Why are EoD maps so dead already?

[Vayne.8563]

34 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Another problem solved!
Hurrah!

I'm not the only one in this thread that's said it. I've done them US times. I've done them Australian times. I did take a break over Wintersday but before that I was doing that fairly frequently. You can make light of my experience, but it's not just mine. Others in this thread has said the same thing.

People who show up late, or don't look in LFG are going to think metas aren't done, but they are.  There are absolutely problems with this game, and every game, but getting EoD metas done isn't one of them.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

EoD maps were atrocious. Yes, the Meta events exist, and without considering those meta events are ‘good or bad’ what is there other than them to do?

The only reason to go to an EoD map is Story, Achievements, Metas. No farming Bounties or attempting Adventures. No need for HP trains. No interesting side events worth stopping to do. There isn’t even much in the way of farming opportunities outside of fishing even.  This content is missing or could be improved upon to give players many more reasons to go to Cantha. 
 

What we are waiting for really is Anet to start adding more content that asks us to go to Cantha. Think about how Skyscale made you go through many different regions and zones. It might be years before there is enough ‘new’ reasons to go to Cantha to keep the regions interesting. Or it may never happen. Probably the latter.

EoD is already dead content. Sure waste your time waiting to run a meta, but other than that why bother being in those zones?

By comparison, you can find multiple TD and AB metas to join even after the events start.  Something you would hope was possible with the newest content released. 

[Randulf.7614]

10 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm not the only one in this thread that's said it. I've done them US times. I've done them Australian times. I did take a break over Wintersday but before that I was doing that fairly frequently. You can make light of my experience, but it's not just mine. Others in this thread has said the same thing.

People who show up late, or don't look in LFG are going to think metas aren't done, but they are.  There are absolutely problems with this game, and every game, but getting EoD metas done isn't one of them.

Think you read my response wrong there, I was in no way making light or belittling your experience - we are in fact in agreement that no issue exists on the EoD meta “problem” 😂

Edited January 8, 2023 by Randulf.7614

[Silent.6137]

23 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

There isn’t even much in the way of farming opportunities outside of fishing even. 
By comparison, you can find multiple TD and AB metas to join even after the events start.  Something you would hope was possible with the newest content released. 

Really? There's no farming opportunities? The chunks of pure jade, the Shrine Guardian and Jade Tech chests. Aside from the usual mats, of course. The events,  which are very easy and fast to get to, all give good drops from mobs. There's also a mini dungeon that can be soloed easily with a guaranteed Jade Runestone.

As for joining after event starts, compare the loots you received and you'll probably figure out why. There is absolutely no comparison. And DE meta requires some basic organizations, not just show up and hit mobs.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Silent.6137

[Cynder.2509]

Alright, maybe it's because I've been recently doing stuff between 2am to 6am CET. Maybe EU servers aren't so active then even if I experienced it differently a few years ago. 
I do show up like one hour before the events but everything is so dead and also when I want to lead and tag up I get insulted. 

[Asum.4960]

On 1/8/2023 at 4:20 AM, Silent.6137 said:

If you're not searching LFG at least 45 mins before meta starts, chances of finding one is practically close to zero.. They all fill up very fast. Anyone doing meta will be on the meta maps, which will be full as well. So, if you're farming, you'll be on maps with the few other farmers.

Joining an unorganized squad that just pops up on the map, expect to fail more often than not.

This is not to answer the OP or even a response to you, but just kind of a rant about a personal realisation of why I've not been enjoying and playing OW content for years now. 

People often talk about how they simply don't have the time for instanced endgame PvE, sitting in LFG's and such, but OW has become exponentially worse. 

Where GW2 (to me) shined with OW was always that emergent gameplay with events and spontaneous cooperation with other players - just playing around on a map, noticing events popping up, joining to help, and slowly merging in with other players into culminating epic events. 

But you really can't play the game like that anymore.

 

Now days with how the megaservers are (not properly) working it's just instances upon instances of dead maps that a confused megaserver system spits people into who are wondering why everything is so desolated, unable to complete anything in those maps - while the only way to actually participate in the content is playing by timers and ferrying into "Meta Maps" in an annoying LFG process revolving around spam clicking to join into full maps hoping for others to DC in order to get a space - just to then wait around for 30m+ in boredom to then participate in a completely overpopulated map entirely filled with players just there for the meta, in that one spot, to autoattack at 10 FPS, blinded by particle effects, while hoping not to get motion sick before the loot pinata. 

