Guild Wars 2

Starting with Living World Season 2, there has been a trend of maps that have a map-wide series of events or objectives that require a fairly high player population to progress or be successful. I know myself and many other players have enjoyed this design, and coordinating events map-wide with many other players can be enjoyable, especially if they end in a boss or series of bosses, like the Silverwastes.

There is a problem, however, that I feel has become more and more pronounced as the game continues to grow, and more of maps of this type are released. When Heart of Thorns launched, every single map that launched with the expansion contained a map-wide meta event, and everything was fine for the most part because the content was fresh, new, and everyone was doing it. Poor Silverwastes and Dry Top began to experience lulls of downtime where the meta events had difficulty progressing and failing due to lower player populations, unless it was during peak time. As the game continues to be developed, this issue will only continue to grow.

With the arrival of Path of Fire, I imagine the difficult map events for Heart of Thorns will reach a similar state to that of Silverwastes and Dry Top, where one needs to log in during peak weekend times in order to have a shot at completing the metas, or, organize events to do so, as some groups have taken it upon themselves to do to reach T6 in Dry Top via Reddit, for example.

This issue is especially dangerous to new players who may not have the means to organize in such a way or cannot play during peak times for whatever reason. Imagine we’re another expansion or two down the road, and a new player needs to get Heart of Maguuma masteries, but the maps are dead… what a nightmare!

I’m sure there are many possible solutions to this issue, but here’s a couple that I feel are most likely to be considered:

1.) Scale back the difficulty of the maps based on player population
This one would be difficult/expensive to implement for what is effectively content that is no longer profitable. It also does not offer incentive for veterans to play this content.

2.) Do nothing.
Maybe this is a non-issue that is being blown out of proportion, and nothing needs to be done.

3.) Offer mystic coins for completion of the meta.
Players complain about the lack of availability of mystic coins, perhaps add a reward once per day for receiving the coins, much like the Legendary Ley-Line Anomaly event, or, add the events randomly to the pool of dailies and have the reward be a mystic coin, much like the mystic forger daily.

Feedback, thoughts, opinions, all are welcome! Thank you for taking the time to read my thread.

I understand where you’re coming from, with players being split over more maps, but I wouldn’t worry too much. Personally I’ve never not seen a a Silverwastes listed in the LFG (on EU), I play at all kinds of different hours/times of day and there’s always maps on there, often permanent RIBA ones too. Granted Dry Top not as many, but still normally I see one or two listed during off peak times.

With HoT maps I’m sure we’ll still see the same, there are always going to be a lot of players going back to them either because like me they still enjoy the maps and metas, or because they are still going at map completion, HPs, rewards or achieves etc. Don’t forget even some people who have had HoT for ages will still have lots to do there, as there are a lot who may not have had time, or just play at a different pace. Plus I would assume there will be a lot of new HoT players who will arrive having purchased the expansion bundle. So I think the numbers will still be good across HoT for a long while yet.

In addition I’m sure Anet will have already got these things in mind, and will no doubt scale things if they see numbers dropping in maps etc

I agree that it is not an immediate issue, but, I fear it will become one down the road. Even now, T6 on Dry Top is very uncommon, and it feels like the Verdant Brink meta has a very low success rate.

I have spent some time this last week repeating older content like LS2 and HoT on different alts. And sure, the Drytop/Silverwastes has no meta going on anymore. There are some people doing quests but nowhere enough to take out final champs.

There are also no people doing Verdant Brink anymore. Again, there are some people on the map doing map completion and HPs, and some events when they run around, but nothing about organising map-wide groups to take out final bosses.

Now, Auric Basin is different. there are more players around, and I have seen commander tags. I also did successful attack on Tarir from 4 sides well under time limit just yesterday.

Thing is, with new big PoF maps, there will be less players left on HoT maps. Even worse, there will be no experienced players left on HoT maps, and that is important, because these events require at least someone who knows what to do. Sure, there will be players on HoT maps even after PoF release, but these will be players who still need to learn the map mechanics. And learning while you have not enough people, is very difficult.