Guild Wars 2

digiowl.9620:

Yeah, the mechanics of the place is clear as mud.

I have protected many a dolyak but i can’t say if it has any effect on the state of the fort. Nor does protecting the repair guy after a successful defense seem to matter much.

And then the breaches happen at near random, sometimes with and sometimes without the toxic smog.

Only place i felt i could really do something besides zerg the mordrem waves was up at blue fort, where i can grab a hammer and build some additional barriers along one of the walls.

Actually, the mechanics are very simple. I liked having to figure out out and not have it spoon fed to me.

Farmers seriously think that without them the rest of the game will not have enough population to complete events in game? Wow, well thanks for a good laugh.

And since a sample size of 1 is enough to prove a point, yesterday i was in a map for 2 hours, never failed an event and got all the achievements except 1 of the legendaries. Guess that proves it isnt dead after all.

There were pretty good attempts yesterday (just attempts), in a an organised map, with TS, with taxiing people, yet the response wasn’t that big and ultimately we failed a few breach bosses and it took a long time to get to the breach in the first place. We were hardcapped but a lot of people AFK’d until the breach. Reasons? Don’t know. There was a lot of disappointment with the nerfed chests in the map chat. I guess people don’t see SW as rewarding any more.

So I’m expecting that as soon as most ppl get their achievements, SW will be empty. At least with the chest farm, there was always someone on the map. And I was also pleasantly surprised with the community! It was not toxic at all. People were helpful, everyone was having a good time. Ppl got the rewards and they answered when commanders in other forts would call for help. It was easier to get organised with that pool of people. Since the Nerf, it’l be much more difficult to get the achievements for those who haven’t done so already.

It’s not dead, it just needs some people with initiative to get things organized. I was on empty maps before and I just talked to the few on map, we got 4 tags up, spread in tiny group of 3 at forts and tried to hold them, while we all disbanded parties and ported players in by posting LFGs of organized map. Done once at 2 am and we filled the map within 15 min. There are plenty who need achievements still, if I wasn’t sick atm I’d be there hunting for legendaries too, so don’t shy away of trying to get it organized if no one else will.

Not dead at all. My friend and I finished the achievements on Sunday and before logging off I bought 50 keys so I could farm the next day which I didn’t (lazy). After I finished the daily yesterday, I went to SW and spawned on a map that had 4 Commanders and all forts, sure we failed silver and gold but no one left. Also, I got 6 shovels and used 25 keys, was probably there for 2 hours or so. I find the map to be fun actually, however, I didn’t stay at just one fort. If someone in chat asked for help at another fort, I went there but only if the current fort had enough people. Also, at least 3 legendary spawned while I was there (red, blue & indigo). But that’s just how I play. I find the map fun. =]

How many lving story updates are left?

If this map is like Dry Top, then it is only 33% unlocked….

Plus the Luminesent Armorset Grind looks a lot like it will be just as time consuming as the Dry top weapons grind (18 pieces and 48 achievement points vs 16 weapons and 50 achievement points).

Plus a lot of people think that one of the the next updates in the zone might have a world boss. (If that happens then the zone will never be truly dead).

I concur that the map isn’t so much as dead as it is unorganized. To blame everything on farmers isn’t quite realistic either. During scarlet invasion many people all they did was farm Champs because the loot from the Champs were much better than completing the entire chain of events. So if the map is dead it’s a result that players don’t feel the reward is worth the time invested to complete post achievement.

Saying that this is more unorganized than dead is right. Today I walked to one SW Map that had no Commander. So I tagged at one Fort and asked for another to tag as commander and it didn’t took long and we had three commanders, were defending the forts with no failure and almost got all bosses. Its really easy to get a map to work at the events, you only need someone to take the first step.

