Guild Wars 2

I love to explore a world like GW2, but not by my self!

The maps level between 25 and 70 are almost empty, It might be just me but I rarely see players doing anything in those maps.

My point is, with out player, there wont be any motivation! whats the point for them maps to even exist if no one wants to go there?

EXAMPLE: Queensdal, the champ train, it gives motivation to the player, and more players give more motos to even more to join the force.

On the other hand, those 25-70 level maps, nobody ever visits other then map completion or personal story, and they just hit from point a to point b with out looking back, if only if there were others there, those middle level maps might wont be so boring.

A net needs to do something to motivate players to go further then Queensdal and Wayfare foothills! So I can have more options then the 1-15 level maps when I just wants to explore random area, encounter some random pps and make random friends!

PS: 69 more hours to go before my account vacation ends.

I agree my last 2 characters for 100 % map completion was just before scarlet and about 2 months b4 that in which both times I saw people in queensdale doing dailies from time to time and people talking and I saw people in frostgorge on the one before scarlet doing champ train at that time embers had been nerfed and no one was in cs so I found people in 2 / 22 maps? give or take I don’t remember exactly how many first sign of life I saw out side of there was a gaurdian that just got downed going up to the gates of arah then a thief came over after I got him up and we were fighting the npc zerg. : P That being said even Fireheart used to have people there but you guys nerfed dungeon rewards so no one really does them now unless they are making a legendary

I don’t think you will ever find an MMO that has all zones fully populated at all times, especially not a year or later after it has launched.

ArenaNet is activly working on making all of the content as rewarding as possible, which is impossible.

Beside that, I see people everywhere I go so it may just be your server.

Scalling system that is in the game should make all maps viable to play on higher levels. The problem is that there is nothing interesting/rewarding to do on most.
I really hope that all zones would be revamped in some manner – overhaul of events, maybe renown hearts that you are able to do more than once, etc. And some mechanic that will encourage players to visit different maps – like you must do some quest chains on map, defeat few champs, etc. to have a chance to receive one of few exclusive to this map exotics.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

I don’t think you will ever find an MMO that has all zones fully populated at all times, especially not a year or later after it has launched.

ArenaNet is activly working on making all of the content as rewarding as possible, which is impossible.

Beside that, I see people everywhere I go so it may just be your server.

This entirely. I see areas even at mid level growing in population, but there are a lot of zones. People simply cannot be in all of them. The invasions have helped, but the mindset of many players is on farming/zerging/champs. Not all, granted, but exploration players like myself are a small group and thus only a few will ever other areas. Low population servers even more.

When more zones eventually come out, this will be compounded.

I see this all the time, this has been going on since january actually. There are some zones that simply don’t have enough resources or rewards from evens, and even missing treasure chests to find that are simply not interesting enough to attract anyone save for the RP crowd.

Invasions really haven’t given much help considering they are exactly like all of the other LS content in that they focus a whole bunch of players into 1 space instead of spreading out the population by adding permanent new DEs and Metas across tyria and improving the rewards across the board for these events.

Imagine if we had concurrent meta events & rewarding DE chains running in the mid-level maps (lvl30-70).
I could see people spreading out for a change of scenery.

As a rule, the rewards on high level maps tend not to compensate for the annoyance factor provided by the mobs overdone crowd control…

You have to look at the right spots.

There are usually at least some people though they might be spread out. If you need help or want to form a quick party, try /map requests. That usually works.

They have a start with dailies for regions, needing to do events, but that mostly brings people to the starters zones. Maybe what they should do is increase the daily by another choice and have it for doing events in specific maps. For example, 5 events in Orr or Dredgehaunt Cliffs. This would bring people to do events in those maps, at least for that day. They could even have additional achieve points for doing additional sets of 5 events on that map. So if you do 15 events, you get 3 achieve points.

Going off topic here but in my opinion less development time went into the later zones.

0-10 is amazing the vistas show some good views, the hearts are fun and there is alot going on between the NPCs. 10-20 the game starts showing some cracks and later it really goes downhill. For example you explore some vistas but they show nothing even remotely interesting!

