DevTalk: Detailed Analysis of Depopulation in Limsa/Grid and How to Fix It

[indira]

they should just lock main stuff to your characters city states, problem sloved.

if your ul'dah you cant get your main content started unless your at home(ul'dah)

[Dreadnought]

People need to be less afraid to spend a little time walking. It's not even a extremly long trip on foot.

lol what? what NEEDS to be done is to release a game with a mount system, not be the only one in the world without one and have its gamers tell other gamers to deal with it cuz its not that bad.
it should not take me an hour to get from one city to another, i dont care what your argument is.

[whoopeeragon]

Not to mention, storyline-wise, all players have to gravitate towards Ul'dah to start the higher-ranked storyline quests anyway. That's another concept I really didn't understand, the need to place everything at Ul'dah to start off with. Limsa Lominsa is pretty much neglected after it's initial quests, because no following quests involve going back to Vylbrand at all. Gridania is a bit better off, since some quests are involved there, but there's a very heavy bias to how the storyline revolves around Ul'dah.

If they create more quests for the story, and implement them around Limsa Lominsa and Gridania, it would probably be better as well for a small part of the problem. Perhaps not so much a huge issue compared to the others you've mentioned, Renta, but I still find it slightly aggravating.

[Viridiana]

A number of things would help immensely, most of which have already been mentioned. As long as Uldah maintains an economic stranglehold, not many people are going to branch out. The downside to the other two markets, of course, is that products in them rarely get seen, meaning they rarely sell. I'd say that, at an absolute minimum, the search feature needs to be linked. At least, that'd be the minimum if the ward system weren't more or less doomed. As Renta (and myself, and others) said, scrapping the NPCs and turning it into a text system would be best. Even with that, though, the cities should have a common economy.

Also, we need better travel options. Anima doesn't hurt me at the moment, because I only get to play on weekends, usually, but I'm sure most people are hurting for it as is. With the increased demands to go from city to city, something needs to change. There's no reason that every trip between cities should require a choice between "finite resource A" (Anima) and "finite resource B" (Time). Some quick, easy way to get form point A to point B, even if it costs gil, is vital to seeing people spread out more.

Another vital component is some way to communicate with non-LS-mates who aren't in the immediate area. Some sort of chat channel for trading that at least operates within the cities. Keep it optional, of course. I mean, here I am asking for it, and even I wouldn't want to be in it all the time. The fact is, though, that trading will always allow for more options than a simple market ward or auction house. The problem with trading at the moment, though, is that it's limited in how far you can advertise. You can either ask LS mates, or you can ask whoever's within /sh distance. I'm personally not fond of selling things to LS mates, and I know I'm not the only one. I also hate /sh and almost refuse to use it (fewer people agree with that part, I'm sure ). Even if I did use /sh, it wouldn't help at all if I were in Grid and the only people who want to buy the item are in LL and Uldah. I want some way to tell them "Hey, I'm in Grid and have a (blank) that I want to get rid of. What do you have for trade?" Or "Hey, I want that weapon you're selling, but I don't have the 12m gil you're asking for. Would you take shards/crystals/clusters/myfirstbornchild instead?" Yes, I'm sure a chat channel would be used just as often for random-ass conversations. Most people, including me, will probably hop in it just long enough to find a buyer/seller and then get out. It's still a feature I think belongs there.

[Rentahamster]

Even with a price history, if the RMT Corporations drive out the competition (e.g., having multiple retainers all price dump an item with super low price), individual players can't keep up with that. They will eventually give up and leave that market segment.

And then the RMT Corporation swoops in and jacks up the price.

Once they jack up the price, anyone can come back in and undercut them.

In the end, RMT are going to do whatever they can to make gil. In my view, it's better to ensure that players have a positive gameplay experience since a lot of anti-RMT measures only frustrate legitimate players and don't really have that much of a negative impact on RMT activity at all.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

I stayed in gridania or did leves all over. I pretty much level and grinded in the town my current class was in. I like grid. I like the forest look to it. the area reminds me of the white mountains. And the forests around it. It hs a zelda lost woods feel
And back story >.> which i found odd. but pleasing.

[KumaAkuma]

I fully disagree with the OP and YoshiP :/

I think everybody is in Uldah, because the server populations are too low. There shouldn't be made any effort to force people to other cities. There should be made more of an effort to get more people to play the game.

[Oibaf]

Great post, I agree with everything you've said. Unfortunately, SE will need a ridicolous amount of time to fix all that.

[Warlyx]

good post

[AuroraBorealis]

Many things you listed are a self-propagating. They result from having so many people in Ul'Dah. Better question, why did so many people come to Ul'Dah?

-Best leves
-Most guild halls
-Most convenient layout
-CENTRALLY LOCATED IN THE WORLD

They are already addressing the first point, and in discussions about the 3rd point. But im wondering how they will address the last point. They cant just move Ul'Dah. Also, we can assume that new classes will have their guilds in LL or Grid to try and balance that out.

when I first got on this game after the beta had ended none of these were a factor for me or my friends for moving to uldah. the only reason we started to go there was because Grid had terrible lag at release (this was later fixed but by then the damage had been done) and we had all been in the beta and had our fill of LL so the only choice we had was to all walk over to Ul'dah. there were alot of rumors we heard as well from others who started in Gridania that Ul'dah didn't have the lag that Gridania had so I am sure we weren't the only ones who headed to that city for that very reason.

By the time the lag issue had been fixed so many people were in Ul'dah that it didnt make sense to go back to Gridania

sorry if someone already said this, i read through most of the posts and didnt see it but i coulda missed it still