Dead Game? Population decreasing!

misterman.1530 · November 15, 2019

@SoulGuardian.6203 said:
Edit:Here's a list of the most active maps.
Lion's Arch 100%Dragon's Fall 95%Bitterfrost Frontier 95%Sandswept Isles 90%Bloodstone Fen 80%Lake Doric 80%Siren's Landing 80%Ember Bay 80%Draconis Mons 80%Kourna 75%Istan 70%Silverwastes 70%Dry Top 70%Malchor's Leap 65%All other HoT maps 60%All other PoF maps 60%Everything else 50% or less
Sorry...those percentages are based on...what? Full map? So one instance of LA is full to capacity?

Antycypator.9874 · November 15, 2019

@SoulGuardian.6203 said:Lion's Arch 100%Dragon's Fall 95%Bitterfrost Frontier 95%Sandswept Isles 90%Bloodstone Fen 80%Lake Doric 80%Siren's Landing 80%Ember Bay 80%Draconis Mons 80%Kourna 75%Istan 70%Silverwastes 70%Dry Top 70%Malchor's Leap 65%All other HoT maps 60%All other PoF maps 60%Everything else 50% or less

I'm not sure about all LS maps. Some of them looks abandoned, noone is doing big events or you can see 3-5 players there. These are maps like:Dragonis Mons (nothing to farm or gather exept Flax).Istan (rewards from Palawadan were heavily nerfed)Bloodstone Fen (again it's mostly about Flax, but there is only 1 big event, not popular though).Siren's Landing (lack of event, no meta, only gathering and hearts).

SoulGuardian.6203 · November 15, 2019

@Antycypator.9874 said:
@SoulGuardian.6203 said:Lion's Arch 100%Dragon's Fall 95%Bitterfrost Frontier 95%Sandswept Isles 90%Bloodstone Fen 80%Lake Doric 80%Siren's Landing 80%Ember Bay 80%Draconis Mons 80%Kourna 75%Istan 70%Silverwastes 70%Dry Top 70%Malchor's Leap 65%All other HoT maps 60%All other PoF maps 60%Everything else 50% or less

I'm not sure about all LS maps. Some of them looks abandoned, noone is doing big events or you can see 3-5 players there. These are maps like:Dragonis Mons (nothing to farm or gather exept Flax).

Fire Orchids for ascended trinkets.

Istan (rewards from Palawadan were heavily nerfed)

You could be right. Haven't been for a while.

Bloodstone Fen (again it's mostly about Flax, but there is only 1 big event, not popular though).

Bloodstone for ascended trinkets.

Siren's Landing (lack of event, no meta, only gathering and hearts).

No metas. Right. Should have.But yeah, pearl farming.

My numbers are based mostly on the peak times, when maps are mostly active, comparing to other maps that are mostly empty at any given time.

If you pass through, let's say Fireheart Rise, you only see 0-10 players tops at any given time; comparing to Draconis Mons that may have close to 30 players or more; especially around events.

I'm not taking into consideration afks, which you can usually see around certain parts of maps, such as ember bay or sandswept isles.

This is also based on my own experience and the servers I log in to or change to when asked.It is not a general view by any stretch of the imagination.

SoulGuardian.6203 · November 15, 2019

@Arden.7480 said:Remember don't answer those trolls ;)

I remember. I learned my lesson.I will follow your advice.

Cuks.8241 · November 15, 2019

@Antycypator.9874 said:
Istan (rewards from Palawadan were heavily nerfed)Bloodstone Fen (again it's mostly about Flax, but there is only 1 big event, not popular though).

Completely disagree, especially about Istan. I haven't had a problem finding at least one group doing the pala + GH + some filler events ever. I really like those 2 metas and do them regularly. Also often I see people meteor hunting.Bloodstone Fen is just a map I like for its verticality and go there to do some events and glide around for unbound magic. It's not a fully packed map but for a map that doesn't have a big meta with huge rewards it doesn't feel empty. There are always people around to help with events.

coso.9173 · November 17, 2019

About expansions, didn't both HoT and PoF end up not being too well received and got people disappointed? I assume that's why they are not making any new expacs for now.

Dante.1763 · November 17, 2019

@coso.9173 said:About expansions, didn't both HoT and PoF end up not being too well received and got people disappointed? I assume that's why they are not making any new expacs for now.

HoT wasnt received well due to the increased difficulty during its pre release event, among other things. Most got fixed very early on, but alot of players have a stigma about HoT due to it.

PoF had other issues but i dont recall the outcry of issues that HoT had.

thepenmonster.3621 · November 17, 2019

@Cuks.8241 said:Completely disagree, especially about Istan. I haven't had a problem finding at least one group doing the pala + GH + some filler events ever. I really like those 2 metas and do them regularly. Also often I see people meteor hunting.

