Guild Wars 2

So I decided to login again at the Queen’s Jubilee and noticed those areas are fine but after doing some of the events decided to continue exploring zones and doing my stuff.

And I notice the areas are pretty much dead on the SoS server.

I am running past events and just doing the hearts in the basic most form because there’s no people and the chat is dead pretty much.

As a ele if I do run into people I run into worriers that can tank 4 guys and come out half health but me as a ele I take 2 hits and half my health is down.

Yes I’m running the right armor etc as I collected it doing the pavillion zerge in the bahs.

Right now I’m sitting in the inquest area in Malstrom and while I got with the event there’s no way I’m doing the rest of the event as there’s just no-one and as soon as I kill anything stuff starts respawning it happens the same all over all the maps.

In gw1 I know after a while allot of zones went dead thats why they brought in the Heroes then upped the limit from 3 to 7 in a later patch because there was no-one else to fill the other 4 places then finally they let your own alts become heroes for a cost in the store.

I think its all good doing living stories but anet seriously needs to find ways to get people back into zones by adding more content to those zones that will allow people to do the older hearts and events still.

It was great when the game first came out seeing areas packed full of people everywhere doing everything now the game areas feel like Gw1 do instanced and you hardly ever run into anyone.

For info: I’ve been writing this sitting at a skill challenge for about 20 mins now without seeing a single person I could time it and I bet it would be a few hours or more.

Anet I hope you have ways to solve this issue properly.

I do have a suggestion which popped in my head and I’ll post it in he suggestions area and I hope it can be done cause it will solve the issues for anyone no matter what server your on.

This is something I would also at least like to see addressed in some form. I’ve tried to jump back into the game, and while I am in a guild that I can chat with, when I’m doing the personal story I’m crisscrossing areas and barely seeing much of anyone. It’s really a bit disheartening.

I tried chalking it up to the times I play, and that may still be it, but even Lion’s Arch seemed oddly quiet in the chat. It’s just odd.

The living story events have content that get people out into the zones, but when there are big events going on it is bound to pull most of the people away from the world content.

There is nothing wrong with this.

It is just not realistic to expect all zones all the time to be filled with people.

If you want to see more people as you travel through random zones, join a high pop server.

On Tarnished coast I never feel empty in a zone. I went to a pretty low traffic zone just last night for a specific item vendor. I expected to be mostly alone, but I still saw people in map chat calling out events and organizing into groups.

I saw quite a few people not at the Jubilee. I was in a party with some myself doing Hearts….

But, it hasn’t always been like that. :-)

Gmr Leon.1846:

This is something I would also at least like to see addressed in some form. I’ve tried to jump back into the game, and while I am in a guild that I can chat with, when I’m doing the personal story I’m crisscrossing areas and barely seeing much of anyone. It’s really a bit disheartening.

I tried chalking it up to the times I play, and that may still be it, but even Lion’s Arch seemed oddly quiet in the chat. It’s just odd.

On my server Lion’s Arch always has an overflow.

Anyway the player base is always going to gravitate to the new content. Forcing people into the under used zone artificially is not a great idea.

Also consider that with all the instanced content in the game, dungeons, fractals, wvw, pvp there is a large amount of the player base doing other things you just can’t see.

Every MMO has spots in the world where you are going to see less players. I personally don’t have a problem with that.

But to those that say they want to see more people, step one is to make sure you are on a high population server, and step two would be to go where the people are.

I certainly don’t want to be forced into zones that I don’t want to be in because Anet is trying to make it look like all the zones are populated.

We need “districting” back.
It’s just that simple…

Example: Is there only ~250 people in Sparkfly Fen, split across 12+ servers in the entire EU Region? …okay, then you only need 3 Districts tops. (mainly b/c all them Candians can help fill up the French one…)

It’s been my view from the start that there are too many leveling zones (also too many levels) and this is one of the consequences of it.

I think ilr’s commen has merit as far as solutions go.

CryxTryx.9208:

The living story events have content that get people out into the zones, but when there are big events going on it is bound to pull most of the people away from the world content.

There is nothing wrong with this.

It is just not realistic to expect all zones all the time to be filled with people.

If you want to see more people as you travel through random zones, join a high pop server.

On Tarnished coast I never feel empty in a zone. I went to a pretty low traffic zone just last night for a specific item vendor. I expected to be mostly alone, but I still saw people in map chat calling out events and organizing into groups.

First part: well yes.
Second part: well no. A player selects a world that says high pop to be his/her home world, manages to get in, creates character, enters first zone…With no one around. They get through it thinking maybe it’s an instance (which it is, buut others can be in it too), then they’re out in the world. Still no one. Chat is still blank. They play for a little while longer…Maybe they find someone, maybe they don’t. Those odds are bad.

