GW2 is good, but not that great. Is a casual MMO and even that, it get bored pretty fast for a lot of people, lets just wait too see what is all this new content that they are talking about.
Games seek their own level. It's not in your hands.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The events scale pretty well to the number of people around, be it a large amount or a small amount. I've not yet encountered an event that I could not complete, including champions.
And even if they are a bit on the hard side, if I felt like waiting, people usually show up within 5-10 mins.
My god has horns.... nah, I don't think he is real either.
Games seek their own level. It's not in your hands.
Basically, if you do nothing, then eventually the player population will thin out to such a high degree that the vast majority of dynamic events will have to be done solo...which kind of sucks.
And I'm not saying this as any kind of "doom" saying or anything, this is just the reality. After all, I think it's extremely likely that ANet will add a large amount of new zones via expansion packs in the future. So this basically means that the area of the world increases, but the players per server do not. This will inevitably lead to more and more thinning out...couple this with the tendency for people to congregate at high level zones, and it gets even worse.
So I don't think that this is something that should be ignored. If it is ignored, the vast majority of the world will wind up being fairly empty in the mid-late stages of GW2's life.
Thankfully though...there are ways to mitigate this, like highlighting certain zones with special events so that people go there, and/or a reverse overflow system (ala WoW).
Either way, I don't think it would be best to just ignore this.
I really like GW2, but one potential pitfall that I can see ahead of it is something that all games with some kind of public questing face. And that is that eventually, the player population thins out, or concentrates in higher level zones, and you get left with a very large part of the world that is more or less empty most of the time. This has already happened to some extent...many zones are still well populated, but some of the mid-high level zones seem to be much thinner on my server when it's not peak time.
This can be frustrating for players leveling up, because they will often encounter events that are too difficult for them to complete alone, and they will have to pretty much just ignore them. I really see this problem getting even worse when the inevitable expansion comes that will probably greatly increase the size of the open world...spreading out player population more and more.
So I started to try to think of what a good way to solve this problem would be...and the Halloween event gave me an idea...
The Halloween event essentially put a spotlight on a few zones and basically told players "go here." I noticed that level 80 players who would normally rarely ever go to the lower level zones were there in droves to participate in the event.
So that's when I thought that maybe this kind of thing would be a good idea to do on a more regular basis. For example, maybe every week, a select handful of zones get "highlighted" by giving them some kind of special content, rewards, etc. Maybe it's a traveling fair that goes through, or an enemy army on the move...a haunted caravan...the possibilities are really endless. Then the next week, a new handful of zones would be highlighted.
This would give level 80's a reaon to go back into the open world, and not just congregate in WvW, PvP, Orr, or dungeons. It would also give players a select few zones every week that they KNOW will be well populated...even if the game gets three times the content in eventual expansions, this should help combat population thinning by letting players know where they should go to find each other.
Thoughts?
I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame. Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out. They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable. The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort. Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience. I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game. The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it.
Originally posted by achesoma Some great ideas mentioned. I really like the idea of a reverse overflow system. Though I haven't personally seen signs of thinning out on JQ yet and I have 5 characters I alternate between at various levels. Every DE I run into typically has at least 10 other players and this on my ranger which is at 45 right now. Maybe it's just because I'm on a large server pop.
Reverse overflow would be good. Automatically send people to a host server until there are enough people to warrant an individual server zone. Some DEs do become impossible with not enough people.
I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame. Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out. They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable. The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort. Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience. I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game. The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it.
I agree. Some DEs are far more enjoyable as solo / small group due to the added difficulty. Some become outright impossible with small groups though.
Originally posted by achesoma Some great ideas mentioned. I really like the idea of a reverse overflow system. Though I haven't personally seen signs of thinning out on JQ yet and I have 5 characters I alternate between at various levels. Every DE I run into typically has at least 10 other players and this on my ranger which is at 45 right now. Maybe it's just because I'm on a large server pop.
Reverse overflow would be good. Automatically send people to a host server until there are enough people to warrant an individual server zone. Some DEs do become impossible with not enough people.
The only one's I have been unable to solo are group events and few of the champion spawns. However, many of the champion spawns are still soloable. A decent challenge, but soloable none the less.
