Hey guys,
This feedback is strictly from the PoV of a small wvw-only guild, who are focussed more on fights and GvG than PPT. We had enough people in the beta to do a small raid (Turns out everyone from the guild got invites) and we ran for approximately 3 hours.
General feedback:
- Map is way too big. You would need to double the cap at the very minimum to populate it. Even when there was a massive queue at the start of the test, we ran for quite some time without seeing anyone other than the passive mobs, which brings me to my next point…..
- There are way too many mobs on the map. Dinosaurs, skelk, spiders, it goes on and on. Aggressive vet dinosaurs don’t belong in wvwvw IMO. they look cool, but it makes it tough to have fights in the only open spaces on the map because they are literally filled with creeps.
- Air turret knockback is annoying. It’s really not hard to dodge but there are so many of them, hidden around corners and in nooks on the stairs. I’d suggest lowering them.
- earth walls in the earth keep are annoying and make running through it take way longer, even if it’s yours. Should only impede enemies assault.
- Verticality (not a word, whatever) of the map is a bit extreme. We spent more time trying to figure out “how do we get down without dying” than anything. Though…..
- We did get to try out the air shrine buff (no fall damage) which was fun until someone capped a shrine while a bunch of us were in midair……
- The middle cannon event was kind of neat. With a few organized groups it could be fun, there could be some awesome fights. It still seems like the server with more players will dominate.
- Overall I don’t see anyone fighting inside the keeps due to the ridiculous choke points and seige overlooks. It seriously seems like the map designers tried their very hardest to make insane chokes. It would only take a few ACs and some solid cc to keep all but the largest zergs from breaching into lords.
- Tower designs were kind of neat. Not really much to say on this. The lords having different attacks was fun.
- Speaking of lords, the keep lords do a ton of damage if left alone. We pushed in on a much larger group in our lords room, right when the lord did its shockwave attack (a bit like Teq’s waves) and it downed a load of them. It’s refreshing for lords to actually be a threat to the opposing team.
- The map looks really nice. We all agreed on that.
- Keeps upgrading on their own means there is a ton of supply. Supply hubs inside keeps seemed a bit scarce and were hard to find at first. A map icon could help.
- Shield generators are really neat. The range is a bit silly, though. Almost 4k range is way too much, at least in my opinion. Looking forward to playing with them more.
- Lots of straight-up un-counterable siege positions in towers, keeps and walls. That’s not fun to fight against.
That’s pretty much it.
Our overall consensus was that the map will not be played by guilds looking for fights, primarily because of it’s size. It is difficult for two groups to meet organically without trying to defend/attack something, and because the map is so large the attacking side should have plenty of time to flip the objective before reinforcements arrive. Even if two guilds manage to meet and want to have a good fight, they are both plagued by neutral/aggressive mobs (free rallies for down players) and the line of sight issues presented by a very slope-y environment. Again, the general consensus is that we will not play this map in its current state, and instead focus on the guild hall arena (and scrims with guilds who actually want to fight) during weeks it is active.
We did not come across any bugs, the event seemed like more of a “look how cool this new, finished map is” than a stress/beta event.
Thank you for inviting us, we had fun!
Zombie Coast [ZzZz]