Guild Wars 2

i see that the racial capital towns (groove, rata sum etc..) are really empty.. i mean no 1 really has to go there and i you see some 1 he is 80% forgein race.. and meanwhile the lions arch is overwhelmed..
so the point is i think that you guys should make that if you leave heart of the mists or wvw through portal or something you get teleported to you racial capital.

Or give the racial capitols mystic forges. That would be cool.

The other racial capitals are a pain in the rear to navigate and that’s part of the problem with them. I’m not sure what they could add to the other cities to get people to go there. LA offers everything, crafting, banks, mystic forge, TP, gates to all other cities, access to the daily activity games and so forth. At this point everyone has gotten in to the comfort zone with LA and DR so it would have to be something pretty appealing to get them out of the habit. Even if leaving Heart of the Mists took players to a different racial city they would probably just go to the LA gate anyway.

Queen’s Jubilee was one of my favorite releases in the past year, and it’s no coincidence that it pushed players to visit Divinity’s Reach, both for the Crown Pavilion and to do the Flames of Kryta puzzle, which pushed players to different parts of the city. It was a clever way of bringing one of the capital cities to the forefront, by giving players a reason to visit.

Hopefully, some of the other capitals (Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel in particular) will get such a nice push eventually. They’re beautiful locations, so it’s a pity if players don’t visit them.

Here’s an idea make the crafting stations race based. If a human character wants to craft something it has to go to Divinity’s Reach. And in the same way if an Asura wants to craft something it has to use the crafting stations in Rata Sum. And to ensure this is the case remove the crafting stations from WvW and Lions Arch. There is no need for them to be there. And to ensure people visit Lion Arch remove the Trading Posts from the racial capitals.

In this way the key services are distributed fairly while causing minimal frustration. WvW is an arena not a town or city and should not have those amenities (crafting stations and trading post). The Trading Post should only be located in Lion’s Arch seeing as it is the entry way to the Mists and the central jump-off point to the racial capitals.

This alone would ensure that each racial capital has a chance of being populated while keeping Lion’s Arch relevant and always in use.

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Here’s an idea make the crafting stations race based. If a human character wants to craft something it has to go to Divinity’s Reach. And in the same way if an Asura wants to craft something it has to use the crafting stations in Rata Sum. And to ensure this is the case remove the crafting stations from WvW and Lions Arch. There is no need for them to be there. And to ensure people visit Lion Arch remove the Trading Posts from the racial capitals.

In this way the key services are distributed fairly while causing minimal frustration. WvW is an arena not a town or city and should not have those amenities (crafting stations and trading post). The Trading Post should only be located in Lion’s Arch seeing as it is the entry way to the Mists and the central jump-off point to the racial capitals.

This alone would ensure that each racial capital has a chance of being populated while keeping Lion’s Arch relevant and always in use.

Sorry that’s a bad fix. Making people have to go back and forth between LA and a racial city to craft/buy mats for crafting would be a huge annoyance. If it is that important to populate racial cities they need to add some feature to attract people there on their own will, not force them to go there.

The Groove is the best misspelling of the Grove so far.
I remember a thread about jp’s in every racial capital. Whatever happened to that? Seemed like a great idea to me. And for the love of God, dont make me zone between cities when Im trying to do some crafting, I already have to run between the crafting stations and the TP in LA multiple times because of forgetfullness or miscalculations.

First of all you don’t have to go through Lion’s to leave Heart of the Mists or WvW. Simply go to character select and pick that character again; you’ll go to whatever zone you were in when you entered WvW. A very handy trick.

One easy thing would improve traffic in the capitals: Mystic Forge access. I personally go to Rata Sum; everything is in one easy location. The only reason I touch Lion’s is for the forge, and I suspect many others are the same. It also happens to be where a lot of the living story is centered, but ANet has been working on that.

I see decent traffic in Divinity’s. But yes, the other capitals are dead.

They need to make the mystic forge in Divinity’s Reach accessible to everyone! That place is always empty, are those tickets even still obtainable?

The Grove and Rata Sum a pain to navigate? …seriously? they are easily the fastest capitals to get 100% in by far.

Mystic Forge access to every other place would be a good start. JPs would be even better. Another option is the dungeon vendors, at least some of them (for example TA in the Grove, HotW in Hoelbrak, and so forth)

Racial capitals aren’t “pain in the rear to navigate” when you know them.
Rata Sum is the most practical because it’s a compact cube with symetrical floors.

