Dry Top

[Nidome.1365]

Dry Top doesn't see the players that it used to, but is still in use.
I still do a daily run through Dry Top with one of my characters and have realised that I haven't seen a T6 Dry-Top map in at least 2 years, I'm now lucky if I see more than two T5 maps per month. Most maps reach T4 but occasionally only reach T3.
Only a few years ago you used to see at least one T6 map per week, at least one T5 map per day, and unless you were unlucky enough to be on an overflow map when the Dry Top map was a daily JP under the pre-wizards vault system the map would reach T4.

Also currently when Dry Top is on rift hunting rotation you are lucky if you see one map reach T4 per day. The other thing I have noticed is that when a copy of the Dry Top map closes due to low population, the map you are bumped to is always of a lower tier. OK, you could remain on your map, but as some people will volunteer to get bumped then you now lack people to do events.

It is time Dry Top got a bit of a tweak so that new players can reach the tiers they require for merchant tier unlocks.

I would suggest the following:

1) Increase the amount of tier progress awarded by each event slightly.

2) Make Rift events count towards tier progress (doesn't need to be much, just enough to compensate for the fact that players doing Dry Top map events are now spread across multiple copies of the map instead of all being in one.).

3) When a Dry Top map is due to close due to low population then close the lowest tier map first regardless of population.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Will probably see an increase in population when this begins: 

 

[Danikat.8537]

I think a big part of the reason it rarely gets above T4 is because T5 and T6 don't unlock anything new, they just reduce the geode cost to buy things from the vendors, and it's often easier for players to farm additional geodes than to coordinate getting a map to T6. For example 10 lockpicks cost 200 geodes at T4, 170 at T5 and 130 at T6, and getting an extra 70 geodes on a T4 map is going to be much simpler than pushing it to T6 within the same time limit.

I'm inclined to think the fix is to remove tier 5 and 6 considering the only difference to tier 4 is slightly cheaper items, and maybe reduce the cost at T4.

[LSD.4673]

3 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I'm inclined to think the fix is to remove tier 5 and 6 considering the only difference to tier 4 is slightly cheaper items, and maybe reduce the cost at T4.

wat

Cheaper purchase price means extra profit. T6 favour means a full stack of clay from 1k geodes; T4 means ~142 clay. That's the incentive to push for T5/6.

But yes: T6 is dead. The rift event grinders made it easier to hit T5.

Edited March 14 by LSD.4673

[Nidome.1365]

On 3/14/2024 at 8:28 PM, LSD.4673 said:

wat

Cheaper purchase price means extra profit. T6 favour means a full stack of clay from 1k geodes; T4 means ~142 clay. That's the incentive to push for T5/6.

But yes: T6 is dead. The rift event grinders made it easier to hit T5.

The rift hunters have made it harder to hit t5, they have made it harder to hit any tier. Rift events don't count towards the map tier.

Because of the flood of rift hunters there are lots of Dry Top maps running at the same time with lots of people doing rift events and very few doing Dry Top events which means that you have some tier progress across multiple maps rather than a lot of tier progress across one or two maps.

If the rift hunters actually helped with Dry Top events it wouldn't be so bad but they don't, and when you ark them to in map chat you just get abuse, I can only assume that these are ex-wow players as the GW2 community is usually better than that.
What makes it worse is that some of the Dry Top events scale by number of players within the event area - eg. the Bakkar beetle event, so when there is a rift event overlapping the event, the Dry Top event gets harder.

[Funky.4861]

I haven't been to dry top since Soto released. The change to gathering locations (ie: their removal) has basically killed dry top, silverwastes and pretty much every LS map. I have unbound and volatile magic in the hundreds of thousands and multiple stacks of every LS 'currency' in my material storage (ie: winterberries, fire orchids, bloodstone shards, mistonium etc); all from home instance nodes. The only slight incentive i have to go to any of them is for the dailies, but that is not motivation enough.

[Randulf.7614]

16 minutes ago, Funky.4861 said:

The change to gathering locations (ie: their removal) 

Can you elaborate? I've noticed no changes to these maps post-Soto, so I'm not sure what you refer to

[Funky.4861]

Remember when the daily was: mine 10 ore in the heart of maguuma, or gather 10 plants in ascalon etc? I haven't been back to that strawberry patch in diessa plateau, or any specific map since that change. I do my daily LLA, chak gerent, tarir, dragonstand, then maybe strikes or whatever the dailies are for pve and finish-off with progressing my next legendary/aurene variant or pushing another char through the story to get to inner nayos.

