Do players really think most people sit in fleet and do nothing?

[TurokDarkstar]

Reasons why fleet is indicative of population:

 

• PvPers Que from either fleet or ship because of epic load times.
• PvPers que from fleet to have quick access to PvP vendors before and after fights.
• PvEers look for groups at fleet.
• PvE content starts from fleet.
• Crafters have access to mail, market and bank from fleet.
• Most dailies are offered at fleet.
• Top tier vendors are on fleet.
  

 

Players go AFK on fleet while waiting for most of the above content to become available.

[Athrins]

Reasons why fleet is indicative of population:

 

• PvPers Que from either fleet or ship because of epic load times.
• PvPers que from fleet to have quick access to PvP vendors before and after fights.
• PvEers look for groups at fleet.
• PvE content starts from fleet.
• Crafters have access to mail, market and bank from fleet.
• Most dailies are offered at fleet.
• Top tier vendors are on fleet.
  

 

Players go AFK on fleet while waiting for most of the above content to become available.

 

In a game where almost everyone has an alt. character, end-gamers at any given time sitting in fleet is not a very reliable way of measuring population. I spend maybe 10% or less time on the fleet while playing and I have 2 50's.

 

I do dailies and queue for PvP regularly on my 50's, but mostly play my sub-50's doing quests on other planets and trying to get a group for a FP once in a while.

 

I only stay in fleet when crafting or browsing the GTN, which is about once a day for maybe 15-90 mins tops and popping in and out of WZ's at the same time.

 

My server usually have around 60-90 people on at peak times nowadays, down from about 90-160 a few weeks ago. While FP's are usually a bit hard to find groups for, PvP and heroics are rarely an issue.

 

But then, I'm not very concerned with having hundreds of people everywhere as I solo a lot, mainly during off-peak times. I like my stories and solo-queues for PvP.

[mypadinla]

Ahh, Leggomy of Brandywine you never cease to amaze me.

 

^^^^^^^^^^

[Leggomy]

On my server, at least 1/3 of the current population (at least Republic side) will be on the Fleet, at any given time.

 

The planets average about 10-20 people per planet (which is pretty low) at normal times.

 

There will be about 80 people on the Fleet at close to peak times.

 

Also, for those who que for Warzones, the Fleet allows the quickest access to the PVP Vendor, quests, the GTN, Flashpoints, and Operations.

 

And, the quickest load times.

 

Im just curious how you know at any given time what the entire population of your server is doing.

[Nywac]

Im just curious how you know at any given time what the entire population of your server is doing.

 

Learn to use /Who and its not hard to determine where everyone is lol learn to use the game.

[Leggomy]

Learn to use /Who and its not hard to determine where everyone is lol learn to use the game.

 

So you know for a fact when you hit that /who that everyone on your server who logs in was online at that particular time? Can we see your data on your research? I mean really come on man you have no idea what 1/3 of the population on your server is doing.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Leggomy

[Nywac]

So you know for a fact when you hit that /who that everyone on your server who logs in was online at that particular time? Can we see your data on your research? I mean really come on man you have no idea what 1/3 of the population on your server is doing.

 

No but i know that searching u on google brings me to a couple places where your designated as a joke and a fanboi so keep on going with how u know so much all of a sudden and /who works rather well at any given time to see whos on what planet if your smart enough to type in planet names and see whats up at peak times obviously all u do is troll and all anyone has to do to see that is to look up your posts and how much time u spend here trolling EVERY day how would u know what goes on in game anyways as it seems u spend all your time here looking for stuff to be emo about and Up your Swtor fanboi status .

[Nywac]

So you know for a fact when you hit that /who that everyone on your server who logs in was online at that particular time? Can we see your data on your research? I mean really come on man you have no idea what 1/3 of the population on your server is doing.

 

Also this is like the 10th post of u saying that people dont know what 1/3 of their population is doing do u have #'s and data to support that we dont know what 1/3 of the pop on our servers are doing? what server do u play on? do u even know oh wait u play on the forum server thats right because u spend more time here than the mods.

