You have to be, i think (big on conjecture). Even myself, that has weekly server meetings with reps from guilds across the server, can only take into account the server i’m on. Most of them continue to talk about dwindling numbers and lack of participation. While it could just be that people are just not feeling living story, there is also a lot of people that miss the community stuff the megaserver took away. I’ve personally lost a lot of interest in the game and i attribute that to how much of the social aspect is completely gone now. I might be in the minority across the game as a whole, but i can tell you from my sample size, people really don’t enjoy it.
At the end of the day, that’s really all that matters.
And I can tell you from my sample size that people really like it, and that’s what really matters. I don’t see shrinking population. My guild is more active than before. People have come back and they’re enjoying themselves.
We have more people showing up for guild missions (which we mostly run without problem, certainly no more than we had before the mega server), and we have more people just logging in to play other parts of the game.
But the real thing is that new players, players who have never played the game and come in now need to have a retention rate, and I’m pretty sure mega servers will keep the retention rate higher, not lower.
Again 50 pages, and how many posters? 50? 100? How many are posting over and over again (including me). Not everyone who posts is against the mega server anyway in those hundred pages.
We know not only from experience but from as an actual fact that forum users don’t represent the bulk of the player base, pretty much ever. Recently there was a post from a Lotro dev who said that though only 2% of their population raided, they were the most vocal lot on the forums. So they took raids out of their game.
People come to forums TO complain. That’s what they do. There were far far more people complaining about ascended gear than megaservers on the forums and many left the game over it. Anet didn’t change its stance. I still don’t agree with ascended gear, but my point is, this just isn’t the mountain you’re building it up to be.
Yes RPers are hit by this. Some other people are as well. But I’m willing to wager it’s not as big a percentage of the population you think it is.
I think most people would be happy if Anet fixed the mega server, without reverting it.
Yes and Vayne on the pro-megaserver side you account for like 90% of the posts. I’ve only seen people besides you suggesting their experience has improved. And almost all the pro-megaserver people have one “pro” in mind which is that there are more people around.
I personally contend that they have gone too far and now there are too many people around, but that is an area of opinion and debate.
You continuously discount all the other “cons” that people bring up and don’t suggest any ways of fixing those… including the “con” that some people don’t want huge numbers of people around them when doing some things (or all things for some people).
And I suggest that the number of people it affects is much higher than you think. There is no way of knowing it is all conjecture and you seem to be a pro at conjecture.
You seem pretty big on conjecture yourself.
Guild Wars 2 is a different game than many other MMOs, so if you’ve played other MMOs you may find some major differences here….you know, like no quests. lol
Think of a world that’s sort of alive. Things are going on whether you show up or not. You don’t have to go up to a quest giver and get a quest. You see an outpost or town attacked and you jump in to help. You see fires and you pick up a bucket and put it out.
Because of this you don’t go from quest hub to quest hub like in many games. You just wander where you want. You can create a human character and level in any of the other race’s starting areas.
And you don’t have to finish a zone if you don’t want, because you can always come back. Due to downleveling, zones are always relevant. There are often hidden secrets in zones waiting for you to discover.
I’d recommend taking my time leveling (which is pretty fast anyway) and not trying to get to max level in a hurry. The thing is, there’s a linear progression in leveling, so it takes about the same time to get from level 70-71 as it does to get from 20-21.
Anyway welcome to Tyria!
I though some people were banned for the linen farm in Iron Marches.
Hi OP, while I’m generally pro mount and not against most of what you said, I do take an issue with open world housing, for a lot of reasons.
First of all the world is beautiful. It wont’ be as beautiful once people start building in it. If there are a limited number of houses, getting the one you want will be a major problem. With mega servers it’s even worse, since your house would have to be on every server. Remember, servers are created spontaneously as they’re needed So if you have a house, it has to be part of all servers. That means 25 zones, types a max of 150 players.
3750 players get houses. Less if there are no houses in Orr, which there shouldn’t be.
There’s no good way to introduce open world housing in a game with small server population caps.
I’d propose modifying the home instance making the place fully customizable, at least add in an additional building that will act as your house and just add in the doodads you want.
This is definitely more along the lines of what I had in mind.
The solution:
1) Kill the Megaserver, and reinstate individual servers.
2) Give everyone 3 free server transfers per year.snip
Wouldn’t solve my problems, being on a busy server that I happen to like. It would give me the problems back I had before the megaserver.
It’s not a solution.
I’ve been trying to understand you over the last couple of days. We were talking about parties being split etc… you have stated multiple times that these problems existed pre mega server for you, and they still exist post megaserver for all of us. You even stated a while back in this very thread that nothing much has changed for you pre and post. So, heres my question…
Why were these problems pre megaserver a problem for you when it affected you and your server but now that the problem is wide spread and affects all of us, you don’t see it as a problem anymore?
