Guild Wars 2

You honestly dont think there wouldn’t constantly be a crowd of people in black citadel waiting for a turn to 1v1 for an audience? Or if there were a moa race every ten minutes and you had a chance to see the birds racing and place bets (up to a realistic max of course)? Just like you can nearly always find people around for Keg Brawl.

Different events appeal to different people in different moods. Make them varied and unique enough between cities and people will have reasons to hop around more.

It was a deliberate design decision to make L.A. the center of the world. It’s unfortunate that its functionality makes the “home” cities irrelevant.

But for me, coming from Rift, it’s nice that there IS a semblance of a world out there, even if we don’t often visit. (Rift is set in some extra-planar world where there’s no cultures or civilizations or anything)

I do not understand your issue really. Yes, it is a shame that those nicely crafted areas are vacated, but isn´t it better to have one hub of player interaction than 6? To add: I actually use the Grove when leveling crafters as the TP and the craft stations are conveniently placed.

I agree, I like the hearthstone idea. That would be a great incentive to travel back – also adding more things to do in cities would also be fun. Maybe even small quests to help the local inhabitants?

Everyone is in Lions Arch and in Lions Arch only.

I’m not. I can’t stand the childish banter and intellectual insult of map chat there (and sometimes /say babbling), and the layout for bank/tp/crafting is horrid. I only go to LA when I need to use mystic forge, which is less frequently since outside of set recipes it’s like a toilet, all you do is flush stuff down it.

I often wonder how some of the chat spammers manage to log in without mommie holding their hand, and wonder how they manage to type, or level beyond 2. Map chat (and general chat in any MMORPG) are evidence that both parenting and our educational systems are failures.

I usually chill at rata sum since it has my favorite layout for services and it’s generally quiet.

There both is no reason for most people to be at any specific town other than LA and due to lack of LFG tools in the game, the only way you’re going to get pugs is to hang out in the zones where your target instance is or to hang out in LA.

You’re not going to get the masses away from the only real hub when it’s the only place to get PUGs for PvE and the PvP zones dump you there when you leave PvP.

Maybe they could have special short-term events in our home cities. Halloween is coming up. Maybe there will be festivals or something.

I love Divinity’s Reach. Would love to see more special events around the carnival there.

Even something like an incentive for players to take tours of those cities. Like a scavenger hunt that takes you there. I vaguely remember a scavenger hunt type questline to get a moa minipet in GW1. Maybe something like that and the end result is a minipet of your choice, maybe one that is representative of the different races or home cities.

I prefer Divinity’s Reach over Lion’s Arch.

L.A. is spread out, noisy, and boring for me.

When I’m done exploring/ getting 100% map completion for a zone, I only port to LA so i can hit up Divinity’s. With the bank and the TP a few steps away from one another, it makes it easier to sell and store my goods for the evening. I also just like the overall design of DR. It’s much more beautiful than LA.

They said (need to see if I can find the link) they are adding more to your home instance, the part of your starting city that is an instance which changes based on what you did in your personnel story.

If anything, this will be the location you get a free port too, and then using quests etc, add useful things to this instance (bank, trader, crafting stations)

People who don’t use Asura home city or divinity reach are crazy. The bank and the TP person is literally NEXT to each other. A mere 15-25ft distance. I believe it’s even shorter than divinity’s reach banker/TP in Rata.

I don’t understand why people use lion’s arch. The distance between the TP And bank is so huge to compare with. Hub city? Sure. Hub city if your heavy into banking and TP? Heck no.

Rata Sum, the Asura Home city is the best in game for levelling a trade skill, all trade stations and the bank, guild bank and trade brokers so close!

Its the only place I use when I was levelling up trade skills

But all other times I use Lions Arch due to the free port there.

personally LA is laid out wrong and costs me more time and is crowded
i prefer DR or RS thank you

Accountancy Waypoint, yo. Best waypoint in the game.

