[Suggestion] Expansion Players get own subservers

The more I play this game, the more I'm having issues with Expansion Players using their mounts against me to get to things first (ex. killing quest mobs) and it's starting to really ruin the game for me.

Now before anyone comes at me saying that Expansion Players paid money so they deserve the advantage, I too am a paid player. I bought Guild Wars 2 before there were expansions. However, things are very financially tight for me and I'm not going to be able to afford the expansions for a long time.

Back to the issue on hand. The longer I play this game, more often than not I'm doing my own thing, minding my own business, then all of a sudden people with mounts come along and basically take all the mobs away from me because they see that I'm running towards something so they'll quickly active their mount to get to it and kill it on me before I can even reach it. It's getting really frustrating to the point where if I see people with mounts taking my quest objectives, I just stop playing for a while before hopping back on and hoping there won't be any Expansion Players there to ruin my fun.

What I'm suggesting is maybe Expansion Players get their own subservers and if they're grouped with a Base Game player, that player gets temporarily placed in the Expansion Player subserver. I know it's possible to do since the game asks you if you want to move to a more populated subserver when there's little player count on the one you're currently playing on.

Please consider this because I feel the game would be on a more even playing ground if the Expansion Players were put in a different place than Base Game players.

This is one thing I don't like about mounts, it actually separates the player-base in a few ways I don't enjoy. This is especially obvious when you got "daily location events" etc where mount owners:

• Faster, so they get there earlier.
• Mount dismount attacks, doesn't scale very well at low levels and tend to wipe out groups of mobs

This basically makes it very hard for a player without mount to have time to tag mobs for event reward. (which applies as much to players with HOT expansion only, as it does Core or f2p accounts).

Splitting the user-base into "Mounts/No-Mounts" for map-population, is going to cause a few other problems.

• Often separating Veteran and active players from the rest, making it hard for new/fresh f2p accounts ot get help/advice.
• Going to cause problems on most of the "middle range" maps, that doesn't have much population to start with.
• Probably going to make the servers overheating when the world boss train needs to be split up into Mount/No-Mount on each map every 15 minutes.

Now, it would be very problematic to remove mounts etc, but I'd actually like to see the "mount Dismount Attack" removed or otherwise nerfed down to oblivion in core tyria maps. So other players can have the time to get a tag for events etc.

Edit: And while at it, disable mounts in cities!!! Keep my Hoelbrak clean of griffon-poo!!!

just need to nerf mounts engage skill/fix scaling tbh. damage is just too high in lower levels.

I say restrict mounts to pof only same gliding should only work in hot we dont really need them outside the areas of pof and maybe lw4 same gliding

No. Game with expansions makes one whole experience. Everyone should be expected to buy expansions as they are released. Whatever your reason is not to buy expansion is irrelevant and game shouldn't be dumbed down or split between different groups of players based on purchases.

Also, objective reason why this never happen is because servers are soon to be scrapped altogether.

The expansions unlock so much extra content and features that playing without them makes base game look like a demo. If you want to play long term there is no reason why you shouldn't buy them.

Also, it really isn't that big an issue. Just try tagging the next mob, or learn to be quicker at getting hits in.

Separating servers for people that bought the game seems like a tremendous waste of resources. They ultimately want everyone to buy them, taking measures against that seems counterproductive.

(Fixed previous blunder).

What you're doing, is reducing incentive to buy expansions. If you reduce incentive for people to buy an expansion, the company makes less money. If the company makes less money, the company adds less content. If the company adds less content, the playerbase dies off. If the player base dies off, the game dies, too, and everyone at Arenanet is out of a job. I agree it is frustrating when a mounted person gets to something first and kills it before you can even tag it, but that is literally in every single MMO when someone of a higher level/gearscore goes to a lower level place to accomplish something.

I doubt this would happen as the trend is to consolidate players rather than put them on separate servers. Do we have vanilla servers, HOT servers, POF servers, HOT+POF servers? Then what do you do when the next expansions start to hit as the number of server variants will blow up fast.

I have PoF and all the mounts but this bothers me too. I do use mounts in core maps, but not all the time. I like to take my time when playing and indulge my tendency to get distracted, and I often find even the jackal or skimmer (on land) is going too fast for me to get a good look around. I certainly don't want to be rushing ahead to the next objective, blasting the enemies into oblivion and jumping back on a mount to rush off again. So I often get over taken by the people who do exactly that and it can be extremely frustrating, especially when I was on my way to an event.

I agree that something needs to be done about it, but I don't think splitting players by expansion is the right solution (and not just because it wouldn't help me). As other people said it could create issues with already quite empty maps, especially for new players. I really don't want GW2 to be one of those games where you need to play for a few hours before you start meeting other people because they're all in "veteran" maps - whether that's high level maps or copies of the low level ones.

Improving the scaling on the mount attacks so they're not so over-powered would be a great first step and I think that on it's own will make a big difference.

It's harder to know what to do about the speed boost, since that's one of the core features of mounts so slowing them down seems less than ideal for Anet. I think that's one of those things where the change really needs to come from the players side. Like high level players in low level events (who even when down-scaled can usually kill lots of enemies so fast that low level players don't get time to tag them) I think it needs people to remember the impact they can have on other players and those willing to speak up to remind those around them. Sure use a mount to get to an event so you can make sure you get there in time, but once you're there and getting credit you can take your time killing enemies so other people also have time to join in, whether it's because they don't have mounts or they were further away or they're using a waypoint and take longer to load or whatever.