Haven’t leveled to 80 yet so I can’t comment on Orr and such..

This morning, I spent about an hour in Snowden Drifts on Borlis Pass and didn’t see even one other player, nor did anyone say anything in chat. Sure, Snowden’s never been the most popular of zones, but…

Craptons of people in LA, of course, when I went there today, but mostly silent. :/

My Norn mesmer is currently playing in Snowden Drifts and I often see people.
It has been a long time since I’ve been in an area that I played 1 or 2 hours and I hadn’t seen a few players during that time.
Of course is nowhere Invasion or champions train activity…

Big maps do that your free to run events with friends but you got to make some first try talking with ppl in LA or these forums or in real life.

This is a known issue with modern MMO’s.

Developers want players to explore strange new worlds. Unfortunately; after everyone’s done it, all the real-estate becomes a ghost town.

Two things GW2 doesn’t have which greatly impacts this part of the game: waypointing and no quests.

First of all there are waypoints absolutely everywhere, you have just about no motivation or reason to actually walk somewhere when you can cheaply waypoint there, especially if it’s in a city.

It’s not completely true that most areas are barren of players, the real issue is that the high density of players are located within a few spots in the maps, those that matter and those they can get to with waypoints.

If there were no waypoints, or if GW2 was like GW1 which had less instant traveling, you’d actually see players walking from place to place, giving it a more alive feeling.

Second, although quests are a cheap way to make players explore areas, their “solution” with dynamic events didn’t quite fill the gap. Especially in cities which have literally nothing for you to do in them.

You have no reason to explore that long corridor in a city, or go behind that house to see if maybe you’ll find something, a quest. Or even out in the world, you really don’t have much of a reason to explore.

One of the ironies of MMO design is that players demand a large open world with lots to do there. Then many of them race through it, barely pausing for breath, food, or sleep to get to max level. At that point, they ignore the open world in favor of whatever a particular game offers for endgame.

GW2 did a better job than many games of enabling players to go into every zone, find challenges (as long as they’re willing to look for them), find things to do, and (hopefully) have fun. So what do many players do? They ignore 90% of the open world in favor of whatever content is the most lucrative.

At some point, the MMO genre will die because developers will refuse to put all that time, effort and money into gameplay that will be ignored — in favor of instanced content that is modular — which means it can be changed up easily, providing variety; which has variable challenge levels for different demographics, and in which the rewards can be more tightly controlled.

IndigoSundown.5419:

One of the ironies of MMO design is that players demand a large open world with lots to do there. Then many of them race through it, barely pausing for breath, food, or sleep to get to max level. At that point, they ignore the open world in favor of whatever a particular game offers for endgame.

GW2 did a better job than many games of enabling players to go into every zone, find challenges (as long as they’re willing to look for them), find things to do, and (hopefully) have fun. So what do many players do? They ignore 90% of the open world in favor of whatever content is the most lucrative.

At some point, the MMO genre will die because developers will refuse to put all that time, effort and money into gameplay that will be ignored — in favor of instanced content that is modular — which means it can be changed up easily, providing variety; which has variable challenge levels for different demographics, and in which the rewards can be more tightly controlled.

Although I don’t entirely disagree with everything you said, I think there’s more to it than that.

A lot of players do want to get to max level as fast as possible, however on most cases those are characters that are trying to level up alts. Though it’s not uncommon for first timers to want to level fast, odds are they won’t ignore the world that’s given to them.

I was confused about what WoW and even Gw1 had when I first played them that GW2 doesn’t have (now mind you, GW2 is my current favorite MMO even though some times it feels more like a chore than a game).

In both games (more WoW than GW1) you really had a lot to do. When you saw a cave you knew that if you went there you’d find something to do. More often than not it would be quests, but usually the quests would give you something to do, somewhere to go, places to explore and in the end you’d be rewarded with some really nice loot or skills.

It motivated and almost demanded exploration and examination on a players part. That combined with the fact you couldn’t or could rarely waypoint meant you actually got to do a lot of the exploring yourself, which led to you finding more things to do and new places to see along the way.