Hearthstones? lolno

Central Transfer Chamber
Solves travelling via the Mists and LA overpopulation at the same time.

Also, linking the chat channel between capitals would make the lesser populated ones feel a lot less lonely.

@Blacklight: “You should be able to waypoint to your home city for free. That provides at least some small incentive to return there now and again.”

This looks like a good idea. Perhaps you should be able to waypoint directly to your story instance home location; that differs slightly depending on which story line you chose when you created your character.

Mif.3471:

Central Transfer Chamber
Solves travelling via the Mists and LA overpopulation at the same time.

And the Hall of Monuments could very well serve like this.
It´s there but is actually useless, everybody can already buy the “Heartstone” to it, but it just takes away an inventory slot for no real purpose.

Like the idea of porting back to the personal story area.
Would be an elegant solution.
Just add an Asuran waypoint that ports you to the nearest one to your personal story area.
Or just infront of it, screw continuity. The Hall already doesn´t care much about it as it just spits you back out from where you went in.

divinity reach has an asuran portal leading to fields of ruins, ebonhawk base.

going one map north leads to blazeridge stepps which is home of the shatterer.

not useless.

Im always in Rata Sum. Easy crafting. BLTP Nearby

FFXI had a novel idea to keep people going back to starting cities. They tied the starting cities AH(TP) to each other, then made the main hub (Jueno/Lion’s Arch) separate from that. This meant higher levels had to return to get some of the lower level stuff being farmed by new players/alts.

Of course you’d have to kill the teleport to Lion’s Arch from the starting cities, along with a lot of other changes. No idea if this is even workable in this game, but thought I’d add my two pence.

DR is where all the RP is. So many people there on Tarnished Coast.

Just make every city free to WP to from anywhere. Problem solved.

I agree with OP. I loved Divinity’s Reach…then I noticed that all the action is in LA.

Maybe if I get a ‘home town’ advantage, I would visit Divinity’s Reach more often. Things like discounts on certain crafting materials, more exp gain in crafting in my home area, better sell rates, maybe even a small bonus stat for for a set time depending on how long I stay or what I accomplished in my area with a max cap (IE +2 for all stat for 15 minutes if I meet X amount of requirement in my home area – sell/buying items, crafting, killing things, completing DEs).

Hey guys,

thanks a lot for the constructive feedback you provided in this thread.
I see a lot of great ideas how to make the cities more interesting and how introduce some system to get to other cities as easily as to LA.

I never said heartstone was the only idea. It was one of the many possible ways to do this.

Anyway, keep it coming. More ideas!

PS: I will update the OP with all the ideas you guys have so we have them all in one place.

Regards,
Looria

Best 2 suggestion I have read here are

- Add a racial, 1h cooldown, teleport to your home city (or just free to waypoint there from the outside)
- Make all city chats (racial citys + LA) connected

Go for it ANet!!

Voqar.2349:

There both is no reason for most people to be at any specific town other than LA and due to lack of LFG tools in the game, the only way you’re going to get pugs is to hang out in the zones where your target instance is or to hang out in LA.

You’re not going to get the masses away from the only real hub when it’s the only place to get PUGs for PvE and the PvP zones dump you there when you leave PvP.

As I said earlier. If the only problem is looking for group, there is esy fix – introduce all cities wide chat.

Actracts.1389:

Maybe if I get a ‘home town’ advantage, I would visit Divinity’s Reach more often. Things like discounts on certain crafting materials, more exp gain in crafting in my home area, better sell rates, maybe even a small bonus stat for for a set time depending on how long I stay or what I accomplished in my area with a max cap (IE +2 for all stat for 15 minutes if I meet X amount of requirement in my home area – sell/buying items, crafting, killing things, completing DEs).

And duuude, I love this idea.

