Guild Wars 2

Since it’s for the leggings (which is arguably a bigger piece of the armor than shoulders/boots/gloves), it’s not surprising. It makes the RNG that much more painful, but with two weeks till the next patch, it shouldn’t take long. If RNG is really not on your side, in 2 weeks, you’ll get a spleen and bladder extractor for a guaranteed part.

So far, it’s taken me 2 days to get 2.5 bladder pieces (still waiting on one more troll bladder piece). The 4th bladder (both pieces) was gotten as soon as the patch hit because I saved up 5-6 unopened parts for each boss, along with 4 spleens. I’m glad I saved up those spare parts, it helped me get a headstart. I’ll only be able to do that in preparation for the next patch once I get my last bladder piece.

I’ve been consistently getting 5/5 maps on every instance I’ve been on for the last two days. It was less active only on Tuesday since people were exploring the new areas (JP) and doing the story mode, but after that, activity picked up. Certain maps also dropped in activity after a new build hit, which is to be expected of people updating their clients.

And yes, certain maps are less active if it’s not as organized, trading forts back and forth. There are almost always maps advertised in LFG that are more organized and closer to breach. I’ve advertised those maps myself when I know it’ll breach soon (usually 4/4 forts held at 60-70% pact assault).

Since I play a Thief as my main, dropping into Caithe’s shoes took no time at all. Her skills are a variation on the core Thief skills I’ve used for countless hours.

Even as a non-Thief, it shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Makes for a different boss encounter.

The stealth archetype doesn’t really have a name that isn’t negative in some way. Frankly, most of the other classes (except Guardian) can be renamed to be negative, but no alternative for Thief would be completely positive.

1k crests is super fast to get. I got 1k in less than a day of playing and that’s including spending a few 100 crests on keys and mordrem extractors. Do the meta event and don’t focus on how many crests you’re getting and you’ll have 1k in no time.

I personally thought repeating LS to be a cheap way of getting the extra shoulder pieces. It also gave players with alts an advantage (some people do like to focus on a single level 80 character).

Did it solo as a berserker thief. I died a few times, but I got the mechanics of the fights within minutes.

As long as you have the episode unlocked, and you’re doing it on a character that has the story done once, you can get the mastery achievement even after the two weeks is up. It is very accessible.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Only one way to break the zerker meta without introducing harder restrictions and that is to make the AI effective enough to counterplay it within the rulesets of the game.
-snip-

Pretty much this.

The other way to approach it is to have each boss encounter involve a complex mechanic where gear doesn’t really matter as much (think Echoes of the Past living story bosses); a mix of both complex AI and complex boss encounters would be an interesting way to break the zerker meta.

Cuddy.6247:

Progression and variation doesn’t have to stop at vertical ratings. There is also horizontal spread that GW2 lacks when compared to other MMOs. You read into this idea of progression way too negatively to have an open mind about horizontal progression.

Disagree.

Really the only form of vertical progression in the game right now are:
- Leveling 1-80 (obviously), skills and traits.
- Ascended gear (subjective as it’s not necessary for most of the content and only really affects a small portion of players who run high level fractals), and by extension, Agony Resist.
- Legendary weapons (arguably only sought after for the skin, not the stats).

And … that’s it. Once you hit max level and get your exotic gear according to your play style in PvE and WvW, all you have to do is work on appearances with no further stat progression. So far, we’ve gotten content at a wide range of levels: max level with Southsun/Dry Top/Silverwastes, mid levels with Triple Trouble and Tequatl, among other world bosses (even low level world bosses), temporary living world content (which was mostly at mid levels – personally wish these had been more permanent content, but most of it used existing maps without introducing a new permanent zone unlike Season 2).

There are good and bad examples of horizontal progression in game, but there are really very few options for vertical progression. A good example of horizontal progression would be a couple of the Ascended back pieces like Fractal Capacitor (all of the upgrades you make to it are appearance, not stats), Spinal Blades (after the Ascended one, it’s all about appearances and adding an extra infusion slot), etc.

