Guild Wars 2

I’d just like to offer the feedback that I’m seeing more and more monopolization of the Silverwastes zone by the people who insist on repeating extended “chest runs” over and over again, to the exclusion of the event aspects of the zone. In my mind, it has become the new Champ train. Perhaps if the locations of the chests were more random, and considerably fewer, we could keep the opportunity to find random loot without allowing it to take over what I assume was the primary purpose of the zone, which was a war between the Pact and the Mordrem.

Or use the LFG to find an active map. SW is different as there’s always several maps going on with people doing events.

I haven’t noticed any issue with the chest farms. I recently completed my luminescent armor, and finding event maps was no issue. I think it is far healthier for the community for this “champ farm” to be in the Silverwastes. Take it away, and the farmers will just move on to some other place that will likely bother people. At least in SW they can be separated from the players who want to do events.

Anets light bulb way to enhance player retention.. egg timer World Boss trains, CS and Frosty champ trains + failfarming obviously weren’t keeping the numbers above the bean counter’s line so they introduced SW rather than .. you know, developing better content with a higher replay value… but no, shovel farming fits in nicely with the “we don’t think players want the swing a sword, swing a sword again and again” so we will use shovels instead.
I just tend to avoid SW all together these days and let the masses dig holes all day long.

I always see people in LFG looking for event maps or chest maps. Though sometimes there are lulls in player activity so it’s hard to find an active SW map at all.

Most of the chest train maps I’ve been to have turned into event maps after the shovels were exhausted or the tag leaves and nobody else was able to step in. And then sometimes they turn back into a chest train after VW is defeated and people are through with the labyrinth.

As for what you’re suggesting…don’t they already sort of do that with Dry Top? There are chests available there, but they’re only visible during the sandstorms so the only trains that pop up there are event trains that go from one champ to the other.

I’ve thought about this as well. Not really sure why it was different than dry top, as in chest farming only available at a certain time. I could see it being available after vw and before timeout, maybe with extra time added between the two.

I don’t know if that would be feasible or not.

Most days, I run the jumping puzzle at about the same time. There’s no particular pattern to what’s going on in the random map I get sent to. Sometimes, it’s in time out, sometimes, it’s just a few people working on chieves and running events. Sometimes, it’s a PUGly breach/vw map. And just sometimes, it’s a chest run.

In other words, I think it’s just luck of the draw that you’re seeing chest runs more often this week than last.

Indeed there are alot of different silverwastes maps at the moment, because alot of people doing the events and others the chest farm. The chest farm is very easy and profitable though, so no wonder why many people do it. You can check out this video for a basic chest farm run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p458deUYHY

Bloodstealer.5978:

Anets light bulb way to enhance player retention.. egg timer World Boss trains, CS and Frosty champ trains + failfarming obviously weren’t keeping the numbers above the bean counter’s line so they introduced SW rather than .. you know, developing better content with a higher replay value… but no, shovel farming fits in nicely with the “we don’t think players want the swing a sword, swing a sword again and again” so we will use shovels instead.
I just tend to avoid SW all together these days and let the masses dig holes all day long.

It’s not really so much ANet designing the game that way so much as players finding paths of least resistance.

Just recently did 6 hours in silverwastes couple days ago cause of the crappy golem week. Anyways I was on the same map the entire time, 3 map event completions went on before it turned into a chest run map. After two hours and ran out of shovels and the commander leading left to eat, it turned back into an event map again.

It actually was a nice break in between just farming chest, that’s the longest I managed to stay in silverwastes in one sitting. Both type of maps are always on lfg so I don’t see a reason to change the map up.

dovgie.8321:

I’d just like to offer the feedback that I’m seeing more and more monopolization of the Silverwastes zone by the people who insist on repeating extended “chest runs” over and over again, to the exclusion of the event aspects of the zone. In my mind, it has become the new Champ train. Perhaps if the locations of the chests were more random, and considerably fewer, we could keep the opportunity to find random loot without allowing it to take over what I assume was the primary purpose of the zone, which was a war between the Pact and the Mordrem.

Monopolization ? Lolwut ? With a system that allow you to create new maps over and over ?

