What do you think Anet's plan is for 90% of the unused game?

[BrettM]

What I can't fathom are people who speak of having "done all the DEs" in a zone so they have no reason to go back. I run into DEs I've never seen before even in zones in which I have 100% map completion on another character. I begin to question whether there is one single GW2 player who has actually done ALL the DEs in even one zone, including all those that are triggered by speaking to the right NPC or finding the right object. Even if you could find one player like that, could you really find 100? 1000?

I also have to question whether most players have actually done even most of the prominent DE in the O2OMs, as Fluffball so nicely put it. My first level 80 got to Straits of Devastation when the game was about a month old and there was still a good number of people around. Since then I've usually had at least one character hanging out in Ft. Trinity to do a quick daily farm in the area, and I often finish off my dailies with all the small soloable events there. In all that time I have never once seen anyone doing anything about the bone ship when it appears off of Half Circle Cove, though I've gotten killed a number of times trying to do it alone. Did every other player in the game just happen to get there and do it in less than a month? Or are most people just skipping DEs that they don't think will be profitable enough?

Even back in September people were not doing most of the invasion event chains, but there was a permanent population defending Lone Post. (Even that's gone now, and Lone Post is very lonely indeed.) Am I supposed to believe that only one month into the game, 99% of the players had already done all the DE in that zone and left only some farmers behind? Somehow I don't think so.

There is some other reason why the Priory Explorers will be trapped in the Risen Clams for eternity and that crashed helicopter in the swamp will never get back in the air. Any way I look at it, it's clear that DEs in all zones are not languishing because everyone has already done them. Perhaps many of them are just not appealing to enough players for some reason. Perhaps players just feel too much pressure to move on and don't have the patience to wait around for rarer events, search for the triggers for those under player control, or hang around until they've seen all of a chain. Whatever the reason, I suspect that a majority of DEs in the game have never been done by a majority of the players and the content has been wasted since day one. Which strikes me as a real shame.

[Alaris]

People flock to the highest rewards. Move the rewards around, and see people flock all over the place following them.

In case you don't get the analogy, the cats are players, the laser dot is rewards.

[sorudo]

i generally avoid big crowds, the analogy fails also because you compare humans with cats.
cats are in nature curies, humans only do what interest them.

cat's follow everything that stands out, humans are only affected to interest so when the thing that stands out doesn't interest the person it makes the thing that stands out pretty useless.

[Смерть]

i generally avoid big crowds, the analogy fails also because you compare humans with cats.
cats are in nature curies, humans only do what interest them.

cat's follow everything that stands out, humans are only affected to interest so when the thing that stands out doesn't interest the person it makes the thing that stands out pretty useless.

wut?

...

I myself am interested in earning gold. I am also interested in the RPG aspect of the game. I am interested in the later until its source is exhausted, then I turn to gold because it is an endless goal.

I do think moving rewards around to different areas will draw people; but I would hope the RPG aspect would be the initial motivation -- even better if the continuous motivation, but that certainly hasn't happened yet for me.

[Saint Troy]

wut?

I think I get what sorudo is trying to say. Bearing in mind that English is not sorudo's primary language.

Translation: Cats have a natural curiosity that is environment driven, and are easily persuaded to follow that curiosity for no obvious reward. Human behaviour is much more governed by self-interest, and thus reward-oriented. If the rewards do not sufficiently interest the human, the human will do something else that is more rewarding.

Note: I'm translating what I read from his post. I may be wrong.

...

I myself am interested in earning gold. I am also interested in the RPG aspect of the game. I am interested in the later until its source is exhausted, then I turn to gold because it is an endless goal.

I do think moving rewards around to different areas will draw people; but I would hope the RPG aspect would be the initial motivation -- even better if the continuous motivation, but that certainly hasn't happened yet for me.