Can they do better with horizontal progression? Absolutely.
Do they have to add vertical progression to give players a sense of accomplishment? Not really. You can achieve the same result by rewarding players fairly for their efforts.

OP has many misconceptions about the game. Frankly, GW2 is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, MMO to return to after a long hiatus.

Or you know, lay down AOE fields which will damage them through stealth.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You left one game, tried something new and didn’t like it.

Now you are back to the game you were not satisfied to begin with and praise it?

Sometimes I have a hard time to understand people…

He’s not dissatisfied with the game. I doubt many people are.

For most, the general consensus seems to be: GW2 is an amazing game and does a lot of things right, to improve the overall experience for players. Playing other MMOs really makes you see how good GW2 is in comparison, especially MMOs that have stuck to the old MMO formula. The few issues that people do have with the game are few and far between, and doesn’t really get in the way of having fun.

The lack of subscription and gear treadmill allows anyone to take an extended break from the game and never fall behind. The extended break isn’t always because the game isn’t enjoyable. My main reason is other IRL commitments, and I always come back to GW2 because it’s the only MMO that I’ve found enjoyable to explore and play at my own pace.

Honestly, pick any three class and you can make a trio out of them. A few pairings have better synergy (Thief and Ele for blasting AOE fields), but it really doesn’t matter.

If you’re looking for classes with a more unique playstyle, Engineer, Necromancer and Mesmer fit the bill. Engineers are particularly versatile with their access to kits/turrets/elixirs/etc. Could argue that Thief has a unique playstyle due to Initiative and no cooldowns (becomes a matter of managing your initiative to make sure you have the right tools when necessary).

Not sure if this topic has come up in the past, but here goes.

Since megaservers was introduced, each map can get several instances running at more or less the same time, with world bosses synchronized across these instances (within minutes of each other). Functionally, this has the same result as districts in Guild Wars 1 – players could choose which instance they want to join using a drop down menu.

The key difference here is that “districts” in GW2 are dynamically created and destroyed; implementing a drop down menu to select the megaserver instance you want to join (assuming it’s not full) would be a logical next step. The drop down menu will have a list of all megaserver instances currently running (instances flagged for completion won’t be on the list).

This gives players a guaranteed way to enter a specific megaserver instance without having to rely on a party member on that instance, which is a way of getting around the lack of a server selection drop down menu. Obviously if the map is hardcapped, it won’t work. With a guaranteed way to enter a megaserver instance, the events API can be re-enabled with an additional field containing the IP address of the megaserver instance a particular event is running on (obviously tied to the particular zone as well). Events trackers can then have the same drop down menu allowing players to track events on specific megaservers, then join that megaserver via the drop down menu. One of the reasons the events API was disabled was due to not being able to guarantee getting onto a megaserver instance for a particular map, which would make it very difficult to do an event that pops up in a specific map. Having a guaranteed way to enter a particular instance should fix that issue.

Not sure where this topic belongs (maybe API development would be one place), so thought I’d post it here.

Thoughts?

E: Well, it seems like a dev posted a response about it about 7 months ago – the same concept apparently doesn’t work well for GW2.

The Last Jagaroth.1652:

Rashy.4165:

I’m not a fan of the idea.

It’s inevitable that people will grind it out just for the rewards. Carrot on the stick. PvE content is already easy enough as it is in Exotics, players don’t need the stat increase from additional levels. Being able to upgrade gear is also not a great idea, even with severe limitations.

Getting to max level is the journey if players took time with it; it can be as epic as you want it to be. The only benefit of max level is getting the best gear (Exotic, Ascended is situationally better) and being able to do content quicker. That doesn’t mean you can’t do content as a lower level player with lower tier gear.

You made my point exactly it is too easy to grind to max cap. Please look at the link i provided you will see that in conjuration with xp there is also karma requirements, achievement requirements (both pvp and pve) and skill point requirements

Oh, I did look at the requirements, and I still don’t think it’s a good idea. Couple of main reasons:
- Skill points are easy to obtain. Champ bags give quite a lot of skill point scrolls, I’ve gotten a 100 in a short time.
- Karma trains give tons of exp per hour.
- WvW ranks are too easy with karma train in EOTM.
- Crafting requires gold, with about 400-500g after sellback, you can level up everything to 400 or 500 depending.