It's not fool-proof of course, event scaling isn't perfect and if there's enough people even auto-attacking can end it quickly. And of course some people simply won't care or believe they somehow have the "right" to events over slower players. But I'm not sure it's a problem that can be fixed by mechanical changes so it may be the only practical option.

@DarthFurby.3970 said:From my understanding you can't even cap without buying the expansion?

???

You can get the cap level (80) without an expansion. Other games increase the cap with expansions but that has never been the case with GW2.

@Menadena.7482 said:

@"DarthFurby.3970" said:From my understanding you can't even cap without buying the expansion?

Before I started playing I was looking at the expansions and read "Max Level Boost" - boost character on account to 80 and didn't realize at the time what that meant. But the misunderstanding stuck I guess that it doesn't meant you can't get to 80 the expansions.

Yea, I know the expansions don't raise level cap, and that is something about gw 2 that is very appealing to me since you don't have to grind out new gear every expansion. I for some reason thought they limited you until you bought the expansion.

@"Danikat.8537" said:

I think it needs people to remember the impact they can have on other players and those willing to speak up to remind those around them.

I will often map-chat request that players not mount-kill during daily events so that everyone has a chance to tag. Most of the time, I see most of the players comply, but there are a few "bad apples" who will mock me for my polite request. Still, it doesn't take much to ask and my experience has shown me that it helps.

Now, for other non-daily events I understand the frustration of the player who is mountless; however, for me I don't see this happen very often.

all we need is a proper scaling for mount attacks, no need to separate the player base because of a bad design/oversight.

Just removing the damage entirely in sub level 80 areas will solve this issue.

Don't reduce the speed or their abilities though.

People actually think that the Anet should nerf the mounts I bought because they cant afford them? I've never heard of a game company punishing the paying customers to cater to the non paying customers before. But hey, strange things happen. If anet does what is asked here, I'll never buy another expansion.

@GwAddict.9746 said:Just removing the damage entirely in sub level 80 areas will solve this issue.

Don't reduce the speed or their abilities though.

But wouldn't reducing the damage of the ability to 0 be tantamount to removing the ability in those areas? What good is an attack that does 0 damage?

@"sorudo.9054" said:all we need is a proper scaling for mount attacks, no need to separate the player base because of a bad design/oversight.

Agreed. Wouldn't this be ultimately better for everyone?The issue is that non-mounted players can't dish out the same initial burst damage, so why not adjust that damage?

I'd be good with something like this:

• Starter zones: dismount does no damage, no crowd control
• L16-30 zones: does just enough damage to tag (a few percent of current)
• L31-50 zones: does "some" damage that is much less than current; add a stun
• L551-60 zones: does about half of current damage; change the 'stun' into a knock down.
• L61-80 zones: same as today's.

(the specifics can be tweaked as appropriate; this is meant to be illustrative)

What's a "quest mob"? There are no quests in this game. In any case, the correct play is to camp the location of spawns so you will always be able to get a hit in. Instead of fruitlessly running back and forth trying to tag every one that appears. The issue I see here is that some players are not learning how to play with their limitations and expecting others to compensate for them. I say that as someone who played on a daily basis without HoT and always had to compete with elite specs and DH traps everywhere.

@DarthFurby.3970 said:

@Menadena.7482 said:

@DarthFurby.3970 said:From my understanding you can't even cap without buying the expansion?

The 80 boost will get you to 80, yes, but you do not need it to get there. I had plenty of level 80 characters before the first expansion and the oldest ones were not boosted at all.

@Menadena.7482 said:

@DarthFurby.3970 said:

@Menadena.7482 said:

@DarthFurby.3970 said:From my understanding you can't even cap without buying the expansion?

Yea, I realize that now, I boosted a few characters as well. But I for some reason didn't delete that assumption from my mind after I should have realized what that line was referring to.

@DarthFurby.3970 said:

@GwAddict.9746 said:Just removing the damage entirely in sub level 80 areas will solve this issue.

Don't reduce the speed or their abilities though.

The second tier of each mount's mastery track adds an effect to their attacks. The raptor draws in enemies, the springer knocks them down, the skimmer heals downed allies, the jackal gives allies a shield and the griffon...actually doesn't have a secondary effect in combat, instead it's dive acts as a speed boost.

Imo, were ANet to change "Daily events in {zone}" to "Daily events in {region}," 60-80% of the problem would go away.

@Danikat.8537 said:

@DarthFurby.3970 said:

@GwAddict.9746 said:Just removing the damage entirely in sub level 80 areas will solve this issue.

Don't reduce the speed or their abilities though.

Yea, I guess. But my point was that their statement seemed a bit of a contradiction.

They said they should reduce that damage to 0, and then went onto to say they shouldn't reduce their abilities. The damage variables are part of the ability, so you can't have one without the other.

After posting I realized they were likely referring to secondary functions of their attacks, but it was already posted.

The daily 5 events on low-level Map X was always a mess since beginning and independent of mounts. Just get rid of it.In all other cases, mob/event strealing doesn't really happen.

@"Menadena.7482" said:The 80 boost will get you to 80, yes, but you do not need it to get there. I had plenty of level 80 characters before the first expansion and the oldest ones were not boosted at all.

Pfft. The first level 80 character I saw in GW2 was 200 hours elapsed wall-clock time after the game first opened in 2012. Someone asked him how long it had taken him, and he said "100 hours". Yes, he had played that character for 100 out of the 200 hours the game had been open at that point.