Guild Wars 2

Any one else notice the 5 main cities are pretty much dead most the time except for on rare occasions?

Unless its just my server lol.

Lions Arch is turning into the main hub…which is sad imo…they are following most other MMO’s out there by turning the other great cities into ghost zones and only focusing on one city…

I know lore wise LA is the central hub for all races…but does no one else think the other cities need some love to?

LA seems to get all the love for events and everything. Why not have other events that effect the other cities once in a while.

I personally love the Norn city…its so dead though..other then the fact of NPC’s

I agree with La being only busy city... The other citys are going to gets lots of love soon probably as earlyu as december im almost positive... also them asura need to work on making gates to fractal from every major city

I also love the norn city and spent a good deal of time there... once i was 80 though i have been forced to LA out of neccesity

Yes but it’s really difficult making players not congregate in one central location to advertise for groups and such.

GrapeGatsby.6937:

Yes but it’s really difficult making players not congregate in one central location to advertise for groups and such.

Agreed…but then that should point to the need of getting a real looking for group system put into the game.

That way people don’t have to sit in one place all day spamming LFG and so on.

Remember the pre-release trailers and such? The cities were such an awesome draw to this game. It’ll be so sad if they end up being looked on as nothing more than a huge waste of resources. making them look awesome should have been just the first step.. how about giving players reasons to spend some time in them?

I remember =r when we were told the cities would all ave events going on and mini games.

I also remember reading how our personal home instance would change and people would react to us differently and we could invite friends to visit our home instances and see what we have built and so on….I dont see any of that…..

I remember the blog post where they say those features are coming down the line in development. It’s fairly far down in there but it’s there.

Fotm kinda put the final nail in other cities population

aye its comine, but i think it needs to be slightly higher in there prioritys now, specially after the firt two events being held in LA. Its kinda shown us that its the place to hang...

Combined Suggestions to help this issue:

1 – unified city general chat
2 – An LFG tool, single-realm only, that will assemble groups but NOT port them to dungeons, while the individual people who sign up in this tool are out and about doing other things…. or a completely global LFG channel with select message archetypes NOT in the spam filter so people can post “looking for” messages without being throttled.
3 – an increase in waypoint costs to Lion’s arch to encourage people to use their closest major city as their point of choice for TP pickups, etc.
4 – an increase in important dynamic events away from Lion’s Arch and Orr.
—- we as a community have been neglecting the elder dragon advance in the face of FotM, this could be used as an “excuse” to launch a new draconic offensive against the major cities?

Epic boss invasions every few hours or so would probably solve the issue. Specific ‘in-city’ currencies earned through DEs with separate vendors might also help. It’s too safe in the towns as it is.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

I remember the blog post where they say those features are coming down the line in development. It’s fairly far down in there but it’s there.

What’s up with their priorities, though? The useless new island, FOTM, Ascended gear first? Really?

Maybe it’s because their priorities are being skewed by an ultra-reactionary community.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

Maybe it’s because their priorities are being skewed by an ultra-reactionary community.

They could have easily decided to put the gate to FoTM in Rata Sum instead of in Lion’s Arch. It wouldn’t have made that much difference to the dungeon’s story.

That wouldn’t necessarily expedite the issue, only transfer it.

It’s nice to be able to get around the game world quickly so you can enjoy more content during short sessions, but this is the downside to having a city with free portals to a bunch of cities spread out all around the world. If one city has an obvious advantage as a hangout spot compared to the rest of them, it’s pretty much a guarantee that players will congregate there. The same thing happened in WoW when Dalaran came out with the 2nd expansion, and a lot of players didn’t like it back then, either. I think far more players enjoy the quick accessibility more than they care about exploration or aesthetic choices, though, so developers took that torch and ran with it.

Its just that they put so much work into each city…but we are forced to hang out in one place like LA cause there is no proper LFG tool and most the population for each server is in LA now due to a bad choice of adding a dungeon to LA…or making every event since Halloween take place in LA.

Keg brawl is in the Norn City…but thats a ghost event to now…

plasmacutter.2709:

4 – an increase in important dynamic events away from Lion’s Arch and Orr.
—- we as a community have been neglecting the elder dragon advance in the face of FotM, this could be used as an “excuse” to launch a new draconic offensive against the major cities?

I really like this suggestion.

Lutharr.1035:

plasmacutter.2709:

4 – an increase in important dynamic events away from Lion’s Arch and Orr.
—- we as a community have been neglecting the elder dragon advance in the face of FotM, this could be used as an “excuse” to launch a new draconic offensive against the major cities?

