Embark Beach. Why?

I think they are looking ahead for when a large part of the population spends more time in GW2 than GW1. Even the population of the port cities will drop off sharply. Having a central meeting place would make it easier to find people doing quests in the same area as you, instead of hopping around just missing other searchers. For example, if I want to do Thunderhead Keep, I could find someone at Embark Beach that needs the Iron Mines and is then willing to do THK with me.

I'm for this idea.

The sentiment behind the idea is right, but I don't think it will work in practice.

It will move the games population to one outpost, and it will be full of trade spam (the lack of trade channel wont stop it obviously, as long as there is local chat of some kind).

What would be better, if they improved the party search dialog, possibly by allowing you to select mode, then campaign/mission. Show a LFG with those details.

If they do it right, it could be a good thing. Let there be a menu system that allows subdivisions (Kryta, Elona, Zaishen, misc etc.) and NO trade channel and it could work as the best idea to revive pugging/group formation.

Let the trade stay in Spamadan, LA and the other traditional trade outposts

The world is already desolate. Apart from the port cities and EotN, there are very few outposts (if none) with more than 1 district. And even before the introduction of heroes this was the case.
One month after Factions release, people had no problem getting a team of henchmen in Vizunah or Unwaking. Most of the Jungle missions are now ("now" being a big word since runners existed since a long long time ago) only touched by those aiming for a title or those who are completely new to this game and created a Prophecies character.

I like running around the world, getting every outpost, exploring every bit of map (except Elona, this was a pain >.< ).
There's 3 types of outposts : missions, trade, quests (in all other outposts, people are either afk or doing cartography or farming or Marhan's Grotto, but I think it's a dead outpost now too).
-Quests : very few
-Trade : port cities
-Missions (not counting elite missions) : half of them are empty, or close to (easy missions, fast missions, missions that can be skipped). For the rest it depends on when you play, but even then with heroes a lot of people don't bother looking for a group. And now with the future possibility of having 7 heroes, less people will be looking for a group.

That's why they want to regroup a lot of PvErs in a single outpost (already put the scenario in an older post)


I don't know if they are able to do it, but they could remove the trade icon next to a character name. No possibility of trading, less traders (let's not say "none"...there will always be someone trying to sell or buy things even if they have to move to another outpost to do so. But even then, people against trading in Embark Beach will make traders think they want to buy/sell their objects so they move out of the way).

Those without Nightfall and Eye of the North have a grand total of zero heroes, and those that do still need to play through enough content to unlock and level them.

Well, imagine you have 4 missions ready. One in Prophecies, one in Factions, one in Nightfall, and one of the mission/quests in Eye.

Instead going to one outpost and wait for a party for ONE, you go to one outpost and wait for ANY of them.

You could also form parties to do any thing else.
Dungeons, quests, vanquishing...

In GW2, there's no need for this. IF you are in one place, you are likely to do what's going on there, and you can do it either alone of with people.

In GW1, you can't check all districts in all regions. And you can't see people in explorables. So you either wait to do one thing, or leave and do something.

With this, the wait is reduced, since you can wait for many things.

It may not be the most needed thing right now by some, but many still need it, and once GW2 is out, this would concentrate all the players the most, so making parties becomes as easy as possible.

You guys can still find parties?
I seriously can't. I literally can either tell my dead guild to help me through something or I can use henchmen.
I also heard that in Embark Beach you can get heroes. Since I'm Prophecies only, if they mean campaign-indiscriminate heroes this would be a huge help.

If trade chat were shifted into its own text box, I'm sure it'd be okay to have traders in Embark Beach. It wouldn't speed up text in local chat if they configured it to where trade chat does not speed up/affect local [partying] chat.

A lot of the time, I may have several missions I'm interested in doing - and in some places, there are choices of missions to do next.

e.g. The 3 Prophesies Desert missions - doesn't matter what order they're done in, Nightfall's Nundu Bay/Jennah's Horde, Factions lux vs Kurz stuff, older missions I may not have got master's on for that character, etc.

If I'm just looking to find a group for any of the multiple options rather than one option in particular, somewhere like Embark Beach would be a godsend.

Hey, if I just want to find a group without actually caring what that group does (e.g. I wanted to socialise, help others out, etc), somewhere like Embark Beach would help.

Sure - if you know exactly what you want to do, by all means go direct to the outpost. But if you just want to find a group to do something with others rather than a group to do one specific thing, having one place to look rather than all over the 3 continents would surely be better...yes?

i agree
12chars

This. Is this that difficult for people to comprehend?

We've been asking for a global "LFG" panel for years. This is the next best thing.

Yup
Itll be spam central.

This is why they need to keep the trade channel.

I haven't heard anything about this until now, but this idea is a good one. A VERY good one. Why? Because you could have a bunch of people who need a specific quest/mission but are killing time trading in Spamadan or LA, or just socializing in GTOB, or just doing something completely different at the time. If you have one central hub and have a party search message out there looking for a quest/mission, you're much more likely to find someone else who needs that quest/mission but weren't actively looking for a group to do it.

All of my characters have tons of quests to do, but I can't be in every locale at the same time.

The game is already greatly empty except for in key places (most noticeably port towns). Embark Beach will make the player base easier to find.

Personally, I'd rather see the kinds of district (language district and continent districts) go down. I wouldn't mind it getting reduced to "American" "European" "International" and "Asian" - rather than having 3 kinds of Asian and, what, 8 kinds of European? But meh.

Bolded word is what shouldn't be necessary.

The last five times I went to do HP - which was a while ago - the district was empty except for one or two seemingly afk people. I was in American.

I'm not worried that it'll become a trade spamming place - though I'd hope people push that stuff to GToB (as it should be there instead of Kamadan, tbh). Just so long as they don't remove the trade channel, because I'd enjoy NOT being forced to see all the WTB and WTS.

Trading would probably be allowed in Embark beach and I am guessing this will be more popular.

You could trade while waiting to find a party buy stuff to equip yourself etc.

If you don't centralise everything there isn't much point having a central point.

I'm not bothered about Embark Beach, but I cant wait for the full hero parties coming with it.

Trade channel or not, I can almost assure you that trade spam will be a problem if the traders pack up and move to the new outpost. Anyone that's spent 5 minutes in any major town knows that lots of people find ways around the filter. We can sit there and report until our fingers fall off, but it's not going to fix the problem.

The best way to nip this issue in the bud would be to implement the auction house along with this and everything else they have planned. Since we have been begging for it for years, odds are pretty good that people would use it... or maybe I'm crazy? There isn't really a point in spamming an item for hours if it's in the system to be sold. There will be the occasional person telling everyone to look at their junk in the auction house, but I doubt it would be anything compared to the number of people trying to sell their stuff in local today.

Unless they plan to improve the party search and trading system, there's no way you can convince me that centralizing everything will be a good idea. Just thinking about it is giving me a headache! >_>

I'm not totally opposed to the idea of centralizing everything. I just wish they would address some other issues at the same time.

All the have to do is divide the party search window into 3 categories. Primary Quests, Secondary Quests, Missions. Then 4 sub categories for each of those. Tyria, Cantha, Elona, Eye of the North. Then again for each of those for each area.

PQ's
-Tyria
--Ascalon
--North Shiver
--Kryta
--Maguuma
--Desert
... Etc. For each campaign. That way all is organized!

Why? What do you mean why?
I wish they'd hurry up and do it soon, like, yesterday.

I've been LFG for days to do HM dungeons and still no group.
Outposts were so quiet that I even went to EotN outpost to LFG, and still no PUG.
Not even one other person who could bring their heroes along :P

*sigh*!