Map - Closing Broken

[Quirin.1076]

This continues to be a problem and still frustrating that it still is occurring.   When your "Map Population" drops below a value the map tells you that you have to transfer in 1 hour of the notice.  If you do not change map it forces you at the end of that hour.   99.9% of the time it transfers you to a map that no one is doing anything but either farming HP's doing Bounties, they are not doing anything to progress the level of the meta or clearing anything to progress the meta of the map.   It will also take you to maps such as Frostgorge Sound to a map that has not done Claw of Jormag so the vendor that was there on the previous map is not there on the new map.

Just add a little line of code to look at the map progress as well as the map population, then the map with the greater progress you move those other players to that map.  It is lame when you spend time leveling a map meta and it simply kicks you to a map that has done none

For those trolling with confused emoji
Map Closing < Broken > needs > Fixing  > Should not move you to a map with less meta progress than current map it is closing.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Quirin.1076

[Illya.9683]

I have encountered this problem a lot too.

Full squad was doing the dragons end meta on a map with all zones at high readiness, yet with like 10 minutes to the start of the escorts it tells us the map is empty and will be closing.

We were halfway through the SooWong fight and would have killed her had the map not kicked us all to an empty one.

[Phenix Flyer.6724]

I just had a full Dragons End meta close mid boss battle WITH 50 in squad, all kicked to a non meta map. It is unbelievable that this mechanic doesn't check map population or meta progression before closure. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

For Dragon's End, this happens specifically because they lowered the map's player limit, but didn't adjust the check. It still tests if the map is empty going by the normal player limit from a map like Dragon's Stand.

 

The player caps and map closing in End of Dragons is all a big mess.

[Quirin.1076]

The map closing also takes away your fishing buff that you build up over time in order to catch the legendary fish for the achievements.

[Silent.6137]

On 1/2/2023 at 6:47 PM, Illya.9683 said:

Full squad was doing the dragons end meta on a map with all zones at high readiness, yet with like 10 minutes to the start of the escorts it tells us the map is empty and will be closing.

We were halfway through the SooWong fight and would have killed her had the map not kicked us all to an empty one.

A little confused here. Map will not close for an hour after the timer starts. Maximum Escort time is 40 minutes. Maximum Soo-Won Fight is 20 mins. Although that's 1 hr plus the 10 minutes before Escort starts, to be kicked off map will means that everything is taking the maximum time. To max out escort time on a successful run is very unusual. Would you have killed Soo-Won in time if the map was not closing? How many % and how much time was left? Also, although map was in high readiness (I assume), why didn't the squad switch map just to be safe? Enhancement is great but not necessary to win the fight. Many squads do not bother with it.

Btw, not arguing that the map closure needs fixing.

------

There's definitely a real need to re-visit map closures and fix some of the problems. What's the minimum number of players on the map before it is triggered? Is there a scheduled closure after a certain number of hours? Although it does occur frequently when players join a closing map and the closure is ended, why doesn't it always work? If map population is beyond a certain threshold, then there should be an automatic stopping to the closures.

Bjora is especially susceptible to map closures because it's separated into 2 areas. When either the East or West has a meta, and practically everyone is on one side, often you'll get a pop-up. Those who tag up for the metas often ignores it because it usually goes away. A sure way to check is to send someone in squad to another map before the meta starts and try to rejoin. Usually, if it's closing, the player can't rejoin on same map. That's when we'll mass migrate.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Silent.6137

[GroteDwerg.4752]

I want to point out that the map closing mechanism is a annoying and frustrating at times.

 

Some examples from my recent HoT adventure:

 

- It's hard to complete a meta event chain since it most of the time it gets interrupted by map closing . Right now I want to do the full meta chain of an outpost in Tangled Depths. So I waited for the whole event chain to reset and I went to the outpost. I got a message that my map is closing so I went to new map. But in that map, the outpost already advanced to meta event 3 of the chain while when I left the previous map, it was event 1. In other words, I have to wait 2 hours again for the whole meta event to reset so I can get achievement.

- Another example is that if you complete a full meta event and switch map, you don't get the final rewards. So it's better to wait first to get reward of full meta event (kill night bosses etc in Verdant Brink) and then switch map.

 

I even had it happen once that a map closed. I go to new map. Within 10 seconds of arriving in the new map, I get another pop-up that the map was closing. This feels like there is something wrong with the algorithm behind map closing.

Finally, I once ignored a map closing pop-up. And after a while it dissapeared and started to populate the map that was "closing". So the game told me the map was closing in an hour, but eventually I was never kicked out and I guess the game let people join the map that was suppose to be closing?  It feels so random and unpredictable.

Edited March 4, 2023 by GroteDwerg.4752

[Kozumi.5816]

This is still bugged as of 7-2-2023

This is a game ruining bug.

Fix your game instead of releasing a new expansion.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Kozumi.5816

[NitricRose.1863]

2023-7-8: Still bugged.

Today, I have been joining squads attempting to do the dragon's end meta.   Despite having close to 50 people on the map, the map pops up warning messages about low population, and closes the map despite having a current high population.

This is definitely broken and needs a fix soonest.