Just to give you an idea on my perspective I have 80 Rng/80 Thief, 25ish Ele/Guard/Mes, and a 12ish Warrior.
Originally posted by I_Return Login into GW1 and then rewrite this thread.
GW1 is 100% instanced except for towns...I don't really think it applies . Just because there are a bunch of people in Lion's Arch, does not mean that you will see people when wandering around Diessa Plateau.
A more accurate parallel would be WoW...and it WoW the mid-level zones are pretty thin player wise...that's why they implemented that cross-server thing.
Games seek their own level. It's not in your hands.
Basically, if you do nothing, then eventually the player population will thin out to such a high degree that the vast majority of dynamic events will have to be done solo...which kind of sucks.
And I'm not saying this as any kind of "doom" saying or anything, this is just the reality. After all, I think it's extremely likely that ANet will add a large amount of new zones via expansion packs in the future. So this basically means that the area of the world increases, but the players per server do not. This will inevitably lead to more and more thinning out...couple this with the tendency for people to congregate at high level zones, and it gets even worse.
So I don't think that this is something that should be ignored. If it is ignored, the vast majority of the world will wind up being fairly empty in the mid-late stages of GW2's life.
Thankfully though...there are ways to mitigate this, like highlighting certain zones with special events so that people go there, and/or a reverse overflow system (ala WoW).
Either way, I don't think it would be best to just ignore this.
I detect a massive slippery slope argument.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I really like GW2, but one potential pitfall that I can see ahead of it is something that all games with some kind of public questing face. And that is that eventually, the player population thins out, or concentrates in higher level zones, and you get left with a very large part of the world that is more or less empty most of the time. This has already happened to some extent...many zones are still well populated, but some of the mid-high level zones seem to be much thinner on my server when it's not peak time.
This can be frustrating for players leveling up, because they will often encounter events that are too difficult for them to complete alone, and they will have to pretty much just ignore them. I really see this problem getting even worse when the inevitable expansion comes that will probably greatly increase the size of the open world...spreading out player population more and more.
So I started to try to think of what a good way to solve this problem would be...and the Halloween event gave me an idea...
The Halloween event essentially put a spotlight on a few zones and basically told players "go here." I noticed that level 80 players who would normally rarely ever go to the lower level zones were there in droves to participate in the event.
So that's when I thought that maybe this kind of thing would be a good idea to do on a more regular basis. For example, maybe every week, a select handful of zones get "highlighted" by giving them some kind of special content, rewards, etc. Maybe it's a traveling fair that goes through, or an enemy army on the move...a haunted caravan...the possibilities are really endless. Then the next week, a new handful of zones would be highlighted.
This would give level 80's a reaon to go back into the open world, and not just congregate in WvW, PvP, Orr, or dungeons. It would also give players a select few zones every week that they KNOW will be well populated...even if the game gets three times the content in eventual expansions, this should help combat population thinning by letting players know where they should go to find each other.
Thoughts?
I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame. Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out. They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable. The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort. Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience. I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game. The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it.
Despite what my OP, I actually 100% agree with you.
I think there is a "sweet spot" for DE's where they are the most fun. One or two people are typically not enough (most DE's), but 10 is way too many and just gets boring and zergy. A group of like 5 is awesome though...it is challenging, but not impossible at all. Mind you, this differs between DE's.
I would definitely NOT want any of these solutions to result in 100% zerg events 100% of the time...that would suck. If reverse overflow is done, the threshold for population should be set relatively low, so that zones don't get overcrowded.
And if the "zone highlighting" is done, then there should always be a number of zones highlighted so that we don't just get one or two zerg zones like release was.
Basically, the goal should be to hit that "sweet spot" where there is just the right amount of players to make events the most enjoyable.
When you run into this problem, where you can't do a DE alone, do you pop a message in /map chat, or just move on? For champ mobs in mid-level areas I do see message in chat.
Sometimes someone will just run up and join you, if they were close enough to see the marker on the map.
But I like your ideas. Some may not be easy to implement depending on the details of ANet's server code, some would require some time from the content team.
I really like GW2, but one potential pitfall that I can see ahead of it is something that all games with some kind of public questing face. And that is that eventually, the player population thins out, or concentrates in higher level zones, and you get left with a very large part of the world that is more or less empty most of the time. This has already happened to some extent...many zones are still well populated, but some of the mid-high level zones seem to be much thinner on my server when it's not peak time.