Really the only challenging part in the requirements is the crafted Legendary and Achievement Points.

The rewards will also need to be tuned.

Just as people ground out content to get to level 80 quickly, people WILL grind out these additional levels. The people who do grind them out will get the cool rewards, while the ones who don’t won’t get it. That goes against what ANet intended: for everyone to have a fair opportunity at max level, and to focus more on horizontal progression (this is clearly vertical progression).

Even if you intend for this system to take “years”, people will speed through it and get it in a very short amount of time. The current leveling experience is fantastic – there’s no rush to reach max level, and players have a ton of maps to explore and do their own thing. Does it feel like an epic journey? That’s up to the player.

I don’t think people want vertical progression. What people do want is to be rewarded for their effort in existing content (better loot based on time spent), as well as new, more varied content (as opposed to having essentially the same content for 2 years now) to sink their teeth into. There are obviously some exceptions (Dry Top, Silverwastes).

I’m not a fan of the idea.

It’s inevitable that people will grind it out just for the rewards. Carrot on the stick. PvE content is already easy enough as it is in Exotics, players don’t need the stat increase from additional levels. Being able to upgrade gear is also not a great idea, even with severe limitations.

Getting to max level is the journey if players took time with it; it can be as epic as you want it to be. The only benefit of max level is getting the best gear (Exotic, Ascended is situationally better) and being able to do content quicker. That doesn’t mean you can’t do content as a lower level player with lower tier gear.

Vayne.8563:

I just hope you’re not using zerker for your Tequatl runs.

Tequatl has been trivialized by numbers, the only time you really need the survivability is in phase 1. For every other phase, Berserker and Soldier are functionally the same as the primary Power stat is the only thing that matters (you don’t take damage when burning down Tequatl after the Megalaser event).

You go down a few more times with Berserker, but that’s not generally a problem with enough numbers doing damage.

phoenix.3465:

Besides, no enemy in PvP can do that much damage plus conditons, plus cripple, plus leaps on 2 second cooldowns, plus damageing trails.

Allow me to introduce you to my Thief! Well, not mine in particular, but Condi-Thief can be very painful.

The new zone is unforgiving, but that just adds to the challenge and satisfaction of taking them down. Over time, you pick up on the strategies needed to fight them:

Menders – burst damage. You’ll need to spike them down quick, or be ready with interrupts. Prioritize.
Trolls – spike damage works here too, they don’t heal unless a Mender is nearby.
Terragriff – cripple or immobilize as they start the charge, keep them down and they won’t be able to hurt you. If you’re facing more at the same time though, it’s pretty tough.
Husks – condition damage, but direct damage also works in taking them down. They’re not that painful to deal with. They do immobilize, but I’ve safely ignored them as a Thief, unless something else was nearby, in which case, I’m screwed unless I dodge out of the immobilize.
Thrashers – leeching ones, I normally range due to the life steal. ones that leave a torment trail, I either range or try to get behind them for a quick jab. With a bit of effort and a 3-4 hits, they go down.

I’m running an offensive build too, so it’s even less forgiving than playing a defensive guardian.

Precursor crafting doesn’t necessarily need to cost anything, but it should require some amount of effort to get the components needed. This will give it a reasonable amount of time-gating, allowing players to take their time with it or grind it out.

As for its affect on the economy, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Weapons themselves won’t be worth much, the legendary won’t be worth much either. But it gives everyone equal opportunity to get a Legendary weapon skin. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone and their cat will have a Legendary weapon – people will generally only go for weapons they want and no more, except for the completionists who just want everything.

The precursor weapon is one step in many towards getting a Legendary weapon. The other components also adds to the time and effort needed. Right now, you either need an insane amount of luck or gold to get the last step (everything else is attainable with enough time and effort even for a casual player).

