46 replies to this topic

[plasmon]

First I would like to make a confession that I am an altoholic. Now that part is out of the way lets start with the main topic.

I thought I finally settled down on a class aka Mesmer. But I have been noticing that there aren't many people to do events in the level 15 - 25 Norn zone. I am not able to clear events on my own and often have to beat a hasty retreat after filling up a heart somehow. Things are further complicated that I have decided to torture myself by playing a solo-not-so-friendly and weak-at-AoE mesmer class. Or maybe I am just not skilled enough to use this class at level 20.

While its not a big deal that I am not able to clear a few events... it does hurt the leveling process since just running from heart-to-heart does not seem to be enough to give enough experience. I guess DE experience is a big deal in keeping the leveling process smooth.

Another problem might be that I start playing around 9 pm or 10 pm PST which is late for east coast people. Are the servers in GW2 zone specific? I reside on StormBluff Isle... so I have no idea if that server is meant for east coast residents.

Anyways... thanks for your patience in hearing my ramblings. I really would like to hear about your experiences regarding this matter.

[matsif]

I completed snowden drifts (norn 15-25 area) with my mesmer fine (hearts etc.), but some of the events in that area do require larger groups (centaur champion especially).  

Really, the problem is that there is little reason to be in the zone after you complete it.  There are no large multi-stage events (with or without chests).  I don't think there is an event larger than 2 stages in the whole zone, so there is never a lot of people in there because there isn't much to do, especially after 100% completion.

[SigillumMilitum]

One suggestion I've seen was to make everyone in those dead zones go to overflow. If that's not possible, I wouldn't be against the idea of customizable NPC allies.

There are definitely events that can't be soloed, even if you have good AOE/DPS.

[Raani]

Thankfully my server still has tons of people in low level zones.

The heart of the problem is that the level 80 zones are just more rewarding. They added downleveling and gave us a chance to get drops that are relevant to our levels no matter where we are, but they sort of dropped the ball when it came to crafting mats/nodes, karma, and XP gains. Waypoint costs don't help either.

I'd love to see them make the downleveling a bit more harsh so 80s can't steamroll lower areas and then working on normalizing the rewards per (actual) character level and not per zone.

[Krazzar]

Unfortunately I'm finding all zones sparsely populated except the Cursed Shore. It's probably because I don't just make a bee-line from one map objective to the next, though. It's rare to see more than 5 people at a time in any zone but the Cursed Shore, it even makes getting to the Cursed Shore challenging at time. I also run around with the "Looking for Group" status (in the friend's list) when not with my guild and have yet to be invited to a group.

[Azure Skye]

Krazzar, on 14 November 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

Unfortunately I'm finding all zones sparsely populated except the Cursed Shore. It's probably because I don't just make a bee-line from one map objective to the next, though. It's rare to see more than 5 people at a time in any zone but the Cursed Shore, it even makes getting to the Cursed Shore challenging at time. I also run around with the "Looking for Group" status (in the friend's list) when not with my guild and have yet to be invited to a group.

Thats what i've done almost in anywhere in PvE or WvW. No ones takes the offer or teams up for do something together as a group. Yea,I've done it on my ele since i noticed it during launch but still nothing. It's say something about the people in GW2, it starts to feel like you are only playing alone.

[Ardeni]

The lowest level zones are fine, but the mid level zones are quite empty on my server. Yesterday I went trhough Fields of Ruin on my guardian and only saw like 10 people there. When I did it on my ranger in September, there were dozens of people everywhere where I went. I'm glad that I'm playing a guardian now, since it gives me the ability to solo champions which would have been quite impossible for my ranger.

[Jobuu]

low level mesmers can be tough to solo events. later on, you get enough tricks to keep a fight going on and on while you chip away at anything they throw at you

[Inraged Twitch]

Jobuu, on 14 November 2012 - 09:16 PM, said:

low level mesmers can be tough to solo events. later on, you get enough tricks to keep a fight going on and on while you chip away at anything they throw at you

As having MES as my second ALT currently at 20 I am having a helluva time doing events trying to stay alive even in places like diessa.

[Alex Dimitri]

8 chars here, six of them level 80, number seven is close and number eight will level trough WvW.
So i went multiple times trough some zones at max you can see 10 other players, all high level players are in 3 zones last two Orr maps or Frostgorge.
There is nothing there so people would come back, maybe occasional dragon but that`s on timer so people show kill it and map out !

This is why i am hoping that Anet will introduce soon more maps (all level 80) because it`s getting boring doing same events all over again day after day !

