Up until this morning I thought the layering had been handled pretty well.
Bad layering was one of the biggest reasons I didn’t enjoy spending much time in the open world during TBC-A. Too many players packed into an area and not enough mobs or nodes made everything feel more frustrating than fun.
This morning the starter zones were crazy packed. I checked three different zones and eventually just logged off because it wasn’t worth fighting over every quest objective.
Ideally, layering would be able to account for individual player preferences. I don’t know if that’s technically possible, but I think it should be the goal. Back in the early days of WoW, if you liked a busy world you rolled on a high-pop server. If you preferred a quieter experience, you picked a lower-pop server. With the way things work now, that’s not really an option anymore.
I know there’s a big focus on encouraging social interaction, and I get that. But not everyone enjoys the open world the same way. For me, exploration and questing are at their best when zones aren’t overcrowded. I like socializing in cities, groups, dungeons, or around elite quests, not while competing with dozens of people for the same mobs.
Hopefully Blizzard remembers there are players who enjoy a quieter world and eventually gives us some way to opt into a less crowded questing experience.
5 Likes
You just “checked” the zones? They already have a solution with spawn rates. I played on launch with what seemed like 500 people in the starting zone. Still got my quests done without much of an issue.
Maybe there’s a gap between a little bit extra players and not increased spawn rates, but I have been in most leveling situations in terms of players being around me, and haven’t had a problem.
I would like if it we could ‘pick’ our layers more directly. Being locked into a layer with a high number of players fighting over the same objective was frustrating last night. But, for whatever reason, the server wasn’t triggering a layer refresh, so it was either give up on questing, or spend an hour trying to tag 1-2 mobs.
4 Likes
So far my main issue with the layering is when you fight your way through a cave or something and group up with a pug at the end to take down the leader. After the person is killed the group disbands and all of a sudden your alone and surrounded by mobs attacking you.
1 Like
TOR and other games have had this feature in the past and it was quite nice tbh.
No I spent a little time questing and stopped when I wasnt getting switched. I have multiple chars 10+ and today just felt different in the zones so I decided to post about it.
I wasn’t mad until I accidentally tagged a defias leader in elwynn last night, quick invited the warrior I almost cheated the kill out of accidentally and it moved us in a new group OUT of the combat we were in into an empty layer where all of the adds and the defias leader were alive and at full health - we handled it but both immediately said things like “What was that?” “Wow” “Brutal layers” to each other.
I just want it to be less aggressive sometimes, and more responsive to the reason a group may be getting together, like in this instance.
2 Likes
Adding manual interaction with layering any more than is currently available, would ruin the game, as it turns layer hopping into a much more feasible meta.
It would be abused by bots and general resource gatherers. It creates a requirement for people farming mats to always have to be manually selecting low pop layers, which bypasses a whole aspect of the game. That is until people figure out that every one is doing that, then resource gathers start trying high pop servers. But now they’re getting ganked more, so they have to strategize what is the best layer pop for getting their mats. And now there’s a whole dumb meta for layers, rather than it being a largely uncontrolled back-end system.
The game is about community and player interaction. I understand some people don’t like that, but that’s what you sign up for while playing classic.
Also a BIG ASTERISK: All your “too many people” woes are almost entirely because of it being early in the games release, and every one playing right now is in the same 0-20 bracket. Once the game actually launches, and people can level higher without making alt after alt after alt, the world will even out a lot.
1 Like
I think they may have opened beta to all. The invitation to come try it is on my launcher this am. Not been in to see, but sounds like they did. Edited to add that I’ve just been assured by someone in another thread that they did not open the beta to all…
We need a way to change layers on PVP server to join the big fights. It’s sad when you know a battle is happening at your location, but no one is there but a couple other players hoping to be on that layer.
Maybe give an option to choose “high density” layers. I don’t mind the lag.
One suggestion I heard from Shobek is to have dedicated layers 1-20 and let people sort themselves. For example RPers could go on layer 15 and big raids happen on Layer 1. A cooldown to prevent spamming layer changes.
Or, hear me out, just have separate realms like the world was designed to support. Crazy, right?
Mega realms serve nobody but streamers who need an endless horde of grunts to support their crappy business.
2 Likes
What happens on Specific servers is they end up 90% one faction. So you’ll have one horde server, one alliance server.
1 Like
How do you think that happens? Transfers which also never should have been implemented other than for server rescue?
Somehow it wasn’t an issue from 2004-2006. Interesting, that.
1 Like
I’ve found over-crowded layers to be the worst playing experience. The competition for mobs is too high and the hyperspawning can create spikes that result in death but often just satiate the little murder hobos for 30 seconds till the next spawn.
1 Like
I was having one of those serendipitous social interactions that blizzard talked about with a fellow player just running through the barrens the other day. Just chatting as we were heading to the next quest destination when suddenly got layered and they disappeared off my screen in the middle of conversation, never to be seen again.
Doesnt seem like blizzard are protecting the social experience very much to me.
3 Likes
Stress and layering are important systems to test. That’s why I’m guessing they are crowding as much as they can to test those systems, too. I would do the same in a Beta.
If it’s like this at launch, then we have an issue since it is quite immersion breaking, but for a beta I’d be all gas no brakes.
1 Like
I liked when they said we’d get little warnings about layering, but it turned out the layer now button did nothing, and whenever you actually get layered, there is no warning anyways.
it would awesome if they would open a couple realms per ruleset as an option.
how hard would that be?
1 Like
Largely irrelevant. Dead servers or single-faction dominance were a thing. No thanks we have been there. Layering is fine if handled right. In Beta I expect them to pack things to the brim since it’s a very important system and I don’t expect it to be like this at launch. Crowded, yes. Insufferable, no. I expect the overcrowding is to test spawn and layering systems and won’t be this bad at launch (hopefully).
My conspiracy theory is they’re making silent changes to the system to stress test it, because this can’t be the intended final product… Today sucked, I was on for an hour and just decided nah, I’m done for the day.
1 Like