Too Many People / Fighting For Resources

Triumpf · January 2015

After about a week of playing this game I've noticed that there are too many people in this game; you can't go anywhere wthout someone jumping in front of you to grab your ore, treasure or runestone. It's ridiculous.

In many instances someone gets to the boss just before you and you miss out on nice loot. The game seems like a constant race to the finish line.

Other games take care of these problems by more servers / worlds , unique instances (WOW) or by having resources that do not deplete if someone jumps in front of you to grab the resource before you (GW2).

My question is: are there any plans to address these problems? If not I'm not sure investment (time and $) is worth it.

Shader_Shibes · January 2015

I'll hazard a guess here and say you are not in vet zones yet?

Triumpf · January 2015

Meaning?

Shader_Shibes · January 2015

You won't have that problem in vet zones.

Iago · January 2015

Vet zones are fairly vacant

Triumpf · January 2015

Could You elaborate?

jeevin · January 2015

The player population thins more the further you get into the game. By the time you get to high VR zones there are very few players there.

Iago · January 2015

jeevin wrote: »

The player population thins more the further you get into the game. By the time you get to high VR zones there are very few players there.

What he said

Triumpf · January 2015

And how long do you think that will last?

Iago · January 2015

Triumpf wrote: »

And how long do you think that will last?

Its been like that for the last year so I suspect it will be like that the next loooooong while

Rosveen · January 2015

Triumpf wrote: »

In many instances someone gets to the boss just before you and you miss out on nice loot.

Loot from bosses is instanced to you. If you contribute to the kill, either through damage (there's a minimum threshold, I don't remember exactly) or healing other players, you'll be able to loot the corpse.

I like having people around. Doing Gold I sometimes felt like I was the only person in the zone.

But yeah, they might have to consider closely monitoring the servers when ESO goes B2P so the phases don't get too crowded.

Shader_Shibes · January 2015

Im levelling a new toon, only level 16 atm, but i know what you mean. Personally i don't have a problem with it tbh, i just move elsewhere then come back another time. 1-50 levels are the best, i love seeing so many people roaming round the place, makes it feel like a living, breathing world.

On one of my vet toons i have a farming run that takes about 1.5 hours and i will be lucky if i see 2 people in that time

UrQuan · January 2015

This is something that varies greatly from zone to zone. The first full zones are by far the busiest, while the veteran zones are fairly empty (with Craglorn being the exception).

Triumpf · January 2015

OK, If it gets better, then I guess the investment is worth it. Still, it would be nice if the resources would be unique to you like in Guild Wars 2.

Khami · January 2015

Triumpf wrote: »

After about a week of playing this game I've noticed that there are too many people in this game; you can't go anywhere wthout someone jumping in front of you to grab your ore, treasure or runestone. It's ridiculous.

In many instances someone gets to the boss just before you and you miss out on nice loot. The game seems like a constant race to the finish line.

Other games take care of these problems by more servers / worlds , unique instances (WOW) or by having resources that do not deplete if someone jumps in front of you to grab the resource before you (GW2).

My question is: are there any plans to address these problems? If not I'm not sure investment (time and $) is worth it.

It's not a problem. I've seen this happen in every MMO I've played, yes even in WoW. One of the reasons why you see so little of node stealing in WoW at the low levels is because there really are not that many players leveling characters in WoW or was the case on the server I played on for 2 months.

ESO has 2 servers, WoW have dozens, so the population on one WoW server will be less than ESO because ESO has less servers.

And like others have said, farming for mats in the vet zones isn't a problem. Actually the vet zones are rather dead compared to the 1-50 zones. Outside of Craglorn.

I don't even bother to farm for mats in Craglorn unless I have a map from a crating writ.

Athas24 · January 2015

personally I've never experienced issues surrounding too many people in my way or anything like that outside of the first week or two of launch and during the ensuing bot-fest of 2014 that we had for a while there. It's only mildly annoying when you are doing the fighters and mages guild lines in the open world and someone kills the last mob or something and you don't hear the dialogue. Not much of a big deal though. I'd rather have overpopulation in comparison to under population and separate servers.

jeevin · January 2015

Triumpf wrote: »

OK, If it gets better, then I guess the investment is worth it. Still, it would be nice if the resources would be unique to you like in Guild Wars 2.

All good, it does get better. You're going to find that you get into the habit of collecting every resource that you see while adventuring

there's plenty to go around.

Triumpf · January 2015

Thanks everyone for the great comments

starkerealm · January 2015

Rosveen wrote: »

I like having people around. Doing Gold I sometimes felt like I was the only person in the zone. But yeah, they might have to consider closely monitoring the servers when ESO goes B2P so the phases don't get too crowded.

Weird... I see more people in gold than I did in silver.

TheShadowScout · January 2015

Yes, sometimes it feels like too many people are farming too few resources. But if you just shrug and move on, you'll find more resources in a different corner, sooner or later. Especially if you go to off the beaten track corners of the map...