And since the Chest farm was nerfed everyone puts the blame on the “empty” map at the other faction without admitting that they were also part of this “problem”. Farmers blaming this on Anti Farmers, while ignoring that even they had the right to farm, they totally abused this, and it was clear that, if left unchecked, would go out of hand.
And we had the Anti Farmer, who had the right to complain constuctively ( happened here with some threads and ideas to spread out the farm ) but also went to vocal about this. It’s not the “QQ” that led Anet to nerf it, not alone. The massive Abuse did also its part and since the last farmspots had a history of having a toxic atmosphere because the farm was incompatible with normal and “intended” playstyle, Anet decided to nerf this.

And here one last piece I would give to everyone surprised by this nerf

Anet : Nerfing farmspots since 2005 and even today they can somehow surprise us with farmnerfs

I think if the ‘time to breach’ could be significantly reduced by coordinated efforts this map could be a lot more fun. As it stands, defending forts over and over again with no real payback for your efforts is what gets old. That overall timer that the pact is ‘getting ready’ is what sucks. If that would speed up if we held all the forts and protected all the Dolyaks that would be much better. If we could actually cause siege to be built and protect it, that would seem more fun. Waiting around for however many waves of attacks it takes for the pact to get ready is dull.

digiowl.9620:

Yeah, the mechanics of the place is clear as mud.

I have protected many a dolyak but i can’t say if it has any effect on the state of the fort. Nor does protecting the repair guy after a successful defense seem to matter much.

And then the breaches happen at near random, sometimes with and sometimes without the toxic smog.

Only place i felt i could really do something besides zerg the mordrem waves was up at blue fort, where i can grab a hammer and build some additional barriers along one of the walls.

1) Bull Escort increases supply level, giving you more siege weapons to use in Defence. Arrow carts, boiling oil, barricades/catapult/cannons – these can help out in providing additional damage while others are killing mobs.

2) Supply Master rebuilds the walls if it gets destroyed in a defence. If it fails, the next defend event would be that much easier for the Mordrem to get inside the fort.

3) Breach is predictable. It occurs when Pact Assault is maximized, which is done through successful defend events (seems to be the only thing that progresses it). Number of forts held/defended doesn’t matter, which is why people only stuck around and defended Amber for the chest farm. This is something that I hope would change, making forts held and defended mandatory for the Breach (increasing rewards in the process).

The Noxious gas is only present after the Breach if it fails. 5/5 = no gas.

4) Everything you do in the map will help. The more forts simultaneously defended (both by players and ensuring supply escorts succeed to get more siege weapons), the faster the meta event progresses to the Breach.

All of that from a couple of rounds of the meta, and observing the events that occurred.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I think if the ‘time to breach’ could be significantly reduced by coordinated efforts this map could be a lot more fun.

According to a user on reddit or these forums, a fully coordinated group defending all forts took 18 minutes to breach. It actually is fairly quick if everyone is on the same page.

Rashy.4165:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I think if the ‘time to breach’ could be significantly reduced by coordinated efforts this map could be a lot more fun.

According to a user on reddit or these forums, a fully coordinated group defending all forts took 18 minutes to breach. It actually is fairly quick if everyone is on the same page.

It never seems to go that fast for me, but that’s great if it’s true. I typically defend either amber or blue and have escorted a number of blue and amber dolyaks but never seen any siege at either location except burning oil which doesn’t reach most of the attackers.

Is there some correlation between supply level, number of dolyaks and what seige should be present?

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

It never seems to go that fast for me, but that’s great if it’s true. I typically defend either amber or blue and have escorted a number of blue and amber dolyaks but never seen any siege at either location except burning oil which doesn’t reach most of the attackers.

Is there some correlation between supply level, number of dolyaks and what seige should be present?

Amber gets cannons, which are almost as useless as the oil. Blue gets hammers that can be used to build fences in front of the walls.

Supply runs are definitely needed to get these, I’m not sure if having broken gates gets in the way (i.e. if you need to get a supply run to repair the gate before you can get a supply run that gives you siege improvements).

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Rashy.4165:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I think if the ‘time to breach’ could be significantly reduced by coordinated efforts this map could be a lot more fun.