This can be frustrating for players leveling up, because they will often encounter events that are too difficult for them to complete alone, and they will have to pretty much just ignore them. I really see this problem getting even worse when the inevitable expansion comes that will probably greatly increase the size of the open world...spreading out player population more and more.
So I started to try to think of what a good way to solve this problem would be...and the Halloween event gave me an idea...
The Halloween event essentially put a spotlight on a few zones and basically told players "go here." I noticed that level 80 players who would normally rarely ever go to the lower level zones were there in droves to participate in the event.
So that's when I thought that maybe this kind of thing would be a good idea to do on a more regular basis. For example, maybe every week, a select handful of zones get "highlighted" by giving them some kind of special content, rewards, etc. Maybe it's a traveling fair that goes through, or an enemy army on the move...a haunted caravan...the possibilities are really endless. Then the next week, a new handful of zones would be highlighted.
This would give level 80's a reaon to go back into the open world, and not just congregate in WvW, PvP, Orr, or dungeons. It would also give players a select few zones every week that they KNOW will be well populated...even if the game gets three times the content in eventual expansions, this should help combat population thinning by letting players know where they should go to find each other.
Thoughts?
SImply filling up the zone with lvl 80 means nothing if they are just there to complete these special events and then go back to ORR, dungeons and w v w.
Unless they have regular events in which high and low levels can participate on regular basis this won't do much for low level players. Even now i have noticed that a lot of high level players go to low level zones to complete the map and get out of there asap.
Games seek their own level. It's not in your hands.
Basically, if you do nothing, then eventually the player population will thin out to such a high degree that the vast majority of dynamic events will have to be done solo...which kind of sucks.
And I'm not saying this as any kind of "doom" saying or anything, this is just the reality. After all, I think it's extremely likely that ANet will add a large amount of new zones via expansion packs in the future. So this basically means that the area of the world increases, but the players per server do not. This will inevitably lead to more and more thinning out...couple this with the tendency for people to congregate at high level zones, and it gets even worse.
So I don't think that this is something that should be ignored. If it is ignored, the vast majority of the world will wind up being fairly empty in the mid-late stages of GW2's life.
Thankfully though...there are ways to mitigate this, like highlighting certain zones with special events so that people go there, and/or a reverse overflow system (ala WoW).
Either way, I don't think it would be best to just ignore this.
I detect a massive slippery slope argument.
I don't really think it's a slippery slope argument...just about any MMORPG will prove that what I describe will happen.
Log on to any themepark MMORPG that is older, but does not have some kind of solution to mitigate this (WoW), and walk around the mid-levelish areas of the world. Chances are, they will be fairly empty. And they will get even more empty as "stuff" is added to the game.
More zones? Each zone will be populated less.
More sPvP, WvW content, dungeons, mini-games, etc.? Less players in the open world.
So I don't really see the slippery slope here...increase the size of the world, don't increase the amount of players...lower population density results. Pretty logical.
Also, why would you not want something like this? Even if what I describe never happens (unlikely), a solution like reverse overflow or zone highlighting will still help off-peak players who have to deal with relatively empty zones all the time just because of when they play.
Originally posted by I_Return Login into GW1 and then rewrite this thread.
GW1 is 100% instanced except for towns...I don't really think it applies . Just because there are a bunch of people in Lion's Arch, does not mean that you will see people when wandering around Diessa Plateau.
A more accurate parallel would be WoW...and it WoW the mid-level zones are pretty thin player wise...that's why they implemented that cross-server thing.
the point being "lots of people still playing",
This game has sold enough copies to make profit, and that is what ArenaNet runs on. Over the next 2 to 4 years they will sell pure profit with about 3 to 4 million more sales in that 2-4 year period.
ArenaNet is not SWTOr, not WoW , its not any failed game released in the last 5 years, it is ArenaNet, they are the best in the world at that point.
Why rock the boat with what if's when it is not a reality >?
My point isn't that there aren't going to be lots of people playing in a few years time, my point is that those people will very likely be concentrated in a few select areas, leaving a large amount of the world relatively empty.