[Asha2012]

Jobuu, on 14 November 2012 - 09:16 PM, said:

low level mesmers can be tough to solo events. later on, you get enough tricks to keep a fight going on and on while you chip away at anything they throw at you

Agreed.  I am a mesmer (now lvl 80).  If you do a lil research on the class you can probably improve your survivability.  I won't go into too much detail, but mix up stuns, stealth, condition removal and blocks and KEEP MOVING (don't remain stationary while casting).  Yes a Champion will still give you trouble but it is more than possible to take on a veteran and three or four "grunts" at the same time with that tactic.  Mesmers downed skills are very effective and (you may already know), when downed, take a second to find the foe with the lowest health to target and improve your chances to rally.

Please feel free to look me up in game if you want to talk more (though I'm on the east coast, I usually play until 9 PM your time).

As for thin mid level map populations; yes it is a problem.  I would think Anet would just start adding events worth coming back for to those areas.  Perfectly good maps, no reason they can't have replay value.  I just (as in the last two nights) found a group to run around with.  There are four of us from three different guilds and we've been having a blast.  Even so, we all have to make a concentrated effort to check our friends list and invite into party to get things going.

The last two nights have had that same fun feeling doing team missions and vanquishings did in GW1.  I've said it before, GW2, by its design, nudges you towards solo play.  There is so much "ooh, shiny" (DE's, mapping items and gathering) it is easy to forget to look around and interact with other players.  I'm just as guilty but I'm trying to use say chat and map chat more.

And, hey, just invite everyone into party.  Worst that can happen is they don't join but even one companion can mean the difference to beating a boss.  Chances are you will start finding people on at the same time as you like I have.  Good luck.

Edited by Asha2012, 14 November 2012 - 09:48 PM.

[Eon Lilu]

They need to nerf the Cursed Shore events where enemies die in seconds and you can do events for crazy loot and karma, there far too easy and far too easily farmed and offer to much reward for no effort at al besides trying to spam more than the next person. They dont scale up to the number of players so enemies die in seconds instead of scaling up to more damage and health with large groups of players.

Fix that and make all other areas in the game have better rewards and similar karma ^^

Then you will see less players farming a few events forever in orr and more in the rest of the game.

Tbh it's Anets fault for making grinding the events in cursed shore the most efficient way to farm karma and lvl 80 rare drops, materials, ecto's and exotics. I just dont do it because I find it boring as hell.

Edited by Eon Lilu, 14 November 2012 - 09:54 PM.

[Nox_Aeterna]

Eon Lilu, on 14 November 2012 - 09:47 PM, said:

They need to nerf the Cursed Shore events where enemies die in seconds and you can do events for crazy loot and karma, there far too easy and far too easily farmed and offer to much reward for no effort at al besides trying to spam more than the next person. They dont scale up to the number of players so enemies die in seconds instead of scaling up to more damage and health with large groups of players.

Fix that and make all other areas in the game have better rewards and similar karma ^^

Then you will see less players farming a few events forever in orr and more in the rest of the game.

Tbh it's Anets fault for making grinding the events in cursed shore the most effeicient way to farm karma and lvl 80 rare drops, materials, ecto's and exotics. I just dont do it because I find it boring as hell.

This would most likely only at most be +- effective , there will always be most effective events , even if they are not in orr , all that will happen is that people will move there.

Maybe they can make ... 5/6 events that when simple adding karma/drop would match orr , then people would divide on those.

The solution to this problem would go much deeper , one example would maybe adding some sort of reward for doing dif events on many zones, which is still a bad idea , but it should illustrate the problem.

[Bloggi]

Not just the low level areas. Numerous higher level areas are deserted as well. In these cases I can see why people can feel terribly alone, even in a well-populated server. There are scores and scores of events that I haven't bothered to do because there's nobody around. Yes, it's possible to pull slowly and take down one at a time and eventually complete it but it can take ages.

The problem is multi-faceted of course. People are willing to undertake a degree of grind to get the gear they want. Some areas can be more profitable than others, so in some parts we get a gazillion level 80s running around in circles doing chains, sometimes bombarding the floor even before something spawns. Mobs are wiped out in seconds. People hope for quick loot. I've even seen one or two naked toons getting to these lvl 70-80 areas when they are only lvl 15, hoping to power level and perhaps farm for the rest of their lives.