According to a user on reddit or these forums, a fully coordinated group defending all forts took 18 minutes to breach. It actually is fairly quick if everyone is on the same page.

It never seems to go that fast for me, but that’s great if it’s true. I typically defend either amber or blue and have escorted a number of blue and amber dolyaks but never seen any siege at either location except burning oil which doesn’t reach most of the attackers.

Is there some correlation between supply level, number of dolyaks and what seige should be present?

Well every Fort has other types of Siege Weapons.
Red has Arrowcarts which are very effective against Mordrems, they make the defense Events there easy.
Indigo has Mortars who can deal quite a bit damage but it isn’t that easy to use them right.
Don’t know what siege weapons are at Amber.

The higher your Supply Level the more Siege Weapons you should have. I saw 4 Mortars at Indigo which was at Supply Level 4 so the Supply Level does matter.

So really not to much siege in general. If we could do some work between attacks to get better siege that would make this much less boring. Mowing down the mobs with an arrow cart would be far superior to slugging it out over and over again by hand.

Also that would let less people on the map maybe go from fort to fort building them up leaving a few behind that could hold them once decent siege was in place. Right now it’s just a matter of getting enough people, but not to many at each fort for X number of defenses.

Killing all those mobs also gets you no loot except crests that you need to convert to shovels and leave forts undefended while you hunt for chests. If I could just get that loot as an event reward directly it would save a lot of running around. If they could scale the loot based on how long you defended a given fort that would encourage participation as well.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

So really not to much siege in general. If we could do some work between attacks to get better siege that would make this much less boring. Mowing down the mobs with an arrow cart would be far superior to slugging it out over and over again by hand.

Also that would let less people on the map maybe go from fort to fort building them up leaving a few behind that could hold them once decent siege was in place. Right now it’s just a matter of getting enough people, but not to many at each fort for X number of defenses.

Killing all those mobs also gets you no loot except crests that you need to convert to shovels and leave forts undefended while you hunt for chests. If I could just get that loot as an event reward directly it would save a lot of running around. If they could scale the loot based on how long you defended a given fort that would encourage participation as well.

Such as have it be kind of like WvW where you have a supply count and can specify the siege you want including any possible upgrades to them?

I think the guild mission in Iron Marches did something with siege and upgrades.

Sizer.5632:

Farmers seriously think that without them the rest of the game will not have enough population to complete events in game? Wow, well thanks for a good laugh.

And since a sample size of 1 is enough to prove a point, yesterday i was in a map for 2 hours, never failed an event and got all the achievements except 1 of the legendaries. Guess that proves it isnt dead after all.

The problem wasn’t the farmers. It was that this farm was just so rewarding that it encouraged everyone who doesn’t normally farm to go farm with them and pretty much ignore the rest of the game (not just the map). Once you got your achieves, why would you try for a successful breach when camping Amber gave you so much more?

I would have also liked to see upgradable siege and have the walls hold longer than 30 seconds.

MashMash.1645:

digiowl.9620:

Yeah, the mechanics of the place is clear as mud.

I have protected many a dolyak but i can’t say if it has any effect on the state of the fort. Nor does protecting the repair guy after a successful defense seem to matter much.

And then the breaches happen at near random, sometimes with and sometimes without the toxic smog.

Only place i felt i could really do something besides zerg the mordrem waves was up at blue fort, where i can grab a hammer and build some additional barriers along one of the walls.

Actually, the mechanics are very simple. I liked having to figure out out and not have it spoon fed to me.

Funny how different the in game and forum communities can be…

Rashy.4165:

3) Breach is predictable. It occurs when Pact Assault is maximized, which is done through successful defend events (seems to be the only thing that progresses it). Number of forts held/defended doesn’t matter, which is why people only stuck around and defended Amber for the chest farm. This is something that I hope would change, making forts held and defended mandatory for the Breach (increasing rewards in the process).

The Noxious gas is only present after the Breach if it fails. 5/5 = no gas.

Funny, i could have sworn i have seen forts go straight from defense to breach with noxious gas more than once.

