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Low population zones
http://www.killtenrats.com/2011/03/16/rift-gloam-covered/
"The zone population has plummeted. After the first zone the drive to get back with the herd must be insatiable. After spending a few hours in Gloamwood, my biggest public group has been three people. I have not seen an invasion, and I am constantly trying to take down footholds on my own. We all pretend not to see that major death rift looming over the central town with its elite mobs."
Has something like this happened to any of you? I'm curious to see if dynamic content can backfire on the player like it seems to have backfired on the author of the entry. Still, there are other things that can be done besides rifts so Im not sure how big of a drawback this scenario could be.
Comments
It's happened to me a few times towards 3-4AM because most people are off sleeping and only the crazies are on :P. During the day/peak hours this has never happened and now im in Iron peaks where a group of 3-4 can easily wipe out elite rifts.
It happens from time to time. Moonshade Highlands was the 'empty' one for me. Then again, my girlfriend and I can easily close a major rift with just the two of us, although we rarely get the bonus stages.
If you stick by a wardstone near a large hub in a low pop zone, you can rack up some nice planarite and stuff just picking off the invasions as they come in from open rifts and footholds (best way to complete the invasions artifact collections as well.)
It's not a big problem so far.
My experience has been fairly good. I will say that I am surprised that I can play from 8am-12pm EST and not have issues with Rifts but then from 8pm-12am lastnight I did have issues with invasions. In Silverwood, though, the population of Meridian factors into how big the Rift Invasions are. Problem is, most people in Meridian don't actually see the Major invasion happen (unless they happen to bring up their map). It works nicely for keeping the starter area bustling, but not so much for events during prime times as the Wardstones get swamped FAST.
The other problem is... most people create 1 toon, max it, move to the next. You're in a period where the starters (unless they're addicts) are just hitting the 30-40 levels. Which means you'll have a bit to cycle before people hit 50 and create new toons. Over time these groups will disperse more based on Raids, Rifts, etc.
Population-wise most servers are always on Med population and High all night. Luckily I don't deal with my server queues anymore (thank god).
I just hit Scarlet Gorge and it looked pretty empty when I got there, until I opened a rift to see what the fire rift mobs looked like. Then a few people showed up to take it out. In Stonefield (the zone just prior to Scarlet Gorge) there were almost always a lot of people around.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Pop goes way down after 2AM eastern but other than that I have never had an issue finding public groups. Like another said, soloing small invasions can be a good thing when it comes to getting planarite. {mod edit}
@Lizard If I have a choice, I prefer the water rifts and fire rifts... life and death were bleh.
In my opinion the MMO market has changed, having high population as a pay to play title is really hard.
I think B2P might be a solution. I always felt F2P to be like getting the cheap version of something. Don't know, just feels dirty...
Wait til you see the air rifts...my god they are beautiful.
Droughtlands AirRifts were awesome.. had about 10 in the group that finally got it closed.. Loving the Public Group option..
Only Rugby releases the stress of Life.
its pretty fun to close rifts with the other faction. just for that one instance put aside our hatred and bloodthirst in order to complete a common goal. its heartwarming i tell ya!
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
I tried that, buy my fool pet starts attacking my new "friends", they take it wrong and start attacking me and before you know it, everyone's at each others throats.
So far so good, no major shortage of population, but I just moved into Gloomwood, we'll see how it goes.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Population is pretty high wherever i'am at on my server.. And i'am still in the newbie zones lvl 16 atm.. I havn't really put in to many "late night" sessions so i have know clue if there will be population problems at night.. But so far anytime a rift pops up or a invasion takes place i'am never fighting it alone.. Its not high to where i'am competeing with people for mobs and waiting on long ques (like the case was with AION right at launch) which is a good thing IMO.. Plus it's been almost a month since launch so i'm sure most have moved on from the starting zones that i'm in.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
Moonshade highland is pretty empty, at least on my server. It's a shame since I actually like the look of the area. I am having a hard time keeping the boredom away. I like the invasions and rifts when there are others around to participate but when I have to go questing it gets really dull.
