General Feedback

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: Basch.1347

Basch.1347

Some thoughts/feedback.

The guild I’m in was actually able to run together since about 15-20 of us got the invitation and were all on YB, so we tried it out. First, the queues were insane because of the stream/new content, but once we were in, I saw a few things that need improvement.

Walls: They’re way too high. You can build an AC on top of them without being able to counter-siege them in any way. ACs can’t reach, ballistas can’t reach, not even Omegas can reach them. Sure, you can build several of the new bubble siege, but only if you spend 60 points to be able to stop AC fire during use. Also, it gives the defending team a huge height advantage, so that trebuchets that they build can easily reach any trebuchets you build to take the wall down.

Keep Lord health: Too much health. Takes too long to take it down, especially with the different AoE abilities that they have. Would be impossible to take with enemy numbers around, especially if you’re running >20.

Keep Rings: The ring on the Lord of keeps is much too large. It’d be too easy to troll the ring (keep it from capping). Even SMC has a regular-sized ring. Make it the same size as current keep rings please.

Distances: Takes much too long to get from point to point. Especially between camps and objectives, so that if you lose your siege, you have to run too far to get more supply. And if you wipe, you basically have to run 5 minutes at least to get anywhere.

Verticality: Stuff is too high/low. Steep ledges, steep hills, etc. I get strategic geography, but much of it is just eye candy and isn’t functional.

Beyond those specific points, the maps just don’t seem conducive to fights. It seems as if there’s too much of a focus on bunker tactics and holding objectives easily with very little effort, with some random content (shrines, laser thing). The only fight zone seems to be the oasis, which has so much visual eye candy that it’s laggy without fights.

I foresee that EB will be bumping and the BLs avoided except maybe someone arranging a fight in the western desert area or in the south between the towers.

FA

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: Basch.1347

Basch.1347

Oh and everything upgrades too quickly, probably because the yaks move too quickly and spawn too often. Slow them down or increase the time between their spawns.

FA

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: Exedore.6320

Exedore.6320

Northern Towers These don’t seem to have any strategic value. They only count for PPT and they don’t allow you quicker access to anything.

Travel around the map It’s extremely confusing to find your way around if you’re not familiar with the map. Though travel times seem okay once you figure out the paths, finding the route initially is daunting and you often run into walls or terrain you can’t pass. I think the big problem with this is the minimap. The roads and walls blend in with the terrain and it doesn’t highlight cliffs well. The fire keep is completely blocked on the minimap.

Kirrena Rosenkreutz

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: DoctorWunderbar.5037

DoctorWunderbar.5037

To add to this,

Verticality: Like Basch said, the map is super heavily focused on up and down movement, which is not bad in and of itself, but its coupled with other bad design choices. The steep inclines are also troublesome for casters to accurately place bombs as well as keep the camera tilted in the right direction. It feels like I am sacrificing 50% of my screen to either looking at the ground or up at the sky. Its almost too confusing, seeing as there seem random portals strewn across each keep that lead to drastic changes in elevation.

Ledges: Man, it really feels like the designer of the Desert Borderlands map looked at Skyhammer and said to themselves, “This is fantastic, lets make this 100x bigger and add more narrow catwalks!”. For a game that prides itself on fast paced movement and dodging, all the pathways up, down, and to an objective are extremely narrow to navigate. The influence from the EotM bridges is obvious, but thats not a good thing. It discourages anyone other than solo roamers to go there, and doesn’t leave much room to fight in.

Odd Terrain Changes: In some places in the borderlands (particularly the southwest desert) its seems they had all this blank space that would better be served as semi flat fighting ground, which would be fantastic, but instead it’s filled with steep hills and wierd angles that make fighting difficult. Semi-related to this, some of the walls and gates are in terrible/awkward positions. For example, south west tower, has walls that if broken lead to a narrow hallway that leads to a narrow staircase. So not only do the attacks have to face numerous AC fire with no recourse, but if they break the wall down, they are forced right into TWO chokes? Really? I realize the staircase is there only because of the huge verticality, but goes back to Basch’s point of “This wall is too kitten high”. And again in SWT, the portal for the defenders, upon exiting the tower, leads you right into a corner, a very very very bad corner to get spammed in, making pushing out suicidal.