Also, did you imply that WoW is a failed game ? If anything, WoW has more people playing it after such a long time, then any MMORPG, ever. If WoW wound up with barren zones, then it should DEFINITELY be a concern for GW2.
I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame. Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out. They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable. The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort. Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience. I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game. The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it.
I haven't yet experienced Creslin's "issue" either, but like him I acknowledge that it one day could become an issue. Hence the proposed solutions. As for now, I continue to be pleasantly surprised with how I seem to run into other players in the most obscure locations in the far corners of Tyria absolutely huge maps. I think part of that can simply be attributed to how map completion and DEs that spawn guide players to specific locations.
That said, part of my concern actually stems from the potential reverse problem: that too many players in one area make many events not fun. This is entirely subjective. I know many players love running around with the zerg, not for the challenge but for the sense of camaraderie. I'm not one of those players. When too many players congregate together in GW2 (like in the halloween events) or any other MMO, gameplay and combat tends to get reduced to the bare basics and becomes extremely boring. There seems to be a "sweetspot" player requirement for most DEs, where you can still get both the MMO community feel and also a small challenge. I've found this number to be between 2 and 5 for me.
I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame. Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out. They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable. The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort. Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience. I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game. The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it.
I haven't yet experienced Creslin's "issue" either, but like him I acknowledge that it one day could become an issue. Hence the proposed solutions. As for now, I continue to be pleasantly surprised with how I seem to run into other players in the most obscure locations in the far corners of Tyria absolutely huge maps. I think part of that can simply be attributed to how map completion and DEs that spawn guide players to specific locations.
That said, part of my concern actually stems from the potential reverse problem: that too many players in one area make many events not fun. This is entirely subjective. I know many players love running around with the zerg, not for the challenge but for the sense of camaraderie. I'm not one of those players. When too many players congregate together in GW2 (like in the halloween events) or any other MMO, gameplay and combat tends to get reduced to the bare basics and becomes extremely boring. There seems to be a "sweetspot" player requirement for most DEs, where you can still get both the MMO community feel and also a small challenge. I've found this number to be between 2 and 5 for me.
exactly how i feel, ty. i generally stay far away from zergs unless we're fighting a meta-event boss. DE's just lose any sort of challenge and/or fun once a zerg arrives, imo.
despite what i said, i gotta say, it's a pretty damned awesome feeling when u start an event chain with 2-3 people then see it build up overtime and end up with a crapload of people by the end of the chain.
I don't really think it's a slippery slope argument...just about any MMORPG will prove that what I describe will happen.
Log on to any themepark MMORPG that is older, but does not have some kind of solution to mitigate this (WoW), and walk around the mid-levelish areas of the world. Chances are, they will be fairly empty. And they will get even more empty as "stuff" is added to the game.
More zones? Each zone will be populated less.
More sPvP, WvW content, dungeons, mini-games, etc.? Less players in the open world.
So I don't really see the slippery slope here...increase the size of the world, don't increase the amount of players...lower population density results. Pretty logical.
Also, why would you not want something like this? Even if what I describe never happens (unlikely), a solution like reverse overflow or zone highlighting will still help off-peak players who have to deal with relatively empty zones all the time just because of when they play.
Not only that, I think the effect snowballs in the worst possible way. The more the low level zones become deserted, the more new players are put off the game by it feeling dead, during a huge chunk of their initial experience. Many of them will quit, before playing into higher levels.
Too many MMOs seem to abandon hope of new players existing at all, but if you look at sales figures, most of them do get at least a constant trickle.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
It is an old problem, the standard since Everquest is to expand a game at the end level. This makes some sense as your existing customers will be located at the end level. But as the OP points out, it leaves players still levelling up with a LONGER journey that will have fewer other players in it.
EQ2 solved it by allowing high level players to downscale to your level and then pull you along. GW2 does a similar thing of course with its level adjustment per area.
BUT it ain't perfect. Apart from the fact that equipment and available skills still tells and a downscaled lvl 80 -> 10 is far more powerful then a level 10, the level 80 will also be doing stuff he has already done, a dozen times for no gains. He will therefor tend to be in a rush.
This leads new players to feel that all the game is about rushing towards the end, it is the reason so many do this, because that is how they been trained. Come join us at the end game, we got cookies!