I've done it a fair bit recently too. Right time of the week there's always people.

But there doesnt seem to ever be enough to get great hall done and Palawadan getting completed is always a crapshoot.

They're going to have to work on the scaling of the various big metas like those if they want to future proof it. Having fewer players over time is a natural part of the lifecycle of a game like this.

Dante.1763 · November 17, 2019

@thepenmonster.3621 said:
@"Cuks.8241" said:Completely disagree, especially about Istan. I haven't had a problem finding at least one group doing the pala + GH + some filler events ever. I really like those 2 metas and do them regularly. Also often I see people meteor hunting.

I've done it a fair bit recently too. Right time of the week there's always people.

But there doesnt seem to ever be enough to get great hall done and Palawadan getting completed is always a crapshoot.

They're going to have to work on the scaling of the various big metas like those if they want to future proof it. Having fewer players over time is a natural part of the lifecycle of a game like this.

Its funny how this has been brought up by other players, and there seems to be a small but overly vocal group who refuse to want to make the metas easier because "Well i just did it and i had plenty of players."

Alot of the metas through POF,(Hot seems immune to this.) and LS4 + LS3 maps should be looked into for reduction in difficulty from to time as players move on to newer content.

During off hours especially getting these metas complete becomes a challenge, if not downright impossble. ive watched a group try to grab the few people in Domain Of Vabbi repeatedly(Since 7AM) for the serpents ire meta, and each time its failed to get more than 9-10 people.

Paradoxoglanis.1904 · November 17, 2019

@Vayne.8563 said:
@"Paradoxoglanis.1904" said:Once again some people in the comments take "dead game" as a literal statement and deny any issues related to decreasing population. Just because you manage to find other people doing the current meta event doesnt mean this game has a healthy population.

Nor does it mean it doesn't. It's all annecdotal. We have more metas and more zones than ever before, so people will be more spread out. It's basic math. Annecdotal evidence remains annecdotal. The population may be declining and the population may not be. No one on these forum knows for sure so saying either is pointless.

I agree that anecdotal evidence is usually misleading, but in some areas of the game like pvp and wvw it is much easier to notice when people leave and dont come back. Many well known guilds have disappeared, server populations have been decreasing, the top 250 leaderboard contains more lower ranks. Unless they recently changed the server population limits and changed the weighting of pvp ranks then there is some evidence that populations have declined.

Zoid.2568 · November 17, 2019

All mmorpgs have decline in population a long time after an expansion has released. Same with WoW after BFA, it dropped 5-6 months after.

People play through the content once. They farm end game etc. Then they get bored and quit and come back the next expansion.

coso.9173 · November 17, 2019

all MMOs decline population after they're published, with some short returns when there's big content drop, but ultimately people always slowly leave.

Magnus Godrik.5841 · November 17, 2019

Idk if its a dead game but i find myself playing something more challenging than gw2, which is Monster Hunter World right now. Maybe im just burned out. I will probably play the new ls this coming week. And probably complete it with ease as thats what i expect from gw2. I think that is why so many stray away from gw2. It is just too fucking easy and there is no penalty for being bad at it.

Substance E.4852 · November 17, 2019

@Zaklex.6308 said:MO leaving, not that big a deal IMO, Devs come and go all the time

Mike co founded Arena Net and the Guild Wars IP

He didn't even say he was retiring from professional life, it was a roundabout admission that he was tired of the company and GW and wanted to do something else

That's absolutely a big deal. If this were a publicly traded company and the Founder and CEO just up and left within a year of massive layoff waves and general uncertainty about the companyy's future plans, stocks would crater

SoulGuardian.6203 · November 17, 2019

What I am finding difficult to do is get enough people for triple trouble.I still have to get cobalt and amber, and can never make it due to the lack of players.

If we do get a few players, the downed ones never return to the fight, and so it always fails... and that's with commanders too... who also place lfgs.

Vinceman.4572 · November 17, 2019

@SoulGuardian.6203 said:What I am finding difficult to do is get enough people for triple trouble.I still have to get cobalt and amber, and can never make it due to the lack of players.
If we do get a few players, the downed ones never return to the fight, and so it always fails... and that's with commanders too... who also place lfgs.

In EU there are communities for that with a well-structured organization including teamspeak. In case people don't like to talk or similar stuff: There's absolutely no need to talk (in some cases you aren't even allowed to talk or have no channel rights). Just listen to the things said in the channel and do as everyone does. Teamspeak is required for those runs because they can organize things better and assure that everybody of the list will get onto the map and participate. They want to be successful and not bother with random players that interfere and destroy the success of the event.

