Guild Wars 2

Hey whats the plan to keep vanilla zones populated?

Because some Hero points need group to get. But if the zone not populated, that could be an issue.

They are setting up a new reward system with HoT where you get a reward for doing X amount of content. That will help some. It can be tweaked as needed to pull people into vanilla maps. During a beta I got an Ancient Bone from it in Cursed Shore after doing a few events.

New map rewards will be a big incentive. Also free to play players. And dailies and boss runs.

They will still be populated its just less shards of the megaserver will exist for each zone.

There will also be the Tyrian Masteries that will need people doing content to progress. Currently they’ve told us about a few. They said there are more that they haven’t yet mentioned.

All hero points are soloable, you just might have walked into part of the map that’s higher level than you and you might have to consider what skills will help you the most. All the same, they will still be populated.

How empty are the low-level core zones right now?

what hero point needs a group? there are sometimes round about ways of getting them

You will always have new players. Plus I am sure I am not the only vet who can not wait to take elite X into situation Y more than playing around in the new small zones.

I for one will be leveling a Revenant the old-fashioned way, despite having more than enough tomes. So I will be revisiting the old zones and slowly completing them, taking my time to learn the Rev mechanics.

The low level areas are not ghost towns now … what makes you think they will be ghost towns in 1 1/2 weeks? Part of the dailies are in them, part of the masteries are in them, part of the fun is in them, etc. Been playing since the original beta and I am not tired of any of the zones. I don’t spend all my time in any one particular zone so I don’t get bored.

No hero points need a group.

All of them can legitimately be done solo.

As for how they are going to keep them populated, they hope to draw in the farmers by adding materials as guaranteed event rewards. Things like Powerful Blood, Charged Lodestones, Unidentified Dyes etc… will be on the maps rewards which should draw in the event farming crowd.

Got to remember that megaservers are in place. So does not take many for a zone to feel populated, and with the influx of new players most zone should feel populated.

Unless Anet make massive changes to the loot drops in the game, the current zones such as CS, FGS, SW, etc which are highly farmed, will continue to me highly farmed for loot, im not overly optimistic that Anet will make rewards better for zones/events, they have consistently failed in this department for years now, so I don’t really think we have to much to worry about when it comes to older zones.

I never saw a single empty map since megaserver launch.

Don’t forget….Guild Hall upgrades need mats/items from all over Tyria. I don’t think there will be a problem, long-term, with map populations.

Even without the map reward system and even if they didn’t have Masteries, I’d still be going back to play on the old maps, especially after the shiny wears off. There are only so many times you can play on the same 4 maps before you get tired of them and decide to go somewhere else for awhile.

There is also farming to consider. If the majority of the population is in the new level 80s maps then the lower to mid level mats needed for crafting are going to decrease in supply and increase in price, and pull people out to the maps where they are.

Legendaries also require full map completion…so there will always be that.

F2P players and core-only players will make sure that old zones don’t become empty I’d think.

Glenstorm.4059:

I for one will be leveling a Revenant the old-fashioned way, despite having more than enough tomes. So I will be revisiting the old zones and slowly completing them, taking my time to learn the Rev mechanics.

Same here.

You also have players like my husband, the Altaholic. He loves leveling new alts and exploring zones.

ANet will as it has been said add a new Map Reward System to all the Maps with the Introduction of Hot, which will help also players alot gaining the materials needed for Crafting rare Weapons and Legendararies, especially finally a greater permanent source of income for all the kinds of Lodestones!!

But there are more ways that ANet should add to give people temporarely at least more reasons to continue to go into the older maps.

1) Add should add for ALL explorable maps their own Region Achievements

2) Anet should introduce new Crafting Materials for Jeweler 500 and Chef 500 to be found in also the older maps mainly

3) Anet should start finally redesigning all the World Bosses, like for start the other Dragon Champions to let them beciome of same quality and difficulty like Tequatl with adding own Achievements and unique rewards to them like Tequatl has.

4) The Legendary Craftign will bring for sure also people constantly to the older maps as alot of thigns will be neccessary to be done in the older maps to get the stuff you need for your Legendary Crafting, thats for sure. But also the new legendaries can be used naturally to bring people back into older regions where it fits.

5) Adding new and missing Material Collector Options like Fishing and Digging could give people also too reason to go to the older maps, when certain materials from specific fishing and digging points can be gathered only in the older maps

6) Living Story will continue, and we will surely see in the future the Living Story also again in some older maps taking place when it fits for the Story.

7) Verticality…. adding somewhen later to certain maps also Vertical Exploration can be used to brign peopel back to let them explore older maps in a new way by either exploring it from the sky or from the underground, seeign the older maps from a completely different perspective where it fits

just some ideas and facts that surely could be used to guaranteed that pplayers will always find enough stuff in the older maps to do to return to them.

