Can we choose and change version of map like we can choose and change districts in Gw1?
Will we be able to choose a version of map which we want or will we simply be inserted into the first map that has free places?If not, megaserver is jyst one more mega overflow, is it?
Pls answer me this.
No. Every map instance will be what we currently call “overflow.”
Prepare to do a lot of ferrying if your guild is moving into a popular map — there’s no way the matching algorithm will get it right 100% of the time, so if you have a big guild, there will always be some people who aren’t sent to the same map as everyone else.
Of course this problem will be exacerbated when world bosses are on a schedule as you likely won’t be able to get online for the scheduled appearance of the boss.
4. Real content for WvW. such as new core maps, or changes to the current ones.
I really appreciate the effort that went in to EotM, but it also highlight for me just how amazing the original maps are. They’re just beautiful and elegant. The simplicity allows the focus to be on the WvW and not bouncing noobs off a bridge.
This. Simplicity is far more important than gimmicks and putting features over every square inch of the land. Look at the bloodlust area and EoTM — both have turned out to be massive failures.
No. Servers won’t have their own map instances anymore. They won’t be associated with a particular map instance either (players from one server can be sent to different maps at the whim of the new matching algorithm).
Every map instance will be what’s now called “overflow.”
Anet didn’t think it all the way through so have to slow it down now to make it seem they’re listening. But they’re still going to do it. How “exciting.”
Considering how bad and infrequent the balancing is, top players are never coming back.
Fair point. Just a shame to see my 200 go to waste, even with my using them each time I went into pvp. And thought there would be others thinking the same.
Oh others did think the same. There were massive rage threads in the PvP forum. But Anet basically said that they didn’t care.
The scheduled bosses are so that Anet can predict better when population will increase.. that saves them money on server rental time.
No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.
LOL!! I’ve always seen going FTP as implying impending shutdown as well.
it’s nearly not possible. if it was 100, it could be ok.
It is possible. Read the dulfy’s guide of slayer achievements. People are in a giant farming guild. They upscale one specific event so that 5 would spawn then kill 4 and fail it. The event respawns around every 5 minutes.
One warning here: Anet has banned people for repeatedly purposefully failing events. The instance I’m think of had some economic implications, but perhaps it’s best to be cautious? .. Especially since it’s now known that people do this.
Yeah I bet they will focus on the megaserver thing, but I do think that a little focus will go to pve after all these feature. We saw a lot of thing for pvp and WvW lately. Not that it has been fixed for these two but I still think pve will get some love soon.
Say what? What has been fixed for PvP and WvW? They’re both pretty much in exactly the same terrible shape that they’ve been for the past year (or more).
I did not say the thing were fixed. Lol read what I wrote ‘’Not that is been fixed’’ does not mean that it is fixed.
Oops! Sorry, reading comprehension fail on my part — I thought it said “Now that it has been fixed…”
Why not just do away with stat cominations all together? Create armour with three sockets, one primary and two secondary. Replace stat combinations with runes or gems. Each stat has two gems, a primary and a secondary gem. Socketing any gem of a specific type prevents others of that type being used.
Essentially the same system as now but instead of creating recipes and dozens of acquisition methods (as well as unfairly forcing players who want specific combinations to participate in inflated markets – zealots, sentinals etc) all you have to do is create two gems of every stat and players can customise it themselves.
The system we have now is needlessly restrictive.
I suspect they want to slowly mete out stat combos in order to periodically release them as new and exciting content. Here’s how it’ll work:
- In a few months, we get teasers for “An exciting new stat combo coming soon!”
- Zero information about which stat combo except for “You all really want these stats! We’re really excited about this new combo!”
- A few months later, the 4th most requested combo from this thread is released.
- People are disappointed, but “Maybe next time they’ll release the one we really want! Just be patient!”
- Anet laughs all the way to the bank.
Yeah I bet they will focus on the megaserver thing, but I do think that a little focus will go to pve after all these feature. We saw a lot of thing for pvp and WvW lately. Not that it has been fixed for these two but I still think pve will get some love soon.
