Guild Wars 2

Although I gave feedback before, with changes to the map and new things, I’d thought I’d update.

Loot: loot, IMO, is nice ATM with wandering around either defending or getting lockboxes, or the champ train and labyrinth. I think maybe a slight increase is in order in the event rewards with badges.

As for the pieces needed from the meta bosses, I think if an exchange system was in place for those who didn’t get the part they needed, would make many complaints subside.

The meta bosses: as people have now learned how to take down indigo more and more, the worse offender is Red. Simply because it can be trolled and lost, as people purposefully aoe (yes, there are people doing this on purpose). Thus, the boss heals. While this can happen to almost all the others, I think it means a look at the mechanics for future bosses. Small scale this can work, but larger it becomes harder.

The defend events: sadly, this is becoming the blemish on what could be a very fun zone. When I first entered, I thought the defend the forts events would get harder, with stronger and more enemies, not just and increased timer…

IMO, how it should have been done.
Retake
First defense: easy
Second: more vets, maybe an elite.
Third: elites and champs
Fourth: throw in the random spawn legendary. (No longer random)

Increase the rewards and the progress bar faster the longer you hold. Perhaps even tie the difficulty to the tier of the fort, thus caravans become even more important. Scale the rewards as well.

The progress bar already progresses insanely fast if you hold 4/4 forts upgraded to t3. Making it faster would be silly.

Silverwastes and Dry Top have become my two favorite areas in the game. I think they are fantastic. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Silverwastes is great. Yes. But there’s also something wrong with the way the progression goes. In my opinion anyway.

From a pure gaming perspective, rather than the farming and reward getting perspective, the progression should not be unidirectional. Meaning the bar always goes up, you can’t fail it goes up faster or slower but always up.
This means there’s less incentive to stay and defend in the map. Always near the end of the progression bar which more often than not after a way longer time than usual, people stream in, grab the reward and switch to another map.
I wish that losing a fort would mean alot more than it does now. Right now it almost feels like it’s preferred to lose the fort for an easy retake and again some progression.
I don’t feel like there’s any pressure to hold all the forts in the map.

What I personnally think should be happening is that every failed event should decrease the bar ever so slightly so that when people don’t do anything at all, the map doesn’t progress at all.

Also then as people stick to their tasks you could give them more rewards, and with some clever balancing you can make it feel awesome.

Also, I thought the defense events did get harder. With more enemies more larger husks that trash the walls and such. But if not then I also agree with bits Serophous is saying.

As I’ve said previously I like Silverwastes and Dry Top, I think ANet is really getting the hang of these meta-maps (as I like to call them, because they all have a map wide meta-event). The only issue of course is how many more of these maps can you add before the player base gets too spread out? Currently we have Silverwastes and Dry Top but what will it be like if we have 10 similar maps?
But I do miss the old exploration maps. Granted the exploration map provide less engagement in the long run (because how many times can you run through a map like Plains of Ashford or Kessex Hill), but in my opinion they do a wonderful job of opening up the world of Tyria and telling the story of Tyria.

Yes. The new maps are great for handling large numbers of players, but what happens when player interest inevitably dwindles and they move on to whatever is the latest and greatest zone? Dry Top is already largely abandoned outside of specific times where organised guilds show up; the events in Silverwastes are basically not doable unless you have at least a decent number of people in the map. (I estimate about 3 – 4 at each Fort, in order to kill the Mordrem Champions at the end, maybe double that for Silver/Gold.) This can make it quite hard for any latecomers to complete their achievements and farm Crests.