I don’t see Legendary weapons as a status symbol. Nothing in this game is a status symbol. All skins should be available to everyone regardless of how often they play. The difference is that a casual player would take much longer to reach their Legendary weapon.

I honestly didn’t see the need for an MMO mouse for GW2; Steelseries Rival has me covered. Heal and Dodge bound to side buttons, Weapon swap to scroll click.

Corsair M95 has a different button placement than the Naga, might be better too.

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.

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).

Jana.6831:

Rashy.4165:

A better solution would be to have a short mission, where you need to use the trait (given to you temporarily during the mission) to complete it, awarding you the trait as the final reward (permanently, once you’ve successfully used it in the mission). That’s been suggested on this thread and makes more sense if their motivation is for players to “learn the trait”.

It still goes against their goal of allowing free and accessible experimentation.

Would make more sense if it comes to skills, wouldn’kitten The effects of some traits are hard to see. F.e. 7% of my precision is turned into vitality. Wouldn’t be that exciting to have an event evolving around that

True >.> It’ll create more work anyway, since all Traits have individual effects across multiple professions.

Re-evaluating the unlock requirements would go a long way towards improving the system. And making it account bound (unless the new account requirements are actually fun to do and doesn’t take a lot of time to achieve all 65 traits).

vana.5467:

Rashy.4165:

I’d also be open to buying Trait manuals, but in the following format:
- 5 Adept manuals, one for each trait line
- 5 Master manuals, one for each trait line
- 5 Grandmaster manuals, one for each trait line.

I think this is one point they’ll refuse to change.
Their primary motivation appears to have been some misguided idea that awarding traits individually encourages players to learn them better (I assume this is what they refer to when they state that they think the trait change was successful in some respects).

A better solution would be to have a short mission, where you need to use the trait (given to you temporarily during the mission) to complete it, awarding you the trait as the final reward (permanently, once you’ve successfully used it in the mission). That’s been suggested on this thread and makes more sense if their motivation is for players to “learn the trait”.

It still goes against their goal of allowing free and accessible experimentation.

Not every class has equal access to boon removal. And even if you did somehow manage to remove the Retaliation without killing yourself in the process, the wolf will just howl again and the Retaliation would be back on.

And as already mentioned, some of them had permanent retaliation, and boon stripping didn’t help. I tried it several times as a Thief. The only option I had was spiking them down quicker, minimizing number of hits, but even that was a lot more challenging than it needed to be.

TPMN.1483:

I Propose :
If I have a toon with that profession already 100% mapped and traits unlocked – we gain all other toons with the traits unlocked !

So if I start a Human Ele – I would have all traits unlocked and can do a fast level up and it’s ready to go.

The pain of doing all the trait / map exploration takes quite a while and I’m beginning to like Eles for various things and would love some more lvl 80 ones on my account. I have about 80 tomes of influence and how this trait thing currently works don’t see much point in using them.

Eh. That still makes it so that you’ll need to unlock all traits 7-8 times, 1 for each profession.

Even better:
1) Account bound. You do it once, never again. Accounts created before April 2014 should have all of their characters grandfathered in.
2) Re-evaluate unlock requirements, most of them are absurd and not worth the time or the cost (the skill point cost is way too high for someone who has to use skill points towards unlocking skills AND traits).

I’d also be open to buying Trait manuals, but in the following format:
- 5 Adept manuals, one for each trait line
- 5 Master manuals, one for each trait line
- 5 Grandmaster manuals, one for each trait line.

Each manual unlocks all Traits of that Tier within a Trait line. So the Critical Strikes Adept Trait Manual would unlock all Adept Traits in Critical Strikes for the Thief.

As an alternative to purchasing, you unlock the 15 Trait manuals through gameplay. Since you’re unlocking a lot more Traits per manual, having a longer time requirement to get them (but not absurdly long, the unlock requirements still need to make sense) is fair.

In terms of cost of purchase, only Gold. All 15 manuals should cost a total of 15g (obviously not 1g each, the lower tier Trait manuals should cost less per manual). 15g is easily made by level 80; I for one had 30g by the time I was around level 70 through normal gameplay.