Say what? What has been fixed for PvP and WvW? They’re both pretty much in exactly the same terrible shape that they’ve been for the past year (or more).
Make what choice? As far as I know, guesting is not going away yet. If you want to play with another server’s community, just guest away—nothing from the blog post saying megaserver will prohibit you from doing.
Also it will be easier to jump to another instance, as currently you can only jump onto overflow instances, but after the update you can jump to wherever there are people who can ferry you to.
Let’s talk about choice: You choose your home server, you choose your guild, you choose your friends. Algorithm will place you into an instance based on your choices. If the algorithm fails for some kitten reasons, there’s the ferry option.
Of what shard to be on, that choice. Guesting is not going away yet, for the non-megaserver maps, which is kinda irrelevant. At any given time, the algorithm will sort me into one particular shard of that map. That will be based on the things it takes into account. The only way to avoid that is to get a ferry… assuming there happens to be someone you know, who happens to be on a different shard of the same map, who is willing to do that for you. There are other reasons for wanting to leave a shard than to be with someone else: eg. toxic map chat; eg. a big guild is doing missions or a world event and the map is otherwise empty; eg. the players on the map aren’t being helpful for a meta-event you want to do; eg. the players on the map are spoiling your champ farm. Whatever.
And it would literally be as simple as a menu. Have a new icon at the top of the UI for Megaserver – you open it up, and it lists all the available shards of the map you’re on, as well as a bit of data. Even include a “(Recommended)” tag next to the one the algorithm wants you to go to. Eg.
Shard 1: High
Shard 2: Very High (Recommended) [You are here]
Shard 3: Full
Shard 4: High
Shard 5: LowThen you can simply check ‘Go to shard’ and will go into a loading screen for another shard (make it available only out of combat, if you want).
Your idea of a drop down menu is great. But I’d bet Anet does not want you to know how many shards are active at any given time: it’d look bad if there were only one for most maps.
Yeah, but when you hear the words “server merge” your immediate thought is that the game is dying. And doing a “server merge” at the same time when other MMOs are coming out makes it that much worse.
Of course, at this point, we’re all used to Anet’s hype/spin machine but new players and potential new players will be fooled into thinking this is a great new “exciting” feature. (By the way, Anet really needs to learn some synonyms for “exciting.”)
My immediate thoughts are “hey, the hype for the game is slacking off a bit and all the users that bandwagon are gone, time to settle things in”. I see nothing wrong with a server merge for low-user servers. I see it as a great thing in that it brings those specific users more users to play with, actually.
That’s interesting. I wonder if that’s how a lot of MMO vets feel about server merges (this is my first MMO and I’ve always associated server merging with impending doom).
I disagree in the sense that it’s not a guaranteed “problem”, there are role players everywhere, not just TC or PS (clearly a minority, of course), and that I doubt that the official ANet stance is that they don’t care about role players. The needs of the game do come first, but that doesn’t mean this change was intended to violate anyone’s approach to the game (RP or otherwise.)
No one said that the change is inteded to violate people’s approach to the game. The change is to save money on Anet’s part (and to do so without having to say the words “server merge”). RPers getting hurt by the change — which will undoubtably happen — is just a side effect.
But RPers are not a big enough population for Anet to care about. Anet is all about making money. They can probably sacrifice some profit to cater to some of their minority populations (getting some goodwill in return), but that’s not how Anet operates.
RPerss think they are getting hurt. No one is going to be hurt. Role players shall always role-play.
And of course it is a business. But saying that they don’t care about role players due to this change, and only about money, is quite a bit of a stretch.
Oh they will be hurt. Right now they roughly have their own playpen in which to roleplay, without too much trolling. But when you dump them together with the general population, the trolls will inevitably cause a lot of grief.
I wonder if Anet’s planning to sell private map instances for gems. That’s a likely next step.
Just let players take whatever stats they wish with new jewels that each give +X of a stat. Let players decide which jewels they want to put on their gear.