Vayne.8563 · November 17, 2019

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:
@Vayne.8563 said:
@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:Once again some people in the comments take "dead game" as a literal statement and deny any issues related to decreasing population. Just because you manage to find other people doing the current meta event doesnt mean this game has a healthy population.

Nor does it mean it doesn't. It's all annecdotal. We have more metas and more zones than ever before, so people will be more spread out. It's basic math. Annecdotal evidence remains annecdotal. The population may be declining and the population may not be. No one on these forum knows for sure so saying either is pointless.

I agree that anecdotal evidence is usually misleading, but in some areas of the game like pvp and wvw it is much easier to notice when people leave and dont come back. Many well known guilds have disappeared, server populations have been decreasing, the top 250 leaderboard contains more lower ranks. Unless they recently changed the server population limits and changed the weighting of pvp ranks then there is some evidence that populations have declined.

While you may thing that PvP is one of the mainstays of the game,. it never really was. That's one of the big problems with judging populations. I have quite a few people who used to WvW in my guild all the time and now they PvE a lot. Doesn't mean those people left the game. Game modes may be doing worse or better, but it doesn't necessarily speak to the population of the game.

I used to WvW a lot more and I even PvPed more. I do neither now. But I did them for specific rewards, got those rewards or at least the ones I was willing to do. We don't really know how many other people are in my boat. There aren't many WvW rewards I want to play for and it's not my preferred style of play.

Talking about the health or population of the game, means you have to look at who the game is aimed at at the first place. Anet has said from day one, that they were interested in created a living breathing world. They also said, early on at a show, that they didn't even mention PvP for the first year, because they didn't want people to be under the assumption this was a PvP-centric game. That's paraphrased but it's what they said. This is because Guild Wars 1 started off as a PvP focused game and though in later years it changed to a PvE focus, it never lost that reputation.

You may (or may not have) come here for the PvP, but I guarantee you the PvE playerbase was always the bulk of the game from day one. The same thing happened eventually in Guild Wars 1. Anet saw the writing on the wall and shifted their emphasis in Guild Wars 1 to PvE. I was there and I remember the complaints from PvPers when that started happening. Factions was the last product Guild Wars 1 came out with that had a PvP component. Neither Nightfall nor Eye of the North had one. PvE only skills were a big thing. PvP was left to coast. In my opinion, Anet realized what size their bread was buttered on. That's why more and more outfits, mostly used in PvE were being introduced in the gem store, even in Guild Wars 1.

Populations of games shift around all the time. The game gets a casual reputation and more casuals join., You won't find most of them here, or on reddit, so they have less of a voice. But quarterly income for the game has remained roughly stable. I mean yeah it went down 5% this quarter, but consider all the recent doom and gloom, that's realliy nothing. And when you add to the fact that years ago, we had the same sorts of numbers in the cool down period after Heart of Thorns...yeah, the game is stable.

It may not be you or your friends playing but my casual guild is still pretty much as active as it's always been. It's just a different game. It wasn't aimed at the PvP crowd to begin with.

Jimbru.6014 · November 18, 2019

The more maps you add, the more spread out the population will be, which can make maps start to feel empty. EverQuest learned this the hard way back when MMOs were first getting started, as have many other games since. Which is why it's necessary to keep advertising and promoting and growing the player population, both to keep up with losses AND to keep up with the evolving size of the game world.

Along with that, the more map INSTANCES you have, the less populated the maps may seem, which is often luck of the draw. For example, each of the HoT metas usually at least a few reasonably full instances going at any given time (even more if there's a daily). But if you accidentally end up in a new or "non meta" instance, it will seem like the map is empty even though it's actually quite busy. Check the LFG and beware of biased perception. "There's nobody here!" No, there's just not that many players in your particular instance.

As for lab farming burning people out: heck yeah it does, and the visuals are a big part of that. Two hours is about my limit; after that, the lab starts turning into a big gray blur and I have to take a visual break. Queen's Jubilee gets tiresome as well; the same circular fights over and over again. Can't do it for more than a few cycles before my brain starts shutting down. The people that live for farming in those areas during the events, I have no idea how y'all do it. And I don't blame people for taking post-holiday breaks. Event burnout is something that I've posted about here before; it's a very real thing in this game.

Of course, there are also the opposites; there are a lot of players who only log in for the holiday events. Those people also skew the perceptions of player population with their presence and/or absence.

AlexxxDelta.1806 · November 18, 2019

@Vayne.8563 said:
@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:
@Vayne.8563 said:
@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:Once again some people in the comments take "dead game" as a literal statement and deny any issues related to decreasing population. Just because you manage to find other people doing the current meta event doesnt mean this game has a healthy population.