[Quirin.1076]

Blazeridge Steppes or Iron Marches get into an endless loop crash to character screen for map closes.    It will prompt you to move to a new map, then crash to the character screen when you click to do so.  When you go back to that same character on the same map it will prompt you to move to a new map.   

It typically happens for Guild Missions for bounties or it will happen when waiting for Ley-Line Anomaly.  Some will test the water to see if there is a new map or if it is fake.  It is super rare it is a new map.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Quirin.1076

[FinnishCoffee.8045]

On 1/3/2023 at 3:51 AM, Phenix Flyer.6724 said:

I just had a full Dragons End meta close mid boss battle WITH 50 in squad, all kicked to a non meta map. It is unbelievable that this mechanic doesn't check map population or meta progression before closure. 

It is now August 9, 2023 and the next DLC is just around the corner and this absolutely IDIOTIC mapswap mechanic is still completely messed up!

I was just now doing the very same Dragons End meta with a large amount of players and I was also thrown out of the map just before we got to the final fight.
From a 30 something players map, mid-event, to a completely empty map with no one else around and the work put in to the event wiped since this "new" map was idle.
Seriously Anet! Take that stupid mapswap thing away or at the very least make sure that if a player klicks "delay" and the map fills up while that hour is ticking, like it did now in that event, just CANCEL the dang pending mapswap already when the map no longer is empty.
I had same problem many times while doing the storyline in some very small and rarely ever visited maps like Grothmar Valley, Crystal Desert and Domain of Istan.
All the time thrown off into a "new" map just as empty as the previous one but with all the mobs respawned of course so I had the hardest time getting things done.

Edited August 9, 2023 by FinnishCoffee.8045
typos

[ShadowInTheVoid.9183]

To be fair, they could just up the map close timer to 2 hours. That would prevent issues from meta's

I still want to see a fix so fishing buffs carry over too though, that one ruins fishing for me

[NitricRose.1863]

I think there are two situations where a map will be marked as closing.

a) The server needs to be rebooted, or the map is bugged and needs to be shut down.

In this case, a hard time limit would be fine.  The communication with the players on the map should indicate that this is a forced map shutdown, and they must leave.

b) The map population has gone down, and there's no good reason to keep the map open any more.

This should be dynamic.  If the map population goes back up, the map should not be closed.

The other problem I see is that when a map is closed, and I accept the "move me now", I get kicked to another map which is closing, and again, and again.    When a player is moved from a closing map, the player should be moved to the map with the highest population, never another map that is closing.   Likewise, when a player enters a map, the player should not be placed into a closing map (the game does this to me quite often).  Again, place the player in a map with a high population.

[Teknomancer.4895]

19 minutes ago, NitricRose.1863 said:

The other problem I see is that when a map is closed, and I accept the "move me now", I get kicked to another map which is closing, and again, and again.    When a player is moved from a closing map, the player should be moved to the map with the highest population, never another map that is closing.   Likewise, when a player enters a map, the player should not be placed into a closing map (the game does this to me quite often).  Again, place the player in a map with a high population.

This happens far too often and you're right, it really should better prioritize where it sends volunteers. Getting dumped into a series of map implosions is not in any way fun.

[thrag.9740]

Yup still a problem in dragon's end, as others have said above

[Night Winde.2693]

On 8/9/2023 at 11:42 AM, NitricRose.1863 said:

The other problem I see is that when a map is closed, and I accept the "move me now", I get kicked to another map which is closing, and again, and again.    When a player is moved from a closing map, the player should be moved to the map with the highest population, never another map that is closing.

Oh yes, this has happened to many of us more times than we can count.  You get the volunteer option and accept it only to end up on a map that asks you to volunteer to leave again within minutes of having gotten to the "new" map.

When I was doing the fishing achievements for Cod Swimming Amongst Mere Minnows every time I would get that prompt to volunteer to change maps I would think to myself  "I know this map has a low population, it's why I'm here."

This "feature" may have some benefits but in general it's been a pain in the butt for the players ever since they implemented it. 

[Shiyo.3578]

I've been doing Seitsung metas for a few weeks now and the map closes every single day with 35+ people in the squad on the map.

This is bugged.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

I remember when Anet changed the system to what they called the megaserver (because people refused to do events on overflow and the QQ reached nuclear levels during the attack on LA) people then started complaining they could never join their friends since maps were always full.

After enough people complained about that I have a feeling (anecdotal evidence here) Anet solution was to run these maps at a lower capacity, so at any time you wouldn't have a problem porting in of even getting a small squad in there, and since people stopped complaining, they left it at that.

Only recently with the queue for PvE did Anet mention that this part of the code hasn't been touched since mid 2010s my guess is because this approach of running all these shards at low capacity we end up with an excessive amount of them just so there is always room for a sizable number of players to get on.

I've seen with my wife we're in the same map, we get the low population warning we press change and the system puts us in different maps that also have the low population warning, only for us to click that too and once again be placed on different maps. Before anyone comments "must be meta that ended" this was in Ember Bay earlier this year, there was nothing special going on at the time, just a dead map as ever, this sort of thing happens fairly frequently hence why I'm convinced the system is tuned to run an unnecessary amount of shards at low capacity, since so often we teleport to a map on the same party and we land on different shards both of which with low population, as if the system is struggling to fill these up instead of congregating all the players in just one.