Guild Wars 2

Hey,

So as you may know leveling a new toon even on prime time, most zones are almost completely dead now, as the flood is over.

It makes me feel lonely. Even when people ARE there i’m reluctant to talk to them, the only time i feel like talking is if theres a few people who are obviously active and doing group tasks, etc.

My solution, which i’d like feedback by you guys on,

Is merging server’s low-level zones, letting the the player limit ‘cap’ and then moving you/others to the next server-merged zone. IE: You’re on Jade quarry, so by default it’ll be like #3 merged server if the starter zones for the area you’re in are full.

I cannot think of any major issues that could come with this.. It would be lovely to see packed lands again, it’s awfully lonely in the world, thus i’ve leveled my 3 alt 80’s via crafting in LA just to be around people..

What do you guys think?
Feedback please!

PS:

SS Below… ..Remember THIS? This is what needs to happen again. We need more players in zones! Ive never felt as part of something as i did in the Headstart day one on Gw2.

Cross realm zones would be a nice feature, since it’s technically allready in the game in the form of overflow servers.

Yeah I’m finding it really depressing running around lower level zones which are completely empty especially when the server I’m on is full!

Yep, an underflow server(actually maps) would be a very good idea indeed.

Would also solve the same problem for Servers that are empty during timezone off times.

It seems so simple to do, hopefully this will happen in near future. I avoid making new characters and leveling in the world because of this.

Add a monthly that gives you credit for specifically participating in events in lower level zones

Add a personal, duo or small group ‘event’ that can be activated by questing in lower level zones. Collect x, y, and z from different zones, combine them and then be able to fight an undead boss for example.

Instead of Monthly, it should be weekly otherwise it only has effect in the beginning of the month.

They can also show us a list of available server (map) list for you to choose when entering a low population map. The list will let you see the number of players in each map so you can make your choice. This can be applied to high level zones too, because the level 70079 zones are pretty much the same as low level zones too.

I stay in the higher level zones for the karma and loot. Properly balance a way that entices me to return to lower level regions with that in mind and the problem is solved.

Ive seen a few threads mention this idea – and my guild was talking about it the other day as well.

Seems like a great idea. I really hope this is something they are considering. It would really make the game a lot more fun.

It would be nice if there was only a server distinction in WvW.

So from your pic you want the zerg back? like it was just after launch?
No thanks, I see plenty of people the difference it is 5-10 or so doing an event or 10-20 taking a boss and honestly I prefer it.( this is low lvl starter zones) You can see how the events play out and you can actually use teamwork instead of everything dying in a flash of light.

Actually I see a balanced pop across all the maps. I play in all the maps on my 80 and alts.

I see these threads about the game being so empty and so many payers are gone and I can’t help wondering what everyone is talking about. Did you really expect to keep the launch zerg? Everyone was low level then.
The game is not empty. Join another server

Morrigan.2809:

So from your pic you want the zerg back? like it was just after launch?
No thanks, I see plenty of people the difference it is 5-10 or so doing an event or 10-20 taking a boss and honestly I prefer it

Honestly?
The Zerg is much more preferable to beeing the ONLY 5-10 people on the whole frikken map.

Change the server, seriously? That´s great, go swing your sword again.

Sorry, everyone’s too busy farming gold from the Plinx chain event (in Cursed Shore) to care about anything else.

Apparently this is how ANet intended for things to be.

Please don’t bring back the PvE zergs.

Thanks.

I am leveling 2 new toons for 2 weeks now. Nearly getting to level 80 now (hitted 77 on both toons just today).

Perhaps its a server issue, because on Far shiverpeaks Server, i always saw other players in all maps i have been while leveling.

However it isnt the crowds like it was when the game lauched. but still, it doesnt feel like i am playing alone.

Have you considered migrating to a more populated server?

Cameo.4073:

Add a monthly that gives you credit for specifically participating in events in lower level zones

Add a personal, duo or small group ‘event’ that can be activated by questing in lower level zones. Collect x, y, and z from different zones, combine them and then be able to fight an undead boss for example.

This actually could be a good idea! To disperse a little more the players around the world.

Changing server is not the solution as the problem will only get worse with time.
Either when people have finally leveled a toon in every class or the grind and sinking popularity will make people desert in more noticeable numbers.

IMHO the division in US and EU servers is the biggest problem. I understand it´s because of latency issues, but it leads to an artificial divide and empty servers during a timezone´s off time.

I think having PvE zones from lvls 1 to 70 shared between multiple servers is a good idea.

