently here.”

God, I hope they don’t try to implement the system TESO is using for their attempt at WvW. Seriously, ArenaNet needs to stop looking at that MMO for ideas.

Heibi.4251:

I still haven’t been able to do the Lyssa event, since the megaserver update, for the trait. And I refuse to pay for a trait just because ANeT misled us about the megaserver not being implemented in Orr. Either put it on a schedule just like the other world bosses or get rid of the megaserver for Orr.

Yeah the unfortunate side-effect of implementing this system that their game wasn’t built around is that all those dynamic events no longer function as intended. No where is it more apparent than in Orr, where’s it’s become increasingly rare to find a temple attack event running and most of the troop movement stuff doesn’t happen because everything’s stuck in the “defend” state (that’s not counting the leadups to Balthazar of course, since that bugs every other day). You’d think a little more thought would have gone into how they’d adjust their content for these Megaservers. If they really thought everything would just work out when their game is based heavily around these dynamic events, they’re insane. But no, they probably thought that they could just half implement the feature and fix it over the next year or so, like they’ve done with all of their big additions thus far.

ArenaNet is really the only company that publicly advertises feature patches that would usually end up in a footnote of larger content patches other MMO companies release monthly. If they discussed it before hand, they wouldn’t be able to properly generate the hype they want in order to get log in counts up for that particular week/month. Gathering feedback in an iterative process won’t have the desired effect of boosted log-in counts, but a big announcement a week before the release of the feature will.

Responding to the issues we’re bringing up now is also counter intuitive to their desired effect. What they’re going to do is continue to work on Megaservers in silence. When they feel that it’s adequate, they’ll do another big announcement a week before they push the bug fix patch in order to get player counts up again. Of course, this’ll still have issues, since you can’t properly address player’s needs without addressing their feedback, but again: it’s about hype generation. If you’re wondering why other MMO companies don’t do that, and why they have things like public test realms (which go against the idea of surprising your playerbase with new features), it’s because those companies know better. They know what it takes to invest in their player base for the long term, rather than focusing on day to day/week to week log-in counts.

About 4-6 months after they actually reply to the issues created by the last update. Which will happen after the game releases in China.

Jski.6180:

Lankybrit.4598:

I must admit, Megaservers is losing a bit of its luster for me, because the Queensdale Champion Train was a mess last night, with no one agreeing on the order, and people sniping Champions left and right.

That not really a megaservers issue that a troll issue or an ego thing just because a megaserver is there dose not changes ppl are still going to act like ppl.

This is happening a lot ppl are using megaservers as a default excuse to blame things on when its more on the lines that ppl are unable to get over there own point of views and work with ppl to get things done. You could blame the internet for all the problems on earth because all the problems are on the internet but that dose not mean the internet is causing them all. I guess its to easy to blame ppl who do not think like your self as “though ppl are messing up every thing” but often that is not right both from a real life stand point and from a morel stand point.

It’s still a valid argument as to whether or not the Megaservers have improved your gameplay experience. If this sort of thing wasn’t happening before, it was because you were playing on a server with a more mature playerbase, and that could be related to the fact that with a single server, you as an individual have more identity. If you kitten up and troll people, your name can spread and you could become infamous within the server. This new system is severely lacking in that level of accountability. But putting all speculation aside, if the argument here is whether or not the introduction of Megaservers has improved GW2 for you, I see this as a perfectly valid reasoning for “No.” If the whole justification of Megaservers is that your gameplay would improve with the introduction of more players to a map, this is an example of that not being the case.

And to clarify, I’m talking about DR in relation to the other cities, which are comparatively far more scattered and “diverse” (for lack of a better word).

Wasbunny.6531:

snip

Alright, I’ll bite. This has been my experience when zoning into DR in the past few days. I’m from Tarnished Coast, btw.

I still don’t get placed with my guild mates. I’m really not sure what the issue is, as most of them get placed together. I’m beginning to think that because I’m still a member of some inactive guilds (still all TC), that it’s somehow influencing my placement. Maybe leaving them will make it better. So that’s still an issue for me, but for the sake of argument I’ll describe the server I see after getting ferried over to my guild mates (since they seem to be placed better).