 

Although I guess that does answer the OP's question after all - you are not playing along with the timer Meta Map culture, and the megaserver system simply doesn't manage to cater to just "doing stuff on maps". 

There are a few completely overfilled instances which players ferry each other into with the single purpose of doing the meta, and the rest is a wastelands of left over spun up instances that people get thrown into and ferried out of, making the game feel dead for anyone not participating in that/left behind.

[Zephire.8049]

1 hour ago, Asum.4960 said:

People often talk about how they simply don't have the time for instanced endgame PvE, sitting in LFG's and such, but OW has become exponentially worse. 

Where GW2 (to me) shined with OW was always that emergent gameplay with events and spontaneous cooperation with other players - just playing around on a map, noticing events popping up, joining to help, and slowly merging in with other players into culminating epic events. 

But you really can't play the game like that anymore.

This is a such a key part of it. When people don't enjoy or have the time to wait in LFG for 30+ minutes before they can even play the game but doing that is required for supposedly casual drop-in content, there's a huge problem. One of the selling points of the open world was that you could do events as they happened, including meta events. This worked in core then HoT and even PoF before it changed in EoD. It only worked for a few weeks in EoD because the map population cap is so much lower so odds of being on a meta map organized enough to actually have a chance is low, particularly with map instances soft-locking before hard cap is achieved.

In core, you can zone in right before a meta or during a meta and succeed. Odds of that happening organically in EoD are slim because one squad eats up the bulk of the allowed number of players in a map instance and then you have people fishing, doing various non-meta things, or are AFK taking up the rest so it soft-locks and you end up on a map that can't or isn't doing the meta.

Core and HoT were designed so the map was populated enough and events funneled players into group or being in the same area as that was an invisible alternative to Go Here quests in other popular MMOs at the time. "You should be happy to see other players and waiting to do things isn't fun gameplay" was a core part of the manifesto. Now large maps combined with drastically reduced player caps means odds of seeing another player is lower and waiting to play is a core part of the game. Even the events that are supposed to funnel players together are no longer a thing because everything is spread out and travel is a nightmare, so even if you see an event, there's less desire to change your plans to do it, particularly if dying means waypointing to the other side of the map and running back.

So to answer the OP's question, there are several factors involved but one in particular is because the original maps were designed with one philosophy in mind, EoD another. People who prefer the former or dislike the latter are less likely to be on the one they enjoy less, and GW2 spent years building a playerbase who prefers the former as other MMOs tend to be the latter. And since other maps are just as relevant (some with better loot), people can choose to play on the maps they enjoy rather than being forced to play the ones they don't.

And that's not even getting into the technical issues EoD has which discourage or prevent people from going there.

[Cobra.6509]

It's simple nothing to work for. EoD was a skinny expansion. Same thing with PoF although because we receive LW episodes POF felt more rich. For example : I go HoT quite often because I have those nodes in my home and I hate not opening them everyday. It's silly I know but yea I will do HoT stuff  'til end of the game(also love HOT maps and metas) . Coming back to EoD idk why they introduced specific mats but nothing to do with them, better keep the old ones maybe some of us would chose to farm on EoD maps.

[Markodius.4076]

On 1/8/2023 at 6:54 AM, Linken.6345 said:

Well 3 am is probabely not the best time to try and do meats (meta) events.

Its hard to find a much squads on hot and pof maps at 3 am on EU)

[Vayne.8563]

5 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

This is not to answer the OP or even a response to you, but just kind of a rant about a personal realisation of why I've not been enjoying and playing OW content for years now. 

People often talk about how they simply don't have the time for instanced endgame PvE, sitting in LFG's and such, but OW has become exponentially worse. 

Where GW2 (to me) shined with OW was always that emergent gameplay with events and spontaneous cooperation with other players - just playing around on a map, noticing events popping up, joining to help, and slowly merging in with other players into culminating epic events. 

But you really can't play the game like that anymore.

 

Now days with how the megaservers are (not properly) working it's just instances upon instances of dead maps that a confused megaserver system spits people into who are wondering why everything is so desolated, unable to complete anything in those maps - while the only way to actually participate in the content is playing by timers and ferrying into "Meta Maps" in an annoying LFG process revolving around spam clicking to join into full maps hoping for others to DC in order to get a space - just to then wait around for 30m+ in boredom to then participate in a completely overpopulated map entirely filled with players just there for the meta, in that one spot, to autoattack at 10 FPS, blinded by particle effects, while hoping not to get motion sick before the loot pinata. 