[Randulf.7614]

2 minutes ago, Funky.4861 said:

Remember when the daily was: mine 10 ore in the heart of maguuma, or gather 10 plants in ascalon etc? I haven't been back to that strawberry patch in diessa plateau, or any specific map since that change. I do my daily LLA, chak gerent, tarir, dragonstand, then maybe strikes or whatever the dailies are for pve and finish-off with progressing my next legendary/aurene variant or pushing another char through the story to get to inner nayos.

I do, but I'm struggling to understand the impact their removal has had on the maps. Nothing stops anyone still gathering there and the populations haven't dropped at all. I spend a lot of time in Dry Top and Silverwastes right now for various things I need and neither are ever depopulated compared to pre-SoTo Dry Top doesn't have the T6 organisers anymore (not been there for a long time mind you), but otherwise plenty of tags, call outs and events are being done.

I'm also in LS4 with an alt and I'm not seeing any kill off there either. Vision and Return to Living World keeps the LS maps going surprisngly strongly

Or do you mean it's just killed it for you personally rather than the wider population?

[Funky.4861]

It's definitely de-prioritised the maps for me personally, and i assume a few others. I can't comment on map populations as i'm not there (!) and it's good to know that the lege trinket and other collections (looking at you, ambrite weapons!) are carrying the maps. I still like Bloodstone Fen, for example (the gliding skills are fun) but i guess it's not relevant to what i'm currently working on.

[Danikat.8537]

On 3/14/2024 at 8:28 PM, LSD.4673 said:

wat

Cheaper purchase price means extra profit. T6 favour means a full stack of clay from 1k geodes; T4 means ~142 clay. That's the incentive to push for T5/6.

But yes: T6 is dead. The rift event grinders made it easier to hit T5.

Sorry for the late reply, I completely forgot about this until now.

Yes if you just look at the numbers on the vendor higher tiers mean cheaper purchases, but that's not nearly the whole picture. This is a case of 'time is money' (or more precisely 'time is geodes'). To buy anything from those vendors you have to spend time a) farming geodes and b) raising the map tier (b is optional, depending on what you want to buy). You can get geodes by doing almost anything in Dry Top and don't lose progress when the map resets, whereas getting the map to T5 or T6 requires coordinating a large group of players to complete specific events on a schedule.

Therefore it can be faster for an individual player to farm more geodes to buy things at T4 than to round up enough people and get them organised to complete enough events to get the map to T5/T6.

You're probably going to say raising the map tier can only take 40 minutes maximum because that's how long the event takes, but that assumes it succeeds on the first try, which assumes you had enough people show up who know what to do and are willing to do it without any prior planning, and if that was happening consistently this topic wouldn't exist.

Edited March 17 by Danikat.8537

[Gop.8713]

I only go to dry top when one of the psna dudes is there, but it definitely hasn't been two years since I've seen a t6 . . .

[crepuscular.9047]

On 3/15/2024 at 3:40 AM, Nidome.1365 said:

Only a few years ago you used to see at least one T6 map per week, at least one T5 map per day

of the years i been playing GW2 and visit it daily for quartz, I think I have only seen 2 or 3 times it ever reached T6

to reach T6 the strategy most organised group I've seen when I was grinding for Geodes for gen1 legendary weapon AP is they stay at the map for 1.5+ hrs to get it to T6 by getting the first cycle to T5 but leaving the beetle event to rollover to the next cycle so there will be more the sufficient events to complete within the time before sandstorm starts

most of time people dont bother to get it beyond T4 beause
1. they only care about the skritt queen event
2. time investment, like I said what I observed, the organised group need to stay at the map for 1.5+ hrs to get it to T6, 99.999% of the player based dont bother

[LSD.4673]

23 hours ago, Nidome.1365 said:

The rift hunters have made it harder to hit t5, they have made it harder to hit any tier. Rift events don't count towards the map tier.

But rift events do contribute to the map-wife event participation bar.

It's why when rifts came out, every map was hitting t5.