A different option to the one I posted earlier a few pages back.

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.

assasin oates.3018:

Honestly I’d like Thief to get Rifle to shoot like a sniper, or greatsword and fight more duelist than berserker.

And I don’t see why Engineers don’t have hammers, it makes no sense!

Thief with rifle would be nice. Thief with greatsword would be awkward. The Asssassin/Stealth/Ninja archetype rarely uses large bulky weapons*. Off-hand sword though (dualwielding katana isn’t uncommon) would be a logical addition.

*Well, if you include all of the Ninjutsu skills, a few of them do take advantage of two-handed weapons such as a spear, staff, etc.

Having missed Marionette, I would love to see it return in some form, either as a permanent event or as an equivalent encounter.

Silverwastes isn’t quite complete yet. I’ve had all of the achievements and shoulderpiece done within the first two days, but I still go back to help others get the achievements and because I like the large scale organization that takes place.

Next week, we’ll probably see an extension of the meta events as more of the map is uncovered.

It’s been longer than 2 days btw, it came out last week.

DonQuack.9025:

wait silverwastes is considered challenging content?

The challenge is in organizing a successful Breach. A disorganized group will find it harder than a highly organized group with everyone on the same page and familiar with their role.

The organizing portion isn’t hard, but it does require everyone to work together – something which doesn’t always happen.

NNYinsanenature.5684:

Lol think what you want. They are the only events worth doing since the enemies that spawn for them actually drop loot. And they drop crafting materials more often than any other mob type on the map.

And guess what? Both events only spawn after a successful capture and defence. Yak events only start once you capture Red Rock and Indigo, with more once you capture Amber and Blue. Rubble Event only pops up after a defence where walls break down.

You want to “farm” the only “worthwhile” events? You’ll have to do all of the events. Might as well start with doing all the events properly and get your “worthwhile loot” while doing so, instead of the other way around.

Tomas.5029:

Chest farm didn’t neccessairly require a nerf – it’s the alternatives that required a buff.
If a mindless farm of chests becomes the be-all and end-all so swiftly, that means that something is clearly wrong with the reward system.

Both are needed.

Chest farms were spawning too quickly and in higher concentrations. Rewards from the meta (while decent) were low enough that chest farming became the better option (despite the mindlessness of it).

Chest farms needed the nerf. Rewards for the meta need a buff. There are many ways to make the latter happen, some of which are probably easier to implement than others (a gold reward for completing the Breach in addition to rare bags and other items, the amount determined by number of bosses killed, or simply increasing the number of items given out for success or failure of the Breach). The more difficult system to implement would be tying the rewards to the number of Forts held and defended at a certain level (perhaps also incorporating Supply level) to make the Breach reward more lucrative if more Fortresses are held, defended and supplied at higher levels.

Kasima.8143:

Rashy.4165:

Your understanding is incorrect. I highly doubt ArenaNet intended for Chests to be farmed to oblivion, hence the patch.

Now, whose reading comprehension needs work?

This entire topic is predicated on the assumption that ArenaNet intended Chest farming to be the ONLY thing going on in the Silverwastes. The four fortresses are just display pieces to be admired and no more.

That assumption is incorrect. This thread should not exist. Actually do the content instead of finding more ways to subject yourselves to mindless grind (and I highly doubt any of you are actually having FUN while doing so, you’re simply equating the gold/hour to fun).

My reading comprehension is fine. Maybe you should actually appreciate the effort ArenaNet put into designing the map and doing the events as intended, instead of falsely claiming that chest farming was the intended purpose of the map.

The far more logical intention of the map:
Capture and defend all fortresses until the Breach.
Open chests during down-time when no events are going on at ALL fortresses.

People broke both by staying only at Amber and ignoring all fortresses.

Your understanding is incorrect. I highly doubt ArenaNet intended for Chests to be farmed to oblivion, hence the patch. Players took what was in the game and turned it into a mindless grind for loot.