And as has been said, in veteran levels its often rare to meet more then a handful of other players for hours...

cote-bmsb16_ESO · January 2015

Its really bad in Coldharbour.. Hollow City. There are people who go around spitefully leaving worms in place of bugloss or columbine. Its a great place to farm for alchemy ingredients, its just that the people are real *** bags.

starkerealm · January 2015

cote-bmsb16_ESO wrote: »

Its really bad in Coldharbour.. Hollow City. There are people who go around spitefully leaving worms in place of bugloss or columbine. Its a great place to farm for alchemy ingredients, its just that the people are real *** bags.

You mean in the city itself? Yeah, that's alchemy harvesting for the lazy, so it doesn't surprise me that someone would either deliberately troll there or farm up stacks on a character with a full inventory.

cote-bmsb16_ESO · January 2015

starkerealm wrote: »

cote-bmsb16_ESO wrote: »

Its really bad in Coldharbour.. Hollow City. There are people who go around spitefully leaving worms in place of bugloss or columbine. Its a great place to farm for alchemy ingredients, its just that the people are real *** bags.

You mean in the city itself? Yeah, that's alchemy harvesting for the lazy, so it doesn't surprise me that someone would either deliberately troll there or farm up stacks on a character with a full inventory.

I doubt they have full inventories, but I could be wrong. I've seen zone chat arguments flare up over worms and flowers. Even had a guy stop me from picking a columbine with only a worm in it --he was trying to get revenge on a different player.

SanderBuraas · January 2015

Triumpf wrote: »

OK, If it gets better, then I guess the investment is worth it. Still, it would be nice if the resources would be unique to you like in Guild Wars 2.

I don't agree with this. The fact that resources are actually picked up from the ground and not infinite sources is a really good feature - makes players actually search for them.

MasterSpatula · January 2015

Just wait until you get to the VR1 starter island. "Resources, resources everywhere, and not a soul in sight. IT'S MINE! IT'S ALL MIIIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!!!"

Triumpf · January 2015

Smepic wrote: »

Triumpf wrote: »

OK, If it gets better, then I guess the investment is worth it. Still, it would be nice if the resources would be unique to you like in Guild Wars 2.

I don't agree with this. The fact that resources are actually picked up from the ground and not infinite sources is a really good feature - makes players actually search for them.

They are not really "infinite resources". If I pick the resource it will still be there for you...but NOT for Me. Your choices should not affect my gameplay.

AlnilamE · January 2015

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Just wait until you get to the VR1 starter island. "Resources, resources everywhere, and not a soul in sight. IT'S MINE! IT'S ALL MIIIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!!!"

I know! And then the V6 which has ALL THE CHESTS!!!

Don't worry, OP. By the time you get to the third zone it will be much better.

And even in Stone falls, so many times I see people just running right past mats.... O_O

Elsonso · January 2015

Triumpf wrote: »

After about a week of playing this game I've noticed that there are too many people in this game; you can't go anywhere wthout someone jumping in front of you to grab your ore, treasure or runestone. It's ridiculous.

Other games take care of these problems by more servers / worlds , unique instances (WOW) or by having resources that do not deplete if someone jumps in front of you to grab the resource before you (GW2).

First, welcome to ESO!

The megaserver limits the number of people that you see in the game, so what you are seeing is already pared down from the full server population. You would not be able to handle the load if you saw everyone. The lag is horrible.

WoW limits the game using caps on server populations. On any given realm there might be a couple thousand people. Since each server spans the entire game, the population is typically spread out. It is unlikely that everyone will be in the same place at the same time, and the population at any given location will be manageable.

ESO limits using channel sizes. Everyone is on one of two servers and each area of the game is covered by one or more "channels". These channels serve to keep the population in an area low enough to manage. When the character enters an area, the character is assigned to a channel for that area. Each channel has a population cap of a few hundred people.

For example, there may be 100,000 players in Devon's Watch (Stonefalls) but due to the channel size limitations, you will only see a couple hundred of them.

Channel sizes seem to be set according to a balance between having enough people around so the world is busy but not too many so that there are performance problems.

Yes, you do compete with other players for resources, as I think you should in a game like this. However, that list of players is a fraction of the game population at any given moment. The easiest way to avoid the crowds is to go somewhere the crowds are not. A lot of people in this game are lazy. The further you get from a wayshrine, the fewer people you will find.

Nestor · January 2015

Shader_Shibes wrote: »

I'll hazard a guess here and say you are not in vet zones yet?

You don't even need to get to the Vet zones. I find farming to quite easy from Zone 2 on, rarely ever saw anyone else doing any farming.

UrQuan · January 2015

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Just wait until you get to the VR1 starter island. "Resources, resources everywhere, and not a soul in sight. IT'S MINE! IT'S ALL MIIIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!!!"

If Khenarthi's Roost is a VR zone for you... Oh man, it's a gold mine for resources and especially chests... Which makes it a gold mine for grand soul gems.

Zershar_Vemod · January 2015

Shader_Shibes wrote: »

I'll hazard a guess here and say you are not in vet zones yet?

^ This.

I rarely see another player in any of the Silver or Gold vet zones. I've had days with zone chats not having anything in them too haha. Resources, treasure chests, etc. are everywhere for the taking.