Guild Wars 2

timmyf.1490:

Not that you’ll like this answer, but it’s prioritization. Exploits get fixed first, but after that, it’s a matter of prioritization.

Right now, priorities seem to be on developing new content and dealing with the China release. Other things are still important, they just aren’t as high of a priority.

I don’t buy that. Even if everyone else is in China, or in jail for tax evasion, or hungover from the Patch after-party, some of the MODs are still here. How hard is it for one of them to simply tell us what is going on instead of letting this fester? Even if their current player base is not their “priority” anymore, it is so easy to type a little something to us. Anything. There is no excuse for not doing so. None.

The total and complete lack of communication is super simple to to remedy. But ZERO response in the Guild Wars 2 Discussion forum for very close to a month now is being downright rude to their customers if nothing else.

The Forum says “Be Heard!” right there at the top when you log in. How do we know we are being heard if nobody replies?

A lot of you are missing a point.
Not everybody has a top of the line computer with decent internet service. We don’t all live in the glorious United States and for some of us the massing of players has made it impossible to function with the agonizingly slow lag issues in WvW, PvE etc. When I bought this game it worked. Now it does not. I care about community a great deal and miss my friends but more importantly I care if I can actually play the game! I’m all for progress as long as it’s good for all. Get it? GOOD FOR ALL.
Now its broke…you broke my game. Now I log in and make coffee and a sandwich while my screen loads. I try to participate. Operative word, TRY.
This is all bs about posting your feedback. If you think they will listen to you then I’m sorry. But I felt I had to put some of you in my picture. This idea you have that it’s people just not liking change is rubbish and it’s not all about those people who like community. For some it’s actually being able to play the game!

Feedback?

Well, after this “Megaserver” thing, I’ve basically quit. Logging in and seeing a bunch of random people isn’t as fun as logging in and seeing the old familiar faces. The new update also brought with it a bunch of goldsellers, which spam constantly with seemingly endless accounts.

So until Arenanet rolls it back to how it used to be, I’ll just find something else to play.

I’d also like to point out that, if you people dislike it, then show it. Stop your gem purchasing, don’t play the game. If Anet sees a drop in one of these departments, they will more eager to listen and actually communicate.

You want feedback? Alright, here’s my piece of wood to feed the flame. ;-)

Whenever I log on, there’s an entirely new set of people around. I’m playing with a bunch of people, I log out, and when I come back after a few minutes, they’re all gone. My favourite faces from the past are nowhere to be seen… the zone chat is full of unknown names. It’s like some cursed invasion of the body snatchers: everybody’s been replaced overnight.

I thought people from the same servers are supposed to be merged together in the same instances? Shouldn’t that be a priority, really?

Q: Devs. is this what you wanted with Mega servers ?..

This is with lowest setting for number of character model limit.- but else all other graphics highest. have OK gear
WB dead in a minute. With the community of 150 random green texts. Players I will never meet again or perhaps I will, who cares or knows?

I dont like megaservers.

I know theres a lot of posts saying how wonderful megaserver is.

Just had a frustrating experience and came to “vent”. I also know there is a guide to constructive feedback do’s and don’ts. Which was kinda long, so ill try and remember points.

What happened:

I was attempting to unlock some traits on my many alts and going for the Lyssa one. Lyssa was up (as there are no timers I can find that work, this was a nice surprise instead of sitting around for ages). Alas was me and 1 person, not enough to do the 3 pre events to drop lyssa’s shields. So I popped over to Cursed shore where there was lots of people doing events and informed them that Lyssa was up. I went back to Lyssa. She was dead..

Short version: I left zone where lyssa was up and in the space of time to load cursed shore, say “lyssa is up if anybody wants” and go back. I got moved to a different zone where lots of people were counting their loot.

How can this be improved:

Stop making a zone’s content, population and timers appear random.

Which game does what you want it to?

Guild wars 2, before megaserver patch.

I liked a lot of things about this patch, the new pvp meta and lack of choice in pve zoning not being on that list. unhappy face

Arrion.2185:

Yes. Let us go back to our individual servers where the lowbie zones are void of life, leaving the new players without anyone to help them when they have questions to ask, and their friends, if any are in the game, are not online to ask. Lets go back to the barren empty cities on the lower population servers, and over crowded maps we get put into queue for, because you want to be a selfish little brat and worry about your own gear.

I personally like the way it is now. And if your guild, provided you have one, is not active almost around the clock, then perhaps you should look into joining a guild that is so you can call on them. It’s not as if the guilds aren’t VERY actively recruiting now.