Yes, a lot of people neglect the whole RPG aspect of MMORPGs. I've been having an enjoyable time following the storylines on several alts, and that means I have been passing through some of the areas I have not spent a lot of time in thus far. Strange that people say they are empty though - even at 4am when I was deliberately trying to do some events solo to test a couple of builds, there are other players that suddenly turn up and start getting involved (not that I'm complaining, though; the more, the merrier). I just don't see these empty maps that people are talking about.

[Alaris]

Cats don't realize that the dot is illusory. Once you let them catch it, they learn pretty quickly to ignore it. The reason they chase it is probably because their instinct tells them it might be an insect they might be able to eat.

As for adding rewards to one area creating a mob there, dude, relax. Of course it might, but that's ok because it won't always be in the same place. Plus, if you do that in multiple place, you can adjust the amount of extra reward until the two become equally populated. It's actually easy to manipulate rewards like that, especially if you make scaling scale a bit too harshly, to encourage people taking up different DEs instead of clumping on one.

[CHIPS]

Have to admit, I do agree. It's impossible to move around Orr normally. I get it's supposed to be a high level zone and thus harder, but I feel ArenaNet upped the difficulty here in the same way they upped it for GW1's HM - they just increased numbers of enemies, and gave those enemies higher stats. It's not difficult to kill the Orrians, but damn, it is dull! The respawn rate means you can't just power through them, and you just never really get a chance to just look around and explore and just get a feel for the zone.

I agree that Orr sucks. Luckily for me my necro have speed boost 24/7 so she can run though mobs ok. She can also kill maybe 2 or 3 of them at once. But it is obviously a pain for players that runs at normal speed.

It is a general mix of the environment being extremely ugly and boring, and the mobs being extremely ugly and boring, and the lack of humans allies support in most areas, that makes Orr so terrible.

I remember this one event in Malchor's Leap where I have to rescue this Largos girl Aaminah from underwater mobs. There were 3 Quaggan that are supposed to help me. But they died in seconds to risen. I end up just going to the girl myself. But guess what? I can't open the cage without those 3 useless Quaggans. So I had to go back to res them. In the way there are constantly aoe snares from up the mountain (I can't even see them) and sharks with snares, and insane spawn rate risens. I died like 8 times before I got those 3 guys to her. And then we got ambushed. So it was another drag to get all 4 out. I spend more than an hour doing this. During this whole time not a single human came by the help out. T_T

I had been saying for ages that the following are the wrong way to make the game hard.

1) One hit kill
2) Crazy spawn rate - lots of mobs
3) mobs with insane stats - overpowered mobs

The right way to make the game hard is:

1) Better AI, almost human like levels.
2) Better tactics, mobs that thinks, etc.

So what's the catch? Well the wrong way is much easier to program. Just change a few numbers are its good to go. T_T

[Fluffball]

I just don't see these empty maps that people are talking about.

Most maps aren't empty, but the group events are often ignored. You can usually rouse about 3 or 7 players for any given event by asking for help. That's not always enough firepower to push events in Orr, and there is no way your progress will be "saved" as the NPCs will be instantly slaughtered when your group disbands. Orr needs a constant stream of players or the map almost instantly plunges into zombieland.

[Alaris]

Chips... in your case the problem wasn't so much that it was harder, but that it was too hard for a single human. There's been complaints about the scaling system failing at very low numbers of players.

[satenia]

What I can't fathom are people who speak of having "done all the DEs" in a zone so they have no reason to go back. I run into DEs I've never seen before even in zones in which I have 100% map completion on another character. I begin to question whether there is one single GW2 player who has actually done ALL the DEs in even one zone, including all those that are triggered by speaking to the right NPC or finding the right object. Even if you could find one player like that, could you really find 100? 1000?

Does it matter? Having potentially missed a DE isn't reason enough to lure me back into a zone. DE's are not content on demand, if the zone holds no interest for me as such, I'm not gonna randomly walk around hoping for a DE to happen (or not). Also, waiting for an event equals (spawn) camping to me, something that is usually considered a bad thing.

The closer you come to a maps completion, the less synergy it holds. As I said before, from a reward-driven point of view, moving on is only natural...