An Update On End of Dragons Map Population

[ControlTheBit.9731]

They did a fix yesterday, so that people now actually should stand in the green afaik.

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

37 minutes ago, ControlTheBit.9731 said:

They did a fix yesterday, so that people now actually should stand in the green afaik.

Multireplying to this again...
+ But Green IS part of the intended mechanics

- But players who just want to stay the only one with the turtle and the satisfaction of clearing the encounter still decides to either not climb the tower if they are a wisp, or stand in them when we were asking not to (outside dedicated Wispers).

= It is a "Zero-Sum Game" event as it stands.

[Woop S.7851]

19 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

We're not making changes to player capacity in the Jade Sea map at this time.

We're taking these steps to make sure we can balance player population without negatively impacting your gameplay performance, so we'll continue to monitor!

1. Dragon's End Meta Gameplay: Multiple tags hard to come by, everyone wants to follow just 1 tag most of the time (need data to verify); when a 2nd tag is present, the map population cap restricts them from joining the instance
2. Map instance/group forming: players have hard time joining same instance due to map instance population cap, new players did not know they had to right-click & select 'join instance' (UI/UX)
3. Commander + squads: sub-groups seems under utilized, only way currently to have a squad tackle 3 objectives is to use 'X' and 'O' markers on lieutenants, but this is very rare and not all players will follow this rule by the commander, an easier way would be to allow 'numbered' markers (1-10) inside a 50-man squad, allowing group to be split 3-ways
4. Duration/timer: need to be dynamic for all scenarios (1-tag, 2-tags, low population? overpopulation? As there's 3 separate objectives & multiple phases of the meta on map at once)
5. Damage scaling: when everyone follows 1 Commander tag, damage on 1 champion are scale/slowed down quite a lot; if there's 2 commander tags (very rare), damage is spread evenly but not all commanders coordinate together
6. Jade Maw: In one instance where 2 tags were present while the dragon meta was active, the 2nd tag was waiting on the Jade Maw, ignoring the dragon's end meta event, 1/2 of the population followed the 2nd tag & assumed the Jade Maw was part of meta, resulting in failed event while hitting the population map cap
7. NPC Captain Fa (west objective): teleported through the blocked rocks/wall during the to attack the shields, as the commander & players (1st time at event) follows the NPC tightly, they became confused & tried to walk around instead of hitting wall using siege turtle (time lost, event failed), is this by design or a bug?
8. NPC siege turtle(west objective): might need more than 1 for additional cannons against the walls? What if a player afks?
9. Turtle egg acquisition (reward): perhaps turtle egg should be rewarded based on time/contribution, and not purely based on event success/fail?

Overall a great meta event, very interesting design! 👍

Please add more in-case I missed anything! Thanks! 😄

[Avanijade.5620]

I would like the chime in currently the End of Dragon meta event is currently unbeatable for the average player and im pretty frustrated.

 

Some issues incl:

1. Green circles/wisp phases are a complete mess. Currently the whole map can't avoid the wisps as the whole map isn't coordinated enough to listen to comms and avoid green circles. In the same breath they also arent coordinated enough to do the intended mechanic.

 

Please fix this mechanic so if a few people fail the mechanic the whole meta doesn't fail.

 

2. It takes a long time, between 1- 2 hours. And everything in the meta other than the final chest (which noone has achieved yet) is not worth the effort put in just for the event to fail. You could add 10 minutes to the boss timer/ fix the tail mechanic there's a clear target and a bit more time to kill it.

 

I'm pretty disappointed I just want to get the turtle mount 🐢

[Knighthonor.4061]

Kaineng need it. The map Feel dead

[Telyn Ethuil.6908]

All of the EoD maps feel vastly empty for a new xpac. It's actually really weird and the feeling of only seeing five to ten other players around in the first two maps only leaves me wanting to skip the events and just fish because there's no point on dead maps. I'm not sure why the player population is so whack, but it is not a great experience.

[Liewec.2896]

honestly thought this had to be a bug.

to find out that it is intended is truly saddening and baffling.

here we all are trying to do the end meta, hoping that we will get enough people,

when the fact is we will never get enough people because the devs have intentionally rigged the maps to be graveyards?!

 

i wondered why the game felt so empty on release week, i thought it had to be a bug, nope, just the usual illogical anet.

"lets make the game seem dead, they'll love that!"

obviously thats why we play MMOs, to run around empty maps by ourselves. 🙄

[Donut.6914]

this xpac has by far the best cooperative content, especially skiffs and fishing, and getting fishing bonuses while you have other people on your boat. people join my fishing party and fish with me when i invite them but....i just never see anyone to fish with. i just fished for an hour going all around seitung and didnt see another person the whole time 

[Healix.5819]

10 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

"lets make the game seem dead, they'll love that!"