Do this for jewel crafting at level 500 and you also get the grind that’s mandatory in all Anet content.
The entire point of “megaservers” is that they’re merging servers without using the words “server merge” because it has such a bad connotation.
They’re (likely) creating a fix for something that wasn’t broken. Server merges happen to MMOs, no exceptions. The fact that they went so far to mess up so much (likely) trying to skirt the issue is both kitten ing and would be hilarious if it didn’t hurt so much of their userbase.
Yeah, but when you hear the words “server merge” your immediate thought is that the game is dying. And doing a “server merge” at the same time when other MMOs are coming out makes it that much worse.
Of course, at this point, we’re all used to Anet’s hype/spin machine but new players and potential new players will be fooled into thinking this is a great new “exciting” feature. (By the way, Anet really needs to learn some synonyms for “exciting.”)
- PPT stays the same for each match and determines the match winner.
- Winner gets 1 point. The two losers get 0 points.
- Server rankings are determined by the points from #2.
- This removes the reason to fight for 2nd place and encourages the two smaller servers to doubleteam the bigger one.
- …which helps alleviate the population gap between servers.
If condensing instances to save money was the issue, then they could have just merged a few servers and created an underflow for traditionally low pop zones.
The entire point of “megaservers” is that they’re merging servers without using the words “server merge” because it has such a bad connotation.
I wonder if the everything-on-a-schedule is purely so that they can better predict when their server loads will be bigger: having this information almost certainly saves them money in terms of leasing server time.
The whole change reduces the number of instances and saves a lot of computing power, most likely. I am first to admit I am somewhat of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but the motivations behind this disaster might be mostly economical.
Oh the map mergers will definitely save them a ton of money.
But I wonder whether even the scheduled bosses are serving that purpose as well. I’m thinking yes.
I have a bad feeling EotM is foreshadowing what a megaserver will do to WvW. I have so many problems with EotM. I don’t want to fight in big battles with a bunch of random players against a bunch of random players, I want to fight with my server’s guilds against another server’s guilds. When I kill someone roaming I want them to know it was from Fort Aspenwood, not from “green”.
I hope I’m reading too much in to this.
This is almost certainly the direction that they’re moving towards — whether they admit it or not.
I’m disappointed no one’s is “For Ascalon!”
I wonder if the everything-on-a-schedule is purely so that they can better predict when their server loads will be bigger: having this information almost certainly saves them money in terms of leasing server time.
They’ve already said that they don’t care how many you have. You’ll just have to trash them.
At that time we skipped almost all mobs and run through the Dredge Square from the sides.
Perhaps that’s what bugged the event.
That’s not what bugs it. Pretty much everyone skips all the mobs and runs through the sides (in particular, that’s what I did last week).
TL:DR
As a friend pointed out, with this Megaserver being used in the towns, how are servers going to coordinate WvW Zergs without tipping off the other servers?
Though we are both in agreement that the Mystic Forge should be in every city to reduce the lag of the central hub (Lion’s Arch) and give true PvE players a non-laggy area to do Mystic Forgesmith dailies, the entrance to the Mists and WvW/EotM are in Lion’s Arch which gets laggy plus servers use the central hub city to plan WvW strategies since it is logical to plan at the entrances to these areas.
This Megaserver is making it where servers can’t rally players for surprise attacks in WvW.
I’m pretty sure that this would be a problem never entered Anet’s mind at all.
I disagree in the sense that it’s not a guaranteed “problem”, there are role players everywhere, not just TC or PS (clearly a minority, of course), and that I doubt that the official ANet stance is that they don’t care about role players. The needs of the game do come first, but that doesn’t mean this change was intended to violate anyone’s approach to the game (RP or otherwise.)
No one said that the change is inteded to violate people’s approach to the game. The change is to save money on Anet’s part (and to do so without having to say the words “server merge”). RPers getting hurt by the change — which will undoubtably happen — is just a side effect.