I have to respectfully disagree with your view on what the game was like before megaservers were introduced.

IMO it was way easier to help new players, way easier to communicate with other players on the map, way easier to get someone to aid you in a quest before MS. It was way more heroic to do some world boss as you were not reduced to a single dot in a 150+ crowd autohitting a boss invisbly hidden in graphic effects while being afk. And my experience is from a lower population server. We had a community then. Now we have anonymous masses of other players I can easily view as NPCs, since I have never seen them before and probably will never again.

I really really don’t like this part of the patch. It killed my fun in open world pve in a way that even the emptiest of all empty maps couldn’t have done.

eleshazar.6902:

What you don’t understand, is that technically every map is now an overflow. Think of the way overflows used to work. Now every map is like that without the standard map existing underneath.

Because when people complained about overflows, Anet took that to mean, get rid of server maps, make all things overflow!!!!

Yeah does seem that way. I just want to be able to get in the newer created ‘overflow’/server

It really does feel like they’ve took a system that was good and ruined it. Yeah it wasn’t perfect but surely it was better than this.

So many different types of groups of people have been affected by this change. Server groups feel they’re lost their community, RP’ers (which I’m not one of) have lost their sense of community (and their town clothes) Boss zerg groupies (lol) complain of low frame rates etc, Europeans have been lumped together even with so many differing languages, waypoints now take two loading screens and people are complaining about overfilled maps, the traits people now feel like it’s more grindy and also the now increased cost of under-80 transmutation. Instead of rolling it out slow as they implied they would, they just (it feels) steamrolled ahead without listening to peoples legitimate grievances.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Hey there, Piken neighbour! I also liked my home server a lot for it being “moderately high” population – enough to make most events which were worth it successful but in most cases not overcrowded and not overflowed (except for LS in peak hours). I could solo some things and zerg some things – but there was a balance for both, especially since I main a mesmer and tagging [invulnerable] mobs in large groups requires extreme timing.

Now I always get mixed in with some random Spanish, French and German players with their filters on and talking about their own business… I do not like feeling like I’m always in EoTM with a zerg from some other countries who do not even care if I’m here or not, if I can tag the mobs or not. It got more lonely than before. And heck, I’m missing some of my favourite world boss neigbours I never talked to but got used to, like that Italian fuchsia sylvari ranger with The Emperor title

Hey, another Pikenese

Yeah, the population seemed good how it was, there was the odd time when there was nobody about to help with an event but that was few and far between. As I mentioned above, I play with my GF, (which helps a lot with champs, Events etc having an extra ‘sword’) but there was always people near by even in the early morning if an event was well too hard for us. There was a real challenge and it was fun, exhilarating even, when only 3, 4 or 5 of you take a champ out by the skin of you tail lol.

If anything with the amount of people now it seems less likely to meet new people, (maybe not, but it seemed that way) as you’re just one of the crowd. With the old system there was plenty of times someone would just tag along with us, or join us while we cause havoc, or even just have a friendly chat.

There’s some people on the forum saying they are seeing more Events they have never seen with the new Mega servers, well sorry but that means you didn’t explore the game enough in the first place. I’ve seen it loads of times, in an event chain, (escort troops to area ‘A’ so then they can assault area ‘B’) people follow the first event, but then leave and not wait for the next event to start. I haven’t seen any new events yet but I guess that’s because I explored more, so if that’s one of the positives of MS it’s only because of their inattention.

Shrug. It is no secret that server mergers can be healthy for an MMO as far population, finding groups, etc. This game is at the stage of lifespan where mergers begin to happen. It’s common.

This is server merging. Unlike other server mergers I’ve experienced, where small, but intact server communities move in together… every server got essentially removed from the game with the exception of wvw.

Instead of a world with increased population consisting of two communities learning about and accepting each other, we get a situation of zones constantly in flux, populated by a random sampling of the entire game population, and no option of even getting to know who is in zone, and no need to.. knowing the next zone will be a totally different random mix anyway.

To my somewhat cynical eye, we just got hit with the biggest de-facto server merging in my MMO experience and they managed to relabel it and call it a “feature”. They merged every server without the bad press of “GW2 announces Server Merges”. Great PR stunt at the expense of server communities. Problem is.. this MegaMerge has produced negative effects far beyond conventional server merges. You dodged one bullet and then the piano landed on you.

I live in a rural MN town of 4000. That is a community. I can drive to Mall of America and be in the middle of more people.. doing the same thing I am, but it is NOT a community. It is a ton of people doing the same thing I am. It is a fun place to go, but it is not a community. Population does not instantly create community.

