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How bad is the "dead mid-level zones" problem?
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483
in Guild Wars 2
Are most of the dynamic events doable solo if you happen to be the only one there? Do there tend to be a few people there doing whichever events are active, but just not nearly as many as launch? Or are you faced with having to skip most of the content if you don't go form your own group manually?
Comments
There's always a few people around. Like 70 - 80% of the DEs scale down to soloability. If you send a message out in zone chat when a larger DE is up, you can usually get a few to come rock it.
Late at night and early morning tend to be more difficult times to find people. This is also coming from someone on Jade Quarry which is a pretty darn populated server.
A good chunk of the events are soloable in this game. However there are a few events that will be displayed as "group" events such as slaying champion mobs, or the climax of a long DE chain. However if these events fail such as the final DE in the chain then the failure event chain kicks in.
All in all, I think there is very little you will miss out if you can't complete some events. Sure it may suck you can't complete the final chain, but I've never had issues with people rallying for the larger chains.
in rush hours you'll be able to find like 5-6 people in these areas (also depends where + server, so it's not accurate).
question is: why bother to do DE there? I rushed through dead stuff non-stop and found areas full of people as DE there are rewarding.
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
Leveling up solo is possible but since DE is not that fun doing solo, a lot of people are either WvW / crafting their way to 80.
This makes the problem worse but that's what is happening.
If you are on the 2 most populated server, it isn't bad.
Any other server and yeah, it is a wasteland.
ANet are aware though and half of their 2013 blog post was all about getting players back into the world.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
On Borlis Pass, where I play, everything you said happens. One time I was in Timberline Falls and when I was starting out I was doing the DEs and Hearts alone. I arrived at a NPC hub and found 3-4 other players. We did some DEs along the way. The next day I logged on there's nobody else in sight, but there's activity in map chat. Eventually a LFG for some Group Event was called out by someone. There's a Champion wandering in my area, but no one else is around so I skipped it and headed towards the LFG guy's location. The next day as I was heading back to complete the Heart I left unfinished yesterday I ran into the same Champ again, but this time two others happen to be there.
Definitely there will be playthroughs where you'll feel alone and had to skip content. DEs are soloable up to the point in the chain where it says [Group Event].
I'm on Ring of Fire which is probably a bit less populated (considering how deep in ladder we are in WvW). I'm kinda altaholic, so I spend much more time in low-mid zones than in high ones. Still I never had serious problems of doing pretty much anything. As other guys said, most DEs are soloable and more often than not, while you do DE, someone walks around and joins the battle.
For group DEs, problem is, people are so used to skipping them that they just run along see noone there and keep going on. Sometimes someone rally people in chat, sometimes if you just stand around a while, someone comes along, see you standing around and join you and in a while there is 4 of you finishing that group event.
As for long chains, that's pretty guaranteed to finish. It usually has this "snowball" effect. More people will come with each event and even if the last bit is really hard there is already enough people to make it work.
To wrap it up, I think it went in opposite direction from how it was on release. There are no longer big zergs running along the map destroying everything. It's more of a solo adventurers running into each other and eventually ending up working for the same goal.
I was in a lower level norn zone tonight, and started a transport guard DE. Before 1 minute had passed we were a party of 3, by the end of the quest, which is pretty short, there were 5 of us. I find that people naturally start to follow along with me and my wife so it's often enough that we'll be completing a map with people hanging around the entire time.
I find that I prefer the number of people now to the huge mass of players that would smash through every event in no time. I like the feeling of actually representing within a fight.
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Mid level zones were a ghost town last I played..
I felt like I was missing out on content when I couldnt solo a lot of the DE's,so I lost interest and stopped playing.
No most of them are not soloable, (slightly more when your a lvl 80 fully geared kicked down).
In the higher level zones you can find players doing the most rewarding DE's, most of the time, its dependent on the time of day really. The lower zones are pretty much dead, you will occasionally team up with players to do a DE, but generally its not going to happen, which means yeah you have to skip content really, or you could just stand around hoping players will turn up.
Hopefully they will incentivise players back to other zones.
Its pretty bad.
I switched servers couple of times , but no avail.
Let me illustrate this for you.
First month of the game. If you were killed in open world, you would wait no more than minute and someone would come and resurect you.
Today, i was asking on map chat, no answer. Nobody at all on whole map , on peak time. Waited around 10 minutes before i gave up.
You're doing something wrong if you can't solo most events. You should be able to solo all events of your level and most events that are a level or two higher.
Thats doesnt mean theres nobody else in the zone, it means nobody wants to come and rez you.
I had no problems doing most of group events without asking in map once.
Not until lvl 80 anyway. A friend of mine can do it on the non-80 Champs (don't remember the profession he used though).
As for the "deserted zones" and "dead game", it's just hot air. Sure, at times there aren't people at an event, but there are thousands of events... no one's going to be waiting for one to start. I almost always find people to do things with even then. If no one's around, I just whisper a guildie and we two man it if it's not something like the Champion Megalodon (which is definitely not soloable)
You waited 10 minutes? Geez. Unless it's Orr where all the waypoints are contested regularly, walking back is no big deal. If I get killed when no one's around, I don't bother waiting.