If they’re not that into it, they quit. If they’re still interested, they jump to forums to ask around. Those odds are even worse.

Rest of post: That’s all true enough, but I’m pretty sure Sanctum of Rall is still pretty high pop, and I frequently feel alone out in the world. Unless I go to Queensdale or something. I might run into some people elsewhere, sometimes, but more often than not I encounter no one or maybe the occasional afk waypoint dweller.

Yeah, I don’t see any real solutions to this. The Living Story generally does a decent job pulling people to areas, but usually only one area at a time. I’ve never seen so many people in Divinity’s Reach, which I think is great because it’s one of my favorite places in game, but that’s going to be at the expense of other areas.

Here’s the thing though. I’ve done world completion five times, I doubt I’ll be bothering with my last three characters. There are some areas of the game that I never want to really return to. On the other hand, I have a few areas that I play through a few hours every day. For the most part they’re beginning areas and level 80 areas. The middle areas are always going to be less populated, and even if the living story does pull us to them temporarily, once the living story is over we’ll either move on to the next chapter or to the few we enjoy.

The only solution I see is player side; to play with a friend or a guild that will help you level up in those areas. Anything else will be temporary at best.

I’m on SOS one of the highest at launch for PVE.

I did see people in some zones doing stuff with the balloons but here I’ve been at this skill point in Maelstorm for a hour or more the golum and I can only get him down 1/5th of his bar before the challenge times out or I die somehow.

Anet was going to make this game solo’ble but that never happened as they kept reducing the classes thinking they were way overpowered (which they weren’t imo) and to try to get us to work more together which didn’t really help in PVE when it was starting to get hard to find others to help with so nerfing made things worse and why I stopped playing as my ele became really crap and I was dying within 2 hits from some mobs and a warrior comes in and tanks everything without a scratch.

I know Anet needs money cause this game is free well they should put in hired help in the gem store for 1,000 gems for a week or something so you can have a full npc warrior following along side you for a week in the PVE zones only for 1,000 gems anet would make a killing on that.

They probably will at some stage just like they made using your alts as heroes cost real money in there gw1 DLC shop.

Everyone goes to the latest hotness. Right now Divinity’s Reach, the Queen’s Pavilion, Queensdale, Frostgorge and Cursed Shore are busting at the seams with players.

You might want to join a leveling guild but even still there’s a lot of players that are leveling in the Pavilion.

ilr.9675:

We need “districting” back.
It’s just that simple…

Example: Is there only ~250 people in Sparkfly Fen, split across 12+ servers in the entire EU localisation? …okay, then you only need 3 Districts tops. (mainly b/c all them Candians can help fill up the French one…)

I think this is a good idea. The opposite of an over flow zone. That would be very cool, not sure how hard it would be to impliment.

CryxTryx.9208:

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Gmr Leon.1846:

This is something I would also at least like to see addressed in some form. I’ve tried to jump back into the game, and while I am in a guild that I can chat with, when I’m doing the personal story I’m crisscrossing areas and barely seeing much of anyone. It’s really a bit disheartening.

I tried chalking it up to the times I play, and that may still be it, but even Lion’s Arch seemed oddly quiet in the chat. It’s just odd.

On my server Lion’s Arch always has an overflow.

Anyway the player base is always going to gravitate to the new content. Forcing people into the under used zone artificially is not a great idea.

Also consider that with all the instanced content in the game, dungeons, fractals, wvw, pvp there is a large amount of the player base doing other things you just can’t see.

Every MMO has spots in the world where you are going to see less players. I personally don’t have a problem with that.

But to those that say they want to see more people, step one is to make sure you are on a high population server, and step two would be to go where the people are.

I certainly don’t want to be forced into zones that I don’t want to be in because Anet is trying to make it look like all the zones are populated.

I understand that and I certainly agree that they shouldn’t force players where they don’t want to be. I do however think that it would be in their best interest to seed new content throughout the world more or better incentivize the revisiting of existing areas. Impressions matter, and if I roll into a world with no one else around and nothing in chat being said, I’m going to play significantly less because I could pretty much certainly get an even better single-player RPG experience in another game.

It’s not that I don’t expect there to be dead spots in a MMO, it’s that I sincerely hope they’re not frequent enough to make me feel like I’m just playing a solo RPG.

CryxTryx.9208:

I think this is a good idea. The opposite of an over flow zone. That would be very cool, not sure how hard it would be to impliment.

That’s kind of the whole point… …it’s easy to implement b/c it was something they already did in the past. They have the code for it. Modifying their “Guesting” feature to bring it back could be done in a single afternoon I’d bet. …just figuring out the number to divide it up by though or how many different language districts to make room for would probably take them a lot longer. (b/c that wades into the “how many people is TOO many people per zone” and / “do we really want a bunch of frogs and limeys constantly at eachother’s throat b/c they have to share 1 district”…)

Well they have the code to redirect to another server.

