Guild Wars 2

HawkMeister.4758:

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.

Right. There are always a few options the players can dream up. But we have no idea what kind of concern they have about this at all and then what they would or even can do about it now.

But that is all part of forums, players dreaming and playing fantasy Game Developer.

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.

This would make me want to wander slowly through lower level zones, as I did on my first play through.

Excellent suggestion.

I do like the idea of an underflow method but not to FILL a low level area just increase the number of players there a little.

- Regarding level loot: Yes the crafting ingrediants/ nodes are lower tier but I’ve got level 80 green and even at least one yellow item from a lvl 15 area DE, So it seems you can still get marketable kit in lower areas.
- Yes, I can ROFL Stomp most stuff in the 1-40 zones but I don’t really mind feeling that awesome now and then, being a casual gamer and all I still find it fun.

- Semi related: while waiting for a last spot for an AC run I kinda soloed that harpy DE 3 times and got over 60+ Vials of weak blood for the effort which was like 12 silver for really no effort at all.

Your pic…that zergfest was not fun.

I have a solution. I will post it below.

The Solution: How to resurrect dead zones

Every race has a higher-up in their city who hands out missions everyday. These important people will send you across Tyria for different objectives. Missions can vary in difficulty.

• Boss Hunting (Harder foes which can require grouping. Stop them from killing travellers etc)
• Resource Gathering (Iron,Wood, Onions, Skale Hides, Dragon Teeths etc)
• City Crafting (Repairs, Weapon/Armour for Soldiers, Food etc)
• Thin out enemies (Decrease their numbers to prevent war etc)
• Dungeon Crawling (Seek for treasures and mysterious hidden magic etc)
• Server Pride (Defeat enemies in WvWvW, Conquer keeps etc)
• City Crime (Find Thieves, Infiltrators, Traitors and put them in jail/execute them etc)

These are a few examples on how to make low level zones, mid level zones and high level zones active and also the races cities. This could make the game world even more “living” than it already is.
As it is now the highest level zone, Orr is the most populated zone. Players need something that drives them to visit other zones and populate those zones to make the game a better experience.

Well for one there’s no way to really know what’s going on in other zones aside from essentially tabbing out of the game and looking at some tracking website… So why am I gonna spend time/money to go to a zone to see “what’s up”?

Very little reason to go back since you don’t get as much karma, coin, reward potentials, desirable crafting mats as higher zones.

As much as the game has horizontal progression, there are still many mechanics that weight rewarding activity heavily in favor of the higher level zones.

I’m not really sure what a good suggestion might be without some major overhaul or implementation of something(s).

dirtyklingon.2918:

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?

I think it happens, just it’s hard to tell because you can’t see who is lvl 80 and just leveled down to the zone and who isn’t.

My guild is a great example. We’re small, have maybe 7 lvl 80s, and you’ll see us scattered. Why? One guy is Map completing his way up. Doing all lvl 1-10 zones, then 10-20 zones, etc. So right now, I think he’s clearing the level 20 zones.. While another guy is getting all the jumping puzzles so his zone level will be random as well.

Me, I’md oing them by region. I just finished all of the shiverpeaks, so now you’ll probablyf ind me somewhere in char terriritory. Yesterday I was finishing up the char starter area at lvl 80.

One things I’ve noticed: Phasing. This seems to have increased where I only see people when they’re x number of feet from me. Which means I’ll see no one, until an event starts,t hen all the sudden we’re all grouped up for the event, then they all dissapear again once the event is over. Which means, I’m not seeing most of the people on the map, even though their there.

I’m also kinda roudy so I keep map chat alive. There are usually people in the zone harvesting/mining/chopping/etc. And they keep to themselves. But calling out a Rich vein will help warm them up to chatting and maybe even helping you out.

For the record: I really don’t want those zergs back… They were more annoying than anything.

Until they put in stuff like Zkeys (Rewards for doing things in lower level content like Zoid suggested) you won’t see 80’s anywhere but dungeons, Orr and PvP.

Every game has this happen. Honestly I think more of the zones should have been end game oriented besides just Orr. GW1 had tons of zones that served no purpose other than for top level characters to vanquish.