If you don’t like chest farm, don’t jump on a map that’s doing it. Get out, and enter silverwastes again, you’ll most probably get a new version, and start taxi people in for events. Problem solved.

CureForLiving.5360:

Bloodstealer.5978:

Anets light bulb way to enhance player retention.. egg timer World Boss trains, CS and Frosty champ trains + failfarming obviously weren’t keeping the numbers above the bean counter’s line so they introduced SW rather than .. you know, developing better content with a higher replay value… but no, shovel farming fits in nicely with the “we don’t think players want the swing a sword, swing a sword again and again” so we will use shovels instead.
I just tend to avoid SW all together these days and let the masses dig holes all day long.

It’s not really so much ANet designing the game that way so much as players finding paths of least resistance.

Of course it was designed that way.. why else have them in the first place.
ANET know the game was suffering a lull and would continue to do so with a content drought looming while working on HoT, so they simply introduced something that would tweak players appetites for easywin looting.
As I said it was a lightbulb moment and has likely proven more successful than actually putting out better developed content whilst taking up a lot less time and effort.
A chest farm that can reward 30-50 chests in 20mins and then repeat throughout the whole day is just a simple brainwash to keep players logged in for longer. The longer players are in the more chance a gem sale might occur. Without this path od least resistance I am confident the map would be no more populated than Queensdale is now.
In fact the only maps I see with a reasonable population and a number of map copies is basically farming maps like CS or Frosty. The only other time a map sees an influx is when it comes up on daily event rotation or the World Boss egg timer alarm goes off before quickly emptying back to normal a few minutes later.

Bandit Chests should only be available during timeout, and (limited per day)shovels should be sold for crests. Not only as a way to promote event completion but to balance the effects of chest farming, without actually nerfing the loot. Also wouldn’t be a bad crest sink either, which will probably be needed soon.

Chest runs are fun…………………..

You have to run events in order to get the shovels that allow you to run a chest train.

What?
I find it 10 times harder to get into a train map than an event map because train maps fill fast whereas the event people are lazy and don’t want to join until it’s like 4/4 75%
And I say that as someone who likes to do both

BrooksP.4318:

Bandit Chests should only be available during timeout, and (limited per day)shovels should be sold for crests. Not only as a way to promote event completion but to balance the effects of chest farming, without actually nerfing the loot. Also wouldn’t be a bad crest sink either, which will probably be needed soon.

Wouldn’t have the impact you think it would. Dry top’s schedule and event structure includes a lot of champ farming, which is the main motivating factor behind its popularity prior to Silverwaste. During the sand storm, the champ train and loot farm continues except it now includes chests, and a couple of extra bosses to dictate the zerg’s path in that 20 min window. But the goal of the players was always the Champ train, as that had the lot we really wanted.

What Silver waste did was cut out the middle man of the sandstorm, and introduced the Shovels (which I’ll go into shortly). The main intent was to break up the schedule, and allow players to speed up the Breach event by completing tasks. There was also a secondary objective with the Mordrem legendarys that you would only have good odds of seeing at higher Fort levels. Because of the initial achievement farm, huge focus was put on Fort prep levels and Ox escorts to coax the Legendaries to spawn.

This is where your idea won’t change anything. The main reason chest trains started is because of the effort needed to collect shovels. This essentially caused us to stumble upon the idea that its insanely efficient to have 1 shovel open 1 chest, which gets used by 30+ people. It also lowers the mob risk, enables zerg utility (like Portals), Swiftness stacking, and drive-by events for bonus crests (for keys).

Even if shovels were made a crest purchase, people would still do chest trains for its pile of other benefits; which now include being able to get EVERY AVAILABLE CHEST on the circuit due to its spawn behavior. When people were shoveling chests randomly, the mix of spawn timers and node shuffling made locating active nodes harder- because of a good chance of a node going active after you’ve already walked past it. So by covering the whole map in one run, you have the best chances of encountering every active node in the area before they despawn or move. If several nodes are live in the immediate area, the zerg scatters to dig and collect them all, and then re-coalesces on one point before moving on. A commander tag significantly improves this further, by having a beacon to bring new people into the train, as well as easy convergence of the existing one. All the commander has to do is stop for 10-15 seconds every couple minutes to let everyone regroup; and can realistically meet that requirement by stopping to kill a Vet or Champ.

tl:dr Forts are achievement farming, chests are for actual loot farming. And the only other incentive we have for doing Forts is to get shovels for the chest train. If we didn’t need the shovels, we wouldn’t even do anything else other then Breach and Vinewrath just for the periodic mental break or change of pace.