[zuile]

I am wondering this because I see a lot of people citing fleet all the time and how many people are there. Why would this be any measure of anything. I hit fleet get what I need done and move on. I spend most of my time in my ship actually or questing. So why would anyone base their opinions on how many people are afk in fleet?

 

Because most of a FP group will be composed of people who were on the fleet or solely of people on the fleet. It's also the location with the most people in the game, I've never seen the fleet not have the most people on it out of all the locations on my server. The only time I ever leave fleet is to do dailies, FPs, Ops and pvp.

 

Personally I think all you "well I never do anything in fleet so you can't use that to measure pop" people are actually in the minority and mostly irrelevant thus yes we can measure server pop by how many are on fleet, you guys are just annoyed that you're ignored or something.

[Ghaiana]

I spent maybe 5% of my time on the fleet (just to train or get/turn in quests), I never read general chat when I am on the fleet, because it's just spam mostly (chat on planets is more interesting). I see more people on some planets than on the fleet, I queue PvP from any place I am.

[AHChrist]

I guess I could leave the fleet and do some dailies on Illum. But guess what...doing that wants me to quit the game more. 20 minutes worth of air-lock and load times. Then I get there and try to do some quest that has been bugged since release. I do the others and discover the tokens I got are completely useless. The equipment is junk and takes like 500000 dailies to get a piece.

 

 

When is the next GW2 beta?

[Valkirus]

I guess I could leave the fleet and do some dailies on Illum. But guess what...doing that wants me to quit the game more. 20 minutes worth of air-lock and load times. Then I get there and try to do some quest that has been bugged since release. I do the others and discover the tokens I got are completely useless. The equipment is junk and takes like 500000 dailies to get a piece.

 

 

When is the next GW2 beta?

 

Lol! I can feel for ya tho. Your comments are closer to the truth than some know. There is this one set of two mobs in a heroic daily I do in Belsavis, which bug out and make doing that one part anoying. And yeah..the amount of commendations you need for the value of the items you get is silly high.

[Blackardin]

I am wondering this because I see a lot of people citing fleet all the time and how many people are there. Why would this be any measure of anything. I hit fleet get what I need done and move on. I spend most of my time in my ship actually or questing. So why would anyone base their opinions on how many people are afk in fleet?

 

There are some that do not think at all, but react viscerally.

 

Everyone, including the development team understands fully and completely that there are a number of low populations servers that require merger.

 

There is a sect of the population that, as with everything else, take that as a sign that the sky will soon fall upon us, and then proceed to demand instant resolve while understanding little of the actual problem, or the immense undertaking that server mergers will entail.

 

Their measure of population becomes a snapshot of fleet at the time of their choosing, and their torch to bear is a sign declaring the development team to be lazy and uncaring. In short, drama above reason whenever possible. If I were to take a wild eyed guess, I would suspect that a look at their post history would reveal a number of early posts demanding server expansion because "everyone is caught in endless queue times".

 

One must take this board, much of the ramblings here with a grain of salt. Very little is supported by examination or fact.

[Leggomy]

Because most of a FP group will be composed of people who were on the fleet or solely of people on the fleet. It's also the location with the most people in the game, I've never seen the fleet not have the most people on it out of all the locations on my server. The only time I ever leave fleet is to do dailies, FPs, Ops and pvp.

 

Personally I think all you "well I never do anything in fleet so you can't use that to measure pop" people are actually in the minority and mostly irrelevant thus yes we can measure server pop by how many are on fleet, you guys are just annoyed that you're ignored or something.

 

I think it is most people you know that are there. Most of the people I know avoid fleet because really there is not much to do besides idle. When we do flashpoints or whatever we go get in the FP not sit there for hours then go. You keep stating that since you did a /who sometime on a server someplace that is the whole population. Sorry but just because you say it does not make it true. You have no basis for your claims other than you say it so it must be.

