Guild Wars 2

Why (Silverwastes)?

And why give MF buff if there’s no loot that’s affected by MF?

That MF boost affects bandit chests, but yeah… I hate when enemies don’t even give a chance at loot.

There is a reason for it. You are getting same amount of loot there as if mobs were dropping it actually. But you dont have to worry about looting and wasting time, so you can focus more on the objectives. And that kind of mechanic seems pretty good for such a dynamic map.

Would love to see that kind of stuff in WvW too. Cuz sometimes I miss these tiny loot bags and it is very annoying.

The loot system in the Silverwastes is rather good, because it encourages you to actually succeed in the events not fail-farm mobs.

To stop the event fail champion scaling fiascoes probably.

Anet actually screwed up the reward system again. The most profitable thing to do in the map is to group up in the area north of Amber and dig up chests. Easy champ bags. No point in being anywhere else on the map.

Yes but how do you get keys for all those chests?

Costs 5 crests/key. Chests drop between 3-5 crests guaranteed and rarely drop 25.

I really like the loot bags – keeps the inventory low so I can keep playing.

I’ll second the notion of changing WvW loot to match. For player kills, let us pick up the bags as bags.

Anti-Zerg balling.

People would not be encouraged to scale up the event for mob loots but more focus on defending all the objectives equally to get the end success.

Chests need shovels to dig them up. The only way to get the shovels is to participate in a successful event. This does encourage players to do the events; if people ignored the events there would be no more digging up of chests.

The non-event mobs drop loot fairly normally. And I occasionally get it from event mobs as well.

grubnick.7849:

Chests need shovels to dig them up. The only way to get the shovels is to participate in a successful event. This does encourage players to do the events; if people ignored the events there would be no more digging up of chests.

I was in a map where everyone gathered at Amber only. We only did some defense event in Amber, no bull escort and occasionally kept an eyes on the quartermaster so that Amber didn’t get taken. I received very very few shovels (3) for the entire 4 hours of farming. However, we made a huge group (40+) so we had no shortage of chests to keep the farm going on and on. One thing I have to note that I have virtually used up all my crests for keys. In short, if I focus on chest farming only, I have:

• A few shovels
• Hundreds of champ bags, in which all of the big-ticket items have been already devalued, for example Bonnetti’s Rapier.
• No bandit crests
• Sizeable amount of Ambrite
• Loads of green to sell and salvage

Compared to the result I’ve got after 2 successful Breach in an organized map:

• Dozens of shovels
• 60-ish champ bags farmed during the break after the Breach
• Two stacks of bandit crests, even after buying the keys
• Extracted champion parts for more bandit crests
• Lucky drops here and there during Bull escort
• Guaranteed rares
• A lot of green to sell and salvage

To my preference, the rewards from the successful events are much better than from chest farming alone.

Kysin.6349:

That MF boost affects bandit chests, but yeah… I hate when enemies don’t even give a chance at loot.

Is this true? Usually MF only affects loot drops.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Kysin.6349:

That MF boost affects bandit chests, but yeah… I hate when enemies don’t even give a chance at loot.

Is this true? Usually MF only affects loot drops.

The buff (+30% MF per stack, max 5 stacks if I recall correctly) you get for completing events in the Silverwastes explicitly states that it works on bandit chests opened while the buff is active.

A complaint in ignorance, gotta love it.

Rasimir.6239:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Kysin.6349:

That MF boost affects bandit chests, but yeah… I hate when enemies don’t even give a chance at loot.

Is this true? Usually MF only affects loot drops.

The buff (+30% MF per stack, max 5 stacks if I recall correctly) you get for completing events in the Silverwastes explicitly states that it works on bandit chests opened while the buff is active.

Yep, thats what it says exactly

kolompi.1287:

The loot system in the Silverwastes is rather good, because it encourages you to actually succeed in the events not fail-farm mobs.

Lol really.. as soon as everyone has their Silver waste achievs done (and I would hazard a guess many players will have already done this or will have by Sunday) all that’s going to happen is the events will get ignored except when they need to retake a fort to buy more keys.. in fact its already happening.

Why is it happening?.. obvious because its far easier to hang around forts (I am looking at you Amber) and just dig for Tyria. What makes it even more ridiculously easywin is that you don’t even need to use your own shovels, just grab a 100 keys and away you go, sit back, hold your CTRL key down and loot till your fingers drop.