No, I didn’t state not much has changed for me. That’s some perception you seem to have that I don’t. The game has improved for me in many ways.
First of all, I think it’s good if everyone is on an equal footing. So if you’re on TC you’re in a good place, but TC is full and no one can get it on it. So you have to guest…in the old method. TC, Blackgate and JQ were the go to servers. They were the guesting servers.
I’ve often said that an overflow is just a copy of the server and if TC can organize we can organize too. But all the “good” people camped the spots until the could get on the TC server. Once they got on that server, they never left.
When the Marionette fight came out, I spent five days trying to get on my own server. Five days. I was on overflows the entire time. But the feeling and spirit of those overflows wasn’t we can do this. The spirit and feeling on those overflows was kitten . We can’t get into the main server. We had guild people camping out there, trying to get to the main server so they can invite the rest of the guild. This was decidedly unfun. This also happened in escape from Lion’s Arch. It would have happened in the Queen’s Pavillion and Tier 5 servers in Dry Top if the mega server hadn’t come out. The old server system created have and have nots. People who were on X server and people who weren’t.
There were fights in the open world, people yelling at people guesting and telling them to go back to their servers. Decidedly unfun.
Since servers are now put on an equal footing, suddenly you don’t have to guest to TC or Blackgate or JQ to clear content. This is not a bad thing, this is a good thing.
That’s half the story. The other half is I play at all kinds of hours. I’ve been playing a lot more during prime time with my guild, but I’ve had spates of time where I’ve played at night as well. During those times, even on TC, places that aren’t hotspots weren’t populated. The world is a better place with people around. So if you get in over your head in an event, maybe you go down because there’s an extra vet and your heal isn’t recharged, there’s someone around to rez you. Not everyone is only doing meta events, you know.
Which brings us to the point. This game was made to be played with lots of people. Not as many as we have now at the big meta events, but definitely more than we had in the zones before the mega server. It was made to be played with more people because it’s more fun that way. More events spawn. More things go on. More people need help and come to help. That’s a big, big thing, not just for me, but anyone new starting who’s leveling a character. Most of whom couldn’t get on TC. Some of whom never guested.
Do you know there’s a person on this forum (I won’t name them) who refused to guest because they felt that their server should be able to do what TC did, but other people didn’t and they were sort of abandoned because everyone else was guesting. And when they were guesting, what happened? Half of them ended up on overflows anyway.
The mega server is not a perfect solution by any means. It’s a flawed system. I’ve said straight out I think cities shouldn’t be on mega servers for both RPers and to have a place for a server to have some sort of identity and meet up with friends. I think the algoryhm needs work.
But I still see, right now, plenty of people I know in zones. Ask around next time you’re in an overflow, how many people are from your server. You might be surprised.
I think the overflow solves a lot of problems and is better for the game as a whole. I understand there were issues with it. There were issues before too though.
I said it would make as many players happy as possible. Nobody can make everyone happy. But 50 pages of heated argument would seem to indicate the MegaServer isn’t the road to Utopia.
Again 50 pages, and how many posters? 50? 100? How many are posting over and over again (including me). Not everyone who posts is against the mega server anyway in those hundred pages.
We know not only from experience but from as an actual fact that forum users don’t represent the bulk of the player base, pretty much ever. Recently there was a post from a Lotro dev who said that though only 2% of their population raided, they were the most vocal lot on the forums. So they took raids out of their game.
People come to forums TO complain. That’s what they do. There were far far more people complaining about ascended gear than megaservers on the forums and many left the game over it. Anet didn’t change its stance. I still don’t agree with ascended gear, but my point is, this just isn’t the mountain you’re building it up to be.
Yes RPers are hit by this. Some other people are as well. But I’m willing to wager it’s not as big a percentage of the population you think it is.
I think most people would be happy if Anet fixed the mega server, without reverting it.
It’s in the Ready Up Twitch Streams which Anet runs every week. You can find notes from them at dulfy.net.
Hi OP, while I’m generally pro mount and not against most of what you said, I do take an issue with open world housing, for a lot of reasons.
First of all the world is beautiful. It wont’ be as beautiful once people start building in it. If there are a limited number of houses, getting the one you want will be a major problem. With mega servers it’s even worse, since your house would have to be on every server. Remember, servers are created spontaneously as they’re needed So if you have a house, it has to be part of all servers. That means 25 zones, types a max of 150 players.
3750 players get houses. Less if there are no houses in Orr, which there shouldn’t be.
There’s no good way to introduce open world housing in a game with small server population caps.
The commander tag is not a status symbol for the people who understand it. The pugmannders who are tagging on your Eternal Battlegrounds and trying to lead your server to victory in WvW, the servers and communities that regularly organize Wurm and Tequatl, the hardcore WvW guilds who lead 24hr paintrains, the solo commander who is explaining Drytop and trying to rally the map for a T6 run…all these people appreciate and understand the tag more than Anet ever will.
