Thank you Arenanet for listening to us about so many things! i was reading through some threads i had posted in over the past year, and discovered just how much our feedback about various things has made it into silverwastes.
1) event loot: based on event completion via bonus chests and prevents “fail-farming”
2) Breach boss fights that allow for certain control effects, without absolute defiant mechanics draining the fun out of the fights, while also creatively encouraging players to pay more attention in the battles.
3) better scaling at the low population end to allow for success with smaller numbers participating (pretty much fixing the main complaint about marionette)
4) Vinewraith meta boss, commonly and affectionately referred to as Marionette 2.0
5) bandit loot chests allows for loot trains (still encourages event completion to acquire shovels)
6) labrynthe allows for more loot trains (encourages breach and VW completion for greater nightmare keys)
7) an awesome jumping puzzle for those who love awesome jumping puzzles
8) [EDIT] and WvW features in PvE (dolyak escorts, siege at forts, air strikes) (thanks KG for reminding me of that one!) {/EDIT]
all these combined make for a very well designed zone. it allows for multiple ways of farming loot and rewarding event completion rather than “fail-training” and for the most part, the community loves taxiing players into specific instances of SW for Breach and Vinewraith, and even other instances specifically for bandit chest farming, while still allowing for chest farming during the “time-out” phase.
i also see people asking where they’re needed for the boss events during pretty much every 70% or higher foothold map. pretty much the only toxicity i see on the map is when the Mordrem own the coloured keeps, and an occasional frustrated player on a low population Vinewraith or breach attempt that doesn’t go so well.
i’ve also seen low population attempts barely succeed with seconds and a single siege carrier to spare! generally, people are giving out better tips in map chat on how to deal with specific champions, and people seem to be keeping their cool, and learning the fights better, too.
Bacon, ArenaNet, and again i say, Bacon to you, too!
– The Baconnaire