World of Warcraft pushed this even further, apperently allowing you to skip straight to the end.
But this would be as if a real world themepark, everytime it launched a new attraction, levelled the entire rest of the park to build a que straight to the one new attraction.
The OP suggests forcing players back but the Halloween event showed how this doesn't really work. I saw the door trains, a whole herd zerging between door spawns, causing a mess for any normal player in the area and totally ignoring any content or players. They were playing in the same area but you might as well consider bots company. It didn't help any low level player in finding enough others to tackle a champ.
And on the occasions a dozen lvl 80's decide to crash a lvl 20 event, the real lvl 20 players find they do anything because enemies are one shotted with AoE attacks.
Yes, games are in trouble when they concentrate players at the end game... so far the only answer is to rush new players to the same end content and then the game slowly dies because end game content is soon exhausted, especially when you never got attached to the game.
The solution? If I knew it, I would be designing MMO's, not posting on a silly forum.
My first worry of the games release was performance.
Once I felt ok with that and had those I play with upgraded to quad cores, as I recommend that pretty much a must have if you want reliable smooth play.
I then had the concern about enough pop to run events and not feel barren as time goes on, because all mmo's have had this issue to date, all of them.
My server is just hanging in right now, usually we get a 2-4 extras in the DE's as we level into the 20's. Sure we can do it with our little team, well most of it. But it is simply a better game getting randoms coming together to run the event, that is to me the Magic of GW 2 PvE.
I wanted to say that those really propping the game up at release didn't think this was going to be an issue, let alone one that happened in Oct. I wasn't planning on buying until late Nov at the earliest, but was able to get in sooner. I'm glad I didn't wait longer, to me just going by experience, this doesn't get better it gets thinner yet.
So yes I am all for bunching server zones together. I'm not asking for a complete zerg face roll, but DE's just solo or with a few to me losses a lot of what could make DE's great. The game to me has to have some type of zone population control to keep it chugging well.
I really like GW2, but one potential pitfall that I can see ahead of it is something that all games with some kind of public questing face. And that is that eventually, the player population thins out, or concentrates in higher level zones, and you get left with a very large part of the world that is more or less empty most of the time. This has already happened to some extent...many zones are still well populated, but some of the mid-high level zones seem to be much thinner on my server when it's not peak time.
This can be frustrating for players leveling up, because they will often encounter events that are too difficult for them to complete alone, and they will have to pretty much just ignore them. I really see this problem getting even worse when the inevitable expansion comes that will probably greatly increase the size of the open world...spreading out player population more and more.
So I started to try to think of what a good way to solve this problem would be...and the Halloween event gave me an idea...
The Halloween event essentially put a spotlight on a few zones and basically told players "go here." I noticed that level 80 players who would normally rarely ever go to the lower level zones were there in droves to participate in the event.
So that's when I thought that maybe this kind of thing would be a good idea to do on a more regular basis. For example, maybe every week, a select handful of zones get "highlighted" by giving them some kind of special content, rewards, etc. Maybe it's a traveling fair that goes through, or an enemy army on the move...a haunted caravan...the possibilities are really endless. Then the next week, a new handful of zones would be highlighted.
This would give level 80's a reaon to go back into the open world, and not just congregate in WvW, PvP, Orr, or dungeons. It would also give players a select few zones every week that they KNOW will be well populated...even if the game gets three times the content in eventual expansions, this should help combat population thinning by letting players know where they should go to find each other.
Thoughts?
So you got a solution for players to not leav the game, man sell it to what ever game developer and you are a millioner.
Comments
Why does it need a solution?
Games seek their own level. It's not in your hands.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The events scale pretty well to the number of people around, be it a large amount or a small amount. I've not yet encountered an event that I could not complete, including champions.
And even if they are a bit on the hard side, if I felt like waiting, people usually show up within 5-10 mins.
My god has horns.... nah, I don't think he is real either.
Basically, if you do nothing, then eventually the player population will thin out to such a high degree that the vast majority of dynamic events will have to be done solo...which kind of sucks.