While there were organized maps advertised in LFG (and I actually did jump ship the moment I saw a large concentration of commander tags at Amber), the proportion of organized maps to chest farming maps (excluding LF legendary boss parties) was very low. Before chest farming became a thing, every map was making a decent attempt at organization, calling out fortresses that needed help defending, etc, while other maps were far more organized with commander tags.

Chest farming did have a higher impact than you claim – it reduced the number of organized maps as people assumed that chest farming was the only worthwhile thing to do.

The respawn timer was far too short to be intentional.

Frankly, it baffles me that players subject themselves to mindless farming over engaging content, just over extra loot.

Thoroughly enjoyed the map the moment I stepped in it too. Took me a couple of hours to figure out how things worked, and with discussion, figure out how the boss fights worked. A lot of fun if done with coordination.

I also love that zerg tactics simply won’t work for the bosses. Gold and Silver particularly – chasing them around as a zerg and dpsing them is plain ineffective as the boss will get scaled up and both bosses will wipe out an entire zerg. However, stick to the strategy and time it just right and you can burn down the bosses in less than a minute each. Same goes for Copper, Iron and Platinum requiring specific strategies to counter their mechanics (though arguably, Iron is the easiest of the 5 requiring purely dps to take him down and watching out for the AOEs).

Excited to see what the future holds for Silverwastes, with those interesting looking lanes on the west side of the map.

The fights weren’t overtuned, it was a lot of fun. Once you figured out the mechanics, it was a matter of patiently executing the necessary steps. A lot of it boiled down to timing in the last boss fight since the colour and fragile buffs could run out. There were a lot of instances where I had the colour buff, but had to wait for fragile to appear, and vice versa.

Kasima.8143:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Or, you know, you could actually try playing this (quite profitable) map properly and contributing to its success rather than attempting to ruin it again.

The map is only more profitable than the FG train when you open chests, genius. So yes, we need to find what the best way is to do chest trains.

Your reading comprehension could use a little work. Nowhere in that post does it mention that doing the meta events the way it was intended is MORE profitable than any existing farming methods. It states a fact: doing the meta events DOES make money. Just not as much as the loot-crazed maniacs want.

A mini Zhaitan would be nice too >.>

azizul.8469:

Lotro has it with mail C.O.D… receiver only get the item in mail after paying via the mail. but the main reason anet does not implement this is to curb gold selling via trade abuse…

Perhaps one way to do this is to compare the value of the item being traded (using TP data) for gold. If they’re within a reasonable percentage, the mail is sent. So, for instance, sending a rice ball for 1000g wouldn’t work.

The reasonable percentage would allow for some flexibility in pricing, if the seller wants to sell at a discount price. I know I would for friends.

C.O.D. would be a nice, optional feature to have. Optional allowing players to do a completely free trade with whatever price they choose (among friends, for instance), with C.O.D. for trading with strangers.

I only trade via mail with people I know and trust: close friends, guildies, etc. We help each other out with less common materials for various purposes.

Player to Player trading has its issues, and would require a lot of anti-scam systems in place to ensure the trade works. Even then, people will still get scammed due to being careless.

Niteraven.1372:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Or, you know, you could actually try playing this (quite profitable) map properly and contributing to its success rather than attempting to ruin it again.

^ This

+1

If done correctly, the entire Pact Assault takes less time. If everyone took the time to learn the boss encounters, all 5 of them will be downed in 5 minutes (I’ve seen them individually go down in less than 5 minutes going to each of the bosses during different Breach events, I know it’s possible). And contrary to popular belief, you actually do get a fair amount of loot for doing the meta events properly.

I’m willing to bet the current meta events is a part of a longer chain; we’ve only begun to see what will happen in the latter half/portion of Season 2, and it’s likely to play a role in Season 3 as well.

Kelly.7019:

if you’re mad about people farming and not doing events , where were you in the first 3days after patch release- thats when you should be playing!! because after that its harder to get you chieves done like usual. Others have their stuff completed so obviously farming is what is going to be happening. Until Anet finds a way to stretch out or make events last longer to complete. this is the way it has been since the beginning. This hasn’t changed much.

Maybe, just maybe, we help each other get all the achievements after getting them ourselves, regardless of when people start working on them.