You know, I was thinking about this the other day and last night I got into a T6 Dry Top through LFG with ease. I had been thinking “surely Dry Top is dead by now,” but there are a lot of people still running it, probably for the fossils and somewhat for the love of the map design.

The new areas will be alluring at first, but people will trickle back to whatever gives them the rewards they’re looking for.

What Anet should keep in mind for the future more than anything is this: Beware of creating too many maps with rewards that’ll keep people coming back to them near indefinitely (such as Teq for chance of weapon or Dry Top for chance of fossils to make DT weapons). Too many maps with a design like that means people will splinter more and more over time, as their priorities differ for which rewards they want to go for.

Right now, I don’t think it’s even close to an issue, but it could be become one down the line.

Orpheal.8263:

3) Anet should start finally redesigning all the World Bosses, like for start the other Dragon Champions to let them beciome of same quality and difficulty like Tequatl with adding own Achievements and unique rewards to them like Tequatl has.

That has been done. World Bosses became “a waste of time” to many players and were no longer being challenged by players. I literally sat and watched as Shadow Behemoth spawned no one arrived and he left. So difficulty level is adequate.

I agree, they should have special rewards tide to them. But then that’s probably why all world bosses have a chance at dropping a guild hall decoration of them self’s. Maybe not enough but something.

6 Reasons to return to Tyria

1. Tyrian Mastery Points for Tyrian Masterys
2. Map Reward System for Materials
3. Map comp for legendary
4. Material Nodes for Guild Hall restorations
5. Map Comp for alts
6. Hero Points for Elite Specializations
7. Mob farming for black lion keys (if only they had a drop rate high enough to support this)

phys.7689:

what hero point needs a group? there are sometimes round about ways of getting them

I can think of three (two in Malchor, one in Shore) that might be problematic, depending on what events are on and what class you run.
To be more precise, it’s not the hero points that are a problem, but the champs that spawn on top of them.
Wait, actually there are four – fourth is underwater in Malchor, and cannot be done if the Melandru statue nearby is in full contested mode (the damage pulse from thorns aoe will keep breaking channeling).
Balthasar temple point, if contested, may also be a little hard for some people.

I’m doing map completion on a character, and the low level zones are ridiculously occupied.

phys.7689:

what hero point needs a group?

Probably referring to the ones blocked by group events. Depending on the tools available to your class, you may or may not be able to solo it. The stealth consumable should however get the job done for the guarded ones. The hero challenge blocked by the Temple of Melandru however requires invulnerability/blocks/evades since you’re spammed with interrupting roots. I haven’t seen that since the megaservers however.

The average player is just playing the game, so these hero challenges are going to seem impossible to solo.

I will still need to map complete with my Revnant… so will anyone else that does that. No worries, I would say, about it ever being empty. It might be a tad scarce for a week or so as people explore the new area’s but they will still go back to complete things, do world bosses and daily’s, and, likely, just to feel OP again since HoT area’s will be challenging.

Healix.5819:

phys.7689:

what hero point needs a group?

Probably referring to the ones blocked by group events. Depending on the tools available to your class, you may or may not be able to solo it. The stealth consumable should however get the job done for the guarded ones. The hero challenge blocked by the Temple of Melandru however requires invulnerability/blocks/evades since you’re spammed with interrupting roots. I haven’t seen that since the megaservers however.

The average player is just playing the game, so these hero challenges are going to seem impossible to solo.

I’ve seen it once, but I don’t think I was on during peak times.

I did go get one of the consumables that grants invulnerability and stealth and was able to grab it I believe. I can’t remember what I grabbed, though.

Healix.5819:

phys.7689:

what hero point needs a group?

Probably referring to the ones blocked by group events. Depending on the tools available to your class, you may or may not be able to solo it. The stealth consumable should however get the job done for the guarded ones. The hero challenge blocked by the Temple of Melandru however requires invulnerability/blocks/evades since you’re spammed with interrupting roots. I haven’t seen that since the megaservers however.

The average player is just playing the game, so these hero challenges are going to seem impossible to solo.

Ah, stealth, so that is why I keep getting the ‘what do you mean, HPs are easy’. I am doing them the hard way and actually fighting things.

If it is just one thing, okay, maybe you can pull it off but maybe you can not. The ones I dread though are the ones where there is a big bad and several other monsters that show up with them. Extra annoying if some want to get behind you. If you do not have a pet (or something like sup ogre runes) you need someone else there. Even if they are just doing a Doctor Who impression (“LOOK AT ME, I AM A TARGET!!!!!”).