And I'm not saying this as any kind of "doom" saying or anything, this is just the reality. After all, I think it's extremely likely that ANet will add a large amount of new zones via expansion packs in the future. So this basically means that the area of the world increases, but the players per server do not. This will inevitably lead to more and more thinning out...couple this with the tendency for people to congregate at high level zones, and it gets even worse.
So I don't think that this is something that should be ignored. If it is ignored, the vast majority of the world will wind up being fairly empty in the mid-late stages of GW2's life.
Thankfully though...there are ways to mitigate this, like highlighting certain zones with special events so that people go there, and/or a reverse overflow system (ala WoW).
Either way, I don't think it would be best to just ignore this.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame. Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out. They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable. The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort. Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience. I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game. The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it.
Steam: Neph
Reverse overflow would be good. Automatically send people to a host server until there are enough people to warrant an individual server zone. Some DEs do become impossible with not enough people.
I agree. Some DEs are far more enjoyable as solo / small group due to the added difficulty. Some become outright impossible with small groups though.
The only one's I have been unable to solo are group events and few of the champion spawns. However, many of the champion spawns are still soloable. A decent challenge, but soloable none the less.
Just to give you an idea on my perspective I have 80 Rng/80 Thief, 25ish Ele/Guard/Mes, and a 12ish Warrior.
Steam: Neph
GW1 is 100% instanced except for towns...I don't really think it applies
. Just because there are a bunch of people in Lion's Arch, does not mean that you will see people when wandering around Diessa Plateau.
A more accurate parallel would be WoW...and it WoW the mid-level zones are pretty thin player wise...that's why they implemented that cross-server thing.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I detect a massive slippery slope argument.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Despite what my OP, I actually 100% agree with you.
I think there is a "sweet spot" for DE's where they are the most fun. One or two people are typically not enough (most DE's), but 10 is way too many and just gets boring and zergy. A group of like 5 is awesome though...it is challenging, but not impossible at all. Mind you, this differs between DE's.
I would definitely NOT want any of these solutions to result in 100% zerg events 100% of the time...that would suck. If reverse overflow is done, the threshold for population should be set relatively low, so that zones don't get overcrowded.
And if the "zone highlighting" is done, then there should always be a number of zones highlighted so that we don't just get one or two zerg zones like release was.
Basically, the goal should be to hit that "sweet spot" where there is just the right amount of players to make events the most enjoyable.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
When you run into this problem, where you can't do a DE alone, do you pop a message in /map chat, or just move on? For champ mobs in mid-level areas I do see message in chat.
Sometimes someone will just run up and join you, if they were close enough to see the marker on the map.
But I like your ideas. Some may not be easy to implement depending on the details of ANet's server code, some would require some time from the content team.
SImply filling up the zone with lvl 80 means nothing if they are just there to complete these special events and then go back to ORR, dungeons and w v w.
Unless they have regular events in which high and low levels can participate on regular basis this won't do much for low level players. Even now i have noticed that a lot of high level players go to low level zones to complete the map and get out of there asap.
I don't really think it's a slippery slope argument...just about any MMORPG will prove that what I describe will happen.
Log on to any themepark MMORPG that is older, but does not have some kind of solution to mitigate this (WoW), and walk around the mid-levelish areas of the world. Chances are, they will be fairly empty. And they will get even more empty as "stuff" is added to the game.
More zones? Each zone will be populated less.
More sPvP, WvW content, dungeons, mini-games, etc.? Less players in the open world.
So I don't really see the slippery slope here...increase the size of the world, don't increase the amount of players...lower population density results. Pretty logical.
Also, why would you not want something like this? Even if what I describe never happens (unlikely), a solution like reverse overflow or zone highlighting will still help off-peak players who have to deal with relatively empty zones all the time just because of when they play.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
My point isn't that there aren't going to be lots of people playing in a few years time, my point is that those people will very likely be concentrated in a few select areas, leaving a large amount of the world relatively empty.
Also, did you imply that WoW is a failed game
? If anything, WoW has more people playing it after such a long time, then any MMORPG, ever. If WoW wound up with barren zones, then it should DEFINITELY be a concern for GW2.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I haven't yet experienced Creslin's "issue" either, but like him I acknowledge that it one day could become an issue. Hence the proposed solutions. As for now, I continue to be pleasantly surprised with how I seem to run into other players in the most obscure locations in the far corners of Tyria absolutely huge maps. I think part of that can simply be attributed to how map completion and DEs that spawn guide players to specific locations.