Don’t get me wrong I like the look of the map, I think the theory of defending all forts in order to get bosses to spawn is a step in the right direction, but as soon as you don’t need the Legendary kills there is simply no point except to tag mobs for crests and farm chests.
I personally hate the failtrain shenanigans that exist in GW2 and maybe this was ANETS way6 of dissuading that kind of mentality, but seems to be an awful waste of time and effort putting this map/event chains together just to see it become nothing more than a chest digging farm.. but hey-ho.. time to go fill my boots again

For what it’s worth, I got an ascended weapon chest (Hronk’s) from one of the bandit chests yesterday while I and several guildmates were farming the Amber Sandfall area, so there’s that.

Kaldrys.1978:

Anet actually screwed up the reward system again. The most profitable thing to do in the map is to group up in the area north of Amber and dig up chests. Easy champ bags. No point in being anywhere else on the map.

Anyone who is only farming during the defense phase isn’t going to be farming for long.

I personally love the new loot system. Mobs drop mats and you get equipment chests for completing events. My bag stays just as full as it does farming in Cursed Shore but it feels more rewarding and less random (even if it really isn’t).

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Kaldrys.1978:

Anet actually screwed up the reward system again. The most profitable thing to do in the map is to group up in the area north of Amber and dig up chests. Easy champ bags. No point in being anywhere else on the map.

Anyone who is only farming during the defense phase isn’t going to be farming for long.

Seriously. If people want to spend all their time farming chests then more power to them, I’m glad they have a place they can go and do that. Myself, I’ll be leaving their instance asap to find one where people are actually doing the (more profitable) events and farming chests after/in between.

Giving rewards in games is a very tricky balance. Not just in how you give it but how it is percieved. If you only do content for the reward then there’s something wrong with the content.

Personally I only do content I enjoy because it’s fun to do. I may not get as much reward as those farming or running zerg trains, but I don’t care because I am enjoying the content and that is the whole point in me logging in in the first place. I don’t log in to fullfill my hunger for stuff, I log in to be entertained and have fun. If that is less rewarding I do not give a monkeys.

So I don’t really care if my magic find is not utilized or whether I get X amount of spades in X amount of time. It’s all irrelivent and shouldn’t be the deciding factor in why you I things.

However, I am happy to see things like loot bags instead of individual items, and it is nice that your rewards are going straight to your inventory now, without having to run round picking it up of corpses. It’s a step in the right direction as far as I am concerned and I hope Anet stays on this path. For me this latest LS episode has been the best one so far and not just because of the reward improvements.

Kaldrys.1978:

Costs 5 crests/key. Chests drop between 3-5 crests guaranteed and rarely drop 25.

You raise a good point. It should be changed so that all that remains for crests is the rare 25 drop. That’d fix that.

wwwes.1398:

Kaldrys.1978:

Costs 5 crests/key. Chests drop between 3-5 crests guaranteed and rarely drop 25.

You raise a good point. It should be changed so that all that remains for crests is the rare 25 drop. That’d fix that.

There is nothing to fix. the chests are severely limited by the shovels, not the badges. A group tried to ignore the events and farm chests last night, it worked for about 30 minutes then they ran out of shovels and were just running back and forth getting absolutely no loot at all.

The real reason they have stopped mob drops on this map is due to the ever increasing trends of maps failing events on purpose in order to continue spawning mobs and getting loot as the rewards for most are better if you fail vs. if you succeed. This has led to a plethora of issues, not the least of which is bad community members yelling at people who try to succeed. This seems to be their answer to that behavior (make it more profitable to succeed than to fail).

would be nice if the perseverence buff also applied to some chance bonus item loot table in the event rewards, but I do also feel like I am getting a decent amount of loot. If I remember right, in under an hour last night (1 breach) I opened about 10 chests (mostly running between events) got 15+ champ bags (might have been closer to 20), used probably 2 full salvage kits, and got 3-5 rares, a few various cores, a couple T6 (would be nice if there were more of these actually)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

There is nothing to fix. the chests are severely limited by the shovels, not the badges. A group tried to ignore the events and farm chests last night, it worked for about 30 minutes then they ran out of shovels and were just running back and forth getting absolutely no loot at all.

Yes, chests are fine for their contents because they are gated by the shovels and how you acquire the shovels.

Invictus.1503:

The real reason they have stopped mob drops on this map is due to the ever increasing trends of maps failing events on purpose in order to continue spawning mobs and getting loot as the rewards for most are better if you fail vs. if you succeed. This has led to a plethora of issues, not the least of which is bad community members yelling at people who try to succeed. This seems to be their answer to that behavior (make it more profitable to succeed than to fail).