As for the rest, thanks.

From my experience over the last couple of days (post chest nerf), there do seem to be far fewer instances of the map (not really any way to know for certain, but I had fewer distinct instance ips when i checked this time around. I kept getting tossed into the same 2 or 3 ), distinctly fewer lfg and sw taxis, and more of an issue getting enough people into any specific map to have enough people to complete the breach successfully. Hell, there was quite a while where we simply couldn’t get enough people to have enough coverage to hold all 4 forts. This resulted in a lot more kittening in map chat than I had previously seen at any point since this chapter launched. It was disheartening, to say the least.

The nerf hit the zone far heavier than I think anyone would have hoped. The insane chest farming was mostly due to the imbalance in the spawn rate near Amber, and they were right to nerf it. But instead of just nerfing that, it would seem that Anet has also nerfed the lootdrops, and the amount of bandit crests that you receive from the chests. With the chests being no way near as profitable any more, a lot of people have stopped farming them, and that is a shame.

Another thing is that the loot you can trade in crests for are so cheap and many dropped from chests. A lot of people have a large percentage of the recipes. I know that I have all that I would need except for one. Hopefully they had more things to buy next week.

Sizer.5632:

Farmers seriously think that without them the rest of the game will not have enough population to complete events in game? Wow, well thanks for a good laugh.

Are you still laughing now? I was there last night and the place was empty. People would pop in and see that nothing is happening and just leave. At least the farmers kept the place alive.

I’ve been there last night and was full. We did the events, we did the breach we looted the chests and everybody was happy.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Is there some correlation between supply level, number of dolyaks and what seige should be present?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2lsm4o/a_very_simple_silverwastes_guide/clxw1gx

The bottom half indicates the number of successful escorts to advance supply to the next level.

e: Regarding time taken, as far as I know, it depends largely on the successful defend events:
The first defend event takes under 2 minutes, the second around 3-4 minutes and the last defence takes 5 minutes. These times are only increased if the NPC dies (up to an additional 2 minutes to revive the NPC) before the defence continues. That’s a total of 10 minutes spent solely defending. In between are about 3-4 minutes of rubble events (rubble event doesn’t trigger at all if the fort is successfully defended without walls breaking), so at most, that’ll add about 9 minutes. Time between defend events may be less without the rubble event.

All of that is happening more or less in tandem at each fort. A perfect map would have all four defend events occurring simultaneously if all four forts are taken simultaneously. Additional time may be required for more defend events after level 3 depending on Pact Assault progress.

Estimate of 18 minutes might be far too low; I’d say 25-30 minutes is more reasonable.
Losing a fort doesn’t reset progress, but it does slow down the Breach in an indirect way:
Successful defence seems to advance the Assault more than a successful capture. Losing the fort means you don’t get the progress of a successful defence, and then you’d have to wait 2-3 minutes before being able to re-capture the fort (the capture itself takes a minute or two), which gives a smaller advance to Pact Assault. You end up spending additional time to get a smaller advance to Pact Assault.

I’m assuming the 18-20 minutes can be achieved with no rubble events (the defence is perfect enough that none of the fort walls are damaged).

digiowl.9620:

Rashy.4165:

3) Breach is predictable. It occurs when Pact Assault is maximized, which is done through successful defend events (seems to be the only thing that progresses it). Number of forts held/defended doesn’t matter, which is why people only stuck around and defended Amber for the chest farm. This is something that I hope would change, making forts held and defended mandatory for the Breach (increasing rewards in the process).

The Noxious gas is only present after the Breach if it fails. 5/5 = no gas.

Funny, i could have sworn i have seen forts go straight from defense to breach with noxious gas more than once.

As for the rest, thanks.

Oh, that noxious gas. Yeah, that usually exists during the breach, but shouldn’t affect players unless they’re coming from outside the Fort. If you’re inside the fort during the breach, jumping right in would minimize the effect of the gas.

The noxious gas is worse if the Breach fails (higher damage tick) and goes away if it succeeds at 5/5.