They need to make a chest train mini game in LA. Keep chests in SW only visible to people in the party that opens the chest. Promotes groups of people working together and they won’t have enough shovels to run around a map for hours in large zergs.
Also I’m tired of seeing in map chat “chest or events?”. This is a win win.

Ayrilana.1396:

Or use the LFG to find an active map. SW is different as there’s always several maps going on with people doing events.

My experience with this aspect of SW play has been spotty, at least in NA. “Always” is really, “sometime.” Regardless, using megaserver shards to compensate for conflict in player intent is a workaround for inferior zone design. I don’t expect SW to change, but it’s my hope ANet learned something (finally) about player behavior and uses that information when designing zone features and events in HoT.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Or use the LFG to find an active map. SW is different as there’s always several maps going on with people doing events.

My experience with this aspect of SW play has been spotty, at least in NA. “Always” is really, “sometime.” Regardless, using megaserver shards to compensate for conflict in player intent is a workaround for inferior zone design. I don’t expect SW to change, but it’s my hope ANet learned something (finally) about player behavior and uses that information when designing zone features and events in HoT.

Things may have changed since March/April when I really last played the game. From the times I happened to step into a SW map, I never got into one for chest farms.

OP you realize that SW and Dry Top are a preview to what H.O.T maps will be like?

Ayrilana.1396:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Or use the LFG to find an active map. SW is different as there’s always several maps going on with people doing events.

My experience with this aspect of SW play has been spotty, at least in NA. “Always” is really, “sometime.” Regardless, using megaserver shards to compensate for conflict in player intent is a workaround for inferior zone design. I don’t expect SW to change, but it’s my hope ANet learned something (finally) about player behavior and uses that information when designing zone features and events in HoT.

Things may have changed since March/April when I really last played the game. From the times I happened to step into a SW map, I never got into one for chest farms.

Event completion is part of an incremental reward system that is zone-specific and short term by comparison to long-term goals like Asc. or Legendary Weapons. As the zone ages, the event rewards become less desirable as people complete those goals. While event completion does support chest runs (crests for keys; shovels from event rewards), it’s possible to do events once and get enough (especially shovels in a run group) for more than one chest run. Over time, the demand for event maps will lessen, but the only way for chest farming to go out-of-vogue would be for a more lucrative farm to crop up elsewhere.

Silverwastes, chest farms, and other champion bag farms are ruining GW2s economy, forcing players who just want to enjoy the game, but still progress to something, do them, in order to get anywhere. Those chests in Silverwastes should be more rare, and or even removed.

Sorlis.9238:

Silverwastes, chest farms, and other champion bag farms are ruining GW2s economy, forcing players who just want to enjoy the game, but still progress to something, do them, in order to get anywhere. Those chests in Silverwastes should be more rare, and or even removed.

Working as intended and players are free to find a new map that isn’t chest farming, you play your way, chest farmers play their way. Everyone needs to learn too get along!!

JediYoda.1275:

Sorlis.9238:

Silverwastes, chest farms, and other champion bag farms are ruining GW2s economy, forcing players who just want to enjoy the game, but still progress to something, do them, in order to get anywhere. Those chests in Silverwastes should be more rare, and or even removed.

Working as intended and players are free to find a new map that isn’t chest farming, you play your way, chest farmers play their way. Everyone needs to learn too get along!!

So when I work a map from 0 to VW and then someone says “chest run” and starts to taxi and I have to leave to find a new map that is fair? Then when you lfg all you see is Chest farm, bring shovels, need commander for chest farm etc.. I have no problem with chests I just am tired of losing my hero of the wastes because people want a easy farm.

