We Need Another Server Merger - Especially with the coming PvP Matchmaking Changes

[IoNonSoEVero]

It's going to improve the condition a lot, since nobody wants to sit on fleet for so long to get a group instead of just put message in the GF and do whatever they want.

 

To save this game, we need more new content and revamp the old ones to fit the player base better.

 

But you don't have to sit on the fleet. You can put your request into the GF where ever you are, and then shuttle over to the flashpoint or whatnot when it pops. You can specify the content you want to do with flashpoints (not sure about Ops) and the devs have already said that they will not be making a tool to let PvP people choose, so that is out.

 

There are a lot of ways for people to find groups that don't involve sitting around on fleet, too. Joining a guild. Asking around on message boards for people who want to get together and run content. Asking people on the planet where the content is.

 

I'm not sure what they could do to the GF to make it any easier than that. Many people in this game don't use the random GF or LFG messages at all, either because they don't like playing with strangers, don't like group content or choose to only play with friends.

 

But IMHO people are walking away because there is nothing new and repeatable to play that appeals to them. Bringing back regular content, making all FPs soloable, adding regular things for other play styles, would likely go much further than tweaking the GF.

[Slowpokeking]

But you don't have to sit on the fleet. You can put your request into the GF where ever you are, and then shuttle over to the flashpoint or whatnot when it pops. You can specify the content you want to do with flashpoints (not sure about Ops) and the devs have already said that they will not be making a tool to let PvP people choose, so that is out.

 

There are a lot of ways for people to find groups that don't involve sitting around on fleet, too. Joining a guild. Asking around on message boards for people who want to get together and run content. Asking people on the planet where the content is.

 

I'm not sure what they could do to the GF to make it any easier than that. Many people in this game don't use the random GF or LFG messages at all, either because they don't like playing with strangers, don't like group content or choose to only play with friends.

 

But IMHO people are walking away because there is nothing new and repeatable to play that appeals to them. Bringing back regular content, making all FPs soloable, adding regular things for other play styles, would likely go much further than tweaking the GF.

 

I want to group up with ppl for heroics, no option in GF.

I want to group up with ppl for WB, no option in GF.

I want to group up with ppl for special quests, no option in GF.

 

These are not hard, even easier than HM FP, but we don't have the option to do so. Also current GF doesn't work with ops well.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Slowpokeking

[IoNonSoEVero]

I want to group up with ppl for heroics, no option in GF.

I want to group up with ppl for WB, no option in GF.

I want to group up with ppl for special quests, no option in GF.

 

These are not hard, even easier than HM FP, but we don't habe the option to do so.

 

But would most people even be interested in this? Heroics are easy enough that you don't need to group, and from what has been said on the board before, most people reject group invites for them. I know I do. I don't know that many people would even put themselves in a GF for that.

 

But for those, I've seen people extending invites by the terminals or in the area where you can pick up the heroics on Odessen.

 

The special events like the Gree and rakghouls, same thing - those quests can be done alone and that's how most seem to do them. But for the Op and Heroics there, it seems like there are enough people in the area that you might find people there to go out with.

 

But a lot of players just don't like grouping and especially don't like grouping with strangers, and all the tools in the world won't change that. Nor will it make players appear if there's no content for them to do.

Edited June 14, 2018 by IoNonSoEVero

[TUXs]

With the trickle of content release down to a drip-drip its no wonder.

 

Releasing 1 op boss every few months and a new chapter every 5-6 months is not gonna keep populations healthy.

 

A lot of my friends are gone. All my guilds are gone. - I've referred about 10 people and there was a big merge last year.....so....

 

- Any problems with populations and the knock on effect of slow/poor matchmaking and keeping WZ popping and GF active is on BioWare.

 

They (BW) went to monthly chapters and galactic command, new conquest and such and took ages trying to get them right while their players told them it was a bad idea before giving up and hemorrhaging away.

This is the bottom line...there's just not enough being done to even maintain the players we have.

[TrixxieTriss]

Well it would actually make sense as both servers are located in the same room. The different servers serve no purpose other than to split the playerbase up.

 

They can always milk transfers but I doubt they make enough off them to make it worthwhile.

 

You can expect that those servers are under a lease and won’t be merged until those leases are finished. Even if one server becomes dead, they won’t merge until the lease is up. They’ll probably just reduce the price of transfers again so they can milk it till they can merge.

 

One server at the last merge would have been the better long term solution.

[TrixxieTriss]

I do not want another server merge. Mainly for the reason that I transferred off of that toxic cess pool of a server Satele Shan for a reason. I don't want those people on Star Forge

 

You know half of them have Alts on both servers

[TrixxieTriss]

Instead of server merge, all queues should be cross server (for servers in same region). Maybe excluding ranked. Uprisings, Ops, Flashpoints, GSF, Warzones - all should be cross server.