In GW2 they removed all of that, replacing it with the “efficient” waypoints which kind of ruin immersion, and the dynamic events which at later levels give you little to no reason to do them since their reward is crap.

On that note, if all quests in more traditional MMOs always gave you some EXP, some money and some sort of second currency, you’d eventually get really bored of doing them. They need to add more and better rewards to doing these events.

We have overflow.
Why ANet can’t make “downflow”?

IndigoSundown.5419:

At some point, the MMO genre will die because developers will refuse to put all that time, effort and money into gameplay that will be ignored — in favor of instanced content that is modular — which means it can be changed up easily, providing variety; which has variable challenge levels for different demographics, and in which the rewards can be more tightly controlled.

DDO

Boring as hell. But it is basically that model.

kristof.7182:

We have overflow.
Why ANet can’t make “downflow”?

Be sensible.. if you have more players than what the instance can handle an overflow is created.. therefore the map cant be empty can it so what are you talking about .. “downflow”

OP.. every MMO has facets of the game that begin to thin out.. players progress their toons/alts and when they reach max level they only frequent lower level maps for things like champ trains.. which imo help to kill interest not aid it.

Players are running round certain maps on egg timers and loot spotting.. then when they have all they need they move on or log out until the next patch.
ANET should have realised that egg timers rotations do nothing to serve the longevity of their Openworld concept other than to create a farm spot for a few days until the playerbase has milked it or grown bored of running the same train over and over and over. . Then again I suppose if they didn’t the playerbase would be up in arms cos things are to timely to get anywhere soon – so devil if they do and devil if they don’t.

What I would like to see is proper difficulty scaling on maps with random openworld event chains spawning which need to be completed in order to unlock follow on events elsewhere across Tyria until finally there is a Large scale end event like the Scarlett invasion.. that way there is no egg timer and maps get pre events that move the players constantly across maps not just sit on an event timer and map flip for a 30second boss fight then move on.
Additionally maps should have certain events locked out until players have reached certain levels or completed certain events to unlock advancement to force maps to be utilised at differing levels and different times.. im not a great fan of content gating but so many maps are lacking in interest now that things need to be spiced up some imo.

And make levelling harder.. I mean I could sit in Metrica and farm onion over and over… why on earth does an onion at level 80 reward more XP than at level 1???? – its an Onion… but if I craft a green plank for XP, pretty soon I get nowt.
Leveling is worthless, it takes 2 days casual playtime to get to level 80 with all the crazy XP to be had from all things wide and “not so wonderful” – that in itself promotes ghost maps

Shivetya.9278:

IndigoSundown.5419:

At some point, the MMO genre will die because developers will refuse to put all that time, effort and money into gameplay that will be ignored — in favor of instanced content that is modular — which means it can be changed up easily, providing variety; which has variable challenge levels for different demographics, and in which the rewards can be more tightly controlled.

DDO

Boring as hell. But it is basically that model.

Actually I disagree I find DDO much more interesting.
DDO has I agree taken in modular conten approach with traditional dungeons, raids etc, but DDO at least has tools and mechanics built into the game that create so much more diversity, dungeon scaling, multi classing, and a plethora of build options/variety heck even down to basic UI customisations
GW2 for a modern day MMO offers very few mechaincs, zero customisation, few class/build options and heck is only just implementing an LFG… DDO has been around a long time, granted and ANET will hopefully add value to the current content but as it stands now its far less immersive for me and I think longer term offers very little repeat value in its content..
I am bias though I admit, I have been a DDO since the first day of beta in EU many many, moons ago.. but even now I have no issues jumping onto low level toons or taking high levels back through things.. level scaling on any form of content is always fun if the content itself has decent replay value and … GW2 thought Openworld was going to do this.. but where is the fun in running egg timer trains in a loop downing map bosses/champs in 30 seconds with a hundred others pew pewing around you.. what does that really offer in terms of immersion.
I think 12 months on ANET have began to realise something just isn’t working out the way they hoped and have themselves had to shift the content model to small bolt on modular LS content and lots of farming to keep players here cos their existing stuff isn’t standing the test of time.. how many times have you gone back to Metrica this week to run events there… with the exception of maybe the fire ele on timer or Caledon Forest… scaling players back was supposed to induce us to go back and redo these maps… hasn’t had any effect imo.