Same with my server in Moonshade it looks like people just skip that zone while leveling.
On my main, which is Defiant, I never notice empty zones or areas. On my High Elf alt though I do see some Gaurdian areas that are a little thin every now and then.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
Playing on NA servers from Australia is interesting.
Weekends, during Aussie daytime, I get zones overflowing with people. Aussie evenings during the week are the opposite.
I like both types of play though - massive invasions and being in a public raid group is different to soloing invasions and closing Rifts with 2-3 people.
Having said all that I did notice Gloamwood (20-26) feels less intense compared to Silverwood (10-20).
I'm in the 3rd zone 20-30 (scarlet gorge I think is the name), and I've been in several 20 person raids, and me and my wife have not had a hard time doing any of the content (invasions and rifts included).
Seems to be more than enough people to do most anything, and this includes even the off hours.
My god has horns.... nah, I don't think he is real either.
Blaiming the payment method is far too easy.
Only Wow had had really high pop servers for a long time and even in Wow there is now a lot of empty space. Expecting a new game will do just the same as Wow is being overconfident, sooner or later will a game do itn of course but guessing which is very hard.
In this case it is because Trion just opened too many servers at launch, we all knew that 100% of all players wouldn't stay and even if the game will peak up again it will be a few months.
I think ANET is on the right track there with GW2. Free character transfers (whenever you feel for it) solve the problem, the smallest servers will more or less empty themselves and when only a few players remain you can close it down and you can always reopen it later. It might of course be somewhat bad for the in server community feeling but it is worth it.
3 persons in Gloamwood? Was it 4.30 AM during working day? Cause at Sparkwing EU server at around midnight(Sunday) in Moonshade Highlands(which is a tad less populated zone, see comments above) guardian side alone mustered bout 15 people to stop invasion and we killed boss. During peak hours there are usually at least 1 full raid.
Rifts and invasions do scale, again at least at my server. If there are few people, mobs packs(those invading ones) are 3+ normal mobs + 1 normal mob with higher health bar. For comparison with full raid those mobs change into 3+ elites with mini boss with much higher health amount.
Also with low pop like 99% Rifts are minor, which are easy to duo all way to last stage or if You alone at least till stage 3 just to seal them.
Seems like very biased point of view in that blog.
I have honestly been waiting for this to happen since trying the game out in the start of beta.
The content in Rift should scale like content in Guild Wars 2 will, that's the easiest solution to this.
It will only get worse as time goes on and sooner or later Trion will be forced to do something about this system because it simply won't work as intended when there's no longer enough people around in the lower levels.
The people and the friends that we have lost, and the dreams that have faded, never forget them~
I have just reached Scarlet Gorge/Perspice and I've kind of noticed the same thing, but not all the time. The population is higher later in the evening. It seems to be very variable too. Sometimes it seems depopulated, and other times there are multiple raid groups running through rifts. The only pattern I've noticed is that the population is higher the later in the evening it is on the server I'm playing on.
The thing with rifts that I've noticed is that often, I'm the first person there. I think people ride by rifts and they don't want to be the first person in the rift. It's fine for me since I spend most of my time as a tank (turns out it's a lot of fun) so it may take me forever, but I can take pretty much anything a rift can dish out, including most of the elites. Being in a rift seems to attract more people to it. I've solo'd very few rifts...someone almost always wanders in to help out with dps.
* edit *
Rifts do scale with population, but that doesn't mean the people in the zone are actually going to do the rifts that show up.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I'm not sure what you're talking about but rifts are already scaling. I've been on the opposite side of the spectrum, one of the few level 50s on the server and it was easy to at lest close a minor rift. Major rifts did not appear with so low a population, so that was a non issue.
Shatterbone has a pretty good population, if there's an invasion in Moonshade, Droughtlands, Iron Pine Peak, Shimmersand, or Stillmoor people are flocking to them. I have a 40 rogue and 48 warrior, both times during leveling the zones had people running about.
Only time of day when it's truly quite is the morning 6am-8am. After that it starts filling up. Prime time seems to be around 6pm-7pm west coast time.