It’s a cinch in organized maps, Gold and Silver are the only troublesome achievements.

Korskarn.9120:

Fixed ? Really ? If it was that much high compared to the others forts, it was hardly noticeable…

See for yourself: http://i.imgur.com/13LzAjs.png

Amber has the higher concentration, Blue has fewer, Indigo and Red have fewer still. All referring to the immediate vicinity of the fortress. Slightly outside of the vicinity, Amber still has more chests. This was really obvious if you used the Spade skill to locate them while outside Amber – 8 or 9 green lines popped up. You did not get that many green lines popping up at any other fortress. I also think I may have been one of the initial people to discover that higher concentration, as that happened before chest farming became a thing and I was helping a few guildies use up their keys (and use up my shovels in the process). The 8 green lines popping up surprised me, but I didn’t think too much of it until the next morning when I saw people farming chests at Amber.

I was also among the players who actively stayed away from chest farming and did everything I could to seek out Organized maps.

Combine that with the incredibly short respawn timer, and it’s no wonder it was abused to make a quick buck.

I went for Valkyrie for my Thief, which I think is the second best option after Berserker. I do have a Berserker set, but I don’t use it as often. Weapons and Trinkets are Berserker, and I play with my traits (occasionally 66002, mostly 56XXX putting the remaining 3 points where I need it most).

I would really like to use a Condition based play-style in PvE, or try Venom sharing, but condition caps get in the way of that. I can do that in open world PvE easily (except World bosses), but not so much in dungeons.

aspirine.6852:

lgf tool doesnt work at all for this.

It does. There are still one or two organized maps advertising in LFG, every so often. Although, at any given time, I’m seeing more chest farming maps than organized ones.

Two things need to happen:
1) Chest farm nerfed by limiting availability or tying rewards to the overall activity of the map, not just Amber.
2) Reward for meta events buffed, and overall mechanics need to be changed to give more incentive to defend.

Organized maps are amazingly fun and gets to the Breach a lot quicker if everyone is on the same page. The boss fights themselves are easier if everyone understands the mechanics. I’m glad there are still some people interested in doing an organized run of the meta events, as the content is a lot more engaging (despite the lower reward).

ArchonWing.9480:

This is 100% a player issue; and not an Anet issue. If players can’t tolerate people playing differently, then that’s their fault and they get what they deserve. And nobody is obliged to do any event anyways.

One of the first things that came to mind when I started spending more time in Silverwastes was: Why does the Breach not require 4/4 Forts held? On the first day, I thought that was the case, until I discovered that loosing a Fort meant nothing for the Pact Assault progress bar.

Two possible solutions:
1) Make the Breach require holding all fortresses at level 3. Each Fortress defend event raises the level by 1, and after level 3, the defend events shouldn’t progress Pact Assault for a given Fort. The only way to progress Pact Assault should be to take over more Forts. As far as I can tell, you only get Pact Assault progress for capturing a fort and defending it against Mordrem (defend events). Both of these combined should only give a total of 25% progress to Pact Assault (requiring a total of maybe 5-6 defend events to reach it, allowing time for the bull escorts to progress supply level), making it mandatory to get all 4 Forts to progress the meta event.

2) Determine the Breach reward based on number of forts held, defence level, and supply level of the Fortresses. The reward is further increased based on number of bosses killed during the Breach. This reduces the meta event reward for players only chest farming, while significantly improving rewards for players actively defending all fortresses.

I would personally like to see a combination of both, in some way:
The bare minimum to enter the Breach is to have all 4 fortresses at Defence level 1 (which occurs after capturing and one successful defend event). Losing a fortress to the Mordrem means losing a small percentage of Pact Assault, which can be re-obtained by re-capturing and defending the fortress.

Once Pact Assault is fully maximized through successful Defend events (no 25% limit on Pact Assault progress), the Breach is only triggered if the conditions are met. This would allow people to maximize Pact Assault by camping Amber without ever triggering the Breach (since all other Forts will need to be captured).