there is no real reason to go back to those zones unless you’re leveling an alt with a friend. it should’ve never been possible to level through crafting. it’s really sad that the only way anet can get people to go back to zones is by promise of loot (hey look we added 8new champion events to brisban wildlands).

lvling being too easy is another thing that’s emptying out zones. it should’ve taken a lot longer. too late now tho

Spicyhash.7605:

there is no real reason to go back to those zones unless you’re leveling an alt with a friend. it should’ve never been possible to level through crafting. it’s really sad that the only way anet can get people to go back to zones is by promise of loot (hey look we added 8new champion events to brisban wildlands).

lvling being too easy is another thing that’s emptying out zones. it should’ve taken a lot longer. too late now tho

Have to agree with you.

Great idea by ANET to create an openworld environment, but that’s where the vision quest got to I guess and now the maps are all but a run thro to the next champ.

A s I said.. we could all sit in Metrica and gather onions till we reach level 80… at least it would take a bit longer than 2 days

I have now watched MMO after MMO after MMO doing exact same mistakes with exact same results for 10+ years now.

I must admit, GW2 was most promising to break the circle, but nope, they even insured their comeback to the circle by turning 180.

I guess some things need to be learned very slowly and very painfully. Well, at least there are few promising titles ahead and Blizzard is back to drawing board with Titan.

But i hope that they learn it in my lifetime lol, but by the speed they learn….

• Underflow Server Architecture. (DISTRICTS)
• “Zaishen” rotating daily challenges

It’s amazing how something from the first game, which wasn’t even an MMO to begin with, was so much more efficient for socializing and recycling older content when compared to the MMO gold standard for Zone & Content incentives

It really depends on the day of the week. Friday thru Sunday, it’s rare I don’t see at least one other person in any map. Monday thru Thursday can be hit or miss depending on the time of day.

With the ascended update, I do pop into those zones quite often now.
Jumping puzzles there are typically easy and fast: empyreal mats
Iron ore: 1+silver
Soft logs: 2+silver

But, yea, I typically don’t do any events, unless I see someone doing one and they need help.

Maybe if ANet would normalize the champs across the zones. I mean, compare the Ascalon Nageling champ giant to pretty much any other champ, lol. You should get 2 or 3 bags from him!

Also, scale rewards with zone levels. Eg, lvl1-15 zone only give white level champ bags, 15-25 gives blue level, etc, so that you need to do at least level 50 zone champs to get rare or exotic bags.

Totally agree with OP. The world is empty. And seeing a few people in a zone doesn’t change that either. The world is down right empty. The most people i ever see are in LA. I’VE never played an mmo that was like this. Its all down to the way the game was designed. 25-70 area’s give no reason to go back when your done. To me this is what Arena net should be working on instead of adding temp.content. The world feels like a wasteland.

wmtyrance.3571:

Totally agree with OP. The world is empty. And seeing a few people in a zone doesn’t change that either. The world is down right empty. The most people i ever see are in LA. I’VE never played an mmo that was like this. Its all down to the way the game was designed. 25-70 area’s give no reason to go back when your done. To me this is what Arena net should be working on instead of adding temp.content. The world feels like a wasteland.

I call BS. Most MMORPG have even more vacated areas below max level. At least, GW2 has some incentive running below level maps with downscaling.

Algreg.3629:

wmtyrance.3571:

Totally agree with OP. The world is empty. And seeing a few people in a zone doesn’t change that either. The world is down right empty. The most people i ever see are in LA. I’VE never played an mmo that was like this. Its all down to the way the game was designed. 25-70 area’s give no reason to go back when your done. To me this is what Arena net should be working on instead of adding temp.content. The world feels like a wasteland.