 

People have wanted cross server for years, and even though we knew it was totally possible, we were led to believe it was impossible. Then the leading MMO added it. So now we cannot be lazy and just say because it is not possible.

 

Cross server queues you get a much larger match-making sample of queued players and much faster pops without negative issues of a merge like server load.

 

Why would you exclude Ranked from that? Cross server for ranked is probably needed more than for any other form of pvp.

[Slowpokeking]

But would most people even be interested in this? Heroics are easy enough that you don't need to group, and from what has been said on the board before, most people reject group invites for them. I know I do. I don't know that many people would even put themselves in a GF for that.

 

But for those, I've seen people extending invites by the terminals or in the area where you can pick up the heroics on Odessen.

 

The special events like the Gree and rakghouls, same thing - those quests can be done alone and that's how most seem to do them. But for the Op and Heroics there, it seems like there are enough people in the area that you might find people there to go out with.

 

But a lot of players just don't like grouping and especially don't like grouping with strangers, and all the tools in the world won't change that. Nor will it make players appear if there's no content for them to do.

 

Of course yes, heroics provide you extra credits with team, that's why you see ppl ask on fleet.

 

A lot of ppl don't want to group because the current format require you to stand on fleet and endure those troll message, if it can be done with GF easily, more and more of them will try.

[TrixxieTriss]

This. It's already been brought up that two NA servers is perhaps safer from a hardware/maintenance perspective. EU servers shouldn't be merged because of the language differences. IIRC they need to maintain different servers for those playing in the European Union to comply with their standards, so those could not merge with NA.

 

I feel like if people are invested in the group content and their current server isn't doing it for them, they do have options to either do character transfers or seek out a guild (there are certainly enough always advertising). No need to drag the rest of us along.

 

Maybe the existing population just isn't interested in that stuff overall.

 

For me, another server merger would just mean a) potentially losing character names and b) having to deal with even more ninjas for clickable goals and mobs in the open areas of the game. There's no upside to it at all.

 

While agree mergers aren’t needed yet, these things you listed aren’t hurdles to merging the servers in EU.

 

You can add language instances the same as you have pvp ones.

You can add language channels

 

And if you are worried about too many people in one area, change map instances. You’d be surprised how many people don’t do this.

I was on Dromond Kaas yesterday doing heroics and there were way to many people waiting to do the same things. I checked my map and saw 2 other instances. I went to the next one and didn’t have to wait for one heroic respawn.

 

You can also try going to pvp instances on planets that have them to do pve stuff. I only use the pvp instances and I’ve seen 6 people in them in the last 12 months and 3 of them were on my side. I only saw the other 3 last week on Yavin in a premade trying to kill elite mobs. So I jumped right in a killed them

 

Even my wife uses the pvp instances and pvp freaks her out.

[jimmorrisson]

We do not need another server merge.

We do need a server move - Satele Shan - to the West Coast. This game lost a lot of players with the prior merge.

Edited June 17, 2018 by jimmorrisson

[Damask_Rose]

But would most people even be interested in this? Heroics are easy enough that you don't need to group, and from what has been said on the board before, most people reject group invites for them. I know I do. I don't know that many people would even put themselves in a GF for that. [/b]

 

If I could queue for world bosses I'd do that all day long! That's one of my favorite activities but I don't see groups for them often.

[IoNonSoEVero]

You can also try going to pvp instances on planets that have them to do pve stuff. I only use the pvp instances and I’ve seen 6 people in them in the last 12 months and 3 of them were on my side. I only saw the other 3 last week on Yavin in a premade trying to kill elite mobs. So I jumped right in a killed them

 

Even my wife uses the pvp instances and pvp freaks her out.

 

One shouldn't have to risk being ganked to do PVE content. I find PvP incredibly upsetting and will not put my characters at risk that way. I would uninstall the game before putting my characters anywhere near PvP.

 

The other thing is that there's some limit to the load that the servers can take. Having several lightens that load and also means there's insurance in case one server decides to die or falls victim to a DoS attack.

 

Also, it's unlikely the game will ever recover the numbers it had before, but several servers = the ability to accommodate more players and less chance of queues to log in.

 

I think one of the devs (Keith?) even said he has his legacy on more than one server for backup purposes.

Edited June 14, 2018 by IoNonSoEVero

[IoNonSoEVero]

If I could queue for world bosses I'd do that all day long! That's one of my favorite activities but I don't see groups for them often.