I really like this suggestion.

This still requires the rewards for those events compete with fractals.

Fractal rewards being superior to all other rewards in the game are feeding the lion’s arch issue.

For players like me who don’t participate in fractals, stops into lion’s arch only happen once a week.

well I really like the fotm atm. Im doing em cos they are fun, but im only lvl 9 on them. Once the grind starts for acended gear Ill stop that. So someone like me while there currently wont stay there for much longer.

I really wish I could hang out in Divinitys Reach or the Black Citadel though since I LOVE those 2 places.

Why not make all of the cities chat connected? I think that would help at least.

Yeah, the Norn City (coz I love Ice Towns) and Rata Sum (design and convenience) are my favorites.

Sometimes I actually make it a point to do crafting in Rata Sum instead of LA. But I really have go out of my way to do it.

BTW, anyone else think it’s kinda weird that most of the cities have the Leatherworking Station next to the Cooking Station? I was under the impression that leatherworking isn’t particularly . . . appetizing if you know what I mean. ;P

Lutharr.1035:

well I really like the fotm atm. Im doing em cos they are fun, but im only lvl 9 on them. Once the grind starts for acended gear Ill stop that. So someone like me while there currently wont stay there for much longer.

I really wish I could hang out in Divinitys Reach or the Black Citadel though since I LOVE those 2 places.

Leave cats alone long enough, and they’ll build a death star. This is why I have dogs.

Build a portal leading directly into FotM in each city next to the gate that goes to LA. When a higher tier dungeon releases, redirect those portals to the new one.

I’d expect them to have plans for their cities, but yeah I’d like to see more in them. They put a lot of time and energy into some seriously beautiful cities (DR is just breathtaking) which as far as I can tell, the wider community appreciates and recognises. Give us an excuse to hang out there and we will!

As pretty as Lion’s Arch is, I feel it’s actually the 2nd weakest of the 6 major cities overall (The Grove being below, it. uggh, The Grove lol).

1. a single map chat shared between all the cities.
2. a single LFG chat channel shared between all the cities.

Problem solved.

Satakal.6971:

1. a single map chat shared between all the cities.
2. a single LFG chat channel shared between all the cities.

Problem solved.

3 – a specific whitelisting AI to prevent people’s LFG spam from being construed as gold spam and throttling their chat.

While we’re at it, remove the Dungeon Vendors from Lion’s Arch and post them next to the Dungeon Entrances themselves? (or at least post some vendors there in addition to the ones in LA)

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

Maybe it’s because their priorities are being skewed by an ultra-reactionary community.

Their priorities are being skewed by RMT.

Flynch.6034:

Epic boss invasions every few hours or so would probably solve the issue.

Gojira!

Four Jacks Twice.2537:

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

Maybe it’s because their priorities are being skewed by an ultra-reactionary community.

Their priorities are being skewed by RMT.

It’s interesting to see how pandering to the ingame economy ( BLT and external traders ) has crippled the viral consumer attraction to the game. GW2 is a stunning piece of work that has so much potential.

Have the devs taken the Kings shilling?

Angelus.1042:

GrapeGatsby.6937:

Yes but it’s really difficult making players not congregate in one central location to advertise for groups and such.

Agreed…but then that should point to the need of getting a real looking for group system put into the game.

That way people don’t have to sit in one place all day spamming LFG and so on.

The likely scenario if a lfg tool were put in? Players would queue while congregated in one place in order to chat while waiting. I’ve seen this happen in games with LFG tools. A better idea might be to put a different dungeon entrance in each city and drop the idea of an lfg tool.

Its Spamadan 2.0! Even tho i remeber KC and LA were extremely well populated before Kamadan became the ultimate spammer ville in gw1

A proper LFG tool would fix most of the problems, since once you take away the LFG spam, you basically can just be in any city of your choice. FOTM not being in an actual city would’ve also helped spread people out.

they could add something like a ‘city chat’ that allowed people to communicate from every major city

plasmacutter.2709:

Satakal.6971:

1. a single map chat shared between all the cities.
2. a single LFG chat channel shared between all the cities.

Problem solved.

3 – a specific whitelisting AI to prevent people’s LFG spam from being construed as gold spam and throttling their chat.

Or they could simply automatically move it to the LFG channel, like Guild Wars 1 did.