I’m not part of your version of everybody since I spend more time in The Grove than in LA. Also you ask why you would waste spending time getting to Rata Sum as an Asura if you can already go to LA and have everything there. I can revert that question, why you go to LA if you’ve got everything in Rata Sum already? And both are just a click on the waypoint away.
I hardly ever use an asura gate to get to LA unless I go via Heart of the Mist which is actually more time consuming because I first have to go to the hero panel, activate the pvp tab and click to go to Heart of the Mists and then run to the gate to end up in LA.
Might as well just open the map and click the waypoint, I’m no cheap skate and don’t mind travel cost.
Looking for dungeon groups in my experience is much more effective in the map where the dungeon is located than in LA so that’s not a reason for me. After having explored LA on several characters all I do there is access the town services that I can also access in other towns.

I always got the idea that it was very intended for players to gather in LA once they’re past their newbie areas. Everywhere connects to LA.

The other cities aren’t useless in that they’re inferior, it’s just, they serve their purpose of providing services for new characters near their respective starter zones, and then after that they send those characters to main hub of Lion’s Arch.

Right?

Blacklight.2871:

You should be able to waypoint to your home city for free. That provides at least some small incentive to return there now and again. Unless you need the Mystic Forge, you might as well take the free trip. And it would be faster than detouring through the Mists.

It is sad that the capitals become useless once the race part of the personal story is concluded… Divinity’s Reach is truly the most fully realized fantasy city I’ve ever explored in a video game. Making it free to travel to them would be a nice step in giving them some new life. While they are at it, they could get rid of the free LA port from the Mists.

Noviere.7309:

Blacklight.2871:

You should be able to waypoint to your home city for free. That provides at least some small incentive to return there now and again. Unless you need the Mystic Forge, you might as well take the free trip. And it would be faster than detouring through the Mists.

It is sad that the capitals become useless once the race part of the personal story is concluded… Divinity’s Reach is truly the most fully realized fantasy city I’ve ever explored in a video game. Making it free to travel to them would be a nice step in giving them some new life. While they are at it, they could get rid of the free LA port from the Mists.

I agree, divinity’s reach is a work of art. Sometimes though it feels a bit like a painting too in that it’s not very interactive. Why are all the vendor NPCs standing around outside in odd places and don’t have their own shops? Why don’t NPCs actually live in DR – for the most part doors are just facades? And Arenanet seem to have been at a loss for giving some of them roles in that many just sell one useless food item and that acts to make it hard to find the right NPC that you need, without running around the whole city clicking on them all and then taking notes.

The mystic forge is a bit of a catch all too (typical c programmer solution) and way over complicated way of doing something they could have done more atmospherically with separate NPCs & shops.

Another thing – when you actually are able to interact with something the game pops up that horrible generic dialogue box – I’d like to be able to read books and inscriptions directly, that would be much better – Skyrim does this rather well (although the sheer quantity of text there is overkill for me).

Not to mention that at early stages your personal storyline has you constantly going back to your home city. And when you’re 2 zones away that’s forcing me to drop money or else run thru the Mist/LA/Grove-Portal game.

I go to Rata Sum, not only because I’m an Asuran, because all of the crafting stations, bank, trade center, and guild bank are all right there in the same area. I go to Lions Arch if I’ve been in WvW, but Rata Sum has by far the best layout of all the cities!

Hm… actually, it would be nice if they had small race-relevant daily events in each of the cities. Then we’d get people moving around all the time, which would help make all the cities look busy.

Yea daily events related to each race would be a pretty cool idea as well.
I kinda miss daily quests or something like that in this game. I mean yea you have daily achievement but its not the same.

I Approve of those ideas. Race events could be cool.

I agree,think one of the biggest problems is that in LA you can do everything, bank,crafting aswell as get anywhere, well almost ebon hawk been the exception. If each city had something exclusive to that city it would have given more reason to spent time in each.

Tarnished Coast’s main cities all seem to be busy when I go there (though Rata Sum is the quietest). DR seems to be just as busy as LA, and there’s usually some chatter going on in Hoelbrak, the Grove, and the BC when I go.