[Suggestion] Please let us manually change map instance.

[Random Object.1298]

Hi guys! Sorry if this subject's been raised before, but I couldn't find any old threads despite my searches.

 

So. GW1 has a UI drop-down menu allowing players to change map instances in towns and outposts, so that they can hop shards at will to find the various language districts. In GW2, before the advent of megaservers, not being able to manually choose instance wasn't an issue. And then it became one. These days one has to hope to have made enough friends, or to have "guilded up", in order to ask for a party to get taxiid over to whatever shard your pals are in. Granted I'm speaking from a RPer perspective, since we tend to want to cluster together for our hobby to even work. If someone is new, or guildless for whatever reason, they're going to have a hard time even bumping into random RP.

 

What would be superlative is for there to be a new ui element allowing players to manually hop shards in a similar way to that in GW1 rather than the clunky workaround we currently have. I kindly ask Anet to consider spending a little time on such a thing. Any thoughts, fellow forumites?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

If your pals are in another map, why can't you join their party/group/squad and move to their IP?

If you have no pals, what difference does it make? Or, if looking for other RP-players, isn't there a section in the LFG?

 

Before MegaServers, players guested to other maps, so I'm guessing (according to the many posts on the forums), it was an issue. And at that time, there were many choices of instances of maps (one for every World/Server).

 

Remember, Guild Wars districts only applied to Towns/Outposts, and often there was only one choice per Town/Outpost, or at most, 2 (except for major cities during Festivals).

 

I'm not sure it would offer what some expect.

 

Regardless, good luck.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

I've seen instance list integrated in the UI in other games. That would be great help when jumping between maps looking for events and when big squads want to organise on close to empty maps. I'm afraid I know why it never happens though.

[Archranis.2375]

I think a good extension to this suggestion would be to let us know the population of the current map. Many map meta events can't be completed if there aren't enough people in the map to do them, so it's a complete waste of time trying in low-population maps. When things are locked behind map state and meta event completion, I'd rather not waste my time in a map that has no chance of advancing.

[PzTnT.7198]

What it needs is a direct copy of this:

 

Behold the instance selector from star trek online


 

[thehighelder.6983]

i think this would be a great addition, i mean you guys just added chairs, something only Roleplayers would really use, you know we keep you guys going by buying gems for transmutes, hair dye and name changes, as well as the cool outfits, please just though your RP community a bone

[Imperadordf.2687]

> @"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:

> If your pals are in another map, why can't you join their party/group/squad and move to their IP?

> If you have no pals, what difference does it make? Or, if looking for other RP-players, isn't there a section in the LFG?

>

> Before MegaServers, players guested to other maps, so I'm guessing (according to the many posts on the forums), it was an issue. And at that time, there were many choices of instances of maps (one for every World/Server).

>

> Remember, Guild Wars districts only applied to Towns/Outposts, and often there was only one choice per Town/Outpost, or at most, 2 (except for major cities during Festivals).

>

> I'm not sure it would offer what some expect.

>

> Regardless, good luck.

 

I sometimes need to change maps to find if an event is up for example, or when I'm going to lead SW farm but trying to find a map (if there's no other on LFG). I think it would be a good change.

[Pifil.5193]

> @"Random Object.1298" said:

> Hi guys! Sorry if this subject's been raised before, but I couldn't find any old threads despite my searches.

>

> So. GW1 has a UI drop-down menu allowing players to change map instances in towns and outposts, so that they can hop shards at will to find the various language districts. In GW2, before the advent of megaservers, not being able to manually choose instance wasn't an issue. And then it became one. These days one has to hope to have made enough friends, or to have "guilded up", in order to ask for a party to get taxiid over to whatever shard your pals are in. Granted I'm speaking from a RPer perspective, since we tend to want to cluster together for our hobby to even work. If someone is new, or guildless for whatever reason, they're going to have a hard time even bumping into random RP.

>

> What would be superlative is for there to be a new ui element allowing players to manually hop shards in a similar way to that in GW1 rather than the clunky workaround we currently have. I kindly ask Anet to consider spending a little time on such a thing. Any thoughts, fellow forumites?

 

I curious about how this would help a new player bump into RP players? Given that megaserver instances are created and destroyed all the time how would a new player know where the RP players are? Or that they exist at all?

 

I mean, how would they know they're on instance #7, whenever it exists, but if it doesn't exist because they shut it down then they'll be on #8, unless of course, they were on #8 and then #7 was recreated and they didn't swap back to #7.