But RPers are not a big enough population for Anet to care about. Anet is all about making money. They can probably sacrifice some profit to cater to some of their minority populations (getting some goodwill in return), but that’s not how Anet operates.
Unfortunately, this looks to be the way Anet is moving (despite what they say). They probably learned nothing from the total fail that was EoTM.
What about getting all the stats we have now in Ascended form (Carrion rings, for example) first?
I dont know if this has been asked yet but it’s a 12 page long thread. Will we be able to force ourselves back onto our main server if we want to? If I am on JQ for a boss and I end up on Tarnished Coast for example. Will I be able to say ‘No I don’t wish to be on tarnished coast, I want to be on my main server’ and move myself back to an overflow or something similar.
There won’t be a main server for JQ anymore. The whole point of this is to reduce costs by spawning fewer maps. So instead of 24 guaranteed copies of Timberline Falls, there’ll be only a few (or perhaps even one).
Maybe this will help clarify what this new system will mean.
Example:
Currently~50 players from TC in the map. After map population is capped others go into random overflows.
New System~50 players from TC in the map, as well as 4 players from other servers. After map population is capped (preference given to TC players zoning in) others go into another map. This new map will group players from TC as first priority.As you can see the real change is the 4 additional players from other servers when the map is not full, and that ‘overflows’ will have a greater chance of being mainly consisting of players from the same server.
The whole point of megaservers is to reduce the number of maps that Anet has to spawn. Unless there are only 54 total people on that particular map across all servers, your example won’t be how it happens.
More likely: the 50 TC, 10 NSP, 20 BP, 10 GoM, 10 AR, 20 YB, and 10 CD that are now spread on 7 copies of the same map will all be put into one map of 130 people.
I don’t RP, but I can see how this would be an issue. In the end though, the RP community is not large enough for Anet to really care about.
Hey at least they didn’t megablobserver you together with 2 additional low population servers.
This is coming. For sure. Sooner rather than later.
Does that mean u will get rid of The Homeworlds as they are now in 1 years time?
The way it looks, this is pretty much guaranteed.
It’s pretty clear they’re going to get rid of servers a la EoTM. They just won’t admit it at the moment in order to keep people from jumping ship right now to the new MMOs coming out.
With megaservers rendering servers obsolete in PvE, servers in WvW is going to be unsustainable — people won’t even know what WvW server they’re on.
The failed EoTM is the future of WvW.
every 25% HP.
It’s still in-game, I did it just a week ago — but I believe it’s known that that part bugs out occasionally.
That is kinda how the Megaserver works.
That’s the point. This works more or less like the megaserver, but keeps some continuity with the current system and allows features that players have gotten used to to remain in-game (the ability to see temple statuses, dungeon statuses, WP statuses).
This idea, like the megaserver idea, is basically a server merge without the embarrassing connotations of the words “server merge.”
Hoping Anet releases some information on Map chat with this new megaserver system, because obviously there are issues with coordinating WvW raids via Map chat. They did mention that you’ll be placed into maps with Home Server being taken into consideration, but all it takes is 1 person from another server to overhear WvW plans to ruin a raid.
So, other than complaining about it, what are some solutions? Have a new chat option which is server-based?
There will definitely be people from other servers on any one map — the whole point of this megaserver business is to have fewer maps in order to save money.
In the end, this may kill WvW. Without server identity, we’ll just have what EoTM ended up being: karma train 24/7.
Instead of the “every map is an overflow” system that they’re introducing, Anet could have instead consolidated by having only a few map instances and assigning each server to one of those instances.
So there would be 3 Sparkfly Fen maps (instead of one per server now) and each server is assigned to one of the 3 maps. Contested WP status, dungeon status, etc. would work as they do now.
If the maps become overpopulated, spawn a few more and reassign the servers for all new incoming players. For people who are already on a map, but not their server’s have a “join my server” button.
Some details would have to be ironed out, but I think this might work better than the current megaserver system.
Most importantly, Anet still gets the monetary savings from having fewer instances (which is clearly the real point behind all this megaserver business).