Map Size: Its huge. Way too huge for the number of players currently allowed in. Time To Travel feels like I would have to schedule time off work in order to get from spawn to the southern towers. Couple the size of the map with the twists and turns of the narrow, tall, passageways and it feels like I’m a rat running a maze.

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: FireHazard.3467

FireHazard.3467

Welcome to EOTM 2.0. This map is way too large. The travel time between areas means fights will never happen, just constant karma training.

Also, as a thief, there are so many places that I cant use my shortbow 5 skill that I should be able to. Like the bridges in the current WvW maps, but much much worse.

RIP WvW – July 30th, 2015

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: selan.8354

selan.8354

it is eotm, not a borderland map.

the good: love that the map is big and it looks very beautiful

the bad:
way too much eyecandy, very annoying passages
not enough space for nice battles. ( i love zergbusting and i love a good large scale battle which doesnt seem to be possible)
the terrain will be horrible for certain classes that already have a hard time with terrain. mesmers blink will fail about 90% of the time and terrain for example.

agree with the walls… they are massive and the way my server defends… u shalll not pass ac spam is back

the ugly: way way way too much ai and pve elements.
to many siege chokepoints
gives mapblobs advantage
the terrain is not practical for a wvw map

dear anet: i love the eycandy, but as a wvw player, thats not what i need. it could work as an optional wvw map like eotm, but should not replace our boderland maps. as a wvw player since release all i can tell u about wvw:

think of it a little more as a sandbox style game mode. less is wayway way more
we dont want crazy ai and weird buffs. we dont want more ai control we want more player control. we need less pve. and flat terrain. too many cliffs will make aall classes without massive stability non viable= we will have our heavy train back again.

well ill need to queue with my mesmer and necro for eb then ….

Lv 80 glamour Mesmer Triforce Mesmerpower PU mes,Lv 80 power necro
[AVTR]
Isle of Kickaspenwood

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: Xenesis.6389

Xenesis.6389

- Only got to play for about 1.5 hrs today, but the majority of that time was spent running from point a to b to c to d.

- The map feels too big for a borderland map, especially when you consider that most times regular borderlands are not full except for prime time and even then not on every server. If this was eotm version 2 or maybe ebg version 2 then ok, but it seems like a waste for a borderland map.

- Too many paths most of which is confusing going from point a to b, especially when higher or lower ground is also included, just felt too much like a maze. Felt like a hindrance to both defenders and attackers. Great for ambushes I suppose, but I wonder how much of that will actually happen.

- There needs to be some work done on the map art, I understand it’s gw2 and art is part of the package, but it really looks more like water painting than a map at this point. Making the map more clear will probably fix some of the feeling like a maze issues.

The areas around the towers look fine for the most part, the area around the keeps look confusing. Bridges need to be more clearly marked so that it actually looks like they’re going over elevated areas and not just some finger streak over an area. The left fire keep is entirely underground and when you go under you get the layout but it looks like it’s blotches and streaks of brown in there. The paths the dolyaks take should be marked all the way from camp to keep, they walk the path often it should be worn in every each from a to b.

- Structures are huge, towers feel like the size of the old keeps, like it was made for giants. Good luck finding pu mesmers in there, that is going to be the new annoyance.

- A+ on the new superior siege designs.

Another derailing post. ^^
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill

(edited by Xenesis.6389)

General Feedback

in WvW Desert Borderlands Stress Test

Posted by: PaxTheGreatOne.9472

PaxTheGreatOne.9472

Well I got into it it’s now almost 10 hours after the starting of the BL event and we were on the map with only a few.