I’ve been seeing more TC guilds than there’s been since the update. I’m not seeing ALL of them and a lot of the tags I recognize aren’t in as full force as I’m used to seeing. In talking with a few, they’ve mentioned that some of them still aren’t getting placed together. I suppose if those members wanted to RP at the time they could be ferried across. It’s just odd not seeing the full roster that I’m used to seeing. What I still see a significant amount of are what I’d call “filler” players. And these are basically just unrecognized guild tags that aren’t doing anything specific (not RPing, usually just doing typical town activities like crafting and TP). I’ll get to that later though.

Map chat has degraded heavily on the maturity front. Even excluding the typical RP trolling (which admittedly has become less common in the past few days, but still way more than I’ve ever seen before the update), arguments constantly break down about gameplay mechanics, builds, or even just real world events. And god forbid when someone from the WvW matchup comes in and starts talking trash. That brews up some real kittenstorms. Honestly it’s to the point that I just turn off map chat now. I never had to do that before, even in LA. It’s something I can live with, but it’s definitely not an area that’s been IMPROVED with the patch. And like I’ve mentioned many times, simply having something be “not as bad” still isn’t much justification for the megaservers in my eyes.

As far as RPing goes, typical spots are a lot more populated. But the additional population is rarely other RPers. More commonly just folks sitting around watching or spamming skills. I personally haven’t seen a particular increase in the amount of RP in general, despite the maps being full of significantly more players. I guess for some that’s cool. It feels cluttered to me. I guess that’s because I’m from a high population server, so my cities were never truely ghost towns. But for me, the increased amount of players isn’t really providing any benefit.

Which leads me back to the suggestion of the RP tag. I really really wish we could get that implemented. Like I said, I see more RP guilds than before, but not all. It seems that the server is at least trying to sort now, but it gets overpopulated with players that aren’t necessarily RPers. But is that a bad thing, to have non-RPers with us? No, certainly not. There are plenty of people that just like to enjoy the atmosphere, and I think it’s great to have those people around too. BUT there are undoubtedly people who just honestly don’t give a kitten. Who are just there to craft/TP and get out. They couldn’t care either way about what’s going on in the city around them. Those are the people that I would like to filter out in favor of people who are actually trying to get in. And I think an RP tag would solve that. People who want to RP could use it to get paired together. People who just want to see RP can use it so they can get paired with them and keep the same atmosphere. And people who don’t care either way could keep it off and would not be factored in, thus they wouldn’t take up space on the instance that could be filled with people who actually want to be there.

anzenketh.3759:

I honestly think that is the case. The good news is the people that get into “MegaServer Overflow” will be paired up with other people on the same server that get put into “MegaServer Overflow”.

lol, is that how it works? Cause I still seem to get paired with random people no matter where I go. I WISH it at least did that, where it kept sorting by servers even in subsequent “overflows”, but it really doesn’t feel like it does that.

In any case, we should keep track of changes and “stealth” fixes to various regions in the game. Since ArenaNet has decided to keep us in the dark, that’s the best we can do to stay on top of the situation. Yeah, most of it is going to boil down to speculation, but that’s not our fault.

And actually that just brings me to my overarching problem with megaservers. It feels like the only compromise that’ll be reached with this system is “It’s not that bad.” It’s worse than it was, but I guess it’s acceptable. For example: before megaservers I could enter a city full of RPers. Now, with megaservers (properly working) I can enter a city full of more people, with most of them being RPers. But some of the RPers are split off (just some). Even if only a small segment is separated, that’s still worse off than it was originally. And in the case of cities, there’s no gain for that tradeoff. There is no gameplay benefit to having the cities filled to the brim. It just makes them look more busy, which I guess is a gain for ArenaNet? Maybe for some players in a low pop server, it’s a gain to have more people in your cities (even if you don’t do anything with them). But does it REALLY matter to you? If you really thought about it, do you care THAT much to see extra people in your city? Because I’ll tell you right now: we (RPers, High Population servers) sure as hell care that we’re getting split up in our own cities. It’s drastically effecting our gameplay experience in a negative way.

anzenketh.3759:

I was reading the MegaServer and RP thread. and I came across this. I felt it warranted further discussion on the thread that has to do with the MegaServers as a whole.

