T2 and T3 population [NA]

[magter3001]

I know it's not on the agenda right now but perhaps it should be...



There are 15 people online in T2 and 31 people in T3 (was 26 a sec ago). I know that the stance of the devs was to remove t2 rats and I don't think that the lack of rats is the reason of the low population. The rewards in Orvr themselves are abysmal in t2 and even though again... devs are against pvdoor, at least we had 3-4 parties of people attack these empty keeps and gave AAO to the opposite side who could gank strays.

I'm not asking for the devs to do anything about this now but instead wanted to show the state of rvr and leveling in t2 and t3. I know that the plan is to revamp the whole rvr system for t4 and possibly t2 and t3 as well. My hope is that the devs don't overlook t2 and t3 when they do make the changes to rvr.

[TenTonHammer]

Yeah theirs literally no point to get on late night NA to level anymore

If you don't play during "server primetime" then it's really not worth it on a low lvl toon

We need other way to lvl up, saying that you should be more people for NA or that you should do low exp quests is not really a good soloutions and the current status of late nigh NA will just push people away

[magter3001]

The questing argument isn't valid to me as I've already done the t2 quests when I was looking to report bugged quests and PQs... they are not so fun the second go around. I could stomach doing t3 quests as I've not done any yet, and only did t4 quests on live but it would be great to make the t2 and t3 experience more appealing.

[Tsokushin]

There's another major problem in t2 and t3 from what I've seen.

It's literally impossible to get a fight anywhere other than Empire Kingdom. This means I cannot earn any RVR influence for any other faction because influence only comes from player kills and players only seem to want to farm each other in Empire Kingdom.

The only time I've ever gotten RVR influence for another faction is when I had to coordinate with the dang leader of the destruction warband just to get a fight in dwarf t2 Kingdom. This is stupid.

This really needs to be looked into soon.

[Genisaurus]

On one hand, the populations in the lower tiers are one of the many things we are hoping to address with the new RvR system. Now that we have the debolster system to allow players to return to those lakes, we need to work out incentives to do so - ones that do not rely on an ephemeral reward like influence or renown.

On the other hand, we just released Tier 4, one of the most anticipated batches of content since the day this server was founded. Even if everything else were perfect, it's not unreasonable to expect a ton of players to switch to a handful of primary high-level characters, or to power-level their alts through. And fixing that content is kind of a priority right now.

But I hope you understand the cycle we have to deal with:

"T2 sucks"
"I'm just going to power level through"
"There's nobody in T2"
"T2 sucks"

The tiering system fundamentally requires a constant stream of new players and alts, or else it fails. We didn't really have the former, and releasing highly anticipated content killed the other for a period of time. That was always going to happen and I don't regret it in the slightest, but fixing the problem is going to require completely changing what the tiers mean - not keeping them as an "extended tutorial" zone, but something else instead.

[Pixie126]

NA's time and the population of Tier 2 and 3 is just not doable for me. Tier 1, I could get my husband and we could duo around the other zones, after getting capped in influence in Tier 1. A duo can't do anything in the higher tiers (no, we don't run an elitist itty bitty gank pair-It's an archmage and a warrior priest). It's frustrating. I have already taken a toon to 40 live doing all the quests in Elf. Not sure I want to do it again, knowing that RR and medallions/emblems are so important to get decent gear. But, PvE is what I'll end up doing as I don't jump sides. I play Order.
And, both my husband and I tried to do the debolster thing, but just couldn't figure it out. Gave it up as a lost cause. I leveled a character out of Tier 1 while in the lake. Didn't level any skills or renown traits, put on no new gear, had no talismans slotted, chickened when I tried to enter again. Not sure how I could be any more Tier 1 except for my level. All my husband and I wanted to do was cap out our influence in Dwarf and Elf.

[Genisaurus]

And, both my husband and I tried to do the debolster thing, but just couldn't figure it out. Gave it up as a lost cause. I leveled a character out of Tier 1 while in the lake. Didn't level any skills or renown traits, put on no new gear, had no talismans slotted, chickened when I tried to enter again. Not sure how I could be any more Tier 1 except for my level. All my husband and I wanted to do was cap out our influence in Dwarf and Elf.

The item level restrictions on debolster are lower than the end of the tier. For example, Tier 1 restricts debolstering players to items of level 8 or lower. This might have been the source of your chickening.

You can type ".ror debolster" to see all of the debosltering requirements for T1-T3.

[Pixie126]

Ah that would do it. I have several pieces of influence gear on. They are level 9.

[DirkDaring]

It`s the same in T4 , everyone just runs around farming each other in Praag, no one goes to the other zones, nor do they try and take the keeps, it`s either sc, PQ grind, or farming each other between Square and warcamp.

Haven`t bothered to stay on more than 30 min at a time the last few days, i`ll log on a different times, and its the same , so i just log back off.

[magter3001]

The tiering system fundamentally requires a constant stream of new players and alts, or else it fails. We didn't really have the former, and releasing highly anticipated content killed the other for a period of time. That was always going to happen and I don't regret it in the slightest, but fixing the problem is going to require completely changing what the tiers mean - not keeping them as an "extended tutorial" zone, but something else instead.

It is very clear that some of the reason behind low t2/t3 populations is because of the very recent t4 release... I understand that and I'm sure everyone else does as well. However I think the main reason is the current rvr system or lack thereof. I know that it's just a band aid fix... I'm not making this thread to QQ or anything like that.

The reason I made this thread was just to inform the devs that any future rvr system should keep t2/t3 in mind when implementing... not only t4. As you've hinted, maybe make t2 and t3 important again as well as giving gratifying rewards for playing in the tier. The rewards would have to be tier specific (unless it's cosmetic) but the importance of the lower tiers maybe could effect the t4 war effort like in vanilla war? Unless you guys can come up with something better of course.

NA population has between 350-450 players with close to 300 players playing either tier 1 or tier 4. Maybe look into why t1 is so popular and implement similar mechanics to the next two tiers?"