Its rare that I ever solo an event. Usually between 1-10 people will pop up and help if an event starts.
Most events are soloable though, only the ones labeled 'group event' can be a bit tricky, and those tend to be the final events in the zone chains. So usually only 1-3 events per zone are not soloable. Once you hit 80, most of those 'group events' below level 60 are soloable. Higher ones too if you are a good soloer.
Also changes to the rewards system look to be implemented pretty soon, so you should see some more open world action soon.
Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen for someone else.
What server are you on? As far as I can tell, only two servers are relatively 'okay' in the mid-level zones and the others are wasteland.
My guardian that just hit 80? Crafting from 40-60, then personal story / WvW till 70.
Cause the 30-40 were just awful.
If you want proof, look at ANet and how they dedicated (and create a whole new game design) half of their '2013 plan' on getting people back into the world.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Nope. Most are soloable.
Why? Because I don't play on a heavily populated server. And I have soloed most of them. They do scale down, and yea, one player can complete them. Especially below 80.
Some you can "fail". Sometimes that happens to me, but I don't die. Usually most all are soloable and able to be completed that way.
Wouldn't it bring back peaple to lower levels if all the de's and reward drops where given depending what level you where? Meaning if you where level 80 you would get your max xp per event no mater what level the zone is. Same with gear, every zone should drop your current level's gear. Or does it do that alrdy?
Oh and also all the merchants should sell stuff acording to your level.
You gain rewards according to your real level (with a small penalty).
And what is the point of merchants selling to your level (although thry sell gathering and salvage kits to your level)?
Currently playing: GW2
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This game isn't very tough, the vast majority of DEs are soloable. That's with 4 80s and 7 characters slots all full. Some may not find that fun and would like lots of players all over (I didn't like it much the first month), and others may prefer small groups that require more skill (that's me). Some servers may have it bad off, and other servers may not be as bad (like mine).
Even within the first month, when there were loads of players on each map, people asking for rezzes in map chat would most often be ignored. Most people don't want to go a on trek to pick someone up. I know this firsthand, as I actually responded to some of these folks, when 30+ others ignored them. Asking for pickups in map chat is pretty lame.
Depends on your class and abilities at dodging and CC - a lot of emphasis on CC if you're not very high lvl. I've got 4 80s, and I have been able to solo champs, on all of them, while leveling up. I did the Jotun champ (who takes over an outpost) on my ranger to about 10% health, and then another player showed up, and I really didn't want them to
("jotun champ gw2" search on google has the youtube video of exact mob, not me playing) That's just one example, done a couple spiders recently too.
The game isn't hard haha. Running 4 person fractals/dungeons is sometimes good.
Edit: I'll say the game is tougher for me on Engineer, I apparently don't sync well with that class and may very well fail at most DEs I attempt (haven't played past lvl 22 though).
I just took my Power necromancer to lvl 60 via normal PvE. Yes, a Power necro. With an axe + focus / staff. It's one of the "use it if you want to be a gimp" builds and I could still solo non-group events well. Yes, some of them are hard for a solo player (dredge are particularly annoying, although I wouldn't call them "hard"), but it's definitely doable even with a below-average build. The only zone that's consistently too difficult is the Lost Shores island, but that's lvl 80 stuff.
And this is a pretty average build. In fact, I'd say it's more difficult to use than the commonly-used heavy armor builds, because elementalists require some finesse with all their attunement swapping and squishiness. A Guardian can just autoattack through most of the game.
The measure I use to judge zone population is how long does the prime time thing last.
When there were lots of people playing back in September and October (the release rush), I could log in at around 7 pm weeknights, and see plenty of people on any map and this would last until around 11 pm, so 3 hours tops.
Nowdays, when I log in at 7, and go to any zone, I will see people about for about an hour. If I don't get done what I wanted by 9 pm, well there is always the next evening.
There are still times when you can find plenty of people in any zone, but those prime time periods are getting shorter, which indicates to me there are far fewer players overall now. It does not help that the trend is clearly downward.
3 million copies pretty much codifies that Anet failed to unthrone WOW like they claimed they would. They got a small market share, it's a niche game.
If I had to sum it up for noobs, GW2 is the limited appeal jumping puzzle MMO.
I guess it's one of those "your mileage may vary" thing, depends a lot on your server and times of gameplay.
Personally I play on the Yak's Bend server, usually after 9 pm venezuelan time (currently EST + 30 minutes, but it's -30 minutes for half of the year since we don't do the daylight savings thing), and while it's obvious that there aren't nearly as many people as there was during release, zones aren't the ghost towns people describe. Note that I'm not saying it's not a problem, just that is not as bad on the server and during the hours I play.
Most events can be soloed if needed (except for the ones marked as "group"), but it's normal that I see 3 or 4 other people doing them, even if sometimes I start them solo. Also I always see people calling for help on group events on map chat, and in my experience doing that usually resulta in 6 or more people showing up.
Of course, it also depends on map, the maps where the dragons show up (earlier is at level 40) tend to be more populated, specially when it's close to their spawning window, but also events in those maps tend to be ignored once the dragon spawns.
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