 

Although I guess that does answer the OP's question after all - you are not playing along with the timer Meta Map culture, and the megaserver system simply doesn't manage to cater to just "doing stuff on maps". 

There are a few completely overfilled instances which players ferry each other into with the single purpose of doing the meta, and the rest is a wastelands of left over spun up instances that people get thrown into and ferried out of, making the game feel dead for anyone not participating in that/left behind.

The rose-colored glasses are real.

 

Sure there was emergent gameplay. Like the Temples in Orr. Like World Bosses that appeared at different times in different servers. If you needed one, you had to get lucky.  The temples in Orr are still like that and you still have to get lucky. I love standing around waiting for a Temple event for an hour or two.  

With a timer, I know when to show up at an event, even if I have to show up early. There's still emergent gameplay it just looks a bit different.  Today  I was in Bitterfrost on an alt account. It was packed. Why? Because today was the Season 3 daily day for Bitterfrost. 

It would be great if we had 20 million players to fill every single zone, every single meta, every single area of the game, but people wanted new zones and new zones means the population spreads out. So you need a way to get people to the same place to make things happen.

The only way the old method would have been sustainable is to not make as much new content. Which means less and less people at each event and there goes your emergent gameplay.  Do you think more people would have stuck around with no new zones, no new world bosses, no new metas?  I don't.

 

At the end of the day, I remember people as far back as Season 1, having to guest to other servers to try to get into a successful Marionette event, and my own home server, Tarnished Coast, was one of the servers that did it successfully all the time. Many many people guested there, so when I logged in I'd end up on an overflow server a good percentage of the time, and when that happened, I wouldn't have a successful run, because I couldn't get to my own server.

 

There was always some emergent gameplay and that still exists for smaller events, but we've always had problems with bigger events in this game, if they had any challenge to them at all.

 

It's easy to have fewer zones, and easier bosses and be as emergent as you like. But I don't think the game would have survived remaining as it was. And I don't think it could have been expanded without changing it.

It's an adjustment sure, but it's worth it in my opinion.

[Dreams.3128]

I mean, NA has metas going on everyday. I know because I do them every single day, and not with some Hardstuck group. Only one that is a little questionable is the Soo-Won fight, but that is me being lazy if anything. But for the most part though, in NA you will often find squads during prime time and sometimes a little bit earlier or later before it goes quiet until the next day.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

Everyone piles into the instances that go up on LFG to do the meats, leaving very scarce numbers of players outside of those instances.

[roederich.2716]

for me its just exhausting to play the same content again and again to buy something for the currencies to make legendaries or so.

i think some of the legendaries are nice and some skins also but ze grind is too much.

[Astralporing.1957]

23 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

The rose-colored glasses are real.

 

Sure there was emergent gameplay. Like the Temples in Orr. Like World Bosses that appeared at different times in different servers. If you needed one, you had to get lucky.  The temples in Orr are still like that and you still have to get lucky. I love standing around waiting for a Temple event for an hour or two.  

With a timer, I know when to show up at an event, even if I have to show up early. There's still emergent gameplay it just looks a bit different.  Today  I was in Bitterfrost on an alt account. It was packed. Why? Because today was the Season 3 daily day for Bitterfrost. 

It would be great if we had 20 million players to fill every single zone, every single meta, every single area of the game, but people wanted new zones and new zones means the population spreads out. So you need a way to get people to the same place to make things happen.

The only way the old method would have been sustainable is to not make as much new content. Which means less and less people at each event and there goes your emergent gameplay.  Do you think more people would have stuck around with no new zones, no new world bosses, no new metas?  I don't.

 

At the end of the day, I remember people as far back as Season 1, having to guest to other servers to try to get into a successful Marionette event, and my own home server, Tarnished Coast, was one of the servers that did it successfully all the time. Many many people guested there, so when I logged in I'd end up on an overflow server a good percentage of the time, and when that happened, I wouldn't have a successful run, because I couldn't get to my own server.

 

There was always some emergent gameplay and that still exists for smaller events, but we've always had problems with bigger events in this game, if they had any challenge to them at all.

 

It's easy to have fewer zones, and easier bosses and be as emergent as you like. But I don't think the game would have survived remaining as it was. And I don't think it could have been expanded without changing it.

It's an adjustment sure, but it's worth it in my opinion.

I think you have completely misunderstood the point in the post you were responding to. It's not about the timers, really. It's about having to be on a specific map instance (and not on other) to do the event.