However, closed-minded PvEers and Anet seem to think it is a vanity item.
Sometimes it is though. There are even trolls that use the tag for trolling, and getting others to follow them when they aren’t doing anything. Many times i’ve seen commander tags when the person is just harvesting or doing regular heart tasks.
If Anet was serious about the tags, they would put some restrictions on using them, such as people getting kicked for being idle too long. One example, the commander must be in a squad, engaged in WvW events, or World Boss & Orr pre-events and meta-events. The tags could have some sort of penalty associated with it if it isn’t used properly, such as a 10 min. debuff until they can turn them on again.
Their whole concept doesn’t mean anything though, when anyone can buy it and there isn’t any consequence when using them. So yeah, it’s really a vanity item without any well thought-out process behind it.
What about when my tag is on during guild events. Early every month, my guild gets together and does jumping puzzles for the monthly. There’s usually more than a couple of parties worth. Not everyone has been to every place. So we use the tags to organize that event.
It’s a perfectly legit use for a tag. Now if Anet came out with Guild Tags that only your guild could see on map, I’d have no problem with what you said.
The solution:
1) Kill the Megaserver, and reinstate individual servers.
2) Give everyone 3 free server transfers per year.This restores server loyalty. This restores seeing people you recognize. This restores the ability to see contested/uncontested waypoints, as well as the location dots of party members in other zones.
They need to post much more accurate accounts of how populous each server is. People will be able to freely choose just how crowded they like to feel in their game. If you want lots of people around for zergs and dragon fights, find a high population server. If you want more challenging fights, and peace and quiet, find a low population server. If you change your mind, freely move to the server size of your choice! Everybody wins, and nobody is permanently locked into a choice that may turn out to be what they didn’t want after all.
That’s your simplest route to making as many players happy as possible. Give us free choice, and the ability to change our minds.
Wouldn’t solve my problems, being on a busy server that I happen to like. It would give me the problems back I had before the megaserver.
It’s not a solution.
Oh you Aussies are minority, aren’t you?
I guess you missed the post where I said I play Primetime now, because it’s when my guild plays. An Aussie who plays at US prime time isn’t a minority now, is he?
More of a comment on the suggestion forums…they were closed because it made more sense for suggestions to be placed in the area they pertain to. Plenty of suggestions made by people end up in game.
However this suggestion I’m pretty sure won’t make much of an impact. I agree that if you can’t afford $25 in the middle of the month, particularly knowing these sales come periodically and you can save slowly for them, I’m not sure that making it on the first of the month is better.
Also many people pay rent on the first of the month, and therefore have no money left over for games at that time. Probably more than can’t afford it due to pensions.
Just saying.
The solution:
1) Kill the Megaserver, and reinstate individual servers.
2) Give everyone 3 free server transfers per year.This restores server loyalty. This restores seeing people you recognize. This restores the ability to see contested/uncontested waypoints, as well as the location dots of party members in other zones.
They need to post much more accurate accounts of how populous each server is. People will be able to freely choose just how crowded they like to feel in their game. If you want lots of people around for zergs and dragon fights, find a high population server. If you want more challenging fights, and peace and quiet, find a low population server. If you change your mind, freely move to the server size of your choice! Everybody wins, and nobody is permanently locked into a choice that may turn out to be what they didn’t want after all.
That’s your simplest route to making as many players happy as possible. Give us free choice, and the ability to change our minds.
Wouldn’t solve my problems, being on a busy server that I happen to like. It would give me the problems back I had before the megaserver.
It’s not a solution.
Dear Anet,
Please get your head out of the clouds. This game is not an Esport and will never become one. The vast majority of people play this game for the PvE aspect of the game.
Over 3 million PvE players have been begging you for new ingame armor sets for almost 2 full years. We have gotten none.
Now you are implementing a PvP armor set that can only be obtained by winning tournaments in tPvP mode? There are currently <1000 players who actively participate in tPvP.
3,000,000 > 1000. Please re-evaluate your priorities.
Thank you.
Youre wrong.
The game flopped (as in couldve been a lot bigger) in both PvE and PvP.
- The potential of PVE in this game is relatively limited due to the absense of the holy trinity. Endgame mechanics will remain limited and mini game esque due to this. Think about it like this: who in his right mind refers to GW2 as a game with real decent end game content.
- The potential of PvP however is a lot better. The lack of the holy trinity means a faster and more reaction based playstyle with a lot of focus on movement and rotations, which is ideal for pvp.
The only thing that lacked for pvp where resources and attention from the devs. Seasons, proper ladders, rewards etc.
You have no real evidence that the game could have been a lot bigger if it had the holy trinity. For each person who likes the holy trinity there’s another who can’t stand it. But this is one of the only games that doesn’t have it. If you added it, it would just be one amount dozens of others, rather than one that a niche could find a home in.
