State of meta/public events

[panthertheswift.7602]

I was wondering how populated meta events are these days? I have kind of been backing out of the game since beating the EoD campaign. The Dragon's End meta is fine but it's not my favorite. The thing I like most about GW2 is jumping into some random meta events throughout the world but it looks like most people are concentrating on DE. Has anyone been in big populations in any other meta's lately? Maybe I am just looking in the wrong places at the wrong time.

[Chichimec.9364]

I jumped into Drizzlewood during the NA afternoon last Monday. The south meta was just finishing up and there seemed to be a couple of tags on the map for that. When the north meta started, there was a tag leading that and plenty of folks joined in. Haven't done any metas since then but where I have been seeing people is outside the latest LS 1 instances. That might be where folks are at this week.

[SamuelW.2685]

From my perspective, they're great for pop! I started playing a little over a month ago, I'm close to 200 hours in and almost all of those are spent in the open world and I've seen quite a bit of people in that tine. There's always people for major meta events, Core World Bosses, Drizzlewood, Verdant Brink and Bjora are the places I've been at and I've almost always found people.

There'll be times were threes more or less people, and i'll admit I've failed Drakkar a few times due to low pop, but you won't need to try hard to find others most of the time.

[Parasite.5389]

other meta are still being run, some Guildies run a weekly Meta Response Squad on LFG on EU, where they do metas for over 6 hours with no requirements to join or obligations to stay the whole way through.

[Gibson.4036]

I’ve been working on Vision and can report that I’ve found enough people to do all the LW4 metas over the last few weeks.

One thing I’ve learned is that “enough people” doesn’t mean nearly as many as I thought. I’ve actually had smoother runs of some metas with smaller groups of people, presumably due to the way scaling works.
 

I’ve completed several metas staying on a map after the low population pop up tries to get me to switch.

Edited May 28, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[mindcircus.1506]

9 hours ago, panthertheswift.7602 said:

I was wondering how populated meta events are these days? I have kind of been backing out of the game since beating the EoD campaign. The Dragon's End meta is fine but it's not my favorite. The thing I like most about GW2 is jumping into some random meta events throughout the world but it looks like most people are concentrating on DE. Has anyone been in big populations in any other meta's lately? Maybe I am just looking in the wrong places at the wrong time.

People are still running SIlverwastes and Drytop metas (though not 24/7).

[AliamRationem.5172]

9 hours ago, panthertheswift.7602 said:

I was wondering how populated meta events are these days? I have kind of been backing out of the game since beating the EoD campaign. The Dragon's End meta is fine but it's not my favorite. The thing I like most about GW2 is jumping into some random meta events throughout the world but it looks like most people are concentrating on DE. Has anyone been in big populations in any other meta's lately? Maybe I am just looking in the wrong places at the wrong time.

There are way too many people playing this game for all of them to be concentrated in one area of the game.  Just use wiki event timers and show up at the right time.  If you show up late you'll end up on dead overflow maps, which is likely the problem you're encountering. 

[Gibson.4036]

34 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

There are way too many people playing this game for all of them to be concentrated in one area of the game.  Just use wiki event timers and show up at the right time.  If you show up late you'll end up on dead overflow maps, which is likely the problem you're encountering. 

I’ll add that for some, showing up “on time” by the timer is actually showing up late. At Octovine, for example, showing up 20 to 15 minutes early has given me success. Five minutes early, and I end up in an instance with people asking each other if there are enough to do it. Show up at the “start” and I end up in a map with that one guy trying to solo West and nobody on any other lanes.

[panthertheswift.7602]

Thanks for the answers. I checked LFG last night and was able to hop into some pretty solid populated metas. So it sounds like people are still doing a variety of them.

[Erich.1783]

Last weekend, May 21-22, I was farming for HoT currencies, seemed like the DS meta was being run most cycles, and the other 3 HoT metas were running as they have for years.

[Bast.7253]

I haven't really done many lately but the Heart of Thorns metas will always have people you just have to check lfg. 

As for living story maps, I imagine Dragonfall and Istan will remain pretty popular. Drizzlewood I haven't done much but I played a lot of it when it first came out. 

Dragon's End is just still a waste of time most of the time. It's successful more than it used to be but if you misstep slightly and lose to the timer it feels extremely bad. Not only is it just a stale lead up to the final boss but even if you win against the final boss you're left with a 0.0000001% chance at an infusion or combat tonic and an antique summoning stone. There's just no reason to sit through that for 2 hours only to have everyone do as well as they can and just... not make it because they need an extra 2 or 3 minutes. 

I wish they would stop making these infusions such a low drop rate. Who is that really exciting for? How does that increase player retention? One player a month getting something that sells for 10k gold and either using it, or selling it to some tp baron or raid seller that has 10 other slots filled with thousands of gold infusions? Yippie. Or some dup-hacker breaking the economy because the infusion drop rates are laughable to begin with? 

To the average player, what is the difference between being 1 out of a million and getting a 10k gold infusion, or doing a meta 10 times and getting a 100-200 gold infusion every now and then? Does it really matter? 

They all should be increased imo - to the point of being 300 gold MAX on the trading post to be more accessible and give MORE people a chance to obtain them. Might make all the other metas with infusions as unique rewards more active - like Death Branded Shatterer in Jahai Bluffs. It's just such a waste to put all that time into creating those effects and then have the people that ACTUALLY want them not be able to obtain them without selling their organs. 

Do we have a lot of people shelling over 500 real life dollars for gem conversions for these infusions? I highly doubt it when you could buy 2 or 3 legendaries for the same price. 
 

[Tiamat.8254]

Not had a problem with open world meta except in EoD. 

[JayHog.3280]

HoT rarely has issues of little people doing metas. Almost everyone does Exhalted, and Dragon's Stand is more like checking after a map reboot to see if anyone is planning to rally the troops with the commander tags.

[Obtena.7952]

It defies my understanding ... but anecdotally, HoT meta events still seem extremely popular, even with the new legendary weapons not requiring any HoT materials. I suspect that at this point, the popular metas are simply going to be related to content that is 'fresh' and content that naturally funnels players through the story that they haven't experienced. 

[Mickey.4207]

On 5/28/2022 at 10:17 AM, panthertheswift.7602 said:

I was wondering how populated meta events are these days? I have kind of been backing out of the game since beating the EoD campaign. The Dragon's End meta is fine but it's not my favorite. The thing I like most about GW2 is jumping into some random meta events throughout the world but it looks like most people are concentrating on DE. Has anyone been in big populations in any other meta's lately? Maybe I am just looking in the wrong places at the wrong time.

On EU servers. EOD metas seem to be getting less popular by day. DE is run maybe once or twice a week by few guilds but they only take people with raid experience. HOT and IBS are the most played metas right now along with Silverwaste. I feel sorry for new players who missed the rush at relase and would really struggle to complete DE and all associated Mastery points with it. 

[captrowdy.9561]

I got the world boss portal from the store. Was worth it. I show up 15 early so I don’t get stuck in a empty map.