Regarding the lack of people in zones currently, i think it is because of two points:
1) You only have to do a heart quest or complete a map /zone ONCE. After that, there is no point coming back.
2) There are TOO MANY zones in the game so everyone is spread out. Thus, there needs to be basically one zone for a level range, not like 5+ zones for lvls 1-15.

It is better at 80 because there is only a few lvl 80 zones for people to PvE in so you tend to see more players

Lend.7250:

Cameo.4073:

Add a monthly that gives you credit for specifically participating in events in lower level zones

This actually could be a good idea! To disperse a little more the players around the world.

I have nothing against such an idea. More carrots are always nice.

But it doesn´t solve the underlying problem for high level players in low level zones.

The underflow server (free cute kitten pic for anybody coming up with a better name ) would elegantly solve the problem.
The overflow server mechanic is already working and shouldn´t require too many devwork hours to adapt and invert.
It would also help in staving of the eventually coming server consolidations. Always a major psychological downer.

This happens in like every mmo. When it first comes out lower level zones are super populated, then a month or 2 later they are completely deserted.

Like others said a real simple fix is to introduce actual proper down scaling so people don’t feel penalized for being anywhere but Orr…God knows I’d be ecstatic to get out of that god forsaken zone!

Kojiden.8405:

This happens in like every mmo. When it first comes out lower level zones are super populated, then a month or 2 later they are completely deserted.

Indeed, and this game has actually a mechanic to solve this problem.
But it doesn´t use it.

Thinking out of the box, force inmates nationwide to play GW2. And force them into low pop zones.

I started a new character (human) a few hours ago and was the only one in the instance. I was shocked.

HawkMeister.4758:

Kojiden.8405:

This happens in like every mmo. When it first comes out lower level zones are super populated, then a month or 2 later they are completely deserted.

Indeed, and this game has actually a mechanic to solve this problem.
But it doesn´t use it.

This is true but the later zones dont represent anything new. There is a plethora of content but it is all of the same and that is what disappoints players. We as people need to strive for goals but there really isn’t any goals in this game, it is casual.

The best choice would be to actually give max level characters a reason to go back to lower level zones.

1. Nix the RNG on high-demand chef ingredients, like Vanilla Beans, and lay out a grove of them in a couple different low level zones.

2. Change loot tables and DE rewards so that drops/money/karma are attuned to the level of the player, instead of the level of the mobs; this way, players can farm in any zone they want, instead of being forced to stick to Orr.

3. Expand DE chains to create multi-zone META events. If a slew of DE chains were added to lower level areas that all had to be completed to unlock a major META event (and all the DEs, and the ultimate META actually had some semblance of difficulty and rewared the players appropriately), you’d see a lot more max level characters in the low level areas.

The problem, as it currently stands, is that there’s just no reason for level 80s to come out of Orr, Lion’s Arch and PvP. Loot, karma and coin are all better in Cursed Shore, and none of the lower level zones have events that effect what happen in other zones. “To see content you haven’t seen before” only works until the player becomes bored.

Once you give them a semblance of reward or progression, the incentive returns.

Tip..

Hit the newbie zones..

Do some person quests..

Powerlevel alt via JC, Cooking and Artificing.

Be around 50 and then you can play pvp, catch up on personal story, or rack in xp in zones with more folks..

Everyone is doing it.. Zero reason to do 1-40 anymore if you don’t want to..

If you do, cool. Enjoy and have fun.. But don’t complain if you pass up ways to level up quickly..

Speaking of alts only, of course. New players (which is sad as game is not old) will have issues if they don’t buy gold..

Siobhan.3582:

Tip..

Hit the newbie zones..

Do some person quests..

Powerlevel alt via JC, Cooking and Artificing.

Be around 50 and then you can play pvp, catch up on personal story, or rack in xp in zones with more folks..

Everyone is doing it.. Zero reason to do 1-40 anymore if you don’t want to..

If you do, cool. Enjoy and have fun.. But don’t complain if you pass up ways to level up quickly..

Speaking of alts only, of course. New players (which is sad as game is not old) will have issues if they don’t buy gold..

The fact that anybody even has this mindset is just proof that Anet failed in their design goals, and should be re-evaluated.

Greyfeld.7104:

Siobhan.3582:

Tip..

Hit the newbie zones..

Do some person quests..

Powerlevel alt via JC, Cooking and Artificing.

The fact that anybody even has this mindset is just proof that Anet failed in their design goals, and should be re-evaluated.

Nah, it´s just the typical minmaxing/no Necro l33t crowd.

Can´t avoid those as company. As a player it´s pretty easy though.

Why grind out low level pve?

Heck this game says boost to 80 in 2/3 of the areas you can play in.