Wildstar has a trinity, good combat and good dungeons from all reports, but it’s not doing that well. A lot of people are just tired of the trinity. In any event, the place in this game what would have benefited most from the trinity is probably PvP. But for PvE, it wouldn’t have benefited. It would have been the same circus in every game.
People spamming looking for tank and healer, waiting an hour to do content, and then wiping when they find out the healer they had or the tank they had sucked. No thanks.
Most people don’t do dungeons or instances in most games, they just bang around the open world. You don’t have to believe it, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Rift is mediocre because Trion listened to the wrong people. Listening to your customers assumes they know as much as you do. That’s not always the case.
No, Rift went steadily downhill over a long period of time because it had a number of fundamental problems with its design that ate away at the longevity of the playerbase.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this game has some of that too.
Well I doubt there’s only one reason why Rift went downhill. Some of what you said is true, but the thing is, Trion even in the first place, made assumptions about what most people want, and I think they were completely wrong.
You won’t miss content any more. The First season of the living story is all you’ll miss. You’ll be able to play your personal story and Living Story Season 2 on all your alts as long as all the episodes are unlocked on your account.
You unlock episodes by logging in at least once (and clicking on the thing over your minimap to unlock it) while it’s current.
Season 1 wasn’t meant to be repeated when it was created. They’re looking at ways they might be able to put it into the journal in the future, but it’s a very back burnish project.
Anet does not listen to feedback as much as Trion at least does. I give you evidence of the broken Colossus fractal problem of the disappearing hammer and the myriad of mesmer bugs that continue to plague that class. I just love their response of “it’s too complicated”! If it’s too complicated then either redesign around the cause so it doesn’t happen (like eliminating being able to dodge off with hammer – a simple solution) or get some programmers that know what they are doing. Ever hear of monte-carlo regression tests Anet. If you did that a lot of these new features/bugs wouldn’t be creeping into your patches.
Rift is mediocre because Trion listened to the wrong people. Listening to your customers assumes they know as much as you do. That’s not always the case.
It’s a vanity feature now. Those farmlords with 10 legendary weapons just had the vapors about nothing else to buy. Finally something new for them.
/sarcasm
Horrible idea.
Yep, I agree with this. They should make a new type of tag called a pretentious tag and sell THAT for 300 gold.
the thing is, without the proper and competitive pvp anet promised, gw2 is going to die, sooner than they think. at least me and a lot more people play this game hoping for a competitive scene
I don’t believe Guild Wars 2 would die even if it had no PvP. I think a relatively small percentage of the playerbase PvPs.
Now if the PvP was really good, it might have more players or do better. But I seriously doubt it would die without it.
And my main guild has 150 people and I have probably over a hundred on my friends list. So the server knows to put me with friends. Add some people to your friend’s list.
It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
I probably have 100 people on my friends list too but I never counted… but I don’t see them randomly around either. In fact when I do see someone I know it is sort of shocking since it almost never happens anymore. (It didn’t used to be shocking pre-megaserver)
Not sure how any of this helps… if anything it is only demonstrating (if what you are saying is true) that the megaserver implementation does a very poor job of sorting people for the vast majority and a very good job for a select few.
This is pretty much my experience as well. While it’s slightly better than release, it’s nothing like pre-megaserver. I’m rarely tossed into the same map even with people in my party, especially popular maps.
People have short memories. Popular maps, particularly on TC have always had this problem. If you go back far enough in the forums you’ll see that.
I can’t tell you how many times I ended up on an overflow in the old days, spamming ot get into my own server. There was a difference though. In the old days you could look at your map and it would say overflow.
They really do need to put addresses or numbers on maps, because it would make a huge difference.
I remember them, i really didn’t have a big problem with overflows as they were rare for me and even then i still managed to at least get my party in the same one most of the time. So what they essentially did was make everything an overflow and expect people not to complain? It was a hot button topic then and it still is now. Funny how that works.
I can tell you this much, i play at peak hours, which means i’m constantly competing to get a map spot with my guild, server and even my party. If you play more off-peak hours you’ll likely see more than i do when it comes to who you see in the game and how often you get matched up with the people you want to be matched with. So Oceanic players probably have a more positive experience in general.
I’ve gravitated to playing more peak hours, because that’s when my guild is awake. My peak hours are generally not spent in game these days.
“I haven’t played GW2 in a few years or so…”
“Ah it feels like a few years but I suppose it’s been just one and some months”There is a fairly substantial difference between a few years and a month or two. If it’s been “a few years”, or 2 years since the game is 2 years old then there are substantial changes to the game. I suggest you read the blog posts. However you now say it’s a month or so. So. Season 2 of the Living Story has begun and a new map, Dry Top, is opening up. That’s about it.
I think one and some months means a year and some months.