I call BS. Most MMORPG have even more vacated areas below max level. At least, GW2 has some incentive running below level maps with downscaling.

OMG and even that is not working my friend. Out in the world in a two hour play period i might see 12 people.

Its a serious problem, apparent since a couple weeks after release. The upcoming LFG system will help a bit, at least more than anything else so far. Districts would help too, but it doesnt seem anet wants them.

Algreg.3629:

wmtyrance.3571:

Totally agree with OP. The world is empty. And seeing a few people in a zone doesn’t change that either. The world is down right empty. The most people i ever see are in LA. I’VE never played an mmo that was like this. Its all down to the way the game was designed. 25-70 area’s give no reason to go back when your done. To me this is what Arena net should be working on instead of adding temp.content. The world feels like a wasteland.

I call BS. Most MMORPG have even more vacated areas below max level.

Even in the MMORPG with the highest number of players, World of Warcraft, the majority of the people seem to hang out in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, depending on their faction – and what few people there are out in the world are kept apart by the insane amounts of “phasing” introduced with Cataclysm…

(So bad that, just a month or so after Cata was released, I was on a free week’s return and started a new character (an Undead Hunter; sad to see that they’ve been moved from “genocidal maniacs who want to destroy all life with disease and poison” to “just misunderstood and are really working for the good of all”). Things were fine in Tirisfal Glades, but when I went to Silverpine Forest, I saw exactly ONE other player on the road over the two evenings it took me do the entire level 10-20 zone)

Sharuko.7820:

Calae.1738:

This is a known issue with modern MMO’s.

Developers want players to explore strange new worlds. Unfortunately; after everyone’s done it, all the real-estate becomes a ghost town.

It is a known issue in many MMOs and many of those MMOs failed. WoW realized how big of an issue this is, and actually solved this issue over a year ago, with cross realms and now with connected realms the issue is solved. Log into any WoW server even dead ones and make a new character, you will see players everywhere from 1 to 90. They realized the issue and fixed it.

This is a bigger issue in GW2 because of how the game is designed. Leveling/Dynamic events are significantly better with players, and really boring alone. All MMOs lose players all the time, the problem is if new players buy the game and start playing and see a dead world they will quit. So you won’t be bringing in new players, while players are constantly quitting.

It is a serious problem, and shouldn’t be ignored or put aside.

What WoW did didnt solve anything, as with almost everything with WoW they put a band-aid on it.

Rushing through the area as fast as you can just to move on as fast as you can….and pretty much never come back….thats the problem.

I was in Southsun earlier today, I was trying to do the Varrv event on my own. The start went ok, until a veteran karka and its mates (hatchlings or whatever they were) cut me and poor Varrv to ribbons.
If that’s meant to be soloable I’d sure like to see a video. I thought to myself ‘why bother?’

yorick.1305:

I was in Southsun earlier today, I was trying to do the Varrv event on my own. The start went ok, until a veteran karka and its mates (hatchlings or whatever they were) cut me and poor Varrv to ribbons.
If that’s meant to be soloable I’d sure like to see a video. I thought to myself ‘why bother?’

Sadly so does everyone else, its why you were alone to start with.. the rewards do not equal the effort so no one really goes to those areas anymore..

Bloodstealer.5978:

kristof.7182:

We have overflow.
Why ANet can’t make “downflow”?

Be sensible.. if you have more players than what the instance can handle an overflow is created.. therefore the map cant be empty can it so what are you talking about .. “downflow”

My wrong.
I meant if there isn’t too many players, map from server X is merged with server Y.

Between guild missions, dungeons, world bosses and dailies I just can’t fit open world in to the schedule.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to roll a necro and play through the world again. But I have hardly the time or resources to keep up with power curve, let alone roll another alt.

Bleh. The more I play again, the more I am convinced they need to dump the Worlds system (just keeping the designation for WvWvW purposes) and move to GW1-style Districts. Of course, that would take effort and actually benefit the user base, so it’ll never happen.

With the addition of Ascended gear and grind, I believe many players have simply left their alts to die. I used to play a lot on my other characters, exploring all over the map, but sadly all I do now is grind with my main.