This works for me. Farm the events, not the mobs spawned by them. Even failing is rewarded somewhat (for killing lesser mobs presumably, the effort etc.). It’s way better to succeed.

Buy a lot of keys and supplies, farm some chests when there’s a break in the fighting.

GamerOnline.3650:

Buy a lot of keys and supplies, farm some chests when there’s a break in the fighting.

This is what I have been doing so far, I run around pressing left ctrl alot to see if there are any around while doing the events.

There be valid reasons, but the implementation irks me. GW2 introduced mf and luck essence as a major grindfest. The moment they did however, they removed the effect of mf from 70% of the game. Bags containing 3 master craft items? You seriously invalidating my mf roll on common loot now?

That Guy.5704:

GamerOnline.3650:

Buy a lot of keys and supplies, farm some chests when there’s a break in the fighting.

This is what I have been doing so far, I run around pressing left ctrl alot to see if there are any around while doing the events.

Left CTRL is your friend.

This is why I like running supply escorts. It’s a good chance to scout the field for chests and earn my event payout to boot, provided I don’t get too distracted. It can be tough with the local spawn and the escort attackers.

Archy.1045:

Would love to see that kind of stuff in WvW too. Cuz sometimes I miss these tiny loot bags and it is very annoying.

“MY PRECURSOR!” cried every wvwer ever, as they laid fully dead on the floor, watching their fellows being wiped.

Gerrand.3085:

There be valid reasons, but the implementation irks me. GW2 introduced mf and luck essence as a major grindfest. The moment they did however, they removed the effect of mf from 70% of the game. Bags containing 3 master craft items? You seriously invalidating my mf roll on common loot now?

When they redid MF, they also reworked champs and other events to drops boxes and bags and purses, etc…these are not affected by MF. The current luck system is nothing more than a placebo and blue/green item sink that, in reality, affects very little in the line of drops, even at 300%. Temples return chests, dragons…chests, world bosses…chests…Tequatl…chests that return event more chests…NONE of it affected by luck/MF. Only mob drops are affected and the chances of a high end drop are so small that 300% luck affects it so little that no one would ever notice the difference. Pursuing a high MF/luck is one the biggest wastes of effort in this game.

Back in the pre-luck days, I had a farming outfit that I could get to about 250% MF, and I swear I got worse loot when I used it…probably due to the lower DPS associated with such a build. Luckily those traveler runes ultimately became quite valuable and I didn’t lose much on the deal, but still…

The explanation I got was that it raised the bar enough that junk dropped substantially less, but that high end drops would drop slightly more often….overall I made less coin since all those porous bones and whites could at least be sold at a vendor. I wonder if this will be the same effect with the current luck system…except this one we can’t just ungear.

Well you know they said they’d be making a different sort of game but all I’m seeing is more of the 2004 wowness of any mmo title in which you stop fighting the forces of evil and start fighting the games artificially bloated RNG loot system.

They’ve made minor adjustments to the dry top and the new area but really this needs to be global from now on.

In my opinion this is the best mode for a map with such dynamic activities. Ever! Period! Gj Anet on this one!

Honestly, if people are ONLY farming chests, they are making less than the people farming chests AND events. The equipment bags from events have a chance for rares and exotics too. And more to either salvage/sell from the event bags, rather than just one bandit bag.

People are farming 100 champ bags/hour in the silverwastes it’s rather boring and less rewarding then people believe though

Considering I’ve had over a 100 Bags of gear so far (haven’t been playing in Silverwastes all that much either), and quite a few champ bags from looting chests, I’m not complaining. More than plenty fine/masterwork gear to salvage for Luck, and a few rares every now and then for Ectos.

silver wastes is gonna be one of the biggest reasons people start quitting gw2

Redxon.6832:

silver wastes is gonna be one of the biggest reasons people start quitting gw2

Hilarious. Because this is so much worse than champ trains, map bosses, and fail-trains, right?

No, this is good content with a single rewards issue that needs a bit of ironing out.

Exeon.4358:

People are farming 100 champ bags/hour in the silverwastes it’s rather boring and less rewarding then people believe though

This is a symptom of a larger problem in the game. Farming like anything in any game like this and even those that have affected gameplay like trying to keep events from finishing, is directly due to nothing more than there being such a stranglehold on loot and rewards for so long in the game that players couldn’t possible make a dime outside of PVP trains or Dungeons.