Went to a almost empty map today. Me and another player tagged for commander and after a bit time we had a really good map running the fortresses and having no problems at the champs.

Clearly not dead the map, you just need one or two willing to tag for commander, be patient and do events. And the Map will fill up automatically.

It really depends on what you mean by “not dead”, it only takes ~30 active ppl(3~5 station each fort, 8~10 run doly) to create a 4/4 SW map. As for breach, had done copper with 5 man, iron with 3, platinum with 5, not sure what’s the minimum require for gold/silver.

For a new map, while farming 2k crests to finish shoulder collection, it really feel dead to me. But just from event completion pov, I guess you can still say it is not dead yet.

I do not know about anyone else, but between the chest nerf and the fact that mobs do not drop loot, it is not a place I want to spend time in as I do not feel rewarded enough for my effort.

The idea of the region is good, but as usual Arena Net have missed the mark in regards what they think players would find rewarding content. People are always going to gravitate to the easier and more rewarding content once novelty factor has worn off.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Massive nerf + mobs don’t drop loot + boring, unchallenging faceroll content = empty map.

Not to mention a density of trash mobs that are a thick as Orr was in the bad old days. Endless roots and knockdowns from the Mordrem. Endlessly being poisoned. Mobs that pound you into the dust if there’s 2 or more on you that you cant escape from due to the lame kitten slowing down while in combat. And major lag spikes galore.

As soon as I have enough Bandit crests to buy the other 5 Carapace armor items I’m gone from that place.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Massive nerf + mobs don’t drop loot + boring, unchallenging faceroll content = empty map.

Only before the “massive nerf” Silverwastes was an empty wasteland (other than outside Amber) it’s far better now that most of the map has some action.

The OP seems to be playing a different game than I. From the beginning, I’ve seen map instances that appeared empty and disorganized and others that are crowded and coordinated. That includes pre-bandit-chest-drop-rate-nerf and post.

The thing that seems to have changed the most is that maps that are starting to succeed have people encouraging each other to use the LFG tool to taxi people into the same instance. This tends to empty out less successful maps, making them seem underpopulated. And, for a variety of reasons, if you just zone into the area, you’re more likely to end up in those seemingly-low-pop maps, reinforcing the impression that things are empty.

Further, it takes only a handful of people to change a low-pop map into a successful one (at least, as far as getting Breach to occur sooner): 1-2 people dedicated to each doly escort and 2-3 people at each fort (making sure that siege gets used, that rubble is collected quickly, and that the NPCs are protected). The speed at which supply reaches the forts seems to make a huge difference.

tl;dr use the in-game LFG tool to find a coordinated map or start organizing one yourself

Using siege weapons to defend Indigo is one of the most fun activities for me; I think each fort could be really fun if it was organized like a Tequatl fight, with groups working on different tasks. I’ve ocassionally seen this arise spontaneously on a map, but I think it would happen a lot more if the reward for defeating all 5 champs in the breach was heftier, like it is for Tequatl.

One other reward for success should be a longer “time out” if the breach event succeeds; then we could all run around and farm and/or clear inventory, eat drink, etc.

its important to stop the husk seige mobs from downing the walls then you can funnel / agro pull some mobs towards the oil use 1 to slow them down and then 2 to burn them into the ground, it makes it much easier to deal with .

at the start of a defence go do a air strike just before the first wave pops kill the siegers , the rest of the mobs can’t down the walls that fast.

after the first wave , you have about 20secs+ the time to get to the signal fire by then the next air strike will be nearly ready , melee types shouldn’t go on the walls then the ranged types can attack and wait for the airstrike to reactiveate jump down to the walls and bomb/use oil if the gate is still up.

its a amazing system and yes between Eu and NA there are hours of the day where its really quiet normaly around 8am-1pm for me (EU) NA’s are asleep and Eus are ether at work or some won’t be online till late afternoon.

instead of complaining about the amount of people encourage new players to go to this area , if you give it a negative outlook they won’t even try to reach the place and proberly give up before even trying out the good stuff.

