Empty Zones

With issue 23's announcement on another new zone "night ward?" something like that I just have to give a huge *sigh. It so unfortunate that many zones already that are extremely cool like:

First Ward
The Pretoria area
All the hazard zones blueside specially the shadow shard
Faultline

and many more are almost completely barren of actual players. I am not much for thinking of ways to help this if it needs to be helped, but I feel like it is such a shame that such cool looking zones go unused by the majority of the playerbase.

Why do you think that is? Will this new zone become more wasted space? What would you do to bring in more players to these areas if you think we should be even bothering to go to them?

I'll be honest though I've never read any of the npc text boxes fully in my whole time playing cox, tl;dr lol for the most part cause it doesn't really have incentive for me. Maybe that has something to do with it, being part of the player base that's like me and not caring for the story they give us. Though I do appreciate a cool looking zone that clearly says its story almost just by looking at it.

I think it's because they've walled everything off.

Heroes can't see what zones villains are in, villains can't see what zones heroes are in. Neither can see where Praetorians are and vice versa. Kind of hard to get together for some cooperative action when you're not even sure if anyone is around doing anything before you make the trip.

Faultline used to be really crowded post-rebuild when I was last here, though I suppose with the shakeup of the old mission structure, less people are being sent there. (that and since it's not on the train line, who cares?)

I think it will continue the trend. A lonnng time ago, street-sweeping was the way to level but they changed missions to be more desireable. I don't see this changing so unless they get some new tech to make the zones more interactive, seeing empty zones will continue for all except the most populated servers. I feel the same way as I travel through zones but at the same time, missions/trials/TFs are where the action lies.

Just as an example, unless I see a building being physically demolished(physics tech) by a monster, a humongous water spout in IP about to hit land and heroes need to gather items from the zone to build a dehumidifier on crack or a large group of citizens attacked at random(and being 'defeated', i.e. they disappear), then I don't foresee any interest in a zone besides it being something I have to travel through or a nice backdrop to look at as I go from mission to mission. Even the re-occurring Monsters seem to not gather much interest in zone-events, at least on the servers I frequent.

It's sad and I wish it could change but I think the effort along with the level of tech in the game engine versus the ROI would prevent seeing anything different happening than we have in the past few years as far as zones are concerned.

Zones will remain ghosted until there's good reason to inhabit them, otherwise folks will use them for their arcs or just because there's a mission door there they have to go to. Task forces, zone events that don't suck, etc. Faultline used to get run fairly often because you get access to Yin-Os and the Ouro badge as you go through it, now we've got DFB dropping SOs and anyone can ask for an ouro portal at 14. otherwise, you're just running stuff for story and badges.

Night Ward is a bit unnecessary, when apparently the story is just "First Ward with ghosts." A few new mission maps could've easily done the same job without having to turn it into a new zone.

In my opinion, the devs need to hold off creating new zones for awhile, focus more on new maps since that's where all the action actually goes on (maybe give us those maps in AE so we can use 'em as well), and just start making new content that takes place in existing zones. Maybe even spruce up a visually lacking zone every now and again, like Skyway City or something.

It would also help to make zone events worth running more than once. Increase their rewards a bit. Like have Lusca dish out five or ten merits, or maybe two per tentacle and five for the head, considering she takes a generous amount of coordination and time to beat. Have preventing the Clockwork Paladin's construction give out ten merits, since there's a small window of opportunity to actually pull it off that often gets overlooked. Have the Ghost of Scrapyard dish out five merits, and maybe a bonus two merits if you defeat all of his Scrapyarders. I'm sure that'll really help get people more motivated to go out into the zones.

Besides for my hatred for Red Caps, I loved Croatoa. I sometimes run the arcs on new characters for the story. My love for the Fautlline story is undying though.

I would really like to see more to do in some of those empty zones.

For example, how often does anyone go to:

Boomtown. Other than one TF (?) and some 'kill x' missions. there really isn't much going on here.

OR:

Crey's Folly. Same thing. one or two door missions, some street sweeping for 'kill x'.

OR, since the change:

2/3 of Mercy Island.

You get the idea there. This is not the same as the zones I think of as forgotten zones. Those zones have plenty to do it's just that people tend to overlook them.

Places like:

The Hollows
Perez Park
Skyway City (BIG zone that most people just use to get to...)
Faultline (one of the best blueside mission chains in the game)
Founders Falls (it seems like every contact I have that is actually in zone, sends me to missions outside of it)

I think I'd be happier seeing more done with those zones before we start adding more real estate.

The old abandoned hazard zones would make for good zones if the GMs spawned even faster than they do now, or if they would perhaps revamp it with new lowbie missions. I don't know, though. Some of these zones do seem better just left the way they are. I'd just like access to Faultline without using my SG base/Skyway/Pocket D. Does the i23 tunnel system offer Faultline? I forgot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lothic Basically Night Ward was quick-n-dirty way to allow the Devs to "claim" that they've added a whole new zone to the game because saying that sounds better marketing-wise than saying they just added a few new mission arcs and enemy groups to fight.

^:/

there are 2 types of "empty" zones

zones that people play in but not a lot and don't stand around in the zone
hollows, faultline, striga, Sky, etc - There are reasons to go to the zone and things to do there. But given instanced missions you don't spend much time in the zone itself and not a lot of people are there

dead zones that you only go to if sent
Crey's Folly, Boomtown, Perez

I don't have a problem with zones that have content but not a lot of players. Dead zones are just sad. I would like to see something done with them.

my solution is to create zone arcs by theme or story. Which they seem to be doing with Praetoria. It has lvl 1-20 starting area, First Ward for 20-30 and now will get Night Ward 30-40.

I really want to see a science set of zones, magic set of zones, gritty set of zones, 4 color hero set of zones. Then you could choose your style/theme and play 1-50 in the content type of your choice.

I think the devs are kind of shooting themselves in the foot with some of these new zones.

Making lovely new zones, but then filling them with annoying mobs that a lot of people would rather not fight just seems like bad logic.

Now I've never actually run First Ward, but I've talked to a few people who have, and they all said pretty much the same thing. "Nice zone, but annoying mobs, only ran through there once to see what it's like and won't go back".

That was my main issue with Praetoria. I felt like I was fighting mobs which were designed to be fought in the 30s, not in the early teens..

I wasn't entirely surprised when I read about that myself as it truely makes sense. They're trying to build up content Gold side to the point that they can bring it up to par content wise (level I mean) so that they can finish what they started. Atleast, that's what I gathered out of this and other discussions/speculations over the past year or so.

I will admit that CoV swung the pendulum back a bit to far in terms of zones.

What I think would be neat is to use Praetora zone tech to tear down most of the walls.