I know lots of people complain about the repetitiveness of the events but I really enjoy playing in SW. I play there more than anywhere else and I have no trouble finding an event map. I don’t really see any need to change this map.

dovgie.8321:

I’d just like to offer the feedback that I’m seeing more and more monopolization of the Silverwastes zone by the people who insist on repeating extended “chest runs” over and over again, to the exclusion of the event aspects of the zone. In my mind, it has become the new Champ train. Perhaps if the locations of the chests were more random, and considerably fewer, we could keep the opportunity to find random loot without allowing it to take over what I assume was the primary purpose of the zone, which was a war between the Pact and the Mordrem.

I join in on them now and then as a break from the usual but I would rather be doing the normal events. It seems like there are less people doing the events when there is a chest run going on.

Menadena.7482:

dovgie.8321:

I’d just like to offer the feedback that I’m seeing more and more monopolization of the Silverwastes zone by the people who insist on repeating extended “chest runs” over and over again, to the exclusion of the event aspects of the zone. In my mind, it has become the new Champ train. Perhaps if the locations of the chests were more random, and considerably fewer, we could keep the opportunity to find random loot without allowing it to take over what I assume was the primary purpose of the zone, which was a war between the Pact and the Mordrem.

I join in on them now and then as a break from the usual but I would rather be doing the normal events. It seems like there are less people doing the events when there is a chest run going on.

If you are in an chest run map, there are indeed barely people who are doing the normal events.

Two.1627:

So when I work a map from 0 to VW and then someone says “chest run” and starts to taxi and I have to leave to find a new map that is fair? Then when you lfg all you see is Chest farm, bring shovels, need commander for chest farm etc.. I have no problem with chests I just am tired of losing my hero of the wastes because people want a easy farm.

Hero of the Wastes buffs magic find. What regular use is it in the ordinary event map other than maybe the few chests at the end of VW and maybe the large chest? The event mobs don’t drop loot, and magic find doesn’t effect the pop-up chests, so I don’t see the problem of losing the buff if you aren’t chest training.

If you want to do events, use the LFG to find an event map.
If you want to do chestfarms, use the LFG to find a chestfarm map.

That’s what I do when I go to SW. I do both events and chestruns.
(I think they are both fun…‘blasphemy!!’ :O :O )

If I enter a map that’s quiet or on time-out and I want to do events, I either search the LFG or start a LFG myself asking people to come in and start the VW events with me. I simply start one myself. For me this works almost every time.

If I’m looking for a chestfarm (cf) map I use the LFG to find a cf map. If there is none and I have enough shovels I start my own LFG asking for a cf commander. I also have some chestfarm commanders in my friendslist who I can whisper. If I can’t find a cf map I try again later.

I would never demand everyone in the map I enter to change their ways to my preference. I simply ask what’s going on and change maps if needed.

I see this thread as a: “Don’t ‘fix’ what does not need fixing” thread..

shaquinna.2869:

If you want to do events, use the LFG to find an event map.
If you want to do chestfarms, use the LFG to find a chestfarm map.

That’s what I do when I go to SW. I do both events and chestruns.
(I think they are both fun…‘blasphemy!!’ :O :O )

If I enter a map that’s quiet or on time-out and I want to do events, I either search the LFG or start a LFG myself asking people to come in and start the VW events with me. I simply start one myself. For me this works almost every time.

If I’m looking for a chestfarm (cf) map I use the LFG to find a cf map. If there is none and I have enough shovels I start my own LFG asking for a cf commander. I also have some chestfarm commanders in my friendslist who I can whisper. If I can’t find a cf map I try again later.

I would never demand everyone in the map I enter to change their ways to my preference. I simply ask what’s going on and change maps if needed.

I see this thread as a: “Don’t ‘fix’ what does not need fixing” thread.

Actually, I disagree. LFG is a workaround for poor design — unless the design intent was for the zone to — over time — feature less and less event shards and more farm shards. That was the OP’s point. However, I suspect that this issue will end up being a “Don’t fix what’s becoming passé.”

I’ve also thought that Chest spawns should be more during Time out, choose to Champ farm, Chest farm or Labyrinth.

During Foothold and Vinewrath assault, there should be less chest spawns.
Since I’d like to use the Perseverance and Hero of the Wastes buffs to the events, not loose them when people on map choose to do hour long chest farms.