46 replies to this topic

[radamant]

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

I have been noticing that there aren't many people to do events in the level 15 - 25 Norn zone

I`ll second that. Low level Norn zones are pretty much ghost lands. Dunno about other races low level areas, since my only char is Norn.

[escada_assassin]

Leveling my mes and right now I'm in Lornar's Pass. It's depressing how empty it is. Rarely you might see another human been around who's chasing a few WP's or SP's and then suddenly poof away. Before this area, I was in Harathi Hinterlands and I was remembering this area being more populated than it is right now. People were all over doing the same Centaur chain of events and then doing the event with that big guy in the cave (forgot his name). Now? Most people I've seen around that area at a time were 5 guys. We all tried to do the event, res when downed and everything, but it was impossible, so one by one they were just leaving. So I guess low level areas are being transformed into ghost areas where sometimes, when you start a new alt, you go just for leveling. What reasons could anyone have to go in low level areas after hitting 80? Pretty much none, compared to playing on 80 areas. In 80 level areas you get more karma, more gold, more drops, valuable material nodes and finally - more people. While it's true that some events can be soloed, that's opposed to the meaning of a MMO - this isn't a single player game, and I'm really expecting to find more people in one map especially since my world says high or full. Where is everyone? I understand that some people are just sitting around in LA for hours (imo they should be kicked from that world), some are doing dungeons over and over again...but still...does it mean that I dunno 70% of a server's population is into WvWvW? Or in Orr doing mindless farming for hours and hours? That means there's something wrong with some things in this game. They should do something about the low level areas, because it's too bad they're becoming ghost areas, I actually from time to time come back to low level areas to have fun, run around and things like that. But if you're chasing a legendary weapon (and I can only presume that a lot of people if not the most are after getting one) there's no motivation for you to return to a low level area. Karma rewards are crappy, gold is crappy, drops are crappy, so nothing you do there would have you working towards your legendary weapon or even exotic armor / weapon sets. I guess ANet wants to forget about those areas, since they're obviously focusing on feeding some more new things to the WoW kids.

P.S. I still enjoy the game and will still be playing it, but playing in low level areas just bitters me because of the lack of more real people.

Edited by escada_assassin, 15 November 2012 - 12:58 PM.

[Vackashken]

Of course they're empty. It takes you a matter of moments to get to 80.

[Skolops]

It's hurting the game tremendously.  In previous MMOs, nobody really cared or noticed if low level areas were sparse.  I leveled 10 characters in TOR, a few of them with high population but most on a low population server long after most had hit max level, and it was for the most part just as fun when things were sparse as when there were others around.  Of course, this is one of GW's strengths: its design makes it fun to play with others.  Unfortunately, that very same design by its very nature makes it fairly depressing and in some ways (DEs, for instance) difficult to play when there aren't people around.  

Here's the thing: MMOs have (for the most part), for as long as they've been around, designed the low level areas around solo play (with some very optional multiplay here and there) and end-game areas and content around multiplay.  This has worked well because, other than the very beginning of the game, early areas are precisely where people are going to be going solo most of the time and end-game is where people will mostly be playing with friends, guilds, or randoms in multiplay.  ArenaNet boasted that they'd made 'the whole game the end-game," and this sounds good on its surface.  The problem is that it just doesn't mesh with the inevitable truth that after a month or two in any MMO, all but the highest level areas are going to be largely empty.  Thus, all of that "end-game everywhere design" - which is centered on multiplay - becomes a liability for all but the very beginning of the game's life.

[escada_assassin]

It would be ok if the low level areas would be empty after let's say 1 year, but it's been what? 3 months since release? And it's not JUST the low level areas, it's basically every area until the 75-80 level areas. I was in Bloodtide recently...a few people here and there, and by a few I mean - 1-2 people here and there, each for himself, chasing one heart or one SP / WP / whatever. People arrive in the Tequatl spawning point as soon as he's up and after the event is over - bye-bye and next dragon. So it looks like the entire game isn't the end game, but level 80 areas are the end game. And they offer no motivation for anyone to go back to a low level area, otherwise we'd see more people there.

[beadnbutter32]

This is the bane of just about every MMO ever created.  Get just a bit past release when there are tons of players, and the player base gets dispersed across multiple zones, levels, etc.  The 'I beat the game, time to move on' folks are long gone.

Sadly if you were not here at release, you have missed your chance to complete much of the content.

Anet is no different from other Asian grind fest makers.  Whatever resources they put into the game from here on out, will be primarily tweaking the cash shop items, and the latest step in their gear grind treadmill.

With the newest content release coming up soon, forget about ever getting regular dungeon story mode done if you have not already.
The end result is the older the game gets, the harder it will be to get legendaries, because of the world completion requirements.
New players face ever increasing difficulty finding others to complete low level content required for world completion.

[lagrangeify]

Contrary to what the guy above me says, I think you'll see a regular influx of new blood, simply because GW2 is the only decent B2P MMO in existence - you see it on a shelf, you buy it, install it, good to go. That alone ensures that all the time the game is being proactively marketed and cared for by the devs, new people will come to play it, just not in the deluge one would expect from a new release, more a regular gentle influx.

Put it this way, my server has just recently seen a spike in the number of players in the lowbie zones who don't appear to know the ropes very well and are asking a lot of questions. Interestingly, the map chat is normally pretty quiet, but the sheer number of people popping up to offer advice tells me there are also a fair number of longer term players in the zone, they just don't talk very much.

I've noticed that if you actively prompt the zone about dynamic events during the usual busier playtimes and offer a waypoint, plenty of people turn up for them.