I think what you’re asking for is usually called an expansion. The real answer is we don’t know if we’ll see it, but I personally suspect we will. However it’s unlikely we’ll see it this year.
There is no debate that the previous system had issues… overflows were a hated thing… My point is comparatively: Mainserver+Overflows+Guesting > Megaserver
Both have issues… Megaservers have MORE issues.
Saying that we aren’t remembering the issues is insulting.
No it’s not insulting. Someone claimed that this stuff didn’t happen before, I’m claiming it did, there were plenty of posts on the forums about it. If you choose to be insulted by that, that’s fine. It’s entirely possible to forget something. I don’t see how that’s insulting. And you know, if you are insulted by it, I apologize. Because it’s not my intent to insult.
But the problems after the mega server are worse for some people. They’re not worse for me. And they’re not worse for other people either.
I’m sure there are people thrilled at having tons of people around to do content with that will never come to a forum.
People have short memories. Popular maps, particularly on TC have always had this problem. If you go back far enough in the forums you’ll see that.
I can’t tell you how many times I ended up on an overflow in the old days, spamming ot get into my own server. There was a difference though. In the old days you could look at your map and it would say overflow.
They really do need to put addresses or numbers on maps, because it would make a huge difference.
I think it is more, people have flawed memories, and yours is no better than ours.
I remember things being better pre-megaserver and a boatload of people do too. If you think it is the same and we are just having problems remembering it… I think you should be considering the fact that perhaps it is your memory that is the issue.
People love to jump on a bandwagon. Complaining happens and people all get emotionally on something and suddenly everything that happens fits that pattern of thought. It’s a very common psychological event, another variation on mob mentality.
You really don’t remember the numerous complaint threads about people not being able to get on their servers and calls to stop guesting? Because I remember them quite clearly.
And my main guild has 150 people and I have probably over a hundred on my friends list. So the server knows to put me with friends. Add some people to your friend’s list.
It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
I probably have 100 people on my friends list too but I never counted… but I don’t see them randomly around either. In fact when I do see someone I know it is sort of shocking since it almost never happens anymore. (It didn’t used to be shocking pre-megaserver)
Not sure how any of this helps… if anything it is only demonstrating (if what you are saying is true) that the megaserver implementation does a very poor job of sorting people for the vast majority and a very good job for a select few.
This is pretty much my experience as well. While it’s slightly better than release, it’s nothing like pre-megaserver. I’m rarely tossed into the same map even with people in my party, especially popular maps.
People have short memories. Popular maps, particularly on TC have always had this problem. If you go back far enough in the forums you’ll see that.
I can’t tell you how many times I ended up on an overflow in the old days, spamming ot get into my own server. There was a difference though. In the old days you could look at your map and it would say overflow.
They really do need to put addresses or numbers on maps, because it would make a huge difference.
Except for guild missions to get people to where you are on a map, or even see if other people are on the same map…can you see my commander tag. Coordinating multiple events in Dry Top. They were pretty good for the Scarlet Invasions too.
Commander Tags help people who don’t know find out where to be. Are you suggesting the only people who don’t know where to be play WvW?
Just curious.
Ive done more than enough Tequatl, Wurm and Guild Missions.
All commander tags do is promote braindead play and prevent learning.
Ive seen people that have done tequatl multiple times yet dont have actually a kitten clue where they have to stand if there is no tag out. Plus new players dont have to ask things either and can go straight to the tags, lowering player communication.
Life sure is easy if you dont have to think for your own and can just follow a tag like glue. But it shouldnt be easy, you have seen the disastrous results of that behavior at the crown pavillion. Nowadays if you dont have tags it is almost impossible to properly manage pugs in a large scale encounter, but they arent needed at all, the average player simply forgot how to think.
If there would never been tags in pve i can assure you it wouldnt be a problem at all and the average skilllevel of the people regarding larce scale encounters would be a lot higherSo yes, i suggest large scale combat to be for people who can think, communicate and learn on their own, aka for “people who know”
And people wonder why more people don’t PvP. This is the reason.
The PvP mindset drives people away, and then wonders why game decisions aren’t made based on them. It’s because less people PvP. Because you’re not encouraging people TO play well.
Different people need different amounts of help.
Probably not… but you keep using how you being on TC was worse in the past and better now. Where I am on the same server and it is considerably worse experience-wise with the same home server for me.
I am in a couple small guilds… the guild with about 12 friends… a storage guild with 3 people… and 2 guilds with approximately 500 for doing guild missions.
And my main guild has 150 people and I have probably over a hundred on my friends list. So the server knows to put me with friends. Add some people to your friend’s list.
It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
Pre mega server I did have to fight with the system to play with my friends. Many people on TC, Blackgate, and JQ had to fight with the system to play with their friends. Didn’t you see the complaint threads on the forums (there were many) about people not being able to play on their home server for days on end because it was full?