If they were designing Tyria for the first time I could see them limiting the number of starter zones et, but they had to fill the space so to speak.

We already had someone on the forum asking where the Char themed 25-40 zone is. There isn’t one. Does it make sense to have 5 noob zones and 1 lvl 80 zone? Not really.

I really like the idea of a Cross Realm server. Which is somewhat like what WoW did, so you can play dungeons with your friend from another realm (server) at the same time you can keep your realm score / realm pvp alive. One problem I am experiencing now is lack of people in various zones which makes some PvE encounter/events impossible to complete (example: Mount Maelstrom event which is impossible to do alone).

I would love if they added stuff to do in all the zones. Tyria is just huge, but 95% of it is pretty much useless after you hit 100%.

If they add something, it should be something worth repeating, not an exploration cave or jumping puzzle. These are cool, but in the end everyone runs them max 1 time, to never return after.

A funny example is actually the WvW jumping puzzle. People run this every day, and the reason is simply that there is a reward they want. If only every zone in Tyria had something worth doing like that…

Something like a zone daily quest. Maybe gives a gift bag that has random stuff in it from weapon skins to consumables or costumes or those mini-pets. It would definitely keep people interested and busy. I like that idea

Twomix.5384:

Something like a zone daily quest. Maybe gives a gift bag that has random stuff in it from weapon skins to consumables or costumes or those mini-pets. It would definitely keep people interested and busy. I like that idea

I would hate if we got anymore dailies in the game tbh. In some games it gets to the point that if you wanna do your dailies, you’ll end up doing only that because it takes so much time. I’d hate to see that in GW2… So I’m all for content in those zones but preferably something you can keep doing and not something you can do once a day.

I had the solution to the problem (no seemed to like it).

1)All drops/ XP/ Karma etc scale to level.

2) get rid of DR

3) free waypoints.

Do this and people will spread out on the map and players who quit might even return.

“You have been placed in a normal (but empty) zone. Would you like to join an underflow server? Y/N”

(No WvW info or bonuses on underflow servers, etc.)

Possible solution: Once you have 100% completed a zone, unlock all the waypoints for free. As it stands, it is virtually impossible to recoup the costs of TPing to some zones because events give such poor gold rewards, and this is doubly true if you have already completed a zone since you can’t do the hearts.

HawkMeister.4758:

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.

This idea works for me.

There was a really good concept in bringing dead zones alive periodically in GW1, and that was Nicholas the Traveler. Every week he would make a stop at a certain zone for players to find him and bring him the trophies or items that he want in exchange for gifts. The gifts is like Black Lion chest in GW2 that contains random loot from festival items, to sweets and other useful and fun stuff. The items from those gifts had much more in variety than what we would get in BLC in this game.

While there are very good new concepts implemented in this game such as open world MMO but a lot of solid preexisting concepts were left out from GW1 such as this, makeover pakages, and extremely broad and in depth contents. I know I’m making a comparison to a game that has been in development for 7 years+ but I’d really love to see the good concepts brought back in this game because those were among many things that made GW1 so very much successful in the MMORPG market.

Zaishen-style Quests for the other zones not named Orr.

The thing is that I don’t particularly like Orr in comparison to other zones. What Orr has is the most Orichalcum and Orrian sapling nodes. It will get me the most endgame resources. Since Exotic Weapons require those resources, as do Legendaries, this pushes endgame players towards Orr.

If there was something that offered a reward for killing the big DE boss of some lower level zone that day then you would see more activity in that lower level zone, especially if that reward included high end materials.

Another option would be to have daily events that had a Zaishen Quest style NPC that told you where they were. These would be DE chains in certain zones that only happened that day and completing them would net a reward beyond the regular DE reward.

Basically, there’s not enough incentive for 80s to go outside Orr yet. The drop rate of DE zergs there and the resource availability of Orr is pushing 80s into one single area of the world.

I can understand why they didn’t implement these types of daily quests early in the game honestly. Most players haven’t explored all the content that’s out there. The few that have probably will only quit until the next holiday event.

I run into new content whenever I go out and my completion percentage is only like 67%. I know there’s tons that I haven’t’ seen, but they need to push players (including me) out into the rest of the world a bit more. The thing holding me back is the fact that Orr is where money is made and the game is best played with others around.