In that Bitterfrost example of yours, did you have to spam LFG to desperately get into that one succesful instance, or were you able to play normally on the instance you were randomly put in when you arrived? Because, knowing Bitterfrost, i doubt it was the former.

That is the difference between old model of play, and what we're seeing more and more of nowadays. There's more and more dependence on being there not "on time", but way, way earlier, and hoping to get into that one specific instance, instead of (as it once was) just doing the event on the map you arrived on, with the people that were naturally on that map, instead of specifically queuing for it.

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I think you have completely misunderstood the point in the post you were responding to. It's not about the timers, really. It's about having to be on a specific map instance (and not on other) to do the event.

In that Bitterfrost example of yours, did you have to spam LFG to desperately get into that one succesful instance, or were you able to play normally on the instance you were randomly put in when you arrived? Because, knowing Bitterfrost, i doubt it was the former.

That is the difference between old model of play, and what we're seeing more and more of nowadays. There's more and more dependence on being there not "on time", but way, way earlier, and hoping to get into that one specific instance, instead of (as it once was) just doing the event on the map you arrived on, with the people that were naturally on that map, instead of specifically queuing for it.

That's just the design of DE, which I agree is incredibly stupid and more or less ruins what is probably the best open world boss fight in the game.  Why they didn't just make it function like DS meta is beyond me.  But no, we have to show up as much as an hour ahead of the time we'll actually be fighting Soo-Won or risk missing out due to the stupid preparation mechanics.

I hope they never design a map this way again.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

8 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I think you have completely misunderstood the point in the post you were responding to. It's not about the timers, really. It's about having to be on a specific map instance (and not on other) to do the event.

In that Bitterfrost example of yours, did you have to spam LFG to desperately get into that one succesful instance, or were you able to play normally on the instance you were randomly put in when you arrived? Because, knowing Bitterfrost, i doubt it was the former.

That is the difference between old model of play, and what we're seeing more and more of nowadays. There's more and more dependence on being there not "on time", but way, way earlier, and hoping to get into that one specific instance, instead of (as it once was) just doing the event on the map you arrived on, with the people that were naturally on that map, instead of specifically queuing for it.

 

Honestly, that is why I camp Bitterfrost a lot. I just like the place overall and the meta is the old way which I prefer more. It is a lot easier and more enjoyable to do Bitterfrost meta every 45 minutes with my characters than it is do one where you have to prep an hour ahead of time. That joining so early prep kills the mood for me.

I should mention though I got lucky with my DE soo-won fight recently. I normally avoid that map, so I never really tried for the turtle. I needed extra HP though for my Rev to complete Herald, and there were no HP trains for the jungle. So I went there on my ok equipped Vindicator(Just exotics. No ascended) and decided why not. I will join the meta there, and we actually won it with time to spare. So, it does happen with pugs and no hour prep. It is just more rare.

Edited January 10, 2023 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Vayne.8563]

39 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I think you have completely misunderstood the point in the post you were responding to. It's not about the timers, really. It's about having to be on a specific map instance (and not on other) to do the event.

In that Bitterfrost example of yours, did you have to spam LFG to desperately get into that one succesful instance, or were you able to play normally on the instance you were randomly put in when you arrived? Because, knowing Bitterfrost, i doubt it was the former.

That is the difference between old model of play, and what we're seeing more and more of nowadays. There's more and more dependence on being there not "on time", but way, way earlier, and hoping to get into that one specific instance, instead of (as it once was) just doing the event on the map you arrived on, with the people that were naturally on that map, instead of specifically queuing for it.

I played it then, I play it now and yes it has changed.  But my point is, both the old way and the new way have disadvantages. The post I responded to definitely remembers how good the emergent gameplay was, while ignoring the examples of how it wasn't good, and why it really needed to be changed. 

I think pointing that out is fair game.

[Jimbru.6014]

As I understand it, the EoD maps have a lower max population than most other maps, so they naturally have a lower population to begin with, because ANet reasons.

Another reason could be that at least IMHO, EoD is the worst expansion this game has yet had. NKC and Echovald are terrible to explore, hordes of tough trash mobs, story is completely wrong, Research Notes are awful, EoD gear prefixes locked behind EoD content so you can't get them on stat selectable gear, the list goes on. I honestly wish it had never been made and I refuse to play it any more than I absolutely have to.