And even in some pve (aka Mad King) you got boosted to 80.

You all have some rainbow bridge of dreams thinking the path to max level should be something special..

There is a solid reason you are not seeing tons of folks around to play with as you level alts..

Repeating the same stuff is not fun, no matter the game..

Siobhan.3582:

Why grind out low level pve?

Heck this game says boost to 80 in 2/3 of the areas you can play in.

And even in some pve (aka Mad King) you got boosted to 80.

You all have some rainbow bridge of dreams thinking the path to max level should be something special..

There is a solid reason you are not seeing tons of folks around to play with as you level alts..

Repeating the same stuff is not fun, no matter the game.

Exactly. Which is why Anet needs to work on giving level 80s an incentive to do more than farm Plinx all day.

I kinda like it this way. GW1 was always played primarily single player, and this gets that feeling back. Once in a while you’d actually party with someone and theres a delight in that. They should make zone chats combine throughout several zones though.

There’s no reason to revisit the areas you’ve done. I think they need to give incentives for people to return to the areas.

They need to make mult-tier heart vendors. First time you finish it the heart turns yellow and you get to buy something from NPC. If you go back, and redo the quest and help the NPCs, the heart might turn red, green, blue, purple etc, and should all have better rewards that you can buy, like dyes, maybe new armor skins, hats, hair pins, weapon skins that you can apply dyes, or maybe even one time temporary things like bulk buying certain foods for cheap etc.

Aridia.3042:

There’s no reason to revisit the areas you’ve done. I think they need to give incentives for people to return to the areas.

They need to make mult-tier heart vendors. First time you finish it the heart turns yellow and you get to buy something from NPC. If you go back, and redo the quest and help the NPCs, the heart might turn red, green, blue, purple etc, and should all have better rewards that you can buy, like dyes, maybe new armor skins, hats, hair pins, weapon skins that you can apply dyes, or maybe even one time temporary things like bulk buying certain foods for cheap etc.

That is good design.
the colour of the heart could fade over time as well so you can keep going back to do them. And every time you do you recieve a nice reward. Something like 3 U-dye or 1 R-dye. Fine transmutation stone…. etc.

Something people generally need.

Not some green weapons the only thing they’re good for is vendoring.

showatt.9413:

Aridia.3042:

There’s no reason to revisit the areas you’ve done. I think they need to give incentives for people to return to the areas.

They need to make mult-tier heart vendors. First time you finish it the heart turns yellow and you get to buy something from NPC. If you go back, and redo the quest and help the NPCs, the heart might turn red, green, blue, purple etc, and should all have better rewards that you can buy, like dyes, maybe new armor skins, hats, hair pins, weapon skins that you can apply dyes, or maybe even one time temporary things like bulk buying certain foods for cheap etc.

That is good design.
the colour of the heart could fade over time as well so you can keep going back to do them. And every time you do you recieve a nice reward. Something like 3 U-dye or 1 R-dye. Fine transmutation stone…. etc.

Something people generally need.

Not some green weapons the only thing they’re good for is vendoring.

I LOVE THIS IDEA!! Also I think it would be a good idea to have loot be upscaled. Perhaps it could have less of a chance of getting something good compared to your current lvl area or something. That or uplvling for loot could be implemented only when involved in a DE. Right now 75% of the DEs I run into don’t have anyone else in them, so I pass them by.

Yeah that multi-tier heart idea is way more practical than any of the underflow ideas (no offense. ) And it actually make a lot more sense too. If you keep going back to help a certain NPC, obviously he or she is going to be more grateful than you helping them once. He or she is going to be SO grateful he might reward you with a family hand-me-downs or some nice jug of karma. Honestly everything about this idea shouts brilliant design.

Introduce a weekly where you have to get specific amounts of materials from low level zones and take part in specific number of low lvl events to earn tokens to hand into an npc. this should encourage players to go to these zones.

Problem Anet created was there is never a reason to replay other zones once characters hit 80.

Morrigan.2809:

So from your pic you want the zerg back? like it was just after launch?
No thanks, I see plenty of people the difference it is 5-10 or so doing an event or 10-20 taking a boss and honestly I prefer it.( this is low lvl starter zones) You can see how the events play out and you can actually use teamwork instead of everything dying in a flash of light.

Actually I see a balanced pop across all the maps. I play in all the maps on my 80 and alts.

I see these threads about the game being so empty and so many payers are gone and I can’t help wondering what everyone is talking about. Did you really expect to keep the launch zerg? Everyone was low level then.
The game is not empty. Join another server

The solution shouldnt be “join another server”, then that makes the server your on become even more dead.