Merged world zones.. I see positives that require tweaking. I see how some love the idea of every zone being “readypug” able to provide warm bodies to finish events that don’t even need grouping and TBH, no need to even know or care who else is 1 1 1 1 as you 1111 at an HP bag.

Server Communities need a home to go to after the Particle Festivals. Give us our home cities back. Dont wreck server and RP communities totally.

Guilds need adequate measures taken to insure that the Guild Content Anet provided for them is doable and enjoyable in spite of MegaMerge. Give guilds the tools or sort weight to load Guilds into zones as a cohesive group. Don’t wreck Guild community.

Anet.. you encouraged the Super Guilds like TTS, GW2 Community, etc. You built the content that made them happen. Give them Schedules and a method to do what they do, please. Don’t wreck their community.

Anet, you made language preferred servers. Respect the communities that made that choice in good faith. They should be exempt from MegaMerge outside of chosen language.

And I’m done with the topic. Again, blowing away the smoke, all I am seeing is everymmo Relabeled and Reloaded. ANET spends far too much time on some weird crusade to somehow re-invent every aspect of the Genre and not enough time to insure that the Brave New MMO is actually working.

I am no software architect, but I would love if we could feed the system with a set of priorities, something like a checklist to make the sorting more individual

language
RP/non RP
organised Bossevents
Serverpriority
Guildcontent
less populated maps
leveling

I guess that’s not going to happen but one can dream.

timmyf.1490:

Im Mudbone.1437:

That works two ways. In the past 2 years, can you say with a straight face and honest concience that they have(in regards to my underlined part in your statement)?

That’s a really good question and one which every individual needs to answer for himself. Personally, they’ve kept several promises they needed to – not making the gemstore pay-to-win, for example. Regularly updating the game with new features and content. That sort of thing.

There have obviously been disappointments as well. If I were concerned about eSports, I’d find trusting them hard. The PvP community hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves and it’s probably too late. Dungeons have been a major disappointment (but to be fair, they never promised a bunch of new dungeons.)

Personally, the introduction of Ascended gear hurt me the most and has made me hyper-sensitive to any further increase in gear or level. The trust I have in them would quickly vanish if additional levels or an addition gear tier were added.

But I can say with a straight face that, despite some missteps, I think they are actively trying to make this a better game for the vast majority of the playerbase (sometimes at the expense of minority groups like hardcore PvPers and the RP community.)

Thank you, this reply was a breath of fresh air to me and took the fanboi thought of you out of my head and has now earned my respect. KUDOS!

Everyone knows me as a staunch defender of Anet and a purported fanboy. While I disagree with that, and I have in many occasion criticized Anet in the past (i.e. farming nerfs, watchwork pick), this single update is the worst update in the game and I would reckon could go down in history as the worst update in MMO history. Never before have I seen a company decide to go in such a destructive route with complete disregard to community feedback.

Last night was the final straw for me. I put up with megaservers since last week because they didn’t venture into Sparkfly/Bloodtide/Cursed. But they activated megaservers, and it wasn’t pretty.

I have about 4000 hours playing this game since release. 1/4 WvW and the rest farming. I’ve invested $1000 in Anet because I felt they did a pretty good job.

All of that doesn’t matter anymore because megaservers are a pretty BIG deal and it’s not anything close to the previous GW2 controversies, and far bigger of an issue than ascended gear.

Unlike most of the top 1% of the game, I earned my wealth through farming and playing the game, not playing the TP. I farmed metaevents and temples across all servers and pushed temple events in Orr.

Thanks to Megaservers, I can no longer keep track of events, making it impossible for me to pursue events unless I want to dedicate hours of my time in a zone, waiting for a temple to be contested. I don’t even know when it will be contested.

I will no longer be able to do Tequatl properly and efficiently, because now I’m lumped in with leechers and people who decide to range Teq. Wurm is now impossible because the margin of error was pretty low before the patch, and introducing more PUGs doesn’t help either.

TTS and many other organized PvE guilds like Ethereal Guardians on SoR are pretty kittened off about this update. I remember how Anet were so excited with the launches of Tequatl and TTS and how they all worked very hard to figure out strategies.

You think that’s going to be possible now? No. These very same guilds and people who supported Anet and completed their content are no longer being provided the resources and space to do so.

Since I cannot do anything in this game anymore that I consider fun, I can’t bring myself to waste my time and log-in. Until Anet reverses megaservers, or at a minimum, remove them from Temple zones and boss maps, I will be elsewhere.

The only people positively affected by megaservers are people who wish to see zones full and lively and to play with others. You can’t convince me that this is a large enough portion of the playerbase.