Some servers will die on their ass though, that's inevitable. If it feels that chronic for some people then clearly they're on one of those and should think about taking advantage of the free transfer while we have it.

[escada_assassin]

lagrangeify, on 15 November 2012 - 02:49 PM, said:

Contrary to what the guy above me says, I think you'll see a regular influx of new blood, simply because GW2 is the only decent B2P MMO in existence - you see it on a shelf, you buy it, install it, good to go. That alone ensures that all the time the game is being proactively marketed and cared for by the devs, new people will come to play it, just not in the deluge one would expect from a new release, more a regular gentle influx.

Put it this way, my server has just recently seen a spike in the number of players in the lowbie zones who don't appear to know the ropes very well and are asking a lot of questions. Interestingly, the map chat is normally pretty quiet, but the sheer number of people popping up to offer advice tells me there are also a fair number of longer term players in the zone, they just don't talk very much.

I've noticed that if you actively prompt the zone about dynamic events during the usual busier playtimes and offer a waypoint, plenty of people turn up for them.

Some servers will die on their ass though, that's inevitable. If it feels that chronic for some people then clearly they're on one of those and should think about taking advantage of the free transfer while we have it.

What world you on? XD

[AarodCutshot]

maybe they could add a server merge overflow thing in lower lvls bringing all the people together on a default server or something. That will bring all the people in that one area together .

[Norn Osprey]

Linfang, on 15 November 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

This happens in every MMO

DING !   Winner.

Yes, this happens in every MMO. This isn't anything new.  Of course Cursed Shores is popular because it pays off the best. Of course Lion's Arch is popular, it was built to be -the- social hub of this game.

Even if events (and mobs) in low areas paid off as well in loot, karma, xp and coin, people would -still- prefer Cursed Shores because of the mob density and number of events. Which is the way it should be. The Devs want Orr zones populated because of the massive meta event chains and the story that culminates there.

Lion's Arch was designed to be the social hub. It was originally the only way to get into W v W but that was quickly changed.

The -only- way to keep people in the same zone is to have the entire game in one zone that has changes phased into it as the player levels higher. This would also mean you could never go back to lower areas because the players have out leveled those phased instances.

Anything else will always mean that some zones/areas are vacant while other areas are popular.

[plasmon]

All these comments are very depressing to read. Like someone pointed out before its one thing to expect low level and mid level areas to be empty after the game has been around for a year. But its whole another thing to see it empty 3 months after release.

And this happened just when I had started to enjoy the class I was playing. Ahh well if I have to play GW2 like a single player game then I might as well dust off my Elder Scrolls: skyrim that I never really played much.

[evilbob]

Yes, OP:  I have.  I tried a fresh alt recently and the only people in the starting zone I saw were downleveled RPers.  It really sucks for events because most are impossible to complete on your own, especially when you have no skills and terrible equipment and are probably slightly under-leveled.  And without event XP, you're going to level even slower, making things more difficult...  And therefore less likely to play your alt.  And the cycle continues.

I see two things they could do to fix this:  first, implement guesting.  I would LOVE to bring a higher level character to play with friends on different servers, and cross-server play allows more people in general to play together.  Plus it was a promised launch feature.  Second, increase rewards for high-level players to be on par with what they'd get in other zones, only slightly lower.  They've already started doing that in this patch:  now a level 80 can reasonably play in a level 55+ zone.  Why cut off at 55+?  Why not level 1?  Maybe level 1 zones give 85% of the normal rewards/items.  If this were done with some consistency, you wouldn't even have to decrease waypoint costs - which they will never do, because it's a very powerful gold sink.  Of course, the majority of players still might not go for it because even a 1% slowdown is unacceptable when your only real resource is time.

Overflow servers working in reverse - "underflow" servers, I guess you'd call them - seems like a drastic step.  But that might help as well.  More events, event chains, and scavenger hunts are probably not going to help:  I don't recall many people actually helping lowbies in newbie zones during Halloween; they just ran through and got the stuff they wanted and left.

[chuckles79]

This is always the case in any MMO.  Unless they give good reasons for people to muck about in Wayfarer Foothills, then people are going to speed right through those areas.

The only reason to go back to those areas is if you sped through too fast the first time and need to pick stuff back up; or if you are broke (aka don't do dungeons much) and need to farm mats.

[raspberry jam]

So guys

I posted this map when they first revealed that GW2 would be using a classic level system. Then I posted it again when they revealed that they would scale levels because we all know that since it's a reward driven system it makes no real difference.

Now I ask you. Take the time to look at this map. Really look at it.

[Steadfast Gao Shun]

Tarnished Coast have a substantial number of role-players, and while the numbers have lessened since launch (expected), mapchat is pretty active across all zones, and I personally find that most people will band together to help each other on map events. This is coming from me with a metric ton of alts ranging from 3-80.

Ironically, the roleplayers are also the bane of my existence sometimes due to crowds of 20+ sitting around RPing in an event zone, scaling stuff up for the three poor sods (including myself) who's trying to actually finish it.

Edited by Steadfast Gao Shun, 16 November 2012 - 04:58 PM.

[geulsae]

With level scaling, I thought GW2 was going to be like the last example in raspberry jam's diagram.
I f'in hate Orr. But I have to go there because other zones just don't give you good loots. And this has caused me to play less often.
It's a shame Anet failed to completely break away from the traditional ladder leveling/zoning.
They just half-assed it and I fear they will just get back on the old wagon soon.

[Lafiele]

It's populated enough for me on SoS. Then and again, SoS is one of the big servers.