 

World bosses I'd file under Ops, though, because those can't be completed solo and AFAIK require quite a few people to defeat. 8 or 16 or something? If it can't be done solo, it's reasonable to put it in GF. But IMHO I don't think most people care about it for heroics they can complete on their own.

Edited June 14, 2018 by IoNonSoEVero

[Slowpokeking]

World bosses I'd file under Ops, though, because those can't be completed solo and AFAIK require quite a few people to defeat. 8 or 16 or something? If it can't be done solo, it's reasonable to put it in GF. But IMHO I don't think most people care about it for heroics they can complete on their own.

 

Ops doesn't work with the current GF format, it would work much better with GW2's LFG style.

 

I always think WB's level sync should be removable.

[JediQuaker]

Jeez, the PvP and PUG pops are just never fast enough, are they? There's always someone yelling that we need more mergers to make them faster..

PvPer's never seem to consider that the reason why PvP pops are long, could be that there just aren't that many PvPer's**. SWTOR is, after all, supposed to be an RPG not a MOBA.

 

** Or, at least, not that many who need to use GF to find a PUG. Most "serious" PvPer's are probably in PvP guilds and don't need to PUG.

Edited June 15, 2018 by JediQuaker

[xordevoreaux]

PvPer's never seem to consider that the reason why PvP pops are long is that there just aren't that many PvPer's. SWTOR is, after all, supposed to be an RPG not a MOBA.

 

This^

[TUXs]

PvPer's never seem to consider that the reason why PvP pops are long, could be that there just aren't that many PvPer's**. SWTOR is, after all, supposed to be an RPG not a MOBA.

I wait longer in the GF queues for any group activity (Tactical Uprising, Tactical FP, Op [LOL]) then I ever do in a WZ queue...and every WZ requires a minimum of 8 players to pop...usually 16 players.

 

I'm not suggesting PvE isn't more popular than PvP, but I am suggesting that PvP is far more popular than you think. Of all the things SWTOR does wrong, PvP in this game is not one of them...it's been the best part of the game since launch imo.

[xordevoreaux]

I wait longer in the GF queues for any group activity (Tactical Uprising, Tactical FP, Op [LOL]) then I ever do in a WZ queue...and every WZ requires a minimum of 8 players to pop...usually 16 players.

 

I'm not suggesting PvE isn't more popular than PvP, but I am suggesting that PvP is far more popular than you think. Of all the things SWTOR does wrong, PvP in this game is not one of them...it's been the best part of the game since launch imo.

 

And regardless of whatever arguments one way or another are posed on this thread, if EA needs some of our game's server hardware to support Anthem's player base, expect a merge. Not that a billion-$ company can't afford a 50,000 server cluster, but bean counters and their profitability requirements force companies to do strange things.

 

Just Googling "server cluster cost" produced this --

Large Memory Compute Node Compute node with 40 cores and 1TB of RAM $33,900

 

And that's just one, doesn't include the login-server Anthem would need.

Hopefully Anthem's hardware is already fully provisioned.

Edited June 15, 2018 by xordevoreaux

[IoNonSoEVero]

I wait longer in the GF queues for any group activity (Tactical Uprising, Tactical FP, Op [LOL]) then I ever do in a WZ queue...and every WZ requires a minimum of 8 players to pop...usually 16 players.

 

I'm not suggesting PvE isn't more popular than PvP, but I am suggesting that PvP is far more popular than you think. Of all the things SWTOR does wrong, PvP in this game is not one of them...it's been the best part of the game since launch imo.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree about PvP being the best thing - IMHO that is something that differs with each player's personal taste and playstyle - but it seems like opinions are all over the place on this one. There are all these threads about how the PvP instances are empty and how people have to wait a long time for a PvP match.

 

I would wager that a lot of the reason PvP pops faster is because - and please do correct me if I am wrong - the GF is needed much more for PvP than it is for PvE, due to the nature of the activities and the people required for them.

 

Whereas with PvE, you can solo a lot of the flashpoints, grab a friend and do them, or go with your guild, and you don't need as many people.

 

Thus, people don't need the or us GF nearly as much for many PvE activities, but it is a necessarily evil for PvP and people are forced to use it for some things.

[Andryah]

We'll have to agree to disagree about PvP being the best thing - IMHO that is something that differs with each player's personal taste and playstyle - but it seems like opinions are all over the place on this one. There are all these threads about how the PvP instances are empty and how people have to wait a long time for a PvP match.

 

I would wager that a lot of the reason PvP pops faster is because - and please do correct me if I am wrong - the GF is needed much more for PvP than it is for PvE, due to the nature of the activities and the people required for them.