Remove all servers

Insert American server, European, Asian, Oceania servers

Change WvWvW to WvWvWvW

karma.8763:

The solution shouldnt be “join another server”, then that makes the server your on become even more dead.

Well, actually if they measure active accounts then they can close down inactive servers and force the few remaining actives to join 1 of the active servers. The problem will be if the number of active servers becomes less than 3.

Its rather difficult at times and tedious to do maps on zones now. The mobs are not adjusting it seems to lower player count and if alone I find my self over whelmed sometimes with mass zergs of mobs. Would be fine if other people were there but I only see a few in a zone now and not many people are bothering to rez or help anymore ether.

You can take the player out of the zerg to best gear and highest levels game but its going to take more than what I have seen so far to get those kinds of game mentalities out of the player. Was great fun at start up, getting kind of sad now.

Even the 70-80 lv maps are all dead. Only place that I see players is the Orr. Maybe merging the low-populated servers is a better idea.

I blame high waypoint costs

I love this idea (or something similar to it)!

I’ve been on Henge of Denravi since day 1. At first I was pretty annoyed with the constant overflows (especially when parties were bugged) but now I would give anything to see them again. I desperately want to move to one of the “full” servers but I know that, even if I did (and could, because I can’t actually join a “full” server), the only “full” zone would be Lion’s Arch.

I don’t know why Henge of Denravi is still considered “high” when I see 5 people at any one time in any zone that is NOT Lion’s Arch. So now I’m stuck on a dying server since the mass WvW exodus a month ago, wanting to leave but unable to join any other servers because Lion’s Arch is “full.”

My plea to Anet: let me play with other players again!

All these ideas are neat and I´d like to have them too, but they have one big problem.
It takes valuable developer time to implement, which is always missing.

Tweaking the overflow server mechanic is a quick and dirty hack, but I daresay much easier and faster to implement than anything else.

Remember it isn´t a server-merge!
It´s actually an instance merge for specific maps, thus it already dynamically reacts to each individual map and its current population problem.

Already people have their favorite leveling maps(queensdale) and basically ignore everything else (charr), so this problem is acute NOW and VERY detrimental to new player retention.

Vakirauta.6397:

Even the 70-80 lv maps are all dead. Only place that I see players is the Orr. Maybe merging the low-populated servers is a better idea.

no, the problem, if you want to call it that, isn´t empty servers, but empty maps. Of cause they are empty, most MMORPG have vacated starter areas. You stay in their level range only for a short period of time, but max level stays with you. Unless there is something to gain from those low level maps, they will stay empty, even when the servers are bursting.

Algreg.3629:

Vakirauta.6397:

Even the 70-80 lv maps are all dead. Only place that I see players is the Orr. Maybe merging the low-populated servers is a better idea.

no, the problem, if you want to call it that, isn´t empty servers, but empty maps. Of cause they are empty, most MMORPG have vacated starter areas. You stay in their level range only for a short period of time, but max level stays with you. Unless there is something to gain from those low level maps, they will stay empty, even when the servers are bursting.

I see your point and agree mate. But either way, something must be done.

yes. balance rewards across the world so that players have a reason to get out of Orr, dungeons and WvW, which is where everyone is.

again, it’s not the servers that are dropping in pop. populations are concentrated in certain areas of the map.

just put the same drops to other zones as in orr (lvl 76-80) gear and materials and i will go there. i will NOT go there if i get lvl 80 drops in orr and lvl 27 kessex hills.

i started a new alt last night, in queensdale which is probably the best chance of finding other players.

i zoomed through the shaemoor area hearts in about 30 minutes, and not a single event procced, because i only saw about 4 other players in teh area.

so after doing human starter zone about 30 times all totalled between betas and retail alts, i am now facing having finished that area with the lowest level yet, and with the largst gap yet.

we gave feedback in beta that the content flow to level/exp ratio was poorly tuned. that trying to force events to be the primary means to level was not sustainable(it didn’t even work well in zones with overflows), and that telling people to do other zones, to do every other zone at every level range, was not only goign to impact replayability, but also was more of an eff you than a solution.

well, here we are 2 months and change into retail, and it seems the onyl viable way to level toons is to do 100% of the hearts plus wvw plus the terrible story that has poor non exp rewards, or dump irl cash into gems to power level via crafting.

it might not be so bad if i hadn’t done most of the content on my first toon, then done much of the rest on my 2nd toon. if the early zones by race were all equal in quality and of interest…

i remember pre launch how they(fans at least, maybe devs too) talked about the entire game was endgame. how at level 80 we’d be spread out across the world because the drops and rewards would be of an appropriate level for our current toon.

what happened to that?