[Blackardin]

I guess I could leave the fleet and do some dailies on Illum. But guess what...doing that wants me to quit the game more. 20 minutes worth of air-lock and load times. Then I get there and try to do some quest that has been bugged since release. I do the others and discover the tokens I got are completely useless. The equipment is junk and takes like 500000 dailies to get a piece.

 

 

When is the next GW2 beta?

 

Case in point. Twenty minutes of airlocks and and load times? Useless tokens, all quests bugged, Five hundred thousand tokens per piece.

 

No offense friend. I'm not intentionally picking on you, just demonstrating the hysteria that sweeps across this board like locus on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. I honestly shudder to think what would happen if some were faced with real crisis if doing dailies cause this much stress and anxiety.

 

....and the GW2 boards are equally inundated with like postings already.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Blackardin

[Valkirus]

I think it is most people you know that are there. Most of the people I know avoid fleet because really there is not much to do besides idle. When we do flashpoints or whatever we go get in the FP not sit there for hours then go. You keep stating that since you did a /who sometime on a server someplace that is the whole population. Sorry but just because you say it does not make it true. You have no basis for your claims other than you say it so it must be.

 

We? It seems you have no problems getttng others to do Flashpoints with and have therefor no need to sit in Fleet trying to get one. But donot assume this is the case with most of the complaints about the issue.

[Leggomy]

We? It seems you have no problems getttng others to do Flashpoints with and have therefor no need to sit in Fleet trying to get one. But donot assume this is the case with most of the complaints about the issue.

 

All you have to do is join a guild. You will find most people arent in fleet and never see you looking for groups. I think a cross server LFG tool would satisfy people who do not want to get into a guild or something. I dont know merging servers would be a good idea. If you had cross server grouping tools then the server populations becomes less important.

[Elwacko]

Does any of this really matter?

 

I sit in the fleet when waiting for the guild to get ready for Operations.

 

I sit in the fleet when doing GTN stuff.

 

I sit in the fleet being bored, cause I'm waiting on other things... like laundry.... (yeah...sad)

 

The fleet is the central hub of the game, and should be counted on as the "base" of server pop.

 

Some people think not, but, hey... if you want to count Hoth as the center point.. that's all you

[ShadowOfVey]

They may not sit and do nothing but yes, a ton of people are in fleet.

 

I'm in a large guild with lots of people on at all hours. I bring up the guild window and the player locations are either the fleet itself, warzones they entered while queue'd from the fleet, and pve stuff they entered from the fleet.

 

Hell at level 50 unless you want to do dailies there's not even any real reason to enter your ship. I'm glad too, because I hate the loading in this game.

Edited May 5, 2012 by ShadowOfVey

[zuile]

I think it is most people you know that are there. Most of the people I know avoid fleet because really there is not much to do besides idle. When we do flashpoints or whatever we go get in the FP not sit there for hours then go. You keep stating that since you did a /who sometime on a server someplace that is the whole population. Sorry but just because you say it does not make it true. You have no basis for your claims other than you say it so it must be.

 

Evidence makes what I say true, also that was my first post in this thread, /who works fine it bugs a little sometime but I've never seen any major discrepancies between what it says and what I see. The who function is the best evidence we have of a server's population, whenever I /who population I check every planet and all the warzones, and the entire server, I normally do this multiple times a night. I won't measure everyone as that's impossible but that doesn't mean however that just because my measurement is not perfect that it is not reliable, except for edge cases when there's like 12 people online on entire server, fleet is 99% of the time the most populous zone. I don't judge things by what most people I know do like you seemingly do, I judge by what the best evidence available tells me, and the best evidence I can get tells me fleet has the most population, if your server has low fleet pop it's near guaranteed to be a low pop server.