 

Just having choosable instances doesn't solve that problem. The LFG tool is a lot more useful for finding RP players.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

@Random Object Agreed. Path of Exile has something similar, and it's very helpful. It's a valid suggestion.

[Samuel.4812]

Srsly this. Everyone I want to join a world boss group I have to use a teleport to friend item to get to the groups server, annoying and wasteful and the only way I have found as a newer player.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

> @"Samuel.4812" said:

> Srsly this. Everyone I want to join a world boss group I have to use a teleport to friend item to get to the groups server, annoying and wasteful and the only way I have found as a newer player.

 

If you're in a squad or party with them, you don't have to use Teleport to Friend to join their instance of the map; you can right-click on their name and choose "Join in . . . " as long as you're already in the same map they're in.

[Mea.5491]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> I've seen instance list integrated in the UI in other games.

 

Yup, I'm playing a secondary MMO atm and it has "channels" (same map, different instances).

[Random Object.1298]

> @"Pifil.5193" said:

> I curious about how this would help a new player bump into RP players? Given that megaserver instances are created and destroyed all the time how would a new player know where the RP players are? Or that they exist at all?

>

> I mean, how would they know they're on instance #7, whenever it exists, but if it doesn't exist because they shut it down then they'll be on #8, unless of course, they were on #8 and then #7 was recreated and they didn't swap back to #7.

>

> Just having choosable instances doesn't solve that problem. The LFG tool is a lot more useful for finding RP players.

 

To answer these questions in order:

1; Said new player would be able to hop maps _at will_ until they found a shard with people RPing in it. This also serves to help people find those speaking their own language, rather than the RNG we get currently.

2; Because the menu ui would tell them which shard they're on among all the current open shards.

3; LFG is never used for this from what I've seen. LFG also ignores NA/EU separation, making it cumbersome (though doable) to edit descriptions to denote either server cluster - and one cannot hop across or guest to the other server cluster's instances. The single time i've seen the "fountain of Rurikton" LFG tab used was when I used it. It's empty the rest of the time.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

> @"Random Object.1298" said:

> 3; LFG is never used for this from what I've seen. LFG also ignores NA/EU separation

 

I thought LFG only shows you groups on your region (NA or EU).

[Pifil.5193]

> @"RoseofGilead.8907" said:

> > @"Random Object.1298" said:

> > 3; LFG is never used for this from what I've seen. LFG also ignores NA/EU separation

>

> I thought LFG only shows you groups on your region (NA or EU).

 

Yeah, I believe it does only show groups in your region as you can't join a map from the _other_ region.

 

So a new player won't be bumping into RPers as such, they'll still have to first of all know they exist and seek them out, swapping from map to map asking if there are RPers on this _particular_ instance of this _particular_ map.

 

It seems like the RP section of the LFG system would be a much better way of finding RPers, if people actually used it. Then a person interested in RPing would be able to find a group for their region on the LFG system.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

If RPers don't use the RP tab of the LFG, how is a new players supposed to find them? Is the suggestion to get a list of every map in the game, and start down the list (and every instance of said map, if more than one), and enter it, and call out in Map Chat? How long should they wait for an answer? Sounds like a big time investment for a new player, and a bit daunting.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

> @"Samuel.4812" said:

> Srsly this. Everyone I want to join a world boss group I have to use a teleport to friend item to get to the groups server, annoying and wasteful and the only way I have found as a newer player.

 

Why do you need to teleport to friend.. you can join the grp in lfg or via join request from friends etc and then right click and choose join on instance. If the map is close to cap you will need to keep trying.. if it's already hard capped then it's a case of get in earlier.

 

Teleport to friend for me at least is to get into maps where I have no wp's active to get into the maps/or to get to maybe a jump puzzle or such if I am feeling lazy ):

[Neural.1824]

This would be a nice thing to have, but the potential downside would be the abuse of it for harvesting maps that have all the nodes clustered in one area as they sometimes do.

[Random Object.1298]

> @"Neural.1824" said:

> This would be a nice thing to have, but the potential downside would be the abuse of it for harvesting maps that have all the nodes clustered in one area as they sometimes do.

 

This is a fair consideration, but there's little stopping people doing this already through use of the "join player X in" function should they find themselves in split shards.

[Neural.1824]

> @"Random Object.1298" said:

> > @"Neural.1824" said:

> > This would be a nice thing to have, but the potential downside would be the abuse of it for harvesting maps that have all the nodes clustered in one area as they sometimes do.

>

> This is a fair consideration, but there's little stopping people doing this already through use of the "join player X in" function should they find themselves in split shards.