Which leads me to believe they did these changes as a cost-saving measure.

I’m not sure I’ve decided that I’m leaving, as of yet, but I do know that this is the worst change they could have possibly made to the game for me personally.

I generally see people falling into two categories here:

1) Those who didn’t have permanent communities before that they felt they belonged to like the change. They didn’t lose anything in this patch because there were no permanent communities that they belonged to that were destroyed. They like the fact that they can play the game with randoms more easily, and they still never have to form a permanent community since every relationship they form in game is gone when they zone.

2) Those who were part of permanent communities that were destroyed with this change. In the spirit of fostering these new “quick and easy” relationships, permanent relationships are very hard to maintain in game. For them the whole reason why they stuck with the game was because of the communities that they were a part of. They normality of seeing the same people, and getting to know them on a deeper level was what kept them in game.

So while the first group is happy because their style of quick and easy relationships has been enhanced, those of us that actually have deep connections with people have been hit hard. I’m not saying one type of gameplay is more valid than the other, but those people that were in the later group have lost any real reason to continue to play this game. And ultimately I feel it was those people that held this game together. Those are usually the people that play more often, and are less likely to play for a month and then decide they really only wanted a “quick and easy” relationship with Guild Wars 2.

So my opinion is this really could have been the move that ArenaNet makes that is remembered as their drowning move. Communities are at the heart of MMOs and they are what make people stay. Anet basically took their greatest asset and destroyed it in the sake of saving some money on server power (and/or beta testing for China).

If they disabled it in major cities and world boss areas, did something about guild missions being trolled, added tags to help sort you for what you’re after RP, Farming, Language etc then I’d be all for it.

As it stands, the patch seems like a giant middle finger to well established communities, at least if they posted and said “Sorry guys, nothings changing.” I could go elsewhere. Personally, it feels like they’re pulling an SWG NGE (a massive patch that aimed to grab more new players than the old it would drive off. It didn’t work.) and getting the game ready for the asian market… I’ll keep wearing my tinfoil hat though until issues are adressed.

I REALLY, REALLY don’t want to find another MMO I was seriously enjoying GW2 until these changes. :/

it definitely killed it for me. It feels like no one knows each other, entire game besides your guild is one giant mindless/ careless zerg. Seriously anet….

My small 5 man guild is on SBI, and I have been very fortunate to be on a server with a great community. Until yesterday. I was unable to get into the same map with the people I have been gaming with since inception. I was put into a Lag infested cluster fudge with rude morons from a lot of different servers. Suffice it to say it was not fun at all. No community feeling AT ALL. What a slap in the face to the servers like SBI that was compromised of mature people having fun and working together for common goals. I had to switch maps to get on the same map with a Guild member.
At my age it is about community and interaction with others. The megaserver idea just wiped that from the game for me.
This should have been enabled for the low end servers that needed help doing the Teq and Wurm runs, or with very low populations, the established servers should have been left alone.

Alright, I’ve only just realized how toxic the community has become with the recent Megaserver change – the situation is bad enough to force me to come here and post my feedback (I don’t hang around much on the forums). First off – I’m from TC (N.A.).

While most of the areas are seemingly more populated with people from different servers, the immediate “trade-off” / observation by me is a spike in antisocial behavior. My guess is that these players were generally isolated to servers that players migrated out of, worse yet, the lack of accountability within a ‘fixed’ community will exacerbate their disregard for others’ playing experience.

There are many issues here, they are not new and were definitely covered by previous posters – but my opinion is that this is game breaking for myself:

I chose to play on a specific server because of its community, now that choice is nullified. I left another server because I found the player base there unfriendly, lo and behold, these people are now unleashed into my playing experience. Furthermore, the community and familiar faces I know have “gone missing” because of the system.

I have even more pity for people in EU having language differences, and from what I’ve heard, no, a language filter is not a FIX.

While we’re at this, I paid a handy (1,600?) gems to get into TC, will you refund this to me? You should refund EVERYONE who has done a server change and paid for it.

Edit: Like many others, I will be watching these forums closely for an official response on this and how they intend to go forward. Until then, I will not login to GW2 as a sign of protest.

Jdawg.4257:

#downwiththemegaservers

This needs to trend, i’ll start

Karizee.8076:

cakesphere.5910:

If server populations were such a problem, why didn’t they just bite the bullet and do server merges?