[Nymeria.1653]

Personally I did the story in Cantha but I prefer PoF maps, just a matter of personal preference because the maps in PoF are better for my way of exploring/the way I like to move here and there for events and so on. But probably I will give Cantha another try.

[Gehenna.3625]

I can only speak for myself, so here it goes:

I don't like fishing and I don't care about the gen3 legendary weapons. They're well-designed as such, but they simply don't fit into my aesthetic. I don't particularly care for the Dragon aesthetic myself. But that means I don't like any of the gen3 weapons enough to craft them. And it seems that EoD was created around those two things in particular.

The previous 2 legendary generations had a lot of variety in aesthetics, so chances were you would at least like some of the skins. With gen3 it's all or nothing it seems. And in my case it's nothing. So from that perspective I think it was a mistake to just have one overall aesthetic. Perhaps they thought that with all the dragon varieties they would address that but it's still all dragon aesthetics.

And then I realized that if I don't like to do fishing and I don't care for the gen3 weapon skins, there's actually no reason for me to spend time in Cantha at all anymore. It seems like all the meta rewards are geared towards the legendary weapons or just aren't that interesting. And well, I find the metas themselves not necessarily enjoyable so that rules out doing it for the fun of it.

--

I did enjoy the story to a point but that has no replay value for me, because in spite of my many alts I only play through the story lines once. Unless there's a specific reward that I want to get but that's not a common occurence for me.

I also did enjoy exploration of the Canthan maps (well NKC not as much as the others) and I did that on a few characters but beyond that I just have no specific reason that drives me to go back there. I mean the exploration gifts you get are also for the gen3 legendaries and serve no other purpose, which brings me again to my point about gen3 aesthetics.

--

And, well, there's the issue of accessibility. Cantha is not on the same map as the rest of Tyria. Sure, technically it is but you have to press the arrows to go there. It may be psychological, but that extra click just makes it out of sight, out of mind. In GW1 there was something on the map outside of LA that you could click on to travel to other parts that were outside the main map. I feel like that was a lot better than just getting a quick travel pass to Arborstone. Just imagine have the image of a ship below LA that says travel to Cantha and just by clicking it you would be at the docks in Kaineng.

I just really hope that with LW6 or whatever they'll call it, they'll do some things that will make Cantha in its entirety relevant to me in other ways so I will have reasons to go back there. Just legendaries and fishing is not enough imo.

 

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I think you have completely misunderstood the point in the post you were responding to. It's not about the timers, really. It's about having to be on a specific map instance (and not on other) to do the event.

It's similar for other maps, you get to HoT maps late and you get an empty instance that won't do the meta.

Edited January 10, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Vavume.8065]

On 1/8/2023 at 3:34 AM, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I can't speak for everyone, but the main reasons I seldom visit EoD are:
- Bad optimization
- Low rewards
- Unattractive maps
- Sparse, boring events with bad scaling
- Annoying movement

 

100% agree on all points, and don't get me started on NKC that map is an absolute waste of space. 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Vavume.8065

[AliamRationem.5172]

23 minutes ago, Vavume.8065 said:

100% agree on all points, and don't get me started on NKC that map is an absolute waste of space. 

I would love this map if there were anything going on there.  I think the aesthetic is really cool.  But everything about this place screams "unfinished" from the pointless, copy/pasted events to the huge amount of empty space and borked textures.  I feel like they just needed more time to make this map what they wanted it to be.  Unfortunately, ANet's track record of leaving business unfinished makes it unlikely we'll ever see a proper update to this map. 

[Astralporing.1957]

6 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

It's similar for other maps, you get to HoT maps late and you get an empty instance that won't do the meta.

In HoT, if i get to map 5 minutes before event, it's usually early enough to get enough people to be succesful. Some metas i have started with maybe 15-20 people, with more people joining late, andit was still completely fine. In EoD however, you either start searching for LFG 45 to 30 mins early, or your chances of doing the meta drop to bottom level. And you are not very likely to organize it ad-hoc at the last moment either.

I'd say that this is a massive difference.

[Sobx.1758]

37 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

In HoT, if i get to map 5 minutes before event, it's usually early enough to get enough people to be succesful. Some metas i have started with maybe 15-20 people, with more people joining late, andit was still completely fine. In EoD however, you either start searching for LFG 45 to 30 mins early, or your chances of doing the meta drop to bottom level. And you are not very likely to organize it ad-hoc at the last moment either.

I'd say that this is a massive difference.

From my experience, it's the same for these metas. Pretty sure I didn't look for eod meta groups 30-45 minutes early.