TL;DR the system is working as designed and as expected by players. Except…… During prime time hours on High Population maps maps on Vary High to Full populated servers and during World Boss events or times of a large influx of players on a particular map. The system is then throwing the members onto a new shard splitting up the players just like the overflow system. Only better then overflow as the system tries to find you the next best shard according to it’s calculation instead of throwing you on something random.

So really the largest problem as I see is in situations like above how would you improve getting a large group of players together with each other in a efficient matter that does not take 5-10 minutes.

What other items should the MegaServer take into calculation. When should it decide that a semi-filled shard would not be the best place to put a group. I think it should take the Guild and if it is running a Guild Event and if a bunch of players are in a squad into account. (That would require actual use of the squad function however.)

Well take both what he said and what I said with a grain of salt. Both of us experienced vastly different things during different times of the day, while there are many people in the thread who have their own experiences. I don’t think the system is working properly, regardless of the situation. In fact, what that original poster’s comment sounded to me like is “It’s not that bad”, which is still not as good as things were before the change. And his experiences boiled down to just being around people he knew while in a town. Even outside of prime time hours, the experience is going to be very different when you’re talking about zones and events. Outside of towns, I still find my guildmates separated into multiple shards. And this is in zones that really didn’t have much going on at the time.

So TL;DR again, I don’t think the system is actually working properly, just in general. Prime time hours and huge player counts just further compound the issues and make them far more noticeable.

Wasbunny.6531:

So I just spent a couple hours in Divinity’s Reach (TC) to test the waters of the megaserver there. I have to say if it is in fact part of the megaserver now and they are trying out a more accurate sorting system prioritizing home servers it seems to be working.

I recognized most of the guild names, I saw no emote spamming/trolling, and map chat was well…very TC. Only one person was spamming spells but quickly got bored, and there’s always going to be that one anyway. Asked for a show of hands in /m for people from TC and a lot responded, no one said they weren’t.

If DR is any indication of how the megaserver will ultimately work we might not need a specific RP flag at all. The Grove on the other hand was a trollfest last night but I’ve been hearing only DR is giving server priority at the moment.

I can’t find any official word about DR being on the megaserver, so if anyone has a link it would be much appreciated.

Edit: Just logged out and back into DR and was so relieved to see the same people from TC still there, as well as three of my guildies (who weren’t there when I logged out). So this is actually very encouraging.

fingers crossed

I’ve still yet to find myself paired with a guild mate when I warp into a new zone. Not even once since the system was introduced. And I was in Divinity’s Reach last night during what some could consider “prime time” hours, and it was a verbal (so to speak) clusterkitten in map chat. It’s been said before, but I think that even if the Megaserver sorting metrics are functioning, it starts to fall apart when larger populations start to gather in a map. If you JUST spent a couple of hours, as in: at the time of your posting, then you’re looking at it during off-hours. So maybe that’s an accurate look at how ArenaNet WANTS the system to work, but things get shaken up fast around evening/night times.

Whether they’re working on something or not, they need to say something. Going this long without acknowledging the feedback threads they themselves created is really harmful to their relationship with their customers.

Here we go again. Starting up the rollout. Nothing’s changed. No response. Divinity’s Reach, the biggest RP hub, is now in a megaserver. Maybe that means we’ll get another sudden surge of responses in this and the other feedback threads. Though that clearly means kitten all, since they’re not responding to anyone.

Rangersix.1754:

Get a core party of 5 people in a map, consider that your “main map”. Now break the group apart and have each of those 5 people form their own party so they can then join their party leader on the “main map”. It’s quick and it’s easy. Guilds complaining that they need to make use of organization, dear me.

lol and also consider the steps you’re describing compared to what we had to go through before megaservers, which was nothing.

StarbornStriker.6493:

My apologies if this has already been discussed (15 pages is a lot to wade through). It seems to me that one step towards solving this problem would be removing the cities from the Megaserver.

Isn’t the idea behind the Megaserver that underpopulated areas will now have enough players to make them fun and manageable? So when I’m running around outside Queen’s Dale, I’ll actually encounter people to do champions with.

But why do I need to encounter more people than I used to in cities? You aren’t doing anything in a city that requires socialization unless you want to RP. I’m sure there are lots of places RP takes place out in the world, and the Megaserver might continue to make that difficult. But why can’t we have our home servers when we’re in cities?