It was very frustrating to be on TC back then. And if those three busiest servers all had that problem, that means it was also a widespread problem. It affected a lot of people.
I am on TC and I have to say it is way worse now with megaservers. It did happen, but when it did happen in the past, you queue to be on the main server and go there when you got to the top of the queue. Now you get split up and you are never making it to your friends unless you purposefully join them on whatever mega they ended up on… and if they ended up on multiple different megas… you have to coordinate to get to the same one. It is ridiculous now… and my experience should be the same as yours since I am also on TC.
Do you have the same number of people on your friend’s list. Are you in the same number of guilds. Do you have big guilds?
It all makes a difference to how the server sorts you. Being on the server isn’t the only criteria here.
Which means the cost and processor power requires to run the game stays higher. Part of the reason for the change is that it’s more efficient to run less servers. Your way would create more servers and part of the megaserver architecture is changing the way that works.
They stated that it had little to do with hardware. I’m still of the opinion it had more to do with man-power and keeping things less buggy across multiple servers (once they tacked on China). I have no idea about the architecture. Basic logic says that if you have 50,000 people you need to process, then it really doesn’t matter how many virtual servers you run. This is especially true if a map is empty, it wouldn’t need to be processed at all. I think China continues to “hurt” the game, seeing some of the more recent choices they’ve made.
I also don’t know about this for certain, but i really don’t think as many people guested as you seem to think did. Regardless, they could have just tossed in the algorithm on overflows and improved that experience. It certainly seems like less work.
All in all, best we can do is complain about it, since we really have zero technical knowledge on why they did it to begin with. Assuming it was just to make maps more populated, just doesn’t feel right to me. It just seems completely counter-intuitive when you have a server competitive game mode.
Stuff still gets processed on empty servers. Events happen whether people show up or not. People fight and die and even rez each other. NPCs are like players in some ways.
Nice of you WvW guys to forget about the rest of the game’s population. Commander tags are often used in PvE too. Should we have to WvW to get those?
why should wvw players have to farm gold in pve to get those?
Nope, but the way to get them shouldn’t be WvW only either.
Well that’s what I’ve been saying all along. Years ago, this genre was filled with server pride. That’s what people did. Each server had its own identity. That’s been falling more and more by the wayside as time goes on and more of the FPS generation who’s more used to hot join is joining MMO space. Now the social aspect for many is in their guild.
You keep going on about how megaservers eliminated loneliness and guilds are now the communities… You seem to ignore the fact that guilds are capped at 500 members, limiting the community and people like me are in a small guild of about a dozen people. So by eliminating the server community…. my community has been slashed to almost nothing. To me a bunch of random strangers surrounding me does not eliminate loneliness… quite the opposite it makes me lonely and you think I should be happy about this?
See that’s the thing. I don’t buy the random stranger arguments. Because I’m seeing people I know all the time.
Point 1. People have many alts. Half the time you wouldn’t know be by my characters name anyway unless we happened to be in the same guild and my name would show up in yellow.
Point 2. I’ve asked on the server several times how many people here are on TC in various maps. There’s always a bunch of TC people around.
Point 3. In the past, when we’ve had events and stuff I’ve asked how many people were from TC and we always had a bunch around. But before the mega server we had tons of people from other servers on our server anyway. So what exactly is the difference.
When it was slow there was no one around and thus no community. Not seeing anyone is not better than seeing people I don’t know.
When it’s busy I get the same people I used to get anyway…either on an overflow or on the main server.
But in the old days, on overflows, I’d get less TC people than I do now, from my experience.
This is going back to the marionette days when we had to show up half an hour early and had time to talk. This is waiting for Tequatl or the Wurm now and we have time to talk.
You say you’re on a stranger with a bunch of strangers. I say that hasn’t changed.
Getting to events via waypoint and guild missions is not only convenient. It’s necessary. Let’s say we’re doing a guild bounty. We have X amount of time left. Now everyone has to ride their mount there. We’re all spread out across the zone.
As it stands now we link the closest waypoint, try to wait for everyone in the guild to get there, and then start the attack. But if time is running short, even now we have to start. Without waypoints, more guildies would miss the bounty.
People shout out for help in map chat with a champion. If we have to ride there, we don’t get to help, it’ll be dead. It can happen with way points too and sometimes does. Magnify that by 5 times maybe and that’s what mounts will get you.
In a dynamic game you need a way to get places dynamically. I wouldn’t mind mounts as a cosmetic addition to the game, mind you but not in place of waypoints.
It would destroy the game as it’s played now for a lot of people.
Commander Tag is there for WvWvW. It should’ve been disabled in PvE long, long time ago.
I might add that the price won’t change much. People will still buy it and use as a vanity item.
Commander Tag progress should be done with successful actions, badges and WvWvW voting once a week/month.
I just gave examples of instances in which the commander tag is used in PvE. It is not an exclusively WvW function. Players with this narrow view on it hurt the game because they don’t see the bigger picture and force the devs down the wrong path.
