Opinions Wanted: NA Population - SPEAK!

[freshour]

I have seen a few threads on this but other than other just complaining about it and finding some way to make it into a nerf WL thread; I haven't seen a whole lot of other very good reasons. I'm not making this thread as a way to come up with a solution but more to identify the problem/multi-factorial-ness of the problem. So I was looking up some old data/forums and NA had a pretty solid population on the Live Warhammer like most other countries but on WAR it is the complete opposite. I find it semi hard to believe that the word hasn't gotten out but I'm going to post what I think might be the problem, and I'd love to see what other people think might be the problem. If it goes well, maybe solutions could start being offered but primarily I want to see what people think the problem is. If you are EU, your input would be much appreciated but might not be all that worth while as your population is GREAT. If you are NA, why do you play and your friends from live don't?

1. Maybe they really just don't know it is back in action
2. They have came to try and play but low population just makes them quit so the cycle continues on and on.
3. Having 100+ ping is too much for some of them? I really don't mind it but idk.. maybe others do
4. Staff weren't on much? (I can't think this was a problem b/c I know a lot of NA staff but maybe?)
5.NA players never LTP'd back on live and can't clean up the salt of never being as good as EU? (/s /s /s)
6. The good NA players "beat the fun" out of the bad NA players?

This is just an example list. Please try and keep this thread full of /s /s /s /s, or just semi serious/factual (as factual as your opinions can get lol). But I am kinda curious because there seems to be a high percentage of really good NA players to bad players, vs the EU group where they have quite a bit of variation from good, to bad, to terribad which any decent population should actually have. So, what do you think the reason for the low NA pop is?

[th3gatekeeper]

On mobile, can elaborate later but it's a three fold problem.

Low activity in a non "solo play" friendly game combined with latency.

Personally, I have 150-200ping living in Washington State (not DC) and this does impact my play, it makes SM and BO classes I cannot play.

It used to be not that bad in t2 and t3 where a small group could hit a keep. Then during the RvR changes and T4 it killed some of NA because population demand to do RvR increased and at the same time the SC crowd was for some reason almost "demonized" in a sense, minimally it was said that SCs were just a minigame and hasn't been much support there, and that crowd some left. Paired with DDOS downtime too.

It's hard to rebuild NA due to it just requiring a solid group to play with... I get on 8pm PST and im.lucky for 1 SC pop every 30min... while roaming in RvR without any guarantee RvR will even progress to a zone lock. The few times I buck up and even prevent order zerg from zone lock, we don't get any def tick. Etc. Anyways... point being

Summary: Low pop in a game that requires grouping in large numbers to accomplish anything not considered minigame while also having high ping all makes it hard to build population.

[Haojin]

I didn't read the thread but all i can say is:

-Most of NA players are easymoders.
-NA population can afford to bring warband both destro and order side.
-Sadly Destro NA switched to order for farming empty zones.

[peterthepan3]

Essentially what Hao said ^ Aside from a few groups (Phantomdrake's group, few others that I forget), most are happy enough to wait for a miracle to get them what they want.

[th3gatekeeper]

I didn't read the thread but all i can say is:

-Most of NA players are easymoders.
-NA population can afford to bring warband both destro and order side.
-Sadly Destro NA switched to order for farming empty zones.

Idk about "easy moders"... I think that's a bit harsh. I think.people just wanna play with other players and NA destroy late nights is DEAD.

2 - depends on the time. 6pm pst is ok. 8pm is dead.

3 - people do what they are rewarded to do.... simple as that. Current rvr mechanics and rewards promotes what's we have today.

[Jaycub]

When you log in and the lakes are dead and it takes 10+ minutes for an sc pop you don't stick around unless you really like the game.

NA pop was fine before the DDOS, and never recovered after it. That really just tells you everything you need to know (it's a compounding population problem that will only be solved once enough ppl log on for healthy constant gameplay every night).


There is a serious sense of apathy in NA when it comes to attacking, because virtually all the 6 man guilds have groups on both sides and all it really takes to stop a full warband (which is going to be all pugs or alliance nucleus at best since NA is dead) is one or two of these 6 mans switching sides to farm the defense. And after the wipe RvR is done till the Russians log on at 2 in the morning (but most of them left so now we can even have that :^)

[Jaycub]

Idk about "easy moders"... I think that's a bit harsh. I think.people just wanna play with other players and NA destroy late nights is DEAD.

It's just yuropeons mad at our superior freedom and way of life, so they have to insult our communities in online games to lash out and escape from their globalist/communist hellscape :^)

[scatterthewinds]

getting to t4 too tedious. Dead lakes, slow pops, slow pve grinding since patch. Alt tab into a movie while you wait for a pop and then alt tab back to find you missed one and have quitter debuff. Go make dinner, look at time and see you have 1 hour before you need to sleep to wake up for work. Decide if you actually want to play/watch something else or sit around waiting for a pop. Alt-f4. Browse forum while watching movie.