As for me I’m level 79 got most of the levels in pavillion over the areas and the cursed shore event.

This is a thing a server can be full but its because all players are together ever in fractals (I’ve still yet to have a look) at the latest hotness event or WvW or something.

The rest of the world suffers as a result because everyone is together elsewhere.

They need to spread some towns around with gates to them for a start with unique things in those towns like one town may have a unique and cool minigame with big prizes.

This breaks the world up so not everything is at LA or divinities reach, sure keep the big events in those places but at least put some ongoing special stuff around the world with a gate to it.

Districting for zones would help to pool everyone together for a region like gw1 not separate them over servers that get full in certain areas and that was my suggestion in the first place a district type for zones but with the overflow que.

Also ongoing stuff in the world like something massive and random may happen in a zone once a week at a random time say 400 pirates suddenly spawn in a zone from a airship and go on a rampage in the zone just randomly and are persistent until they’re cleared out however long it takes with great loot etc.

They can do that on random at will in whatever zone they don’t even need to announce it in a update note just do it have people in the zone go ‘OH CRAP’ and call their mates guild wherever to bring the entire server to that zone to deal with that issue.

That will get people moving around the zones random big massive unannounced non living story like but a random living event stuff thats persistent until sorted.

They have the code to do the above look at those airships that fly around dropping people near the balloon towers that could be remodeled to drop 4-500+ persistent pirates in a zone at some random announced time.

And more stuff like that like full on military ships sailing up and unleashing loads of enemies at random and other race themed stuff.

Gehenna.3625:

It’s been my view from the start that there are too many leveling zones (also too many levels) and this is one of the consequences of it.

I think ilr’s commen has merit as far as solutions go.

The problem is, if there’s too few leveling zones, everyone will rage endlessly about how boring leveling alts is. Nevermind that in the real world they all stay in Queensdale anyway, once they’ve made up their minds about something that’s that.

Corian.4068:

Gehenna.3625:

It’s been my view from the start that there are too many leveling zones (also too many levels) and this is one of the consequences of it.

I think ilr’s commen has merit as far as solutions go.

The problem is, if there’s too few leveling zones, everyone will rage endlessly about how boring leveling alts is. Nevermind that in the real world they all stay in Queensdale anyway, once they’ve made up their minds about something that’s that.

Well exactly. I can’t help but smirk when people are complaining about the very opposite thing they would be complaining about should they get their way.

We are complaing about too many zones now? Really? Had they made us all level in the same 1-15 and 15-25 zones it would be one of the games top critizisum.

Personally I don’t get lonely if a zone is a little bit dead. I enjoyed running through a zone on my own, seeing people now and then. One thing that held true though is that when I needed help or called out a champion, players showed up every time with out fail.

Don’t get me wrong I love a massive world and exploring the hidden away places that not many have been to and hoped everything on the original guildwars map and this one would be explorable as I’m still hoping to visit Janthir Bay and other areas in the future, and there has been talk that bloodlands and crystal desert will come back at some stage even around Henge also.

I also like if there are frequented trafficked zones and then the outer area less frequent but very beautiful hidden away areas.

I personally don’t mind playing by myself, as I’m not too fussed about seeing people all the time, though it is nice and made the game really fun early on, but If I can’t progress because no-one is around or I’m not strong enough to be by myself and solo and enjoy the views at the same time then it sucks.

And all these nerfs are hurting that and has hurt me to the point I am spending silver after silver to respawn and repair way more than I am making it causing me to actually lose money if I choose to continue my story and zone progression.

I like to explore and do things but I don’t want to see enemies spawning behind or infront of me just as I kill the next couple or have to wait for real people all the time.

I just want to get on fight and be able to play in my own time and way.

I thought anet was going to do away with enemies standing around waiting for you to aggro them then respawn on a set timer.

They said also their dynamic events wouldn’t be static and could affect the world and all we got was a set of events on rotation timers and start triggers.

If characters were more powerful I’d be happy even if it means half the current drop and coin rate for everyone as a result and to compensate for the increase in mob killing.

At the moment I find the game too hard to play with my ele to do anything and as such I don’t play much at all anymore cause I die 20+ times in a row and just give up playing for months.

Other mmo’s you can solo and have fun and explore etc and stuff but this one just seems unless you’re with another person you cant really do much at all.

That goes against there for casual players who want to play at their own pace and skill level design.

I know I’m not the best player but to try to play casually at my own pace isn’t working out especially when they keep feeling characters are overpowered and keep toning them down.