First I’d like to say thanks for inviting me to participate in this beta, and good job to all anet staff. I love this map.
Things to improve.. based on first impressions.
Air keep turrets.. Holy crap they are powerful. They can knock everyone off a cliff to their deaths (i know by design). But the other turrets for the other keeps go unnoticed. I rarely ever got crippled by the earth ones, or got damaged by the fire ones. I do feel though that the air ones are a little overpowered as they are placed in very dangerous spots. If I’m fighting an enemy zerg and I’m on the stairs with 4 air turrets, we are dead no doubt. They have the high ground, and we have to either waste a stab or a dodge roll just so we don’t get knocked off the cliff.
Infernal hounds.. Their damage seems a bit high, I was one shotting backline characters. Also while in mist form you can activate profession abilities (at least on guardian)
Supply depots. I found myself constantly looking for supply depots in keeps. Either it was me just not knowing where they are, or they were hard to find. They’re in weird spots. Mostly in the middle of a room, there’s no real indicator as to where they are. A map icon or the default supply hut would be nice, something to give people some clue. I felt like there was only 1 in each keep that I could find.
AC wars 2. I know defending is suppose to be a big part, but it would be so easy to defend the keeps with just 1 or 2 ACs. With shield generators it is possible to take keeps, and no waypoints mean the world, but there needs to be a way you can take out the ACs. Attacking zergs are starved for supply whereas the defending zerg has tons of it.
NPCs, there’s this one cliff near the earth keep where there is just way too many bats on it.
Guard respawn times. While attacking keeps guards respawn insanely quick.
What I loved..
The size of the map. It’s perfect. It discourages omni blobs, it’s great for roamers, and guild groups. To be effective you really need at least 2 forces on the map. It takes too long to travel from 1 side of the map to the other so it’s really effective to have 2 groups each taking a side. For not home BL taking shrines as 2 groups then combining forces is a great tactic to taking a keep.
Air keep jump pads. What great additions. It’s awesome to own air keep and use them.
Infernal hounds. Love em, it’s something new that really sets the tone of the fire keep.
Shield generators. Perfect for sieging a keep, and defending a keep. Many uses. Amazing traits.
Something for everyone.. Havoc can take towers, camps, and shrines. Roamers have room to hide away from zergs, pick people off in sandstorms or from above, guild groups have the ability to run around and be effective as 20 people.
Contrast from Air to fire keep zones. Air keep zone is very close combat but very vertical, whereas fire keep zone is very open and flat (except for the keep part which is very cool)
Oasis event. Really cool idea, everyone can tag in. It really forces all servers to join in and fight it out in the middle. havocs can still go and take objectives behind people. Very cool gameplay mechanic. With great rewards for winning.
Keep lords. They finally put up that last line of defence against an enemy zerg. They do REAL DAMAGE, and have a REAL HEALTH POOL. They have fears, stuns, shadow steps. Fighting against an enemy zerg in a lords room is a ton of fun. Taking a keep isn’t suppose to be easy.
With all this said, balance will still be an issue when organized guild groups get their full guild into a map. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
To all people saying that this map is no good, I think you’re calling it way too early. All we’ve seen are pug zergs, and really this map could be released tomorrow and I would love it. It a very fresh idea and beautiful map.