PoF Feels so Empty

To be clear, I'm not talking about content. There's plenty of stuff to do in the PoF maps, and I see events are always up. But that's a symptom of the problem: events are always up because there isn't anyone in the map. At least it doesn't feel like there are. Aside from the times where a commander is leading a bounty train I often feel pretty isolated in the PoF maps. I can travel quite a distance and not see any other players, and map chat is usually pretty silent compared to the HoT maps. I guess I just feel a lot like I'm playing a single player, offline RPG instead of an MMO when I'm in the PoF maps. I never had that feeling even once with HoT. Do you all agree or am I nuts?

The zones are huge ... of course it feels empty. If the population limits are the same as the smaller maps, that makes it even worse.

There's also the fact that Halloween has pulled many out of the desert and into the Labyrinth.

@TheOrlyFactor.8341 said:There's also the fact that Halloween has pulled many out of the desert and into the Labyrinth.

Yes, both expansions have had the unfortunate timing of hitting roughly the same time as limited content (Halloween). I am guessing most of the people there now are either doing bounties with their guilds or killing Joko minions for Halloween dailies. Most people have their mounts (whether or not that includes the Griffon). They may or may not be fully leveled up, I am sure I was not the only one that held off getting my level 4 masteries until seeing how many points I would need in season 4. So the maps and story now is like anywhere else in the world.

Of course there is always LFG but it is not like you can wander around and be guaranteed it will be a full map.

I don’t enjoy the new maps. I unlocked all but the griffon mount and rarely go in POF maps. There don’t seem to be any rewards and there aren’t any metas. Just doing bounties bored me.

I love the new maps, but Halloween only comes once a year. Once this holiday is over, I suspect I'll be going back to PoF maps.

I've had plenty of times in HoT where the maps felt empty. In HoT, though, people would taxi to fuller maps. In HoT, there were two main reasons to do so: meta events and HP trains. In PoF, there are two reasons also: bounties and HP trains. Bounties seem to be less of a thing than metas. After all, they are just one thing among many to do in PoF maps, while a lot of the other things to do in HoT (e.g., collections, achievements) were tied to meta events. Finally, it's very possible for players to get the PoF HC's done without a train, and I suspect that a lot of the people who wanted HoT HC's to all be solo content are doing just that in PoF.

I've seen a lot fewer PoF maps closing than in HoT. I suspect that's because the meta server algorithms are splitting the population and fewer people are taxiing to fuller maps, so we may have more partially populated maps rather than the 1-2 full maps plus several others getting set to close as in HoT.

I can sort of see why they are empty. They don't offer unique loot that is useful for anything (other than collections), they don't give any additional sources of ascended gear, they don't have new ascended stats, and the loot contracts aren't used for anything other than collections and keys. The desert is big and pretty, but otherwise I have a hard time finding a reason to be there.

Halloween./thread

I do agree that Halloween is probably the main reason, but remember also that due to the absence of meta, you probably won't see many people in the same spots ( unless they are achievement related, like the one for griffon ).

HoT was very good about gathering people at specific places at specific times. But I ran around HOT in off times, and didn't always see people where I was. Mind you if I called out for help in map chat, it usually arrived. PoF is the same. It's been slow until I call out for help with something and people show up.

I saw tons killing Joko minions for the daily, even teamed up with a necro

@TheOrlyFactor.8341 said:There's also the fact that Halloween has pulled many out of the desert and into the Labyrinth.Halloween has nothing to do with it. Because of how the megaserver system works, the population per map is stable, there's just fewer copies of the map running simultaneously.

PoF maps are huge and players are spread all over the map. It feels just as empty as it did before Halloween. The population cap seems too low, but they probably can't raise it without impacting performance..

Certainly doesn't help that the maps are so annoying to travel in, Desolation in particular. I only see others there when I'm running in trains, and we sometimes lose half of the train to terrain and aggros before even getting to the bounty...

People can blame Halloween all they want but it was feeling like this before the event started as well. You had bounty trains and.... bounty trains.

@Menadena.7482 said:

@TheOrlyFactor.8341 said:There's also the fact that Halloween has pulled many out of the desert and into the Labyrinth.

You call it bad timimg icall it smart planning to avoid too much time without new stuff to do.

PoF is not empty.

PoF doesnt require full maps for a few events. Thus people dont stream in thus maps stay fairly empty.

Rewards arent bad, just very decentralized. So theres no big reward instead theres reward for every single tiny event, killing every mob etc. Its a bit like the labyrinth.. just need to kill everything and do all the doors and the occassional big boss for fun.

@Vyrulisse.1246 said:People can blame Halloween all they want but it was feeling like this before the event started as well. You had bounty trains and.... bounty trains.

It does have an effect but yeah, it is only part of the problem. In HOT you had both metas and HP trains. Neither of which I see here (even my character that spent a lot of time there only got 6 POF HPs because her bounty group went after them). After haloween we will have christass and episode 1 (debatable which order) so I doubt you will see a sustained uptick in people there until early 2018, by which point it will be old content.

Anet said it will be like a large chapter and that is what they delivered. Yay?

On the other hand, I seem to get a lot of "Miniatures are hidden due to rising population" messages when in Elona maps. ~shrug~

The problem is, that PoF lacks any kind of incentive to farm as:

• it only added 2 new stat combinations, that don't have as much impact as the ones from HoT
• all maps share the same currency, which doesn't offer anything impactful currently
• there are no meaningful crafting components, which are less abundant in HoT maps or as useful

Also racing events should be a bit more competitive....I got so far 56 victories and it matters very little in terms of rewards.

@Bish.8627 said:I saw tons killing Joko minions for the daily, even teamed up with a necro

Killing our lord militia? How dare you!

I am spending about 95% of my online time right now doing Halloween stuff. That will end when Halloween does and I'll go back to doing some stuff in the PoF maps, but even then, I wasn't often doing a lot of events. It is an issue that the map is huge, and there are often many events going on, and it's hard to tell which ones are worth bothering with and why. Some lead to interesting things, others are just pointless "fill the basket for reasons."

Btw, what Is the best map to farm Joko minions in? I tried desolation but there didn't seem to be a ton of them in any one place that weren't clustered with tougher enemies. I want hordes of red-shirts. Either that, or whichever map is popular enough to have easy groups.

Interesting. I feel I see a fair amount of people on all the maps except Vabbi. Sure, the bigger maps means more empty space but still. It kinda reminds me of Cursed Shore at times, which is never really empty but players can be spread out at times. ~shrug~

Maybe maps from HoT feels more crowded because players (from my experience) when they are not gliding mostly stick to lanes/roads to get from A to B?

@Ohoni.6057 said:Btw, what Is the best map to farm Joko minions in? I tried desolation but there didn't seem to be a ton of them in any one place that weren't clustered with tougher enemies. I want hordes of red-shirts. Either that, or whichever map is popular enough to have easy groups.

Maybe there is a better suggestion but I first tried vabbi but could not find a lot. Then I went to the WP in desolation near the palace and ran across other people there farming them. They are few and far between (mixed with a few vets) if you go up the hill to the west but I found out too late if you go east towards the palace they are everywhere.

@Menadena.7482 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:Btw, what Is the best map to farm Joko minions in? I tried desolation but there didn't seem to be a ton of them in any one place that weren't clustered with tougher enemies. I want hordes of red-shirts. Either that, or whichever map is popular enough to have easy groups.

I went to the area in Elon Riverlands around the Deadhouse. The place is crawling with Awakened. I maxed my Halloween achievement (150 kills?) in about 20~30 minutes.