So, with the new ‘megaserver’, say goodbye to this altogether?
I have used this as a legitimate way to make money in-game for over a year now.
gg
I’m guessing anet wants more ppl flipping the TP for gold?It may still be possible. Maps will have less chance to despawn because there will be more players per map after the merge.
That’s distinctly possible. The apps showing the layouts of different servers may no longer be possible though if they are going to be condensed down to a few severs. And it sounds like you don’t be able to select one map that has a good layout but will get whatever map the computer puts you on.
Yeah.. this is the problem.. and I doubt Anet will let us choose a map when there are multiple instances available.
Did you not read that megaserver replaces overflow and overflow maps will not exist anymore?
Every map will be overflow now.
How would harvest nodes be affected by this change? Because I’ve still got lots of deldrimors to make and piles of iron and platinum to collect. I don’t mind going to a map to find the nodes once, but I’d hate to come back with another character 30 seconds later to find I’m in an entirely different instance of the same map.
^^ This is huge for me
Why’s this an issue?
Aren’t node maps the same on all servers?
And, if you come back after 30 seconds on a different character, couldn’t the only outcome possibly be positive, having mode nodes not gathered (if on a different map). There couldn’t possibly be less, just the same, or more.
It’s not the same. If you find the nodes once you can make your own more efficient route the 2nd time there than it would take you to rediscover all nodes location. Orr is the best example I can give you. Currently we rely on gw2nodes to get our daily orichalcum/ancients. The maps are quite large and finding nodes after resets or patch days always takes me 45-60min on average to track down and update locations to gw2nodes. And I harvest on more than one character. I don’t have the luxury of wandering about 4h a day, 1h a char, but once I know a route I can efficiently run all 4 in a little over 1h. Now imagine “megaserver” putting me in an entirely different Orr, with an entirely different layout for harvest nodes, when I log a character, just seconds after logging off the char I just used to track the nodes. It’s beyond frustrating.
Unless they can find a way to make harvest nodes more static across these different instances/dimensions, it’s going to bother to a lot of people who prefer gathering theirs mats instead of buying. The nodes already change at an alarming rate, see https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/What-is-going-on-with-Harvesting-Nodes
With fewer instances of each map there’ll be less chance maps will despawn (I’m guessing maps will still only despawn when every player leaves that map) — so nodes should stay in the same locations longer.
However if there’s no way to choose which “overflow” instance you map to — if there are more than one — you just might end up on a map you’re not familiar with.
So, with the new ‘megaserver’, say goodbye to this altogether?
I have used this as a legitimate way to make money in-game for over a year now.
gg
I’m guessing anet wants more ppl flipping the TP for gold?
It may still be possible. Maps will have less chance to despawn because there will be more players per map after the merge.
- Pro: the act of crafting is pretty much the most unfun part of the game.
- Con: how will people level by crafting then… as leveling is extremely unfun as well.
Will we still be able to buy/sell (on the TP) gemstore skins after the patch?
but SEp1 hardly has any mobs to skip. 1 hour should be impossible unless you die at least 5 times against every single mob.
I’d bet if you have low DPS and try to kill every mob: doing the gate opening part between the first golem and Nokk can take a while.
Shoulda just switched to the district system but with the current server names as district names. That would have kept continuity with the current system but with pretty much all the benefits of this new megaserver system.
Except the primary benefit of this new system, which is Anet saves a lot of money by spawning fewer map instances. This is almost certainly the true reason behind all this. The rest is just spin.
Even if they did implement server merging for WvW (ArenaNet said the implications of megaserver for WvW would be a “long term plan”, so I’m doubtful anything about WvW is in this feature patch) I really doubt they’d do it so poorly that it would kill off WvW guilds. I mean c’mon: They aren’t Square Enix. Even though ArenaNet may take a while, they know what they’re doing.
Actually, the reason people are so worried is that Anet has shown time and again that they don’t know what they’re doing.
I’d bet they didn’t consider at all the implications of no longer being able to ask for help in Lion’s Arch.