When you have a loot nerf to such a large degree and you finally at long last put loot in an area for people to gather in a game in which it’s ridiculously difficult to get loot for the majority of players, you’re going to see farmers. Sorry that’s just how that works. It’s a real life situation in a virtual space.

So it might be boring but it’s necessary because the economy does actually suffer if there isn’t anyone there to buy the things that are listed in the TP, when that happens the prices are doing what we’re seeing right now, bloating to the extent of stupidity in some cases.

Same goes for the number of useful sigils and runes. Somebody over there needs to go through these sets finally and add things like 25% run speed, and more escape options, and more useful crit bonses to these sigils because as you all know only certain ones seem to be useful in PVE which drives up their price, if there were more options with these useful bonuses on them there wouldn’t be such a focus on only having 1 (like traveler runes for example) and the prices of these other rune sets and sigils would drop (like a sigil that has the crit change to explode into a poison field for example would be useful for those of us who are condition builds).

Let’s see if the do this right, and when the next map opens(Magus Falls) the only way to gain entrance is to hold all of the forts(that’s how I’d do it), but, that doesn’t leave much room for the second entrance to Magus Falls(in Dry Top). Also, it’s not that hard to do the events and farm the chests at the same time, they just need to spread the chests out more, even up the distribution around all 4 forts, that would help spread everyone out that wants to farm them as well. Perhaps also have them only show with successful defenses of the forts…or maybe, more chests the higher tier of successful defenses, with the maximum number spawning after the Breach?

Cose they sell gold?.

Apolo.5942:

Cose they sell gold?.

And gold is not worth nearly as much as it used to be indicating the model has issues with uncontrolled inflation.

2 years ago 100 gems would cost about 80s. Now it costs about 14g. That’s over 17 times the price increase. Likewise 2 years ago 100 gems would convert in to about 60s, these days it converts in to about 10g…again, about a 17 times increase. They’re printing money without providing sufficient means to remove it from the economy and it’s causing runaway inflation.

This is part of the reason they’re afraid of mob loot, it adds even more to an already out of control economy. I would surmise this is a large contributing factor to so much of the new stuff being craft only and account bound. Such dynamics contribute far less to market destabilization.

Here’s a graph on GW2Spidy showing the constantly decreasing value of gold. This graph actually shows the value of gems increasing, but as the value of gems increases, the worth of gold decreases. Back when you could only get 60s for 100g, that’s about 24 gold for $50, why would one bother buying large amounts of gems with irl money since you could make 24g with a couple days of regular play, though surely some did. Now that you can get massive amounts of gold for relatively cheap irl money, that same $50 now gets you ~450 gold, more people are using it and it’s glutting the economy, causing terrible inflation….and it’s only going to get worse because the model has no way to control it. The gem to gold conversion should never have been allowed. There’s no way people are spending nearly as much gold on gems as is coming in to the economy, so ANet is just printing more and more money…which is generally bad.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

Slightly off-subject, sadly I’ve seen a few instances of late of apparently AFK players standing in the Silverwastes, often dead and resuscitated only to be killed again and seemingly unaffected by the auto-logging out (one observed instance was there for in excess of four hours) that I am told exists for players who are motionless for an extended amount of time. It occurred to me (and several other players who entered into discussion about this) that they are still being rewarded with the chests, so could this be considered a form of bot and if so, should I consider reporting said individuals (hate doing this without actual reason) for suspected botting?

Leamas.5803:

Here’s a graph on GW2Spidy showing the constantly decreasing value of gold. This graph actually shows the value of gems increasing, but as the value of gems increases, the worth of gold decreases.

There is certainly inflation of prices for certain rare items. However, many mat prices have been relatively stable for a long time — with some increases due to Ascended crafting. Increased amounts of gold certainly contributes to inflation. However, the currency exchange is not the culprit.

Leamas.5803:

Back when you could only get 60s for 100g, that’s about 24 gold for $50, why would one bother buying large amounts of gems with irl money since you could make 24g with a couple days of regular play, though surely some did. Now that you can get massive amounts of gold for relatively cheap irl money, that same $50 now gets you ~450 gold, more people are using it and it’s glutting the economy, causing terrible inflation….and it’s only going to get worse because the model has no way to control it. The gem to gold conversion should never have been allowed. There’s no way people are spending nearly as much gold on gems as is coming in to the economy, so ANet is just printing more and more money…which is generally bad.