[freshour]

Yeah I can definitely see that a game designed to support a lot of people gets kinda slow when you have a super small NA population. It used to be sorta be that SC's were the escape of that but for some reason the last year has done that in and I don't really know why.

Like when I started playing a bit more than a year ago, at night all that we could really do was SC's. But they actually popped pretty dang fast. The NA pop now seems to not wanna do SC's as much because either there is a premade and the pug sc is cancer. Or they have a roam group and are fighting Avocetti's group in the lake due to AAO or some variation of this. Hmmm any other opinions?

[Darosh]

There is a serious sense of apathy in NA when it comes to attacking, because virtually all the 6 man guilds have groups on both sides and all it really takes to stop a full warband (which is going to be all pugs or alliance nucleus at best since NA is dead) is one or two of these 6 mans switching sides to farm the defense. And after the wipe RvR is done till the Russians log on at 2 in the morning (but most of them left so now we can even have that :^)

Spoiler:

The marked part in the quote is the actual issue. If the population around would sort its **** out, things would actually turn out just fine, as once a proper competition (please, don't throw stones at me for uttering the c-word) is estabilished people would pick up the game again; new players would be more inclined to stick around as theres no more roflstomp or circlejerk happening anymore...

Its a selfmade-problem that no amount of tampering can fix ~ as long the community doesn't pick up on how the game works there will ALWAYS be said roflstomps and circlejerks that will turn the game into a chore for everyone.
Not to mention that said roflstomps and circlejerks contribute to the perception that the gear makes the difference, not the coordination involved ~ which subsequently kicks the pugging and burnout into overdrive; those that get the gear - if they stick around long enough (= months if they pug and due to the single-zone-campaign) - will feel let down once they notice that it doesn't help them overcome these struggles, those that don't get the gear in what they consider an "appropriate amount of time" will immediately leave the game.
With both of these kind of pugs leaving the game, the roflstomp and ciclejerk picks up a notch and the cycle continues.

You could literally hand out gear to everyone and the issue at would persist in an even worse form, as people would then be even more up in arms about balance than they are now, in an attempt to find the cause of their misery; the reason why they hit release 24/7 without any progress made in the zones.
You could open up mutliple zones and you'd enable all of the above (aswell as the other issues pointed out throughout the thread) on an ever larger scale.
You could drastically reduce the time and effort needed to flip stuff, and you'd completly kill off ORvR as everyone - yet again - abides by the above.

Take the big guilds and 6mans for example, they don't engage in fairweather-play or leave the game because of the things that are most often lamented about, but simply because they get bored (everyone needs a break from the game, from time to time) or are simply too busy to play.
Aside from that, in T2 and T3 times we did not have this population issue for two simple reason:
First of all, people considered the progression of the server development as their very own, they had enough leeway - by virtue of perception - to discard whatever "grind" and hardship; circlejerk and roflstomp, they encountered whilst pugging to magically change the moment T4 hits.
Secondly, there were no community related fallouts back then (Bretin/Teinhala incidents).

It ultimately is - and will be - an community effort to get this PvP centric game working the way it is supposed to work, the Devs can just do so much; even incentivising x,y or z won't help much at this point.
If we had people like Ocara and Gdy leading 24/7 pugs on both sides, or just about anyone (guilds or 6mans) picking up a set amount pugs per day/session to show them the difference things would look very diffrent ~ tho, especially the latter is a bit more tricky; the people in charge would have to drop some of their members/their requirements and be more lenient.
It really is all about that first time someone actually plays in a proper group that makes, rather than breaks their drive to play the game.

TLDR: Super-grumpy broken recordness.

It'll take a very long time to regain numbers longterm - there is after all a steady influx of new players, but unless these new (and old) players are engaged properly they won't stick around (i.e.: instead of 6/10, only 2/10 will stick around if their first impression of T4 is left uncontested).

Abbd.: Once cities are in you'll very likely see the population explode in all timeslots, as with the cities there will be a proper meta-progression like there was in T2 and T3 times.


Abbd.:
Note:
I cannot unterstand, and moreso refuse to do so, why it is that if theres only a low population in the NA timeslot, with the ever same people around, these very same people make no effort to finally properly group up and put up a proper fight.
The last time I queued for SCs during NA, there have always been the same 11 people in solo queue complaining about the occasional premade farming them - and if it isn't a premade they complain about, its the matchmaking.
Like... really? Common sense isn't their strong suit, it certainly is not - after hours, days, weeks and even months of solo queueing along side each other, one would think they might grasp it at some point or another; sooner than later.