There is zero need for commander tags in tequatl, wurm or any sort of pve instance
Except for guild missions to get people to where you are on a map, or even see if other people are on the same map…can you see my commander tag. Coordinating multiple events in Dry Top. They were pretty good for the Scarlet Invasions too.
Commander Tags help people who don’t know find out where to be. Are you suggesting the only people who don’t know where to be play WvW?
Just curious.
Can someone actually give me a valid argument for why only 4+ commander tags will be reimbursed?
I’ve got three and I would love to know.Because if you bought a commander tag of any color after the update it would be the same exact price as the three you have. In other words an account bound commander tag is worth 300. You spent 300. Thus no refund.
If you had a fourth, then you’d have spent 400 for something that was only worth 300.
A poor argument, easily overturned with “lex retro non agit”.
Waiting for “a sound argument”, preferably from ANet team.
It may be a “poor” argument but it’s clearly the thought process they used. You’ve had the use of those tags for as long as you’ve had them. That’s the benefit to having had them early. You’re not losing out because you didn’t pay more than someone buying it after the update.
If you think Anet is going to come here and answer you…best of luck with that.
Nothing against you, Vayne, but your answer is precisely what I’ve noticed in the thought process of ANet and I thank you for pointing this out. They do not always think something through.
The change of the price and outlook of the price tag is their new invention, hence those that expected ANet to act fair in the past, when buying the commander tags at their then-form, need to be treated with respect and according to the rule of law with regards to their new invention. I.e. if someone bought a product in the past for a given price at the time in a quantity more than one, cannot be harmed in the future because they decided to limit the availability to one per account solely based on the idea that the price will be higher and there will be different colours. The change of the price for higher cannot be an argument working for the past transactions, i.e. no refunds for more >1 and <4 commander tags. It is simple: you cannot take away something from a legitimate buyer under a legitimate transaction without a refund if he does not fulfil a condition ( which in this case is equal or more than 4 commander tags ) just for the sake of satisfying money-demands of ANet.
That’s precisely what “lex retro non agit” means.
I hope they think it through one more time.
PS And, de facto and de iure, you are losing out, Vayne, because you had 3 instead of what you are given now, 1, without legitimate reimbursement which is unjustly denied against “lex retro non agit”.
Except that a commander tag isn’t a physical product. It’s a virtual product in a game which you paid for in in game gold and got to use for a period of time. I have two commander tags myself and suspect that I’ll just have to eat one of them. I’m not particularly happy about it, but then I’ve had those tags for a long time. I’ve used them for that time.
Maybe if you’ve only just bought the second tag, I can see the point, but if you’ve had it for a year or so, I’m not sure how entitled you are to a refund on it. I’m not sure any law in any state would require someone to refund you a year out if they change their pricing structure.
Can someone actually give me a valid argument for why only 4+ commander tags will be reimbursed?
I’ve got three and I would love to know.Because if you bought a commander tag of any color after the update it would be the same exact price as the three you have. In other words an account bound commander tag is worth 300. You spent 300. Thus no refund.
If you had a fourth, then you’d have spent 400 for something that was only worth 300.
A poor argument, easily overturned with “lex retro non agit”.
Waiting for “a sound argument”, preferably from ANet team.
It may be a “poor” argument but it’s clearly the thought process they used. You’ve had the use of those tags for as long as you’ve had them. That’s the benefit to having had them early. You’re not losing out because you didn’t pay more than someone buying it after the update.
If you think Anet is going to come here and answer you…best of luck with that.
Can someone actually give me a valid argument for why only 4+ commander tags will be reimbursed?
I’ve got three and I would love to know.
Because if you bought a commander tag of any color after the update it would be the same exact price as the three you have. In other words an account bound commander tag is worth 300. You spent 300. Thus no refund.
If you had a fourth, then you’d have spent 400 for something that was only worth 300.
Nice of you WvW guys to forget about the rest of the game’s population. Commander tags are often used in PvE too. Should we have to WvW to get those?
I’m really surprised that Wildstar didn’t do better than it did.
People complaining about pvp-exclusive armor are forgetting about legendary weapons.
Won’t be PvE-exclusive in the future. They announced that they were working on a way to earn legendaries in pvp.
Fractal weapons are PvE exclusive though.
This will be another fine decision brought to you by Cristin Cox, inventor of the Cox Box®™
These things will continue to crop up, there are two ways to create a change:1. Show polite displeasure prior to release.
2. Do not purchase these items with RL money.The first shows we do care, but calling names and stamping feet does nothing to change minds.
The second continues to show that Ms. Cox is making poor choices as in her position of monetization lead. Which might lead to a change. This might be good, might be bad.
Here’s Ms. Coxes Linkedin page, so you can get a better idea who she is and where she’s been.