Some form of DR should apply too: the more defend events occurring at a Fortress, the less it should count towards progressing Pact Assault. This would really discourage camping at Amber, because after a certain number of defend events, Pact Assault will cease to progress.

This would increase the amount of time needed to reach the Breach for players who focus solely on Chest farming. Capturing and defending all 4 fortresses simultaneously should be balanced to progress the Pact Assault significantly faster, while allowing reasonable time to ensure a higher reward (dependent on Defence and Supply level).

Honestly, don’t go looking for it.

Join an organized map, and stick to Red Rock defence. It will eventually pop up nearby and you can go kill it with the rest of the defenders at Red Rock. An organized map will also call out Legendary spawns, so if you happen to be at another Fortress, you can go to the Legendary (try to avoid scenarios where a Fort becomes undefended because everyone rushes to the Legendary).

The content is permanent, there’s no rush to get the title.

I’m actually liking the challenge with Gold and Silver. I’ve only successfully taken them down once.

The main problem I see with that boss is players going around and popping bubbles when the boss is nowhere near it. I accidentally did that once too (had auto-attack enabled). Though, in the very same encounter, I popped a bubble just as I was about to be charged, and the group was able to DPS it down. Ran out of time for the second one though.

I’m really enjoying Silverwastes though, despite that, and I agree, rewards need rebalancing. Chest farming needs to be taken care of, while tying the Breach rewards to the Fort defence and supply level (high the level for each fort held, better rewards in the Breach).

A way to buff up the Breach reward:

When the Breach event triggers, a baseline reward is determined based on the following factors:
- Number of Fortresses held
- Defence level of each fortress.
- Supply level of each fortress.

This baseline reward when the Breach triggers is awarded if the Breach fails at 0/5 or 1/5. The baseline reward is further increased by the number of bosses killed, maxing out at 5/5.

Example of how this would work:
Each fortress has a “reward value” based on multiplying the Defence and Supply level, for instance. A fortress with Defence level 2 and supply level 2 will have a reward value of 4. At the end of Foothold event, the reward values for each fortress is tallied up, determining the baseline reward value. 2/5 bosses would double the reward, 3/5 bosses would triple the reward, 4/5 would quadruple, you get the picture.

Suppose we have all 4 fortresses at Defence level 1 and supply level 1. That would only give a reward value of 4 going into the breach, which can be multiplied up to 20. If all fortresses were at Defence level 3, that would be a reward value of 12, multiplied up to 60 if all 5 bosses are killed. If all 4 Forts are at Defence level 3 AND supply level 3, the baseline value would be 36, up to a total of 180 if the Breach succeeds at 5/5.

The values are simply arbitrary to illustrate that all of these factors should increase the final reward you get from the Breach. A reward value of 180 should give you a lot more loot than a reward value of 20. This can be in the form of more rare bags of gear (but obviously not proportionally more, don’t want to flood the game with too many rares), more varied rare loot, chances at exotics, maybe even Ascended gear boxes, Champ bags, etc.

Just a thought.

Edit: To prevent “screw this, rewards suck unless in organized map”, the rewards would need to be great for maps that can reach: 4/4 Forts held at Defence level 3, 4/4 Forts at Supply level 2-3. These are easily attainable even on a disorganized map – the supply level of Amber and Blue can easily reach level 2, and a really good map can push both to level 3 with dedicated supply escort teams. Both Indigo and Red Rock can reach supply level 5 with minimal effort.

The reward level for getting 4/4 at Defence level 3 AND Supply level 3+ should be a fair amount better because it takes a lot more coordination to ensure that many supply escorts succeed before the Breach occurs.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Not sure what the problem here is. After we trigger the assault, and kill all the bosses, we zerg around hunting for chests for 5 minutes. We redo the event, complete, zerg, rinse and repeat. My only complaint is the lack of bank access.

The key detail here is that all other fortresses are neglected, and only Amber is defended. While this does progress the meta, it’s a lot less efficient.

Honestly, I wish ArenaNet had made it a mandatory requirement to hold all Forts at level 3 defence to trigger the breach.