Guild Wars 2

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.

But what should have been the ideal scenario of a thriving community and a lively PVE environment in each and every zone was that there was reason to go on an adventure with a squad, a party, or a guild, hunting the most dangerous world boss in the zone, trying to clear all contested waypoints and feel a sense of accomplishment and victory, a sense of meaning, a sense of worth with the rewards you get for exploring and that what you’re trying to do in that particular zone has some sort of impact in how the environment would evolve itself through time.

What happens now is that most people just explore zones for map completion: visit vista, POI, WPs, do hearts as fast as possible. I often listen to my guildies complain how excruciatingly painful it was to complete a map to 100%. This should not be how exploring zones should feel like. It’s like a chore that’s being done for the sake of fulfilling a requirement in making a Legendary. They do this as fast as they can so that they could get back to the farm trains popularized by the community be it in-game of in game guides and websites and never look back. And these farm trains can be seen in either beginner zones like Queensdale or high end zones like Frostgorge and Orr. Others will just check websites for respawn timers, again, for the meta events popularized by websites. People will flock to the Event Zone on the dot, spam auto attack and get loot. Do this for all the meta events if you want everyday at the same manner because people want those daily rares to earn as much gold as they can to buy mats for crafting a legendary that’s readily available in the TP.

Players with the classic MMORPG mentality will always find the quickest way to earn the most gold per hour because that’s basically how you get your shinies. I’m not saying nobody likes exploring and roleplaying. In fact I do, but trying to explore an empty map and trying to gather people to do a meta event that’s rarely done, and you’ll end up giving up anyways since all of them are waiting for the Fire Elemental and Jade Maw to spawn, only to be killed seconds later right after respawn without a sweat.

The problem here is that the effort/reward ratio for most activities in the game are rather off especially when we factor in scaling of big events. A champion has too much HP and fighting it alone might be tough for most players. The same champion should be as tough and should be taken down just a bit faster by a larger group of players with that same feeling of epic-ness and not get spammed by autoattack and die in 15 seconds or less. The rewards should also vary a bit based on the level of difficulty of initiating and finishing the encounter or based on the frequency of the event cycle. It’s pretty boring to kill 4 or 5 champions in a fixed routine again and again and again. Yeah, some people might find it fun but obviously people do it since it’s basically a brain dead activity that lets you reap a lot of fast cash in a small amount of time with little to no effort. That is just ridiculous. However, I think ANet is trying to fix this by revamping all bosses in the upcoming update. I hope they do find that sweet spot of making all content equally challenging to both small and large group of players participating and equally worth it in terms of time spent doing the events and the rewards reaped afterwards.

How can you say the zones are empty! There are NPCs everywhere!

MikaHR.1978:

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.

awesome so anet sends us gifts and we see little elves? I WANNA GO TO THOSE ZONES!!! that means my parents lied! Anet IS Santa!!!!!!!!

well Anet wants the players temporary in few specific zones so that the world feels alive. They don’t want to split the playerbase too much. We can see the results in the living story design (main things happen in few specific areas like Lions Arch (Dragon Bash) or Divinity’s Reach (Queens Gauntlet). We can also see this on the daily-achievement design (kryta killer etc.).

In my opinion the world exploration should have other incentives (which aren’t necessarily achievement-only related).

• Example could be guild-created events which are announced ingame (guild missions like content but with the same gameplay & rewards for every player). People could go to announcement boards to see where events will start.
• such events could also be NPC-initiated. A small portal opens to the hourly “expedition” and you follow that npc through a small portal into a random zone where you can accompany him on bigger eventchains with exploration-specific rewards.

Both of these methods would bring a lot of people to the same (low- mid- or high) level areas. Both of these are also permanent content – non living story related, so that people have things to do when they are done with the weekly living story updates. Those expeditions could reward you with a zone-specific progression which would lead to new skins, bags, finishers, new challenge missions for solo+group players (e.g. time trial of the local jumping puzzles),…

+ add sets of collectibles / artifacts to the open world. Things that spawn rarely and leave you excited once you find such a rare piece. This would encourage people to roam around instead of waypointing everywhere.

Katz.5143:

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?

Because they don’t look for guilds of like-minded players? lol

Lux.6490:

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.

I camp my alts at JP’s now so they can get my main emps for crafting. One I use for farming. Then I will hit a few jp’s on my main as well. I have the GS crafted, now I just need to craft the other weaps.

So I guess I haven’t stopped alting as much as I have actually had to settle on a main.

Vayne.8563:

Katz.5143:

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?

