Map Closures / "Lack of players" in a map [Merged]

[Valandil.6453]

I know this isn't a recent problem, but it's still an ongoing (and recently, more vigorous) problem, nonetheless. Map closures are a highly contentious issue, especially when you're being shoved out of one map with a decent amount of players still in it, into another with far less. Recently, I've been farming the remaining materials for Legendary Armour in Skywatch and Amnytas, and being pushed from one map to another seems very unnecessary when so many people are still in the map (mostly farming the same stuff with me), and worse still is having that map closure pop-up come up about 8 times in one hour. Sometimes (rarely) it disappears, but when it comes up a lot of people still get misdirected into a less-populated map, and if they're not in a party they can't get back to where they were before with more players.

I really can't see a reason behind this mechanic going off so often, especially when there's supposedly less players in the map (making it activate), but in reality it's above the threshhold. Worse still is if there's a meta happening on that map and the prompt comes up, people will almost automatically want to go to what they think (or what the game is telling them) is a more populated map, but the truth is that it's very likely that map is just being populated and the meta is far more behind than the map they were being pushed out of.

I've noticed this in-game mechanic has become far more aggressive since the latest update (Realm of Dreams). It won't really matter which map you're in (Wizard's Tower, Amnytas, Skywatch, etc.) you'll still get the pop-up even if you're just chilling in the tower working on your armours. Now I can understand if that pop-up comes up after a convergence has just gone active and players leave the map, but there's still a lot of inconsistencies in this mechanic to make it seem like it's 'working as intended'.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

That mechanic isn't so bad in Soto areas because it resets the lesser chests that spawn.

But it's annoying everywhere else.

[Trejgon.9367]

The one main annoyance I find with this op-up is that quite often, when logging into characters, it pops up before I even finish loading (measured by timer passed by the time I do finish loading and cen see it). Same often happens on map transfers, where I go to a new map, and first thing to happen after the loading screen is another pop-up that map is about to close. Once I had situation where right after changing map due to the closure pop-up not even 5 minutes have passed before receiving yet another of those popups, and this repeated for next half hour.

It would be nice if the load balancer selecting people for those instances would prefer putting fresh loaders on instances that are unlikely to give the prompt to leave in some sensible time after joining. (This is highly disruptive especially for chasing achievements of doing all the event chains in the zone, which SotO is full off.

[Zapgrind.2197]

I'm not the expert here, but GW2 is the only MMO to ask me to change map instance. Or keep almost empty map instance in general. Any other MMO shuffels ppl on maps seamlessly or something like that. So I guess the technology for that exists. 

Anet, please implement it.

[Kiki.9450]

Every time this happens to me in WoW, I hate it. I like having the choice in GW2.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

9 minutes ago, Kiki.9450 said:

Every time this happens to me in WoW, I hate it. I like having the choice in GW2.

This. Getting a forced instance swap when I'm in the middle of doing something is one of the things I like least about WoW. 

[Cernoch.8524]

How does it work in WoW? It ports you to different instance without loading?

[Kiki.9450]

47 minutes ago, Cernoch.8524 said:

How does it work in WoW? It ports you to different instance without loading?

Precisely. It seems fine and dandy in theory, but if you're fighting a rare monster or doing an event and you get phased mid-fight, you don't get loot. That rare monster you were camping and it finally spawned? It's not up on your new phase. Back to camping for ... an hour? Two? Who knows. Did it happen mid-event? The events in that game happen at set hours, so now, if the event is finished on the phase you were forced into, you'll have to wait the hour or more until the event starts up again to get credit for the boss kill. And of course the boss has most of the loot. This happened way too much for my liking during their Azerothian Archives event they recently implemented. 😞

There are reasons most WoW players deem its instanced content to be best, and this is one of those reasons. No phasing to deal with.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

49 minutes ago, Cernoch.8524 said:

How does it work in WoW? It ports you to different instance without loading?

