@Anet Old content and downscaling

[Gamefreak.4207]

With each new expansion and new areas added, the old vanilla areas are starting to become more and more barren with some of them straight up being dead. Is there any chance of downscaling possibly being removed or champions for these areas scaling and being doable solo? Some of these old champions still have achievements and collections tied to them and are basically impossible to complete unless you want to sit around for hours hoping other people are looking to do the same exact old content alongside you at the same time.

[Hoshinohi.1896]

I can't see you point here in fact i allways find splenty of people playing all areas of course for the challenges in the living story and Expansions theire is a bit of a problem as finding others gets harder but to be fair this is stuff people often do with guildies and friends not so much with strangers.

 

What they could change is that they make some of those achievements part of a daylie so people will come along more often.

 

Also most of the older champs are really weak and completely soloable. Map chat also helps to find people most of the time unless you are completely offtime of peak hours ( like me mostly playing midnight to morning ^^)

[Gamefreak.4207]

> @"Hoshinohi.1896" said:

> I can't see you point here

 

I literally sat around for an hour 3 times now trying to get some of the old achievement content done with lfg open and no one wants to do it. That's my point. They are either grinding gold, doing fractals or raids, completing new content, or doing PvP. The only old content that people consistently do is Teq and world bosses which isn't the point of my post.

 

 

[Danikat.8537]

Did you mention in your LFG message that it's for an achievement? I've often found that makes it far more likely people will join. Even if they don't need it themselves it gives them an added incentive to help out and apparently a lot of people like doing that.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Gamefreak.4207" said:

> With each new expansion and new areas added, the old vanilla areas are starting to become more and more barren with some of them straight up being dead.

Every time I do map completion, I'm always surprised (pleasantly) to see plenty of people everywhere (except in areas I never saw them much during the first two years either).

 

> Is there any chance of downscaling possibly being removed or champions for these areas scaling and being doable solo?

Most champions are already soloable.

 

> Some of these old champions still have achievements and collections tied to them and are basically impossible to complete unless you want to sit around for hours hoping other people are looking to do the same exact old content alongside you at the same time.

Don't sit around and hope. Ask for help in /map or in /lfg. I've yet to have any trouble getting assistance. (The worst that happens is I have to try again later.) This includes obscure champs for legendary weapon collections or out of the way events just for the laughs.

 

tl;dr don't sit around; ask for assistance — players are standing by waiting for your call.

[Ephemiel.5694]

Doing "achievement content" and the maps being barren are nowhere near the same thing.

[Randulf.7614]

Can you give some examples of which are a problem? Not much to go on here, especially as the maps are generally well populated. Whether players are willing to help do one time achievements is another matter, but if you give us some examples, either we can advise or potentially volunteer to help

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Gamefreak.4207" said:

> With each new expansion and new areas added, the old vanilla areas are starting to become more and more barren with some of them straight up being dead. Is there any chance of downscaling possibly being removed or champions for these areas scaling and being doable solo? Some of these old champions still have achievements and collections tied to them and are basically impossible to complete unless you want to sit around for hours hoping other people are looking to do the same exact old content alongside you at the same time.

 

> @"Ephemiel.5694" said:

> Doing "achievement content" and the maps being barren are nowhere near the same thing.

 

^ This right here.

 

The problem here is you're confusing 2 entirely different issues that are both very straight forward if you think about them. Its a problem of how players view reward incentive. As time goes on, players tend to tap out every fixed reward they "can" obtain over time..... grinding only then becomes a concern for something that takes a specific set of conditions to achieve. With the way GW2 is designed, Core Tyria had repeatable rewards back ported into it over time, and this idea of grinding for gold/loot/achievement rewards didn't really exist prior to Living Season 1, outside of Crafting's demand for raw materials. And initially crafting only had value for skin collecting, and TP profiting off skin collectors who didn't want to spend time crafting.

 

I also think you're confused about what Downscaling is, because that feature had been the ONLY reason low level areas are worth revisiting. Player Downscaling aren't the reason Champs are hard.... Champs are hard, because they're Champs. You might also be surprised to find out downscaled players are actually statistically weaker then matched-level players, including having their gear set using common tier values even if they are Exotic or Ascended. The only reason they perform better is a combination of Coherent Builds (which are amplified with Espec), and the ability to use them correctly. While not really classified as a struggle, lower levels usually don't have key traits or skills unlocked that enable them to force multiply; and the Especs also have more ready access to control skills that Core/Old Content tried to keep conservative. See, Champ mobs aren't meant to be solo'd.... its mainly that Core Tyria was never updated to reflect the power creep of the Expansions. You go into HOT or POF maps, the Champs are substantially harder with much larger pools of abilities.... those made to push the limits of the game's buildcraft at the time.

 

This feeds directly into the reward incentive issue.... regardless of the difficulty, players generally focus more on wealth attainment, status symbols, and other things which fit into skinner box models. While the game adopted this model later in its life, it hasn't reached levels of abuse other MMOs almost flippantly achieve..... a saving grace that's so far kept it from imploding in hard times. But we're on an inevitable course toward unsustainable grinding, because is essentially the ONLY model that has shown any long term success with this generation of gamers. WoW has both pioneered and assimilated multiple reward systems and presentation styles to keep players stuck on the game like its a second job.... and if you talk to many people about "end game" content, that starts out as a joke, and eventually becomes a depressing reality. Thus the content that gets the most attention from them are the ones that provide the biggest rewards; and uses community obligation to extend its life as much as possible (raid schedules, timers, time gates, and group-oriented difficulty). Once habituated, they generally don't know what else to do with their time beyond those obligations.... so they default to wealth gain.... hence why fractals, raids, world bosses, and map metas get the most attention. Just adding a repeatable reward within a comparable range as the most profitable, and people will farm the crap out of for week/months on end. (And then complain about there being nothing else to do in the game, despite tons of other stuff they could be doing)

 

 

New players also have this stigma from other games that old content is meant to be progressive to the new content..... this is summarily false in this game. Aside from level 80 being a requirement for Especs and access to expansion stories, you can jump straight to the newest content and do as you will. You might still perform badly without a proper build.... but its not outright stopping you from trying. WoW's big mistake with the linear design is that old content is objectively not worth the player's time, and they had to address this by short cutting the leveling process (effectively removing all the major gating mechanisms designed to slow down players when it was new), so players could power through it and get to the only content block that meant anything.... the current End game. With GW2, you only go back to the old content if you want something from it. Even as a F2P player, who only has core, that content exists to keep you busy until you decide you want something else. Theres no point in making it easier, because doing so just increases the burn rate of the rewards.

 

The only good reasons to go back and change something is either to address QOL issues created by later features, or associated it with new content (ie collections as quests). Since achievements are usually framed as one-time things, how you do incentivize players to keep doing it without attaching a reward with the ubiquity of gold?

[otto.5684]

The most barren maps is PoF maps, lol.