It's a flaw with how it works. Maps only hold around 100 people regardless of how big they are, so big maps are doomed to feel empty. The megaserver logic also doesn't help, as it's made to spread people out rather than fill to capacity, so maps that don't use LFG will end up half filled.

[psyt.9415]

They should split the zones if the cap is that small. It feels depressing doing every meta myself and never seeing anyone. Ended up going back to Lost Ark.

[Yphex.2136]

A.) I have no way of finding out which map I'm on. B.) I find myself constantly on completely empty maps/zones/shards, leveling felt like playing a single player game. C.) Can't do metas because either the zone my team is in, is full or I'm on in an empty map where the meta 100% fails.

 

So yeah, one week into the new expansion and I feel like stopping playing again, such a bad game design.

[humanevil.8461]

well good to see the maps are still dead , the most people ive seen is 5 , 5 seems to be the max player count in any location ive been in the new xpac.  its a joke

[The Boz.2038]

On 3/5/2022 at 1:02 PM, Joey Lanuza.1479 said:

All of the EoD maps feel vastly empty for a new xpac. It's actually really weird and the feeling of only seeing five to ten other players around in the first two maps only leaves me wanting to skip the events and just fish because there's no point on dead maps. I'm not sure why the player population is so whack, but it is not a great experience.

Check the LFG. There's usually four to five instances of each map in there doing random events, not even the map metas. The size of the map and the smaller population cap to make sure the servers are stable can combine to make a certain locale feel emptier, I guess...

On 3/6/2022 at 1:16 AM, Healix.5819 said:

It's a flaw with how it works. Maps only hold around 100 people regardless of how big they are, so big maps are doomed to feel empty. The megaserver logic also doesn't help, as it's made to spread people out rather than fill to capacity, so maps that don't use LFG will end up half filled.

There isn't a fixed number of map instances. Map instances with less than, say, 25 players in them are "sunset"; nobody can get in them randomly, and they will shut down within one hour. Once all current instances have over, say, 45 players, a new one is created. Once a map instance gets over ~55 players, it is exempt from "auto-place"; nobody can get in randomly, but "join in instance" works until some thresholds, such as 70 players. Some properties may increase these thresholds; being in guilds with people on an instance, for example.

The numbers are guesstimates based on what I've seen of EoD so far. I expect the numbers to increase later on, to match other expansion instances. HoT numbers are ~double these numbers.

[Suranis.8279]

You have to remember guys that the maps in Cantha are actually very large. So even if there were 45 people on the map, you might not see any of them.

[AlenaVolkova.8179]

In short, nothing, added more afk players instead, saw plenty stay idle after hitting stuff.

[Seth Moonshadow.2710]

Not that it matters if the other metas are like the Jade Sea (haven't participated in the other meta's yet we will this weekend) but It does seem that even with the increase the most we see is around 5 other players. but still on average it seems like just or group.

 

Again, meh works for me we just might not get metas done. But then there is the other meta we won't get done so meh.

[Hesione.9412]

Please, for the love of the gods, downscale events. With extremely low pop maps, I can't finish any events solo because the number of things I have to contribute (kill, give some sort of resources to a collection point) is so large that I can't even fill the collection bar 1/3 of the way. I repeatedly end up in failed events because often there is no-one else around to help. Even three people can have difficulty if mobs spawn as a part of an event, e.g. the relics collection at the Waypoint zu Heltzer. These events have timers on them, so are easily failed because the collection amount is not obtained before the timer runs out.

 

It's frustrating, it's in every zone, and I am going back to PoF and HoT as soon as I do the achievements I want to do in Cantha. Why stay on maps that don't properly reward effort.

[Enundr.9305]

On 3/3/2022 at 6:54 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Hi all,

We want to thank you for all the feedback you're providing as you play End of Dragons. We're keeping an eye on player conversations across all expansion gameplay and features.

One of the things we're taking a close look at is map population in Cantha. On Tuesday we made an adjustment to improve player distribution across map instances, and today we made a change to increase the maximum player capacity in Seitung Province, New Kaineng City, and the Echovald Wilds by about 30%. We're not making changes to player capacity in the Jade Sea map at this time.