I’m on TC, and it’s true that I would often be thrown into OF in Lion’s Arch, but not so often that I couldn’t regularly get into the main map. And every other city I pretty much never encountered OF except for occasionally in Divinity’s Reach. If we could at least have the cities as our home servers, RPers would at least have a haven. A place where they could meet and chat and move out into the world from. It would solve a lot of the complaints I’ve witnessed in this thread.

Way in the long ago, in the days of GW1 we had districts. Several people have already suggested a way of moving from map to map which sounds remarkably like districts (IE a drop down menu where you can move between them and each one has labels). Also way in the long ago, for eight long years, we begged Anet to give us RP districts. IE districts with labels that said RP so the RPers had somewhere to go. We never got them.

One of the things I loved about GW2 was that it felt like home servers solved that problem. We had a place to go. Now we feel it’s been taken away from us. The creation of districts, and RP districts at that, would be fabulous. Failing that, having our home cities back would at least help. Surely since no events take place inside cities, it wouldn’t be harmful to remove them from the Megaserver?

We’ve had several people put forth that suggestion (to remove cities from megaservers), but it doesn’t hurt to have different ideas on the matter. It might be an interesting idea to move them off the megaservers, but also include the ability to quickly switch to each server’s version of the city. This could be similar to the “district” system a lot of people are also suggesting.

CookieNoodle.6503:

Just wanna add it here. If ANET gave us the ability to add a small ‘’ IC ’’ icon next to our name, lots of problems will be solved. They could add it so that if we had the IC icon activated – we would automatically be placed in the same map as others who has the icon active. This way we would have small RP maps filled with IC-active players. Which would actually be an upgrade for us RPers.

Yeah we’ve been asking for an RP-related tag that we can toggle since the Megaservers were first announced. Unfortunately the placement algorithms that they currently have aren’t even working properly. The likelihood that they’ll implement something like that, especially anytime in the near future, is becoming lower and lower.

Phantom.8130:

Shyhalu.4891:

I am fine with as many personal insults as you’d like to throw at the rest of the community that isn’t one of your precious RPers. If you all want to hold hands and pat each other on the back over how wronged you have been and how you are the true reason that MMORPGs exist, then go ahead. It isn’t true, but if that is what this thread is for, then I’ll leave you to your hand holding.

I have played plenty of MMORPGs and participated in RP events and I haven’t seen this level of ‘poor us’ in a long time. I support everyone who said that they are in favor of keeping COMMUNITIES together.. of all sorts.. but not those who feel that RPers are the special children deserving of extra attention and catering too.

This pattern of people coming in, saying everyone’s wrong, insulting everyone, then trying to act like they’re the ones being mistreated is getting tiresome. Bring me some better shills.

/awaiting yet another infraction

Frankly, I agree with you. Thread derailment happens at least every 3 pages here from people like that.

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

The fact that Anet has made this thread the official RP thread seems to indicate that they at least notice a possible problem with the megaserver system in this case.

No one made this the official RP thread. In fact, there is no official RP feedback thread, as indicated in this list here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feature-Patch-Feedback-Thread-list/

It’s very likely they’ll use that sticky as another excuse to ignore us. Even though this thread has more views and replies than their other feedback threads, including the one about Megaservers.

Please temporarily remove all of the capitol cities (Black Citadel, Rata Sum, Hoelbrak, Divinity’s Reach) from the Megaserver system until it’s functioning perfectly. And by perfectly, I mean that all the bugs have been hammered out and all of the placement metrics are functioning as intended (including additional metrics sorely needed by the community). The cities provide little to no actual gameplay benefit from being in the megaservers- having each city flooded with players is really just an aesthetic thing- as opposed to actual zones. And by keeping the cities server-based, you’ll give each server’s community a bastion in which they can organize and communicate with eachother. RPers have their place to RP, WvW players can make announcements and call for aid, guilds and solo players can properly form groups ahead of time before heading into a megasever-ed zone, etc. It would be a nice gesture of good will to help alleviate some of the stress you’re causing to players while you continue to test the megaservers in a live setting.

And if you need to get accurate tests for Megaservers sorting players in a hub-like setting, you still have both the pvp lobby and Gendarren Fields in order to do that.