I disagree that players have to go in their racial capital in order to craft.

Lion’s arch have too many bonuses :

• Center of the map
• Free access across the Mists
• Access to the Mists
• Fractals
• Portals to everywhere
• Portals lead to Lion’s arch
• Mystic Forge
• Concentration of services (workshop, bank, auction house)
• Dungeon Armor Vendors
• Activities
• (Currently) Wintersday.

The only things that you have not at Lion’s Arch is Ebonhawk and Fort Trinity portals.

A rework of the other capitals in order to facilitate crafting by bringing closer workshop, auction house and bank is a first step.
Adding exclusive services and content to other capitals will help to revive their usefulness and attractiveness.
With content like Queen’s Jubilee or bonuses moving from capital to capital, you can make people switch and visit them more often instead or standing comfortably in the same city every day.

The Bane in the Black Citadel can be used for a new world boss fight. A giant devourer with piercing stingshots applying poison & bleed, melee pinching, and an earthquake that knockdown people.

Divinity’s Reach can provide God blessings (not combinable) by interacting with a God statue for a few hours.

• Balthazar : +100 Power
• Dwayna : +100 Heal
• Melandru : +100 Toughness
• Grenth : +100 Condition Damage
• Kormir : +5% Boon Duration
• Lyssa : -5% Condition Duration

I have no ideas for Hoelbrak, The Grove and Rata Sum currently.

Suggestions from players I’ll love to see :

Xar.6185:

The Grove. Use the pale tree and the dream to ‘see / participate’ in the living story steps or replay personal story parts (perhaps even choosing differently, though this wouldn’t affect your actual PS, just let you see more parts without creating another character of the same race). The pale tree actually does something similar to this for you and Trahearne in a story step. Doing it this way lets people select what they want to do. Want to do the Molten Facility? Don’t hope for a random fractal, put it here selectable in the Grove. Same thing for Aetherblade retreat. This would allow the living world / story to continue at whatever pace it wants without rushing and herding players from map to map. Players would be able to step in and out of the story without fear of missing anything.

smekras.8203:

Rata Sum is easy… Polymock Arena. Already half installed anyway

Rata Sum is easy… Polymock Arena. Already half installed anyway

something for the grove could be a dungeon based inside the sylvari dream.. open a portal into it somehow when something goes wrong (nightmare court) and have brand new gear for that dungeon…

smekras.8203:

Rata Sum is easy… Polymock Arena. Already half installed anyway

I know a little Asura who will love you ! Nice idea ^^ I will link your suggestion in the appropriate CDI topic.

The crooks of the matter is in the minigames Anet promised before launch and failed to implement now more than a year since release.
Once anet introduce a variety of minigames (more than 1 in each city) with decent achievements, ranked ladders and tournaments, youll see more people in each racial.

IM also hoping that at least some of the minigames will be open world, including a large area of each racial (like a hide + seek game or something).

For crafting, banking, and trading nothing beats Rata Sum. Everything is oriented in a way that makes sense and isn’t cluttered (I’m lookin’ at you Holebrak and Black Citadel), what you need is a closer run than other cities (the run from crafting to TP or bank is long in the Groove and Black Citadel), and you’re not dealing with the clutter of other players and the exceptionally longer load times they create at the start of the living story.

The only reason I even dare go into Lions Arch is for the Mystic Forge. Much like the real LA it’s congested, people are rude, and it’s just a dirty mess. j/k

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Here’s an idea (…) If a human character wants to craft something it has to go to Divinity’s Reach (…) And to ensure this is the case remove the crafting stations from WvW and Lions Arch. (…) And to ensure people visit Lion Arch remove the Trading Posts from the racial capitals.

In this way the key services are distributed fairly while causing minimal frustration.

Causing minimal frustration?
Need I remind you people often use BLTC delivery NPCs right next to the crafting stations just so they don’t have to run back and forth 50 times?
Imagine if they had to WP to another city…

The only way to populate the capitals (properly) is to add and adjust stuff like WPs to make navigation easier, then I’m sure people wouldn’t mind to be there.
Making the in game stuff less accessible to force people into a bottleneck will only bring rage.

Id like to add that personally, I use rata sum and DR as my main crafting/trading areas. These cities have the easiest layout by far for these types of things, and if it wasn’t for the mystic forge being in LA I simply wouldn’t bother going there at all.