We're taking these steps to make sure we can balance player population without negatively impacting your gameplay performance, so we'll continue to monitor!

mmmm with all due respect , excluding sea of jade may not be the best of decisions in this case.....theres already comparisons of player cap vs raid size in difficulties and its not looking good. and the boss fight seems to be random for whether her defiance bar is vulnerable or not , some never see it , some only see it once , and ive heard someone say theyve seen it pop 7 times. i feel like this is either a bug in design or it should probably be set to certain intervals / conditions? there are alot of frustrated players over this map and the turtle egg being stuck behind a successful completion of the meta though , to read it was left alone for population increase is......disheartening....and tbh this just makes me ready to stop playing till theres hardly anyone doing it since trying to join a squad ends up being pointless with map population cap being an issue......please reconsider these decisions.

[choon.6308]

Here is a new player's comment from somewhere else word for word: 
 

Quote

 

Where is everyone?

So I started playing the new expansion, but there is no one anywhere. What happened? No hype?

 

 

Regardless of the cause, is that really a good look for a new expansion to be empty end deserted right after launch? Never had this problem with HoT or PoF. Map shards can't be the only problem, it's clear how tiny the EoD population is compared to before. Guess this should raise awareness on implementing gimmicks as new game mechanics instead of gliding, raids, a new class, mounts and how it affects the game's popularity. 

[yann.1946]

On 3/11/2022 at 4:49 PM, choon.6308 said:

Here is a new player's comment from somewhere else word for word: 
 

 

Regardless of the cause, is that really a good look for a new expansion to be empty end deserted right after launch?

I agree that it is a problem

On 3/11/2022 at 4:49 PM, choon.6308 said:

Never had this problem with HoT or PoF. Map shards can't be the only problem, it's clear how tiny the EoD population is compared to before.

Why couldnt map shards be the only problem?

On 3/11/2022 at 4:49 PM, choon.6308 said:

Guess this should raise awareness on implementing gimmicks as new game mechanics instead of gliding, raids, a new class, mounts and how it affects the game's popularity. 

And this is a form of confirmation bias. Now it might be the case that eod is not as popular as the other xpacs, but we dont really have the data to make a reasonable guess either way.

[reddie.5861]

i dont go eod maps for a simple reason..
i bought gw2 i enjoyed it the maps where nice and open and had npc's all over the place to kill or quest w/e u enjoy.

i bought HoT i hated it the maps where forcing me to walk certain ways cus of big cliffs everywhere

i bought PoF i kinda liked it the maps where more flat again more npc's to roll over again etc.

then i bought EoD its horrible. it feels like im playing a 2d game imagine if u dont have a mount to fly how u go around? everything is blocked off everything is forcing you to walk in a certain way when did MMO's become like this?

compare any EoD map with queensdale or w/e tyria map u want and u can see how bad its.
from nice open field with good and funny events to a forced to run in certain roads to get to a point with barely any npc's to kill on the map.

only the last map from eod is somewhat "okay" but it doesnt rly make me want to be there either tbh..
ofcourse i know every1 has their own thoughts and some might rly love the EoD maps, thats okay i cant stand them and im pretty sure im not alone.

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by reddie.5861

[Worrbinpike.2957]

I would be interessted in numbers from anet:

 

How much played was the Meta in Dragons End, and how many of them were successful.

 

😄

[Zebulous.2934]

Wait, how long does it take for a fresh map to become a sunset map and start closing?
When does it count the number of players and decide that the population is too small? Because I have been shunted to another map, only for it to decide to sunset within 5 minutes.  
And disabling auto placement of players when a map is only half full seems... short sighted.  Maybe at 75%?  I don't see how you can run exacting metas when halfway to capacity it becomes invite only. 
 I have heard that several people have gotten their turtles and have vowed to never run that meta again. So it isn't like we can invite friends or guild mates who already got their turtles, they don't want to help, they have been hurt too badly by that meta.

[voltaicbore.8012]

13 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

 I have heard that several people have gotten their turtles and have vowed to never run that meta again. So it isn't like we can invite friends or guild mates who already got their turtles, they don't want to help, they have been hurt too badly by that meta.

I confess that I am one such person. I got lucky and got a meta clear on my second try, but I had to put on a selfish version of a raid dps build and get very, very intense about doing max dps. More so than in actual raids.

At first I wanted to go back and help others clear the hurdle, but I just couldn't bring myself to waste another 2 hours and too much hard worn. Then they announced the change, so I felt less guilty about abandoning that meta. Even if I go back to DE to grab some spare mastery points, I doubt I'll ever touch the meta again.

[Zok.4956]

On 3/12/2022 at 11:53 PM, reddie.5861 said:

only the last map from eod is somewhat "okay" but it doesnt rly make me want to be there either tbh..

I believe Dragons End could have been an outstanding, great map to explore, even one of the best maps in the game if they would have added more NPC/events etc. to explore and not the expansion-final-map-meta . It feels like the beauty and artistic creativity of this map is wasted because of the map-meta they put in this map.