I’m not saying to PERMANENTLY split cities from the megaservers. Theoretically, if everything works as perfectly as you want it to, it should be just fine to have them in cities (as servers would be grouped together properly). However, the system clearly isn’t functioning as intended, as even the metrics that you shared with us aren’t being considered. Not to mention all the additions that people are asking for in feedback. So at the very least, give us the cities as a temporary safe haven while you continue to fix the system. Once it’s functioning properly, THEN you can finish moving everything over.

munkiman.3068:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Really they should have just manned up and done server merges.

But no they can’t be admitting needing to do that when a competitor just launched.

Server communities being destroyed like that would most likely be far more damaging than a megaserver.

The difference is that with a server merge, essentially 2 communities get brought together. Neither are destroyed or broken up, they’re simply combined. With the megaservers, server communities are actually broken apart and scattered among different maps. It doesn’t matter if the server was high population or low population, every server community is now split apart.

Hystery.8415:

Overall it remains such a waste of time. If we think about it, why did they decide to do this megaserver stuff?

They say it was to group people together. for more interactions and gameplay.
I say that the servers are getting empty, and thus they need to regroup people together to hide this fact.

It was perfectly working before, and I don’t remember seeing someone complaining about ‘OMG there’s none on this map! Laaaame!’. They did like the town clothes. They took something working perfectly fine, to kitten it up so hard.

People were complaining about empty maps, that is a common issue among players doing events in non-champ farming zones (especially new players). The issues weren’t nearly as present in high population servers, but they were still somewhat present. This system went about fixing that in entirely the wrong way, where higher population servers are now being broken apart. Even with the metrics working properly (they’re clearly not), we would have been broken up. Just not as badly as we’re seeing now. The system, at its core, is flawed. Server Merges carry some bad undertones among players, but they work. They’ve been proven to work by all the other MMOs that came before this. The way you solve underpopulation issues is by working from the bottom up. You take the lowest population servers and have the megaserver merge them up into the next lowest, and the next lowest, etc. You don’t take already high population servers and suddenly filtering them down. That’s just unintentionally punishing players in servers that were operating perfectly fine. Those servers could have benefited from seeing some of the low pop server people brought up into their zones, but they sure as hell aren’t benefiting from being split up themselves.

zoejo.2317:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

zoejo.2317:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

zoejo.2317:

eleshazar.6902:

Thanks Anet for ignoring our feedback and continuing to roll out the thing that none of us want…

Or maybe the feedback asking for fuller maps was significantly bigger than feedback asking for quieter ones. Probably even more than the feedback asking for empty maps because some computers can’t handle it.

What’s the point in a fuller map, if the Megaserver decides you’re going to one where everyone speaks a language you do not?

You know, like how the different languages of Europe picked out different servers to play on, with people who speak their language?

Only now you might be a Spanish speaker on a map that speaks French, or an English speaker on a German speaking map, or a French person on a map that speaks Lithuanian.

You missed this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Guild-World-Events-Megaservers-WvW/page/5#post3915670

Obviously the language mess isn’t how it was intended to work – they actually stated the opposite.

The concerns being expressed are that ArenaNet continues to roll out Megaservers into new zones without addressing the obvious bugs in the system. Anyone with some common sense should realize that the language issue shouldn’t be happening. But it IS right now and ArenaNet hasn’t responded to the issue, nor are they halting their rollout of the system into new zones. When they announced changes to the rollout plan, the expectation was that they would add the megaserver to those select few locations, gather feedback, and fix errors in the system before then applying it to the rest of the world. What they’ve actually done is continue to add zones to the system before the errors are fixed.

I see your point. I don’t know, however, what the “new” zones are. It was implemented less than 48h ago – how can you tell the initial zones from the newly added ones? Honestly, every zone I was at yesterday had people from every server (I had a lot of fun asking where they were from in map chat actually). If they told me the system had been fully deployed in all maps I would have believed them.

Most importantly, there’s no doubt that they are aware of the issue. Posts about it have been moved here and deleted, so we know they noticed them. I’m sure we’ll see a fix or an announcement sometime soon.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1450-megaserver-status-update/

That post is keeping track of Zones as they’re being added. The ones in bold on the first list were added slightly after the initial implementation. From there on, they (the poster for that thread) are listing newly added ones by “round”.