I’d be real careful about naming employees in any negative manner. Do we know for a fact she’s behind this specific decision? Are we guessing? This kind of witch hunt is ill advised.
Attack the problem sure. But singling out employees won’t end well. Ask Trahearne.
… that would have taken everyone off their servers where they were happy with less people and put them with more people
But isn’t that exactly what the Megaserver did? With the added benefit of making sure that even their language choice wasn’t taken into account.
Sorry I’m on a US server. I can’t possibly comment on what’s going on on European servers. But I can say an underflow server would NOT have solved the problem many were having on high pop servers. That is, with everyone guesting over…take the marionette. I couldn’t get onto TC for the first five days of the patch. Five days not being able to get on my own home server. Why? It wasn’t just TC people on there.
This solves the problem. Let’s say I don’t get on the main TC servers. Many fo the TC people and guildies get on the same server at least. This is better than it was. This is a solution for people.
And I don’t see anyone else bringing up solutions that would be better or more equitable, even though I think the mega server could do with some changes.
This would have been solved if they implemented the megaserver algorythm on overflows and left the home servers alone. There would still be a home server to aim for, with all the community aspects of home servers, but there would also be overflows that (supposedly) take your server, guild and friendlist into consideration as you are sorted if the home server is full.
I would prefer to have a system like that. As for underflows and empty maps, upon entering a desolate (home server based) map, the client could give a pop-up telling you that this map has X number of players on it, and that some content might be too hard with such low number, then present the choice to port to a megaserver version of the same map. Just like how “You are in an overflow map, would you like to queue to the home server map?” popups back in the days, just the other way around.
Which means the cost and processor power requires to run the game stays higher. Part of the reason for the change is that it’s more efficient to run less servers. Your way would create more servers and part of the megaserver architecture is changing the way that works.
Before megaservers, you couldn’t be in your main server’s map.
After megaserver, you can’t be in your main server’s map.
Nice improvement.
No before mega servers I was RANDOMLY thrown on overflows. Now I’m placed on overflows with others from my server and my guild and my friends list. I don’t know about you but I’m often running into people I recognize. That didn’t happen often on other overflows in the past.
This is… oddly specific.
I’m gonna go with dragons.
A Spontaneous idea i had during chit chat on an IRC channel
it started with the kitten why is this new enemy boss another dragonYou do realise there’s a large and angry dragon underground don’t you?
your talking lore right?
or did i somehow miss something..
I believe he’s referring to Primordus the dragon the drove the Asura to the surface.
Well we know what happened to them. They raised us, decided we were ready and left us to fend for ourselves…as per Nightfall anyway.
Be great for Asura, Sylvari and humans. Last time I checked, the camera for Charr and Norn would make this area quite annoying.
Well yeah, the whole use of the word dead is pure hyperbole. City of Heroes is a dead game…because they shut down the servers. That’s what makes games dead. You could say a game is past it’s prime or you could say a game is not receiving updates or it’s in maintenance mode, but that’s clearly not the case with Guild Wars 2 either.
I dunno why people would actively want this game to be dead as well. I mean, I may hate some of the content that they’ve released, but as a B2P game, I still want it to be around for a long time and receive constant updates.
People want the game to be dead because they feel betrayed by the changes, which is fair enough. They’re angry. The game isn’t want they wanted it to be. And they’re so vested in that desire that they want the company to crash and burn, because the company is making a game they don’t like that they desperately wanted to like.
The problem is, they have trouble acknowledging that people who like it can be intelligent and thoughtful and having fun. Because we don’t see their obvious point of view, we must all be blind fan boys.
It’s pretty much human nature. We stopped fighting over physical territory and now we fight over ideological territory. Instead of hurling feces we hurl words at each other. It’s all basic primate behavior.
Well yeah, the whole use of the word dead is pure hyperbole. City of Heroes is a dead game…because they shut down the servers. That’s what makes games dead. You could say a game is past it’s prime or you could say a game is not receiving updates or it’s in maintenance mode, but that’s clearly not the case with Guild Wars 2 either.
… that would have taken everyone off their servers where they were happy with less people and put them with more people
But isn’t that exactly what the Megaserver did? With the added benefit of making sure that even their language choice wasn’t taken into account.
Sorry I’m on a US server. I can’t possibly comment on what’s going on on European servers. But I can say an underflow server would NOT have solved the problem many were having on high pop servers. That is, with everyone guesting over…take the marionette. I couldn’t get onto TC for the first five days of the patch. Five days not being able to get on my own home server. Why? It wasn’t just TC people on there.
This solves the problem. Let’s say I don’t get on the main TC servers. Many fo the TC people and guildies get on the same server at least. This is better than it was. This is a solution for people.
And I don’t see anyone else bringing up solutions that would be better or more equitable, even though I think the mega server could do with some changes.
No worse than Fractal weapons are to PvPers.