Anyway, this is kind of redundant, because even if millions of players crowded around the racial cities crafting areas, the city would still feel dead anyway but the crafting tables. The only way to make them feel alive is giving incentives for players to explore every nook and cranny on a regular basis.. Something which is really hard to achieve.

i have a great Idea, or i would believe so. First of all each capital city has to offer every thing that LA does, without Fractals and other dungeons and quests.

Now to manipulate or actually to motivate people to visit cities ANET has to create various bonuses that would rotate on weekly basis. For example Black citadel will give bonus 20% exp for weapon smith crafting and The Grove will have same type of bonus for Huntsman crafting. Every week it rotates. This is to illustrate how the bonuses work and swap.

Now i’ll list various bonuses that can be created, those are also examples:
1. Crafting EX bonuses – 20% extra exp
2. Crafting chance bonuses – 20% chance to craft better quality item
3. Auctioneer bonus – minus 20% off the listing fee
4. Auctioneer luck bonus – 20% chance on sold item to get 20% more gold as bonus
5. Swift foot – simple 40% movement speed whole you’re in the city
and i also thought there could be negative bonuses that would motivate people to move out of the city. pretty much a negative counter to the ones i’ve added above.

of course there can be plenty more bonuses, i gave off a few. The bonuses can be redistributed in various mixes for all capital cities and get random redistribution every other week, this is done so people can’t just pick the best bonused city.

My idea for the racial capitals (I posted this in one of the collaboritve development threads and it seemed to be largely ignored )

Lions Arch has portals to every city, portals to WvW, easy travel from the heart of the mists, the mystic forge, all the dungeon vendors and fractals of the mists. Oh and Moa racing. It is chock full and needs no more stuff to make peolpe travel there.

The Grove. Use the pale tree and the dream to ‘see / participate’ in the living story steps or replay personal story parts (perhaps even choosing differently, though this wouldn’t affect your actual PS, just let you see more parts without creating another character of the same race). The pale tree actually does something similar to this for you and Trahearne in a story step. Doing it this way lets people select what they want to do. Want to do the Molten Facility? Don’t hope for a random fractal, put it here selectable in the Grove. Same thing for Aetherblade retreat. This would allow the living world / story to continue at whatever pace it wants without rushing and herding players from map to map. Players would be able to step in and out of the story without fear of missing anything.

The Black Citadel is the perfect place to host warband vs. warband… Er…. Guild Vs. Guild rather, on a neutral field so to speak. Guilds could post on an in game ‘bulletin board’ for challenges or schedule matches or even recruit.

Hoelbrak should be where all of the ‘pvp’ activities portals are located. Like southun survival, crab toss, sanctum sprint, keg brawl and maybe even add on a special rotation of the limited time activities like reapers rumble, dragon ball or snowball mayhem.

Rata Sum needs to have the Super Adventure Box become permanent. There could still be a ‘living’ focus brought to it once or twice a year when new levels are added or tribuilation mode is altered or new skins are cycled in and out. Also the polymock arena is there so if and when that is implemented that make two strong reasons to visit Rata Sum.

Divinties Reach. This is where we leverage the Queen’s Gauntlet combined with the heart quest in plains of ashford, Help Paenula train the troops by fighting in the pit and capturing creatures. Players would be able to go to DR speak to a ‘Big Game Hunter’ of sorts and choose first by location, then by type etc a specific PvE mob to fight solo or in a group. These could be bounty targets, wandering champs, dungeon bosses etc. All unlockable by doing specific things. For example if you wanted to choose the cave troll from queensdale you would have to have queensdale map completion or have killed a certain number or type of trolls. To unlock Kholer from ascalonian catacombs you would have to have completed AC story mode first etc.

All of this could be fleshed out and have details added but I think it’s enough to get the point across.

A big step toward balancing traffic for me would just be adding portals from Heart of the Mists to each of the capital cities. I would use the less populated zones if I could get there without having to load into LA anyway.

@ Xar.6185:
Not a big fan of the other ideas, but I love the one for The Grove.

I know I have some kind of a “home” somewhere in my race city. I do not have any reason to visit there.
What about to make a wp in my home location with a zero cost to travel ?
And maybe add tp access, and crafting stations to the home locations, all comfortably close.

that might happen fext when they add in player/guild housing.. id imagine once that is done what you ask may be possible.