I do not think zones will ever be unpopulated. It is just a question of what vets will be doing there? I for one think the new maps do not look as interesting as they could have been but it will probably be same-old-same-old for me but with new tools.

I always thought the vanilla idea was kinda silly. Why would anyone not want a game to progress? That makes no sense what so ever. If you had ever paid attention to the game you would of realized they made this game so every zone can be relevant even to a lvl 80. No other game or very very few games do this. They may have a dragon attack Queensdale one day that would bring some people into the zone just to fight it.

GW2 has no zone that is not vanilla, but some of us like the strawberry , chocolate, cookies n cream, butter ripple, caramel, etc. part of the game. The core game will be the same no matter what. Next will it be the vanilla HoT?

Glenstorm.4059:

I for one will be leveling a Revenant the old-fashioned way, despite having more than enough tomes. So I will be revisiting the old zones and slowly completing them, taking my time to learn the Rev mechanics.

That was my plan as well. But as I thought about it I realized how much experience it takes to get to 80, and it occurred to me that all of that exp is wasted on getting to 80 if I have the tomes.
If I insta level to 80 and then do all the same content then all that exp goes into masteries instead of just getting to 80 in the first place before even starting on masteries.
It’s like 4.8mil exp wasted on leveling.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience#Leveling_table

this games population is soaring right now since f2p, so it wont be an issue at all. plus not everyone bought the expansion (yet). Plus, guilds will always help anyone who needs anything, people will still farm low areas for linen etc. Also, dailies.

will be fine

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Glenstorm.4059:

I for one will be leveling a Revenant the old-fashioned way, despite having more than enough tomes. So I will be revisiting the old zones and slowly completing them, taking my time to learn the Rev mechanics.

That was my plan as well. But as I thought about it I realized how much experience it takes to get to 80, and it occurred to me that all of that exp is wasted on getting to 80 if I have the tomes.
If I insta level to 80 and then do all the same content then all that exp goes into masteries instead of just getting to 80 in the first place before even starting on masteries.
It’s like 4.8mil exp wasted on leveling.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience#Leveling_table

^

Exactly.

You can still stay in vanilla Tyria and learn your new profession on a level 80 also, maybe even better since you’ll have all the traits and skills to play with. Once I realized that I could tome to 80 and then use all the exp from doing map completion, events and personal story to progress a mastery line then that settled it in my mind as to which was best. 4.8 million exp will get you a fair chunk of mastery line progression.

How are the existing zones staying populated today?

Is any of that changing with the expansion?

Are there any type of systems being added to promote people going to specific maps?

Did people still go to the existing maps (from release) when DryTop and Silverwastes were added?

Do people still go to those maps months after DT and SW were released?

As far as the comment that some hero points need a group to get, that’s false. I’ve done world completion on every class and have been able to solo every hero point. Some being more difficult than others such as the Snowden one with the Mesmer boss.

There are still like a million active players left. Ok, kind of guessing/exaggerating, but there must be 100k at least. And even if 1% of those players are in old maps, that still leaves at least few dozen per each map, and with the megaserver (if its working right) they will all get put into the same instance, so seems unlikely youll ever be alone.

6 months from now, this might not be true, but from now til like january this games population is going to be huge

Ayrilana.1396:

I’ve done world completion on every class and have been able to solo every hero point. Some being more difficult than others such as the Snowden one with the Mesmer boss.

As it has been already pointed out, it’s not the hero points per se that are a problem, but the events that spawn on top some of them. Like the champion risen knight in Karst Plains (Malchor’s), which is very hard to avoid solo on some classes (at least without cheesing some environmental kits), or the underwater one below Sculptor’s End (also Malchor’s) that is just impossible to do on most classes if the nearby Melandru statue is pulsing thorns.

Astralporing.1957:

Ayrilana.1396:

I’ve done world completion on every class and have been able to solo every hero point. Some being more difficult than others such as the Snowden one with the Mesmer boss.

As it has been already pointed out, it’s not the hero points per se that are a problem, but the events that spawn on top some of them. Like the champion risen knight in Karst Plains (Malchor’s), which is very hard to avoid solo on some classes (at least without cheesing some environmental kits), or the underwater one below Sculptor’s End (also Malchor’s) that is just impossible to do on most classes if the nearby Melandru statue is pulsing thorns.

You don’t need to kill the champion as you can just lead it away or distract it with a summon/pet. There are consumables for classes that do not have abilities that provide them.

I never had any issues with the one in water. You should be able to pull them back far enough where you’re not taking the ticking damage but they haven’t leashed. I’ll have to look closer at that one but it’s never been one of the ones I had trouble with.