 

Yes, but with the current set up, you have to be partied with an account in a given shard. Being able to just jump instances would simply make it very fast for people to go through each available instance until they find the one they like best. No friends or secondary accounts needed. It *could* work, and I certainly would use it for that exact reason, but I also think there might be a potential problem with bots being able to do the same thing.

 

I'm not against this. Would love to see it, just not sure there aren't potential problems that need to be worked out first.

[Random Object.1298]

> @"Neural.1824" said:

 

> Yes, but with the current set up, you have to be partied with an account in a given shard. Being able to just jump instances would simply make it very fast for people to go through each available instance until they find the one they like best. No friends or secondary accounts needed. It *could* work, and I certainly would use it for that exact reason, but I also think there might be a potential problem with bots being able to do the same thing.

>

> I'm not against this. Would love to see it, just not sure there aren't potential problems that need to be worked out first.

 

Hmn. What if the ability to hop maps was on a cooldown outside of town instances? Say, half an hour? That's the same cooldown as most regular (non-Rich) gathering nodes.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Random Object.1298" said:

> > @"Neural.1824" said:

> > This would be a nice thing to have, but the potential downside would be the abuse of it for harvesting maps that have all the nodes clustered in one area as they sometimes do.

>

> This is a fair consideration, but there's little stopping people doing this already through use of the "join player X in" function should they find themselves in split shards.

 

The abuse is the lesser of the many problems with the premise itself. At the top of the list, its a grossly inefficient use of resources. Its a server architecture that the game started with, and partitioned out based on multiple criteria with the idea that each would form as their own community....... But that doesn't happen unless you have a critical mass of population that can justify multiple instances on body count alone. Sub-dividing these groups by interest only lead to large numbers of partially filled instances, all of which have a fixed minimal resource cost, regardless of utilization. When the population fell off in the first year, that lead to the eventual decision to restructure into the Mega Server architecture. Mega server operates under the goal of filling instances to boost population interaction; and thus trying to sub-divide them based on exclusionary criteria only results in returning to wasted server resources.

 

An analogy I'm hoping most people can grasps is "having to pay upkeep costs in all game modes, regardless of how much you play each". Right off the bat, people would be lambasting that as 'bad design', forcing players to pay for something they'll never use............ yet a company is required to pay this cost on the off chance 1 or 2 people out of every thousand decides its something they want to do that week, and for some reason demands they isolated from the rest of the game while doing it. If your population is in the ball park of 10 million, that 0.1% fringe community has enough raw numbers to justify allocating a minimal unit of measure (such as a server instance), and would be active enough to fill it. But by the OPs own admission, you'd be hard pressed to find even 100 hardcore RPers in normal circulation; and that has nothing to do with the server architecture itself. They simply don't exist in large enough numbers to stand out and form their own community.

 

 

For small groups that want to do something specific, Mega servers are mildly inconvenient at best. After all, a group of 10 can reasonably fit themselves into the 100-150 player cap of server instances. But with so much of the player base demanding events scale upward properly, and offer bigger, better event chains- having the map filled with people is of much greater importance then trying to randomly fill a server with "the right people'. "The right people" is an unsustainable delusion in an MMO's PUG sector, and always has been better serviced via the game's Guild mechanics and LFG.

[thehighelder.6983]

this is also a prime example of why sharding is detrimental to roleplaying, i tried several different times to get a new shard only to keep ending up on the same one as these trolls, there's only so much you can block/ignore and when your targeted like this then it hurts your enjoyment of the game and makes you wonder why you should keep playing

[Hati.5734]

I really wish RPers would use LFG but the problem is that you can only make parties unless you're a commander so you're going to end up with tiny groups. I try to advertise when places like The Busted Flagon are busy so people can taxi in but nobody checks LFG now.

[MokahTGS.7850]

An instance switching UI is sorely needed for the current meta event setup. RPer's would benefit, but such a system is need for far more players playing the game as intended with the current meta events and new map model that ANet has rolled out.

 

The Labyrinth is a perfect example of why this is needed and would compliment the LFG tool. Right now there are squads of commanders advertising on LFG with particular playstyles. It's pretty difficult to join these commanders however because when you join their squad, more often than not, the instance is full. Forcing you to drop the squad, and look for another group. Rinse and repeat that a dozen times and you get a frustration fest. If I could see how many people are in an instance and how many people until it's capped, this wouldn't be an issue. I'd just check LFG and find two things: A commander that is playing how I like, and an open space in the area.

 

Just give us the data ANet.