 

Whereas with PvE, you can solo a lot of the flashpoints, grab a friend and do them, or go with your guild, and you don't need as many people.

 

Thus, people don't need the or us GF nearly as much for many PvE activities, but it is a necessarily evil for PvP and people are forced to use it for some things.

 

Accurate analysis, in my view. Players can and do get a lot of traction in PvE without the need for GF. PvP, not so much really.... and as such PvPers do most of their play via GF. So it makes sense that GF works more efficiently for PvP than GF.

[JediQuaker]

Or maybe the OP is just on a lot of Ignore lists.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Ever since the first server merger occurred and it was discovered that there was only one NA and one EU datacenter the idea behind still segregating parts of the community confused me. I didn't understand why it wasn't just brought down to one server for each region to allow each aspect of game to have as healthy a population as possible regardless the time of day.

 

It's been 7 months since the server merge. The Operation side of content releases has finished for now. We all await the incoming PvP changes. The servers have had their time to settle since.

 

~ Snip

 

 

There's a very easy way to overcome the things you find troubling in the state of the game. Go to Star Forge and you won't have any of those issues.

 

I couldn't possibly be happier since the merger, it made all the difference and is night and day.

 

You are one person and you are assuming everyone sees things as you do. If you are unhappy with your server go to Star Forge or Malgus.

 

We don't need another merger, that would be the worst thing they can do because if they did they might as well be signing thier own death warrant. One server would be like a neon sign flashing over and over "This game will end very soon because we don't have enough players anymore to need another server because we can't stop losing players hand over fist". Who the hell would join a game that they knew was on it's last legs."

 

What's the point? Best case scenario you love the game and you won't be able to enjoy it for long so why become vested in it?

 

There is a very good reason they want to seperate servers in NA and the same goes for Europe, and they have flat out said the reason why. One server couldn't handled all the players, it would just get too bogged down and the play would suffer for it. Not only that, when servers go down now other servers are still operational. You make it one server for all and every time that server goes down NO ONE can play the game. You think that might piss people off more than now when it happens? Let's get more people pissed off at BW, that's always a good way to go in business. Unhappy customers in droves are great for the bottom line.

 

Once you get down to just one server, there is no where left to go. It's a one way ticket to hell. People are not blind and they can read the wrighting on the wall a good amount of the time.

 

I couldn't be happier with Star Forge and all due respect, but what goes on on other servers isn't my problem. I say that mostly because there are tons of people from every server saying they're doing fine in their estimation. Their estimates are just as valid as yours and no one perspective has a better claim than the other. And I'm not interested to hurt my game on a strangers behalf who would just as soon spit at me as give me the time of day just because they would rather wait 2 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes for a pop.

 

Count me for a no to another server merger. I couldn't be happier with the technical state of things on my server.

 

The reason Satele is having issues is because of the toxicity from the Harbinger refugees there surpasses any other server. They all have toxicity mind you, but I think everyone pretty much knows that their was/is an extremely large A-O population from Harbinger there. Not all of course, I'm sure there are many decent players there, I just never met either one of them =p

 

People totally prefer to deal with people who aren't A-Os.

Edited June 17, 2018 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[xordevoreaux]

We will get down to one server for the entire player population on both continents, zero will change about PVP, and then people will come out to these forums asking for a server merge, when there physically cannot be another merge, because those players have no idea how else to tackle the problem.

 

Better start thinking now, other than a weak bid for additional server merges, of how else to prop up the pvp environment at the player level. More players apparently didn't do enough for the last merge if calling for another.

Edited June 18, 2018 by xordevoreaux

[TUXs]

We will get down to one server for the entire player population on both continents, zero will change about PVP, and then people will come out to these forums asking for a server merge, when there physically cannot be another merge, because those players have no idea how else to tackle the problem.

 

Better start thinking now, other than a weak bid for additional server merges, of how else to prop up the pvp environment at the player level. More players apparently didn't do enough for the last merge if calling for another.

It's not the players who are at fault - it's Bioware and their complete lack of attention to this game. Last years content was anemic at best...this year it's been the same way. I don't know anyone who JUST does PvP...do you? All the people I know, ranked players even, all also do PvE stuff as well...the entire player base has been shrinking, not just PvPers.

[Asmodesu]

It's not the players who are at fault - it's Bioware and their complete lack of attention to this game. Last years content was anemic at best...this year it's been the same way. I don't know anyone who JUST does PvP...do you? All the people I know, ranked players even, all also do PvE stuff as well...the entire player base has been shrinking, not just PvPers.

 

This. Likely the only way to keep an mmo, or any multiplayer game going really, is a steady, constant and consistent stream of content release which swtor just does not have.