Because they don’t look for guilds of like-minded players? lol

Probably because smaller guilds are useless for anything but socializing), in larger ones you are just another random person in their Guild Mission zergs, and in all cases you have to choose one or the other because you can’t have more than one guild active at a time.

JDGumby.7685:

Vayne.8563:

Katz.5143:

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?

Because they don’t look for guilds of like-minded players? lol

Probably because smaller guilds are useless for anything but socializing), in larger ones you are just another random person in their Guild Mission zergs, and in all cases you have to choose one or the other because you can’t have more than one guild active at a time.

Only if the guild doesnt talk to one another. Im in a guild with several hundred members and I know or have chatted with most of the active players. If you dont participate in the guild and engage with other members what is the point of joining one?

As for the OP’s point of empty zones; There are several factors outwith the game that preclude areas from having higher populations than they do when you are playing. Timezones, RL commitments, plus gaming styles and habits are the most obvious ones.

If you are playing early/late in the day you are much less likely to see other players due to real world stuffs. Similarly if in game events transpire that require numerous players (ie scarlet), people will migrate towards it leaving a zone with fewer players.

This is the nature of gaming online in every type of game there is. You will never have hundreds/thousands of players wizzing around you at all times in every single game zone, no game does not even WoW.

Lexandro.1456:

As for the OP’s point of empty zones; There are several factors outwith the game that preclude areas from having higher populations than they do when you are playing. Timezones, RL commitments, plus gaming styles and habits are the most obvious ones.

If you are playing early/late in the day you are much less likely to see other players due to real world stuffs.

I’m seeing numbers in the Gendarran Fields (on Borlis Pass) during prime time (around 7pm-1am Eastern) these last few days that would seem about right for 6am on a weekday when I went on hiatus last November.

For the rest of the zones I’ve gone to the last few days:

Queensdale gets lots of people, but they’re mostly on the Champion train and camping out for the Shadow Behemoth.

Timberline Falls only seemed to have people when I went there because a Scarlet invasion was on.

Mount Maelstrom seemed to have a few people, but they seemed mostly concerned with the bosses, based on what little /map chatter there was.

Wayfarer Foothills was a little underpopulated when I was there, but at least the population seemed split between regular content and waiting for the Maw event.

Harathi Hinterlands had a decent number of people – by Harathi Hinterlands standards.

Snowden Drifts was virtually deserted, so no different than it’s ever been. :P

Dunno about Bloodtide Coast since I was only in there to run down to the Whispers cave for a Personal Story bit.

Also dunno about the first Orr zone – went in and then left almost immediately after I noticed that the Personal Story part I was there for was going to be utter hell (defending Fort Trinity – hate siege quests).

Basically, far, far, FAR fewer people than there used to be in those zones (except for Snowden, which had always been one of the lowest population zones, and Harathi).

I’m always running into ppl in every region. It seems like every time I turn around I’m tripping over some other player including in those 25 – 70 zones. Maybe it’s just your server…

Cole Eyre.8471:

I’m always running into ppl in every region. It seems like every time I turn around I’m tripping over some other player including in those 25 – 70 zones. Maybe it’s just your server…

What server are you playing on where you are triping on other players in mid level zones?
I play on TC and I’m lucky to have 1 other person helping me with DEs in mid zones.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

well Anet wants the players temporary in few specific zones so that the world feels alive. They don’t want to split the playerbase too much. We can see the results in the living story design (main things happen in few specific areas like Lions Arch (Dragon Bash) or Divinity’s Reach (Queens Gauntlet). We can also see this on the daily-achievement design (kryta killer etc.).

In my opinion the world exploration should have other incentives (which aren’t necessarily achievement-only related).

• Example could be guild-created events which are announced ingame (guild missions like content but with the same gameplay & rewards for every player). People could go to announcement boards to see where events will start.
• such events could also be NPC-initiated. A small portal opens to the hourly “expedition” and you follow that npc through a small portal into a random zone where you can accompany him on bigger eventchains with exploration-specific rewards.

Both of these methods would bring a lot of people to the same (low- mid- or high) level areas. Both of these are also permanent content – non living story related, so that people have things to do when they are done with the weekly living story updates. Those expeditions could reward you with a zone-specific progression which would lead to new skins, bags, finishers, new challenge missions for solo+group players (e.g. time trial of the local jumping puzzles),…

+ add sets of collectibles / artifacts to the open world. Things that spawn rarely and leave you excited once you find such a rare piece. This would encourage people to roam around instead of waypointing everywhere.

Expedition!