Same with trade chat. They should really bring back player-to-player trades (of course, it would only work if you were in the same server/overflow).

Seriously, they had better systems in the original game.

On Tarnished Coast, we’re very busy in LA and very very busy in Divinity’s Reach. Fortunately, people do also RP in the other main cities but they are mostly dead as well. And I agree with the OP – Hoelbrak is my favorite city, but it’s always empty.

I had made a suggestion that for the Wintersday event, they should bring back some mini-games related to the capital cities. It would certainly bring in traffic!

I think having some kind “world” event with the cities would be fun too. Like one day, Hoelbrak is being over run by Svanir and Norn characters need to rescue it… Or etc. for the other cities. That would help as well.

My last suggestion would be free WP travel INTO your capital city. For example, as a Norn you can free WP travel to a WP in Hoelbrak from any location (or maybe only from Norn territories? I’d be okay with that too).

One thing they could have done or can do is make the portals to the Fractals appeared randomly in the world.

My suggestion :-

It would have been a lot more dynamic and interesting if there were agents of the consortium or scientists from Rata Sum looking for anomalies.If they are spotted we know that a Fractal will open soon or something will happen (remember the Observers in Fringe).

Make quests tied to it in the form of an obscure faction with a secret agenda who wants to bring back something from the past.This obscure faction has agents disguised as regular folks in the capital cities.Listen to the chatter around and you might get quests from them.Once the DE related to the Fractals are activiated the player will have to choose working for his city or the Secret faction.Choosing this secret faction will prevent you from doing race specific quests tied to the cities and will make you fight the Durmand Priory,The Vigil and Order of whispers in DEs.

After an amount of time/influence points/artefacts collecting from the Mists, the cities will start to feel the effect of those Fractal incursions.

1. Rata Sum (Asuras)will have specific quests to find a solution to the problem.

2.Same for Divinity’s reach(Humans)

3.Same for Hoelbrak(Norn)

4.Same for Black Citadel (Charr)

5. Same for the Grove (Sylvari).

from time to time creatures from the Mists will pour in our realm and we will have to defend our cities ( through DEs) from them.

A better LFM panel would help. Would allow players to go play around while waiting for the group to fill instead of having to spam in chat or wait in one area to see if any kind of group is forming for what you want to do.

Vabbi is a desolation. Yesterday i play and see 5 people during the whole day in such 10 place. I feel i’m like a survivor…and i can’t play arah dungeon because there are no much people to liberate. How sad.

rata sum will have polymock arenas and maybe that golem chess thing

I’ve been trying to find some of the mini-games within the major cities that I’ve read about in blogs, but so far it seems only keg toss made the final cut.

I believe there is a very simple fix to this problem. Make the home city of your race free to port to. Every Charr would port to BC, every sylvari to Grove etc., I know I would, saves me 2-3s. You wouldn’t see so much cross race interaction within the home cities, but are you even supposed to? I’m Sylvari and I’m pretty sure the Grove is supposed to be mostly Sylvari. The townsfolk whisper about seeing Norn or humans every now and then like its a big deal, which only reinforces the fact this would be a great solution.

Other races only need to pass through the other cities for exploration or maybe storyline.

So make home cities free for their race and you will see it change.

People in Lion’s Arch don’t want to miss LFG advertisements. So the simplest solution would be to implement a global LFG channel. Therefore people can hang out, craft, browse tradepost from any of the 5 cities.

Angelus.1042:

GrapeGatsby.6937:

Yes but it’s really difficult making players not congregate in one central location to advertise for groups and such.

Agreed…but then that should point to the need of getting a real looking for group system put into the game.

That way people don’t have to sit in one place all day spamming LFG and so on.

Even when WOW added this opption people still sat in Stormwind and Org all day …… so stop pushing that this will fix this problem to get what you want

Imho the events should be spread along to other cities aswell. It would be better not to stack la sardines in a can on every event in LA with massive lag.

offence.4726:

Imho the events should be spread along to other cities aswell. It would be better not to stack la sardines in a can on every event in LA with massive lag.

This is pretty much the way forwards imo as well. We can have flamboyant ideas and we can have a raging debate over the LFG tool or lack thereof. Or we can implement a really basic design, as above.

Just link all capital city map chat, that will solve it, im fed up going to LA but its the only place you can get groups.

Yes this is a problem. I remember how annoyed I was when Cataclysm launched that they put everything in SW and Org and the other capitals were just completely dead. They need to scale back the focus on LA and let things go on elsewhere.