Positing that the gold per gems ratio is increasing due to increased numbers of players buying gems to convert to gold is backwards. If more players were to buy more gems to exchange for gold, then the gold per gems ratio would go down, not up. This is a basic tenet of supply and demand. What’s more likely is that as more players acquire gold, they feel less need to buy gems to convert to gold.

While, as I understand it, the system is not direct sales from player to player, the ratios change based on the amounts of gems and gold put into the system by players. Increased amounts of gold per 100 gems indicate a scarcity of gems and/or an abundance of gold. This does not mean that the exchange is “printing new gold.”

In fact, the system takes gold out of the economy. The amount a player has to pay to get 100 gems is more than the gold a different player receives for his 100 gems. This is a gold sink, not a gold faucet. I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for the cause of the increase in gem prices.

Belenus.9132:

Slightly off-subject, sadly I’ve seen a few instances of late of apparently AFK players standing in the Silverwastes, often dead and resuscitated only to be killed again and seemingly unaffected by the auto-logging out (one observed instance was there for in excess of four hours) that I am told exists for players who are motionless for an extended amount of time. It occurred to me (and several other players who entered into discussion about this) that they are still being rewarded with the chests, so could this be considered a form of bot and if so, should I consider reporting said individuals (hate doing this without actual reason) for suspected botting?

You actually have to do something (use the sonar and/or dig) to get the lost bandit chests, so I assume you mean the bonus chests from completed events. I don’t know that it’s actually botting – for example, do those afk characters have “real” names or gibberish “names”, which is usually a fairly reliable sign of a bot – and also, I think you have to actually do something in the event (kill at least one enemy or, for the wall building, transfer at least one block of rubble) to get at least bronze credit, though I’ve been able to get gold credit in wall-building with as little as just one rubble block sometimes.

Kysin.6349:

That MF boost affects bandit chests, but yeah… I hate when enemies don’t even give a chance at loot.

There’s plenty of enemies that drop loot.

Stop running past them.

Leamas.5803:

Apolo.5942:

Cose they sell gold?.

And gold is not worth nearly as much as it used to be indicating the model has issues with uncontrolled inflation.

2 years ago 100 gems would cost about 80s. Now it costs about 14g. That’s over 17 times the price increase. Likewise 2 years ago 100 gems would convert in to about 60s, these days it converts in to about 10g…again, about a 17 times increase. They’re printing money without providing sufficient means to remove it from the economy and it’s causing runaway inflation.

This is part of the reason they’re afraid of mob loot, it adds even more to an already out of control economy. I would surmise this is a large contributing factor to so much of the new stuff being craft only and account bound. Such dynamics contribute far less to market destabilization.

Here’s a graph on GW2Spidy showing the constantly decreasing value of gold. This graph actually shows the value of gems increasing, but as the value of gems increases, the worth of gold decreases. Back when you could only get 60s for 100g, that’s about 24 gold for $50, why would one bother buying large amounts of gems with irl money since you could make 24g with a couple days of regular play, though surely some did. Now that you can get massive amounts of gold for relatively cheap irl money, that same $50 now gets you ~450 gold, more people are using it and it’s glutting the economy, causing terrible inflation….and it’s only going to get worse because the model has no way to control it. The gem to gold conversion should never have been allowed. There’s no way people are spending nearly as much gold on gems as is coming in to the economy, so ANet is just printing more and more money…which is generally bad.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

The currency exchange has absolutely nothing to do with inflation in any way, shape or form.

An increase in the gold cost of gems means only one thing: that more players are converting gold into gems than are converting gems into gold.

This actually means that the gold supply available in the game economy is LOWER over time, which is the exact opposite of the point you are attempting to make.

mtpelion.4562:

The currency exchange has absolutely nothing to do with inflation in any way, shape or form.

An increase in the gold cost of gems means only one thing: that more players are converting gold into gems than are converting gems into gold.

This actually means that the gold supply available in the game economy is LOWER over time, which is the exact opposite of the point you are attempting to make.

OK let me phrase it differently with a group of questions. So, is there a limited supply of gems, or is the supply unlimited? Say I were to go out and buy 50000 gems from the gem store with my VISA card (~60000 gold) where do those gems come from? Could I get hit with a message saying there are not enough gems? What about the gems you get in achievement chests? Where do they come from? OK, so call me a skeptic, but I don’t believe our illustrious currency exchange is entirely untampered with. Are gems becoming more expensive or is there so much gold that it’s becoming worth less? What happens if the demand for gems to gold conversion exceeds the amount of available gold coming in (XMas maybe?)? Will ANet deny the transaction or will they just generate more gold? NSF?