Bubi.7942:

Vitaly.3418:

. I’m not a farmer but I found the chest runs entertaining because they were so fast paced. Having ADD the whole “OMG look a ping to the west!! Now to the North!!” was fun while it lasted.

What? It was fun? Running from one place to another and picking up free loot was fun? For hours?

Yea, dude. Totally. It was the most fun I had in a while, specially if you tune into some good music in the background while you mute ingame sounds. I miss cofp1 ; _ ; cofp1 zerk warr farming will always be the golden era of gw2 for me.

mXz.4512:

If you complain about something (in this case, farming) you’re basically telling everyone around who could possibly help you do achievements, to leave.

Now that farming is nerfed (because of all the complaints), there’s no swarm of people around to help do the events.
Before, it was a profitable situation, now its empty. Think before you complain.

Sorry, but they weren’t there to help you do the events before either. They were too busy farming stuff at Amber.

I hope ANet makes this map hell more annoying, it’s a lvl80 area and SHOULD drive players mad. Because it’s supposed to challenge them while they walk around! Those teragriffs are awesome.

I feel like the pact assault meter should go up a bit faster. Maybe have it progress with every completed event, not just defense (I don’t know if this is actually the case).

I don’t know what’s the problem with Indigo, since it seems to be deserted even in the evenings. Maybe it’s because people got their teragriff fangs from the story, so they don’t want to bother with the twin champs (which is surely the hardest fight of the lot)? But the whole camp itself is usually less populated than the others.

mmos = no lot no care. Give a donkey a carrot and he will run after it. If there’s no carrot, even a donkey is smart enough to not bother.

Are u less smart then a donkey?

Valento.9852:

I hope ANet makes this map hell more annoying…

I hope you enjoy playing on an empty map.

Well, I don’t think that the map is dead, I just think the degree of selfish behaviour and organization differs a lot.
— If you have a large group AFKing at Camp resolve to keep the Perseverance MF buff high, you are not helping the map
— If you AFK inside a fort, so that the NPCs are constantly rezzing you (and leech the defence events) you make the life of everybody doing the event harder
— if you just tag events and run off, you are slowing the meta progression down
— if you escort caravans from base to fort with more than two people, you are doing it wrong
— if you don’t call in air strikes on recharge, you make the defence harder
— if you don’t use siege on walls and over gates during defence events, you are wasting potential
— if you don’t use siege to cover collection events, you are making a mistake
— if you don’t finish a collection event before the time out, because you just gave one piece of rubble before heading off, you did something wrong

This map rewards cooperation and working for the common goal, because the meta cycle gets so much shorter when the forts are organized, when forts are working together handing over caravans to escorts and – as a bonus – everyone shovels after defence events.
Sadly people still think selfish behaviour (tagging, leeching) and loot-fixation (they took away the easy Amber fort farm) is giving them better results.

I think it is irrational to expect non-selfish behavior in reaching goals when the goals are selfish. My two bit opinion.

Some two bit suggestions:
Be more aggressive with consolidating LW-centric zones.
If zone are designed to progress most efficiently when players understand the zone mechanics and organize, include an achievement for reaching zone milestones. For instance, an achievement for reaching defense level 4 and/or 5 at any of the forts. I suspect very few players have looked at guides for Silverwaste and there isn’t one achievement that requires them to do so.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2lgnrt/guide_semiorganized_silverwastes_guide/

Shpongle.6025:

Haaaaiiii

So 2 days ago I was playing and the map was so full everywhere I went there were people playing, I even found maps that had 50-60 commander tags on them and the LFG tool was full of SW ferries, and now today I log in and all of a sudden it’s dead. Everything is dead, all the people disappeared, everyone is gone…

What happened ? It’s only been 2 days.

IF the the map you’re on seems dead, look in the LFG tool for an SW run. People often post taxis for Silverwastes in the LFG. If there isn’t any SW event listed, trying guesting on a busier server (preferably a server with a High or Full population).