In those parts where event chains are clearly lacking or otherwise infrequent, it becomes a ghost town. Once upon a time there was a massive zerg going through Straits of Devastation. Go there today and it's likely to find every waypoint contested. Essentially there's a helluva lot of content that people are not going to experience because they feel the urge to farm in order to chase after the gear they want. That's a given of course in a game like this, not that they made it any better after plans to bring in more powerful Ascended gear. At first I thought I was nearly done with chasing gear and could actually focus on playing the game rather than farming events or dungeons. Now I know that I'm completely wrong about that.

Personally, I enjoy the low level areas a lot better. The environment is less hectic, more relaxed, people seem more willing to hang around, have a chat, party up for the sake of company and effectiveness, not just to improve their loot drops. The graphics and general ambience is scores better than in Cursed Shore, which is super dull. Yeah, some parts may be good for the coin, items and mats, but other than that there's no draw for me.

[Raiden_Kyo]

Hah, yes. Throughout leveling on my guardian i encountered maybe about 15 different people from lvl 10-80. My server says its full, but i think everyone is just standing around in LA...

[Impmon]

plasmon, on 14 November 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

First I would like to make a confession that I am an altoholic. Now that part is out of the way lets start with the main topic.

I thought I finally settled down on a class aka Mesmer. But I have been noticing that there aren't many people to do events in the level 15 - 25 Norn zone. I am not able to clear events on my own and often have to beat a hasty retreat after filling up a heart somehow. Things are further complicated that I have decided to torture myself by playing a solo-not-so-friendly and weak-at-AoE mesmer class. Or maybe I am just not skilled enough to use this class at level 20.

While its not a big deal that I am not able to clear a few events... it does hurt the leveling process since just running from heart-to-heart does not seem to be enough to give enough experience. I guess DE experience is a big deal in keeping the leveling process smooth.

Another problem might be that I start playing around 9 pm or 10 pm PST which is late for east coast people. Are the servers in GW2 zone specific? I reside on StormBluff Isle... so I have no idea if that server is meant for east coast residents.

Anyways... thanks for your patience in hearing my ramblings. I really would like to hear about your experiences regarding this matter.

Yeah this is what I said few days ago in regards to dislikes about pve, that if theres no people you can't do any of the content other then hearts.  I had some jagoff babbling about how you can solo all the content to disagree with me.  Not to prove my point, because I'm right, but I made a thief alt and the first event outside the charr citadel was defending this area.  Up to 3 charr flame guys would spawn and being the only player present the npc dropped like a sack of potatoes and I got downed.  The even was undoable.

[Bloggi]

Impmon, on 15 November 2012 - 12:50 AM, said:

Yeah this is what I said few days ago in regards to dislikes about pve, that if theres no people you can't do any of the content other then hearts.  I had some jagoff babbling about how you can solo all the content to disagree with me.  Not to prove my point, because I'm right, but I made a thief alt and the first event outside the charr citadel was defending this area.  Up to 3 charr flame guys would spawn and being the only player present the npc dropped like a sack of potatoes and I got downed.  The even was undoable.

There will always be exceptional players who claim (or are actually able) to solo a large amount of content, solo champs, group events etc. The same people may have an ego the size of the moon.

The point however is, that just because an exceptional player can solo content doesn't mean that everyone else should be expected to do the same. Just because we can solo three veterans and complete the event by ourselves doesn't necessarily make it fun. If I were a new player rocking up to GW2 and finding absolute ghost towns everywhere, I'd be particularly turned off. I might see an event with a veteran or a champ and attempt to solo it myself, fail miserably and then decide I'll never do that content again. So what are we left with? We do Hearts. That's fine, but we're still missing the events which to me are a good proportion of what this game is about.

I've come across newbies in this game who have never been seen to log on again after getting a toon leveled into the mid-teens. GW2 really shines when there's multiple players around making a concerted effort to do something (with the exception of the friggin' zerg fests, which I do just like a second job after work just because I want the coin/ karma), but a little lack lustre in deserted zones. Anet needs to rework this quick, otherwise new players aren't getting the most friendly of introductions to this game.

[ScorpioSpork]

The human low-level zones on Yak's Bend still have a decent population (people post about events and there's general map chatter). But the other races' areas aren't very popular.

If you're having trouble with Mesmer, try using staff (especially once you get the trait that reduces its cooldowns). You can stack condition damage and ignore defensive stats with it since nothing can catch you with the right utility skills and staff's #2.

[Biz]

That particular zone was always empty, with people generally picking the Charr 15-25 map over it for reasons of not being a barren wasteland. Apart from that, High Pop servers generally see more people everywhere, if you are not on one then you can't really complain about not finding people everywhere.