I know that’s a DIRTY WORD in MMO-land, but honestly the megaservers are killing the game in a way that server merges could never hope to do. Nobody wants to play a game where tagging mobs is impossible, where doing guild missions is like waiting in the queue at the post office, and where I hear nothing but hate speech because someone dared to type to map chat in a language that isn’t english

It wasn’t a server populations problem, it was a map population issue. Some maps just didn’t get that much traffic.

It’s also a way of future proofing the game for when they open new zones this year and the older ones will naturally have less traffic.

For the record I’m loving Megaserver tech. Needs a couple tweaks but it’s a very good change to see a city like Hoelbrak be a bustling metropolis.

Sure, everything is tokyo populated, but what is the point when 90% of the chatter is hateful and I can’t recognize anyone? This might be crazy, but I don’t mind empty mid-level zones as long as the server population itself is healthy. For me, megaservers are not healthy when they destroy server communitites.
It’s not our fault that nobody wants to do anything in some zones. That just means they’re boring. Maybe Anet should make zones worth going back to instead of forcing us into megaservers.

Reporting a major bug with the 15th April update:
It’s been identified and called MegaServer. It breaks the game as we knew it. Please fix/remove it. Thanks.

I fail to see how this is a bad thing

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.

You know we had communities, people chose servers based on what type of players they wanted to play with, servers built up communities, cultures and pride. Then Anet decided to stick everyone together.

You think we are being harsh, unfair, mean to the Devs? Why shouldn’t we be, they are wrecking the game for many people, and why? Just so the China release can go smoother?

I’m a language teacher and do pretty well in four different languages, but this Babylon update only causes confusion and friction between players. We chose a home server for a reason and have spent two years there.
Please rethink this.

I’ve noticed. First time I feel like turning off the general chat. It’s really horrible.

I like some of what’s changed and loathe others.

GOOD STUFF:
Accountwide dyes - didn’t bother collecting dyes because they were too numerous and the idea of gathering+unlocking them PER CHARACTER was abismal. With the ever-increasing costs of some rare dyes that looked really nice and the daunting task of collecting them meant most of them were just written off and I made do with my lucky Ancient Silver drop I got on one of my first U-Dye unlocks. Now all my characters can make use of it and any new dyes I might buy or open.

Skin unlocks - only getting ONE skin and having it FOREVER is good. I still have LS skins that I’ve never used because I didn’t want to use up my one shot in case I changed my mind or some other use for them came along. Only needing to buy one skin from the gem store to have it forever makes the prices more bearable rather than feeling gouged for per-character purchases. I’d actually avoided opening my Legacy heavy armour from the Deluxe upgrade for the same reason. I kind of wanted it on my main but there was an alt that could use it too. And now they both could.

MIXED BAG:
Transmutation costs - much better having a singular currency for them instead of stones for 1-79 and crystals for 1-80. Using crystals to transmute anything less than 80 was a waste and by 80 the stones became worthless to that alt unless they chose <80 gear to equip. So one cost instead of two is better. What lets it down a bit is this now means we transmute a third of what we used to on the way up to 80 forcing a more conservative approach to those who can’t afford it (or coaxing towards a gemstore purchase for those that can). This is counterbalanced by keeping the city reward, in reduced form, and in PvP tracks. The biggest downside is the loss of rune transference. Not so bad at the green level of runes but more of a problem when we get to the higher orange ones. So it’s either insert & destroy old rune/sigil OR salvage, buy new gear, re-insert (and reapply skin if neccessary).

NOT SO SOLID STUFF:
Outfits, helms and tonics, OH MY! - probably my biggest beef with the wardrobe is the loss of my old, freestyle clothing. And at first I thought it was probably better overall until the announcement that the retired parts were being turned into tonics… and this is despite the fact they were all turned into COMPLETE outfits.

Now I got lucky in that one of these actually matches my old casual outfit, the khaki shorts were given the layered vest, but the others got matched up with riding pants and make me look like Toad of Toad Hall. I just don’t get why these had to be tonics. The themed outfits override every armour making everyone look the same so it can’t be about armour/class-identification and having been made into complete outfits it can’t be about “clipping issues”. Unless there’s some future plan to make them outfits and this is a stop-gap measure to avoid missing the release date; it seems to me either short-sighted or uncaring to those who actually purchased them when they were just town clothes and lacked ANY functional usage outside of fluff or RP.

shogei.8015:

Overall I think the update was fantastic. The ability to add and remove trait points on the fly will help tremendously.

That said, I don’t care for the changes to the trait UI. I liked the little drop-down arrow on each of the traits. It made it much quicker and easier to find what I wanted. I think having the locked skills appear in the list to the left and the unlocked appearing in the drop-down would work much better.

Totally agree. The old UI was much better and more intuitive.