Sharding happens when you either join (and sometimes when you leave) a party/raid group that's in the zone you're currently in or when the area you're coming to has recently become overpopulated and had a new shard forced open there. So you can be running up to an herb node or an NPC, and then it'll just poof as you get close because you're suddenly on a new shard. You at least know it's coming when you join a group, but it's not always consistent with leaving a group. And you never really know when a forced shard will happen because it's not clearly marked or anything.

[Kiki.9450]

6 minutes ago, RoseofGilead.8907 said:

Sharding happens when you either join (and sometimes when you leave) a party/raid group that's in the zone you're currently in or when the area you're coming to has recently become overpopulated and had a new shard forced open there. So you can be running up to an herb node or an NPC, and then it'll just poof as you get close because you're suddenly on a new shard. You at least know it's coming when you join a group, but it's not always consistent with leaving a group. And you never really know when a forced shard will happen because it's not clearly marked or anything.

The only time I know 100% I'm about to get phased is if I join or leave a group where the leader is on an RP realm. RP realms are made to kick off non-RP characters when they're out of a group to help keep the RP immersion flowing. Helps keep the trolls (not the race, but jerk players lol) from ruining an RP session.

WoW's got a very particular RP community, and thankfully for them Blizzard has actually supported them where they could over the years.

[Cernoch.8524]

Thank you guys for the answer. That seems much worse to me than what we have in the game now, I will rather have one loading to different instance than this. 

[Danikat.8537]

12 hours ago, RoseofGilead.8907 said:

Sharding happens when you either join (and sometimes when you leave) a party/raid group that's in the zone you're currently in or when the area you're coming to has recently become overpopulated and had a new shard forced open there. So you can be running up to an herb node or an NPC, and then it'll just poof as you get close because you're suddenly on a new shard. You at least know it's coming when you join a group, but it's not always consistent with leaving a group. And you never really know when a forced shard will happen because it's not clearly marked or anything.

Elder Scrolls Online does the same, although I don't think it affects material nodes (or I've just never noticed them changing), but you see it sometimes when you're running up to an area where a quest takes place and suddenly everything will change, with enemies and even structures appearing or disappearing.

That was the main point of it - so you could see areas change as you completed the quests, so it usually doesn't mess them up, but it used to be incredibly annoying if you wanted to play with other people. If one of you had completed a quest and the other hadn't (or if you'd made different choices) they'd just vanish as you got into the area and you had to move out of it to rejoin them. That also meant if you wanted help with a quest you had to find someone who was on the same part you were. It's a lot better now, they removed a lot of the phasing or replaced it with enemies just going neutral instead of disappearing but it's still weird sometimes.

I agree with the people who have said it would be even worse in GW2 because so much of the open-world stuff is events and there's no guarentee they'll be running when you change maps. The pop-ups are irritating sometimes, but I'd much rather have that, and therefore have the option to ignore it, than just get dragged into a new instance whenever the game decides it would be more convenient for the servers.

[Trejgon.9367]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Elder Scrolls Online does the same, although I don't think it affects material nodes (or I've just never noticed them changing), but you see it sometimes when you're running up to an area where a quest takes place and suddenly everything will change, with enemies and even structures appearing or disappearing.

And it tends to be buggy at some points too. At sume point I had the issue, where quest told me to kill a miniboss at particular spot, but as soon as I approached the boss, I was being phased to an intance where it was for some baffling reason already dead, but without pushing story step forward.

In the end to progress that particular story I had to attack the boss from outside the treshold where it'd phase me, and pull it outside of designated area.

[CHI AME.3210]

Can we please make some changes to how maps close? 

I love fishing & I do most of my fishing Crystal Oasis but there's a problem I can't seem to find a solution for... The map closes very frequently & more often then not I get punted onto another map that is also closing resulting it all my fishing stack being lost & having to start from scratch again. 

So ArenaNet please either change fishing stacks to stay applied when swapping map or fix the maps so they don't close so kitten often. 
Thanks!