 

I just checked my server and 100 people online, 21 on fleet, 8 in Denova, 8 in Novare Coast, a couple people in Ilum, Belsavis, Black Hole likely doing dailies, some 50s on random worls, couple in ships, space, just a while later Novare ended and fleet increased to 27. There were 20 50s on fleet, and 48 50s online total. So that's a quarter of the server population on fleet, and almost half the 50s.

 

So most people aren't on fleet, but fleet pop matters and is citable because it's the most important location in game it's where the action starts, it's where Pugs form up, it's where most PVPers hang about. It's fine that you dislike fleet and your circle does stuff other than hang around fleet, but don't act like just because of that that fleet pop is not one of most important indicators of a server's health in game.

Edited May 5, 2012 by zuile

[PremierNSeven]

All you have to do is join a guild. You will find most people arent in fleet and never see you looking for groups. I think a cross server LFG tool would satisfy people who do not want to get into a guild or something. I dont know merging servers would be a good idea. If you had cross server grouping tools then the server populations becomes less important.

 

You assume that joining a guild will solve all these fleet problems?

What happens if you join a guild without a good active community, but you like it because of the people you get to interact with, should you leave it because you have to PUG more often than not?

So you buck up and join a huge guild with 200+ members who runs FPs, PvP, HMs, and Ops. Now how do you get in on those? What if you don't like the people in the guild, or don't feel like a real part of their community? What if its just not the right place for you? Guess you have to suck it up and deal with it if you want to sit on your ship and craft.

 

Personally, I love going to the fleet and hanging out for a bit. I've never really been on a high population server (Colonel Tobin and Elysium) so typically, the Fleet has the highest population of any of the zones. Not the majority of the people online, but normally the highest population of any zone. Only other world that could ever compete for that would be Coruscant (for Republic) in my opinion.

 

It has been said over and over on this thread the many reasons that people hang out on the fleet:

- PvP Queue times & Vendors

- FP Hubs on the lower level (most of them)

- PvE and PvP Daily Hubs

- PvE Vendors of top tier gear

- Commendation Vendors

- Crafting Trainers, Crew Skill Vendors

- GTN

- The VIP area (except I've never seen anyone up there, Bioware really dropped the ball on that one, oh well)

 

With that being said, put your self in someone else's shoes OP. Say you're not in a guild, or in a guild that doesn't have a good active community (but you're happy there anyways) and you want to run a FP, or a HM or maybe want to get a kind of "premade" together to whoop some Imperial/Republic butt in PvP. What better place to do it than the fleet which is usually the highest populated zone on the server? What if you want to devote a good long session to just crafting items and putting them on the GTN, what better place to visit the crafting trainer (if needed) the crew skill vendor (if wanted) and the GTN (thats not neutral)? You could go to Dromund Kaas/Coruscant for all that I suppose, if that's your thing. Another scenario, what if you have a buddy in a different guild than you and you guys want to meet up to do an Ops and you are combining your two guilds for a co-op Ops run? It would be pretty easy to meet up on the fleet to get everything organized with all resources available. Not essential, but convienent. I hope you're getting the point I'm trying to make. The reason that people stay on the fleet is for its functionality and convienence. Its not essential to much, nor does everyone (or should everyone) hang out there.

 

As for the people who use the fleet population to get a general estimate as to how active the server is, what is the harm in that? It is statistically accurate, no. There are too many variables and the correct way to gather the data would be almost impossible for a singular player to do with the information available to you. However, there is no reason for people to think that the central hub doesn't correlate with overall server population. Is there evidence to back it up, not specific to the server however I am sure that we can devire that assumption based on other data.

Example: Assuming New York City is the Hub for the Northeast would their population show how populated the surrounding area is fairly accurately? Same thing for L.A., London, Paris, and any other major city in the world. Is it perfectly accurate? No. But it does give someone a general piece of information for them to take for their own.

 

So maybe the things discussed in this post, you disagree with. Awesome, glad that we have that right. I'm not trying to say you're wrong or make you change your mind. I am trying to show you why I think that way. And hopefully, some people will agree with me.