Since the money making and valuable resources are in Orr and the kills are more frequent, making the drops more frequent, the stifled economy and my character’s finances makes me feel like I need to do Orr. Others are on this same track, so there’s a lot of people in Orr and not elsewhere. If I go somewhere else and forego making money, I still run into the issue of there being no others to do events with.

It’s interesting that people are seeing this… I haven’t noticed really. There are some zones I guess that are “dead” but I always see people running around.

I was going to make this thread. I’ve created a new toon and thank God it is a warrior. I’ve got to pretty much solo everything now. The only group events that I see these days are bots running in a very large oval killing the same monsters over and over. I’m impressed that the bots will revive anyone that is defeated.

I guess one solution is that if there are not many people on a server, an option can pop up offering to go to an overflow server. That will put all the low levels from different servers onto one server.

LightningLockey.5938:

I guess one solution is that if there are not many people on a server, an option can pop up offering to go to an overflow server. That will put all the low levels from different servers onto one server.

You really don´t like to read threads, eh?

dirtyklingon.2918:

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?

Reality and quite a bit of shortsightedness.

ANet needs gold sinks(Death Repair/WP travel) desperately to battle rising inflation, which would render their GEM currency practically useless.

But this leads to people don´t want to take the risk of spending hard earned gold on repair and travel. So we have everybody in ORR grinding the same mobs over and over again instead of having fun in actually exploring the rest of the world.

So getting high level players back is tricky and basically impossible without giving them some high cost(for ANet) incentives in gold.

Remember, if ANet makes earning gold too easy or allow runaway inflation, they shoot themselves in the foot!
After all selling GEM for “real” currency is how they are supposed to stay profitable.

So that only leaves luring 80ies with karma incentives back into the low zones.
Incentives that somehow have to offset the high travel cost and potential Death repair costs.

Tricky.

I still like to have the “underflow server” option ASAP. Better than this impotent theorycrafting.
BTW the free kittypic is still available.

Newsin.1945:

It’s interesting that people are seeing this… I haven’t noticed really. There are some zones I guess that are “dead” but I always see people running around.

Some servers/maps are hit harder than others, some only during certain times.
Granted, it´s not THAT big of a deal yet but it´s only the 2nd month and it´s already noticeable.
VERY troubling!

People today don’t play for fun, they play for REWARDS. If an area is dead, that’s because it doesn’t offer rewards that meet people’s expectations. If Anet ups the rewards for doing events in all areas, people will start to come back to them. It’s a shame, really.

dirtyklingon.2918:

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…

what happened to that?

I think you really hit the nail on the head with this. Between betas and leveling 2 toons I feel like I completed everything. When you take the rewards out of the equation the game completely loses its sense of purpose.

The question is, What’s the fix? Perhaps if there were less levels it wouldn’t force a player to do so much content on a single toon? I know this is a sandbox game, but it’s not working. Perhaps racial starter areas that would take a player through max level would work. You could then graduate to the sandbox areas.

I think these fixes coupled with standard rewards per level might really help with the replayability.

NoOneShotU.3479:

We already had someone on the forum asking where the Char themed 25-40 zone is. There isn’t one.

Uhhh, Fields of Ruin? Its 30-40, but that’s close enough.

Why can’t orichalcum / ancient saplings / omnomberries spawn in lower level areas?
If you put level restrictions on harvesting tools, this ensures lower level people can’t harvest them, but it gives high level players reasons to return.
If you’re worried about over-saturating the market with these materials ArenaNet, well just get over yourselves. The world won’t end because high tier crafting materials suddenly become more readily available.

I’m not missing the zergs one tiny bit….the bot armies have picked up the slack.

To be honest I’d like to see just a few more players milling around some of those zones. But it really does depend what time you’re there, or so I’ve found. During peak time I have no problems mustering for group events and the towns always seem to have 4 or 5 people in them milling around.

Weekly incentives to be in zones for events would be good. What I wouldn’t want to see when I’m on my alt is lvl80s bedecked in exotics making DES entirely trivial for everyone else involved.