  • We took a keep with no resistance with 2 golems and 1 flameram, it cost way too long, almost a dozen minutes. We were about 7 people…. I play t6 nowadays and we have 2 to 3 people during the weekday/border (when lucky). With these times and needing to run from place to place it will mean once we capped 2 things all others are t3, guaranteed… Slowing things down to a horrid grind, and as sch this map will not be inbteresting to play.
  • Single player camp capping is way more difficult then capping a camp in a border as is now. leaving only shrines and sentries… which is not rewarding, nor gives an advantage to tick. Dolly huntying is nearly impossible as they run like they are being tailed by all six dragons…
  • I see we need shrines and such, but I cannot go and cap 3 shrines and run into a keep and trust those to stay mine. and if poeple retake them taking them is possible but not rewarding
  • Things like golems which are very usefull in roaming ,are to run FOREVER… I was running for 5 minutes.. and I was spotted. You cannot do anything, only backtrack, I got killed for 75k points without being able to hit the attacker once. there is no escape. It will mean you have wasted a lot of time, gold for siege and no rewards.
  • Keeping control over the keeps on 3 borders is important, but you cnnot run form other maps leaving our server with 50-80 WvW players disadvantaged compared to other more manned servers. We narrowly maintain our position in borderlands now by porting in people if possible or running, but the distance is now so big it would be a failed effort from the start.
  • Our server has no people to defend at least 20 hours a day… So this is beautiful, but useless for t6 as it is now
  • You will (probably) never see the attackers. especially on servers with lower amounts of players, So you’d either you put a tail on groups found or you NEED to karma train, which is useless due to the distances and the rediculous speed of upgrades.
  • 3 necro’s could defend all small elevated passages and ridges, some paths are more like JP’s… This also shows an inherent weakness of the map. You need to move and move and move… so in the end it’s about groups countering groups, if a server notices it has superior number spliting up will make them take the whole map and there is NOTHING you can do, itt’ll be abit like EotM ice station: one necro can kill zergs.

On the bright side:

  • In all it’s beautiful, I get solid 70+ FPS running through the BL on high settings. But I have no experience whatsoever with zergs or zergs vs zergs as there were none, I did 1 5 vs 8 battle. we won… we took a camp a keep and a control point. And I was in for 45 minutes. In this time I should be able to flip most of the map… this will never be possible.
  • If we get in a Mesmer we will get it back without real problems. Chances they’ll be found are negligable, maybe we should change all players on our server to mesmers. On the other side we would never find an enemy mesmer, leading to mesmer vs mesmer battles for the keep sand towers.
  • I love the new siege designs, I do not like the stealth fields… The lava defence looks nice, but it’s unbreakable, it should have timer as well, (Righteous Indignation ) like all bosses, so it cannot be capped for 5 (maybe 10) minutes.
  • We could implemenmt EotM, Desert and normal BL for the 3 borders so we have a normal experience (present BL), a karma train (EotM) and a semi static map (Desert)… We could change Edge of the Mists to randomize 1 of these 3 maps as well.
    Else it will be the end for non WvW focussed servers (say t4 and down)

My conclusion:

I doubt this map would be usefull on low tier servers, unless they have a huge amount of players.. Quantity will prevail over quality in any case.

Even though it’s beautiful and it has a lot of mechanics and is innovative. The map feels and plays way to slow and sluggish to play due to it’s HUGE size for small groups and low tier guild groups.
How powerfull and experienced they may be… You’d never be able to defend. You’d be running after the facts the whole time…

I’d prefer the old borderlands in all scenario’s, except maybe using the EotM and the Desert, This might be nice as a replacement for EBG, but if it would come to a choice I’d prefer the old EBG…..

Good luck with all opinions.

23 lvl 80’s, 9 times map, 4ele, 4ncr, 3war, 3grd, 3rgr, 2thf, 2msm, 1eng, 1 rev.
Been There, Done That & Will do it again…except maybe world completion.

(edited by PaxTheGreatOne.9472)