[LavaSquid]

have you tried using map chat? Most of the time I solo all the way, and just use map chat to rally some players for those group events. Link the nearest waypoint and people will come to help

[NeHoMaR]

For ArenaNet: Revamp the low level zones, add exotic versions of all rewards of that zones, more karma, gold, special rewards you only get playing that zones, etc., make people go to that areas and prevent they stay in the level 80 area.

[Krazzar]

Raiden_Kyo, on 15 November 2012 - 12:46 AM, said:

Hah, yes. Throughout leveling on my guardian i encountered maybe about 15 different people from lvl 10-80. My server says its full, but i think everyone is just standing around in LA...

I guess they're taking the "sequel to GW1" too seriously and doing what they usually do in GW1.

[Redhawk2007]

I would agree Anet has to do something to lure higher level players into the lower level zones. Most of the low level areas on my server are very sparsely populated, and it can be difficult if not impossible to solo a lot of the events and skill points.

On the plus side, I do like the isolation sometimes and the challenge it brings. On the other hand it can be pretty exciting when you are doing a tough event and a couple of players ride to the rescue out of nowhere. There is a much stronger tendency for players to be extra helpful to each other in the lower zones than in higher level zones, so the sense of camaraderie is better. I will always help someone who asks for it if I have a waypoint nearby, as I am sure many others will. Don't be afraid to ask.

Edited by Redhawk2007, 15 November 2012 - 05:19 AM.

[Juanele]

Krazzar, on 15 November 2012 - 05:07 AM, said:

I guess they're taking the "sequel to GW1" too seriously and doing what they usually do in GW1.

Perhaps they need to add in some Zaishen type of daily quests/missions. Entice people a bit to go back to some other areas.

[Lucas Ashrock]

Yes, perfectly true, just a desert, and i'm one of the most higher populated server go figure.
But hey, sometimes someone pop, running next to you. Now imagine when new dungeon is online.
Amazing mmo huh.

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 15 November 2012 - 05:49 AM.

[SigillumMilitum]

Naturally, given the leveling speed of this game, it's hard to keep population in lower level zones. An unfortunate consequence, though it beats being stuck grinding a spot until the next tier.

A few ways, other than introducing lower level content to draw other players:

-Scale waypoint costs with map population. If there's a larger scale event going on (such as some of the centaur camp raid/overlord chains), it'll allow people to move in on it faster. And if people decide to help each other out in map chat, they won't be burning silver just showing up and helping each other.

-Allow players in "dead zones" the option to move to a common server (similar to overflow). Players entering a zone are given a one time notification if they would like to stay or move to the common server.

-The most extreme - optional henchmen/NPC allies that scale to event difficulty/player presence. This merely is there for content that is difficult for certain solo classes/small groups, and is not intended to be a substitute for actual players.

Edited by SigillumMilitum, 15 November 2012 - 07:42 AM.

[cyclopsje]

Azure Skye, on 14 November 2012 - 09:15 PM, said:

Thats what i've done almost in anywhere in PvE or WvW. No ones takes the offer or teams up for do something together as a group. Yea,I've done it on my ele since i noticed it during launch but still nothing. It's say something about the people in GW2, it starts to feel like you are only playing alone.

Well mayby use chat to form a group or invite a random person. Instead you choose to get a invite, while you are not inviting anybody either.

[Lucas Ashrock]

cyclopsje, on 15 November 2012 - 07:47 AM, said:

Well mayby use chat to form a group or invite a random person. Instead you choose to get a invite, while you are not inviting anybody either.

So true. Lead, be carried. Such a big difference.

[ilr]

Soloed the Metrica Fire Elemental while 2 lowbies watched & sometimes brought me additional aggro to play with (and then insta died themselves b/c they weren't "geared", I assume) ...bless their little misguided hearts


(no I don't have ego problems btw, infact my counselor says I have major self esteem issues)

Edited by ilr, 15 November 2012 - 08:42 AM.

[Linfang]

It will only get worse.

This happens in every MMO I play. From launch there is an initial ripple effect where waves of players will populate zones as they level. Once a majority of the player base is at 80 there is not much of a desire to go back through earlier content. All the fun and excitement is in the highest level zones.

Now with a new gear tier and a new high level zone on it's way this will further lower level zones becoming ghost towns. People who are sitting comfortably at level 80 in solid gear will feel obligated to push through this new content and item acquisition, verses taking a break from their main and picking up an alt they have not invested much time in.