That said, part of my concern actually stems from the potential reverse problem: that too many players in one area make many events not fun. This is entirely subjective. I know many players love running around with the zerg, not for the challenge but for the sense of camaraderie. I'm not one of those players. When too many players congregate together in GW2 (like in the halloween events) or any other MMO, gameplay and combat tends to get reduced to the bare basics and becomes extremely boring. There seems to be a "sweetspot" player requirement for most DEs, where you can still get both the MMO community feel and also a small challenge. I've found this number to be between 2 and 5 for me.
exactly how i feel, ty. i generally stay far away from zergs unless we're fighting a meta-event boss. DE's just lose any sort of challenge and/or fun once a zerg arrives, imo.
despite what i said, i gotta say, it's a pretty damned awesome feeling when u start an event chain with 2-3 people then see it build up overtime and end up with a crapload of people by the end of the chain.
Not only that, I think the effect snowballs in the worst possible way. The more the low level zones become deserted, the more new players are put off the game by it feeling dead, during a huge chunk of their initial experience. Many of them will quit, before playing into higher levels.
Too many MMOs seem to abandon hope of new players existing at all, but if you look at sales figures, most of them do get at least a constant trickle.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
It is an old problem, the standard since Everquest is to expand a game at the end level. This makes some sense as your existing customers will be located at the end level. But as the OP points out, it leaves players still levelling up with a LONGER journey that will have fewer other players in it.
EQ2 solved it by allowing high level players to downscale to your level and then pull you along. GW2 does a similar thing of course with its level adjustment per area.
BUT it ain't perfect. Apart from the fact that equipment and available skills still tells and a downscaled lvl 80 -> 10 is far more powerful then a level 10, the level 80 will also be doing stuff he has already done, a dozen times for no gains. He will therefor tend to be in a rush.
This leads new players to feel that all the game is about rushing towards the end, it is the reason so many do this, because that is how they been trained. Come join us at the end game, we got cookies!
World of Warcraft pushed this even further, apperently allowing you to skip straight to the end.
But this would be as if a real world themepark, everytime it launched a new attraction, levelled the entire rest of the park to build a que straight to the one new attraction.
The OP suggests forcing players back but the Halloween event showed how this doesn't really work. I saw the door trains, a whole herd zerging between door spawns, causing a mess for any normal player in the area and totally ignoring any content or players. They were playing in the same area but you might as well consider bots company. It didn't help any low level player in finding enough others to tackle a champ.
And on the occasions a dozen lvl 80's decide to crash a lvl 20 event, the real lvl 20 players find they do anything because enemies are one shotted with AoE attacks.
Yes, games are in trouble when they concentrate players at the end game... so far the only answer is to rush new players to the same end content and then the game slowly dies because end game content is soon exhausted, especially when you never got attached to the game.
The solution? If I knew it, I would be designing MMO's, not posting on a silly forum.
My first worry of the games release was performance.
Once I felt ok with that and had those I play with upgraded to quad cores, as I recommend that pretty much a must have if you want reliable smooth play.
I then had the concern about enough pop to run events and not feel barren as time goes on, because all mmo's have had this issue to date, all of them.
My server is just hanging in right now, usually we get a 2-4 extras in the DE's as we level into the 20's. Sure we can do it with our little team, well most of it. But it is simply a better game getting randoms coming together to run the event, that is to me the Magic of GW 2 PvE.
I wanted to say that those really propping the game up at release didn't think this was going to be an issue, let alone one that happened in Oct. I wasn't planning on buying until late Nov at the earliest, but was able to get in sooner. I'm glad I didn't wait longer, to me just going by experience, this doesn't get better it gets thinner yet.
So yes I am all for bunching server zones together. I'm not asking for a complete zerg face roll, but DE's just solo or with a few to me losses a lot of what could make DE's great. The game to me has to have some type of zone population control to keep it chugging well.
So you got a solution for players to not leav the game, man sell it to what ever game developer and you are a millioner.
P2P games typically have a greater breadth of PvE content. At least, they do if they want to survive (I'm looking at you Funcom...)
You make me like charity