Back in november they had still had plans to slowly roll out more event chains and content across the existing outdoor world. Those plans were canceled with the onset of the circus rotation (I mean, living story). So dont expect Anet to go back to improving the existing outdoor content at an acceptable pace until the living story concept is changed in some way.

I can go login to WoW and not see anyone till I hit the level 80 + zones… and the people I see are probably farming materials or bots farming materials…..

Whats your point? People dont go hang out in low level zones? Why would they when theres so much other stuff to do?

You have people doing spvp, WvW, dungeons, hanging out in LA working the TP/Crafting, Doing Fotm, Doing level 80 events in ORR for temples, Farming champs in frostgorge/queensdale, Killing world bosses when they spawn.

Theres a reason why low level zones aren’t really populated, its because people are out playing the game. And given the short amount of time it takes to level its not really a reasonable conclusion to think that the game isn’t populated. its just that people move on quickly into higher level areas and stay there.

There is a big population, they just aren’t leveling.

When I cant even join my friends in a event because theres an over flow its not because the game has no people its because theres so many I cant even get in on my server to play with them.

At times I like the solitude I can experience in some maps, at other times I’ll ask guildies if they want to x, y, or z, and other times I feel I’m just one in a million all trying our best to do something together.

I like that variety!

Started a new toon to see if there’s a problem getting RNG to function between toons differently. Gotta say with the new scrolls there’s really no reason to run past level 25 zones really. Most of the events that aren’t “Orr” ridiculous midway are in the lower zones, not to mention that some classes (ranger/engineer) have this change in scores that occurs that makes fighting in the mid level zones more difficult. I think their damage ratios are severely off. It’s bad when it’s harder to fight enemies in the mid level zones then it is in Orr right now which is something else I’ve experienced on all my toons.

Compare it to real life situations.

You go to the mall. Crowded.
You go to the beach on a holiday. Crowded.
You go to the beach at night. Empty.
You go to the middle of the north pole. Empty.
You go to wall street. Crowded.
You go to the forest at night. Empty.

You, going to a lvl 20-75 zone, is like going to the north pole.
You, being in LA or lvl80 zone, is like going to wall street.

You shall find solitude anywhere wherever solitude is meant to be.

Shivetya.9278:

IndigoSundown.5419:

At some point, the MMO genre will die because developers will refuse to put all that time, effort and money into gameplay that will be ignored — in favor of instanced content that is modular — which means it can be changed up easily, providing variety; which has variable challenge levels for different demographics, and in which the rewards can be more tightly controlled.

DDO

Boring as hell. But it is basically that model.

Yeah, figuring stuff out and having a specified role is boring as kitten
I much prefer zerg rushing as well.
No I don’t.

Oddly there are many people who want company while they play and want to find leveling buddies. And yet the problem remains. Its one of the great mysteries of mmos. Why do these people never find each other?

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Compare it to real life situations.

You go to the mall. Crowded.
You go to the beach on a holiday. Crowded.
You go to the beach at night. Empty.
You go to the middle of the north pole. Empty.
You go to wall street. Crowded.
You go to the forest at night. Empty.

You, going to a lvl 20-75 zone, is like going to the north pole.
You, being in LA or lvl80 zone, is like going to wall street.

You shall find solitude anywhere wherever solitude is meant to be.

Yes, completely agreed, going to lvl 20-75 zones is exactly like going to north pole.

Peetee.9406:

Between guild missions, dungeons, world bosses and dailies I just can’t fit open world in to the schedule.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to roll a necro and play through the world again. But I have hardly the time or resources to keep up with power curve, let alone roll another alt.

Sorry but I don’t understand. A lot of the things you listed can be done with an alt, so I can’t really see why that list would stop you trying a different profession.

And (IMO) if you’re spending all your playing time “trying to keep up with the power curve”, then you might want to reevaluate why you’re playing the game in the first place. (Not meant in a snarky way, just that I found myself enjoying this game a lot more once I decided to not worry about whether I complete dailies every day or how many more whatevers I need to complete various achievements).