Shards need to:
- Not be triggered in while within the radius of an active public event (hunt, time rift, etc)
- Not be triggered while a player is in combat
9 Likes
I think what happens is they do that but someone makes a group and invites 30 plus more people into the shard and instead of shifting the group maker to another shard and possibility losing the rare they made the group for - they kick out the solo players.
1 Like
I’d say thats a rare circumstance. I’ve had it happen when I’m the only one in the zone, late at night, and just random times since last patch.
So its only happened to me a couole times, but all those times were identical to this idea.
When a raid group is forming with auto accept. Eventually we hit enough people with enough solo runners too that the group shards as a whole.
Then ive happened upon a raid group forming while being a solo runner about mid fight and i got sharded
There’s a nice long thread here in GD where a CC member is supposedly relaying sharding incidents to the higher-ups. Something along the lines of “Have you been Sharded” is the name of it. It’s our best bet at getting something done about it. Y’all should go post in there 
2 Likes
I feel like a clown when I’m running around that dumb slow tree where he has to make the loop 10 times for a buff…splinterlimb? and then I get rephased at 8 stacks, every damn time it’s so annoying.
Was just doing researchers under fire in a raid group and we got moved to a shard with the event already completed. So annoying.
3 Likes
I wonder if they should do the GW2 thing where they put a prompt in the corner of your screen that reads “there are few players in this map, switch to a more populated one?” and then they give you an hour to click yes before they close the map and force you to move
At least you’d have control over the sharding. Though this comes with the pitfall of having this prompt pop up all the time instead.
1 Like
Seriously, being sharded willy-nilly all the time makes getting stuff done so difficult especially these timed events like Researchers Under Fire. You are happily in a group with others getting the event tasks completed then when another person is added to the group you get sharded to a phase where the event isn’t on. Aren’t you supposed to stay in the same phase/realm with the group leader/host? Why isn’t this being addressed promptly after the release of the meta achievement? So many players have returned to do old content in order to complete this. But it takes so long when your progress gets sharded away from you. 
2 Likes
Not necessarily. Resource nodes have a short grace period after someone harvests them to let others harvest it as well. It is entirely likely that you’re approaching the node after someone else has harvested it and the timer is running out. This is especially true if you’re in Azure Spam or Zaralek as these are the most contested farming spots.
The way to know if you have been sharded/phased is to watch the environment around you. Everything will all change at once. You’ll see a handful of people appear or disappear all at once. You’ll notice all the animals disappear at the same time or all relocate at the same time.
If you’re running up to a pack of bears and they all disappear as you approach you have been sharded. If the mob you’re fighting just vanishes you have been sharded. If the hunt you’re almost done with resets to zero progress then you’ve been sharded.
1 Like
It also really dumps all over world pvp.
Just solo’d the hunt to 1/6 and killing the last boss. Under 100k left…I phase to a 6/6 hunt…
3 Likes
Seriously.
They could massively improve this game by simply removing the shard/phasing tech.
3 Likes
Whenever I’m farming storms or cobalt assembly the game keeps swapping be from shard to shard, multiple times per session. So I go from having a bunch of people around helping me, to being alone suddenly, then some people again.
Or suddenly there are no mobs.
Or suddenly the corpses I was about to loot disappear.
Filling up Wrathion/Sabellion’s key meters is impossible because I get kicked to a fresh shard with 0 progress partway though every time.
I never noticed this happening before the last month or so, but it’s suddenly became super frequent and super annoying.
4 Likes
Less of an issue with war mode on.
Yeah but that’s like saying traffic is less of an issue when you drive through the bad part of town.
4 Likes
I am curious what their goal was in implementing this design feature, and whether they achieved that goal. Were they aware that what players are complaining about would happen? Are they even now aware of how often it makes content annoying?
I made a key farming group, and one of the members needed the Sabellian event. We filled the bar, went to do the event, and when the boss was at 10% we got sharded away 
I was gonna stop farming keys for the day but I felt so bad that I helped refill the bar for the event again. I’m glad he got his achievement done but dang, sharding sucks.
3 Likes
Are you suggesting that people don’t appreciate being fear kited, death coiled and chaos bolted?
There is also a certain joy in killing bots while herbing and mining, like seeing a deer in headlights and acceleratinf
This is still happening, huh? Wait, what am I asking? Of course it’s still happening. It’s probably never going to stop happening. The current devs are both focused on keeping the content stream flowing (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you), and probably wouldn’t even know how to fix it if they wanted to, because from where I sit their competence is more in coming up with ideas, not so much getting them to work properly.
2 Likes