The "megaserver" system is awful, and would regularly have 3-4 instances open for the tiny population before rift events, so the idea of it diluting map pop doesn't float.

Lastly, people are missing the point that there's a slew of players who have hoards of geodes from WvW, so the idea of grinding them doesn't compute. We just want the best conversion ratio for what we have, and since the rift thing was added, it has been far more common to drop into a map and find it at or near to t5.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

You know, I was actually just in the Silverwastes the other day and I had the exact OPPOSITE reaction. Not saying you're wrong, OP, absolutely not. I don't think I've ever seen Dry Top hit T6 before, at all. But at the same time...do you realize how miraculous it is that there were players there at all? By every metric we use nowadays every single core map should be dead. Every LWS map should be dead. Every HoT map should be dead. Every PoF map should be dead. Every Icebro- actually let's skip that one. Every EoD map should be dead. The only part of the games that should have any playes in them at all are the cultural hubs, LA, and the SotO maps. Because traditionally that's how MMOs usually work. Once you're done in an area there's usually zero reason to stay there. There's no good loot, no good money, no experience, and if you're max level or max gear, not even any players to play with since you'll just dominate everything. I've seen it before in SO many other MMOs.

GW2 is different though. Not sure how they came up with the design but of all the things they have screwed up (and they have screwed up a LOT in the last couple years) that core design has been one of the greatest things to happen to all MMOs. There's always a reason to go back to those old maps. Your gear levels with you so even if you're in Queensdale you still pick up unidentified gear that's level 80. The resources you collect always have value either for crafting or selling, and so, so, SO many achievements have you tread over old ground meaning that all the old maps at least have some people on them.

It might suck that Dry Top can't get up to T5 or 6, but I think you're looking at this glass as half empty. Instead I would look at it as half full. Every time I got there there's almost always a commander, Catmander, or at least a mentor leading events. There's always a group ready to take down the Skritt Queen, and even though it's kinda pointless, every time those little parachutes fall there's always a team of people there to fight the inquest for them. Everything is good here. Relax and enjoy.

[Nidome.1365]

On 3/18/2024 at 3:03 PM, LSD.4673 said:

But rift events do contribute to the map-wife event participation bar.

It's why when rifts came out, every map was hitting t5.

I do a quartz run through Dry Top every day.  Maps usually hit t4 every hour, occasionally t5. When it's t5 I'll buy a stack of lockpicks and grab chests during the sandstorm. The only time they occasionally didn't hit t4+ was when the Dry Top JP was on rotation for PvE dailies and you had 20+ people just sitting up by the JP chest.

Last week it was a struggle to get maps to t4. I also took part in rift events that I was passing and on completion of the rift event the their progress bar did not move at all. Even did a couple of rifts directly after the hourly map reset and the progress bar stayed at zero.

The main reason I started this thread is because on the Monday I didn't see a single map hit t4 when they normally would. Had the rift events counted the map would have been t5 or maybe even t6 as there were two squads on the map, one doing t1 rifts and the other doing t2/t3 rifts non-stop.

[LSD.4673]

43 minutes ago, Nidome.1365 said:

I do a quartz run through Dry Top every day.  Maps usually hit t4 every hour, occasionally t5. When it's t5 I'll buy a stack of lockpicks and grab chests during the sandstorm. The only time they occasionally didn't hit t4+ was when the Dry Top JP was on rotation for PvE dailies and you had 20+ people just sitting up by the JP chest.

Last week it was a struggle to get maps to t4. I also took part in rift events that I was passing and on completion of the rift event the their progress bar did not move at all. Even did a couple of rifts directly after the hourly map reset and the progress bar stayed at zero.

The main reason I started this thread is because on the Monday I didn't see a single map hit t4 when they normally would. Had the rift events counted the map would have been t5 or maybe even t6 as there were two squads on the map, one doing t1 rifts and the other doing t2/t3 rifts non-stop.

In my case, for about 2 weeks before the "weekly rifts" or whatever rotated to Dry Top, i was doing a 5min daily chest run with the treasure hunter bot slot. Before that, i'd show up every now and then to spend geodes, which was the case for years. Every time the map was either deserted or, at best, T4.

Then suddenly one day the maps were full of players while i was grabbing chests. Every time i logged into the map it was T5. 

Based on that, i was pretty confident rifts contributed to sandstorm tiers.