Guild Wars 2

Two things that have been becoming more and more annoying are contested waypoints and the slow movement speed.

Contested waypoints, especially areas like Straits of devastation, are nearly constantly contested, which begs the question “why are they there if they can only be used for 15 minutes after a long event chain that succeeds 1/10 times?” Others like the Fort Marriner waypoint in Lion’s Arch simply don’t make sense as to why they are contested. It’s Lion’s Arch. No one is attacking anything. Why is it there if you can never use it?

Some waypoints make sense to contest; if there’s an event happening around the waypoint, sure. Other than that, not really. Waypoints should be checkpoints so we don’t have to footslog across the entire map if we happen to die and yet in several areas they often are useless while I’m there because I can’t use them!

Secondly, the movement speed of the characters, and this ties into not being able to use waypoints en masse (Straits comes to mind) but needing to be across the map. WoW put mounts in because they reduced the time being wasted by players having to run across large maps or in cities. GW2 kind of solved this problem with waypoints, except those constantly cost money and as I said above are sometimes unusable which completely voids their purpose. Passive bonuses to speed can get up to 25%, but that’s not enough. One could feasibly have Swiftness for extended periods of time, but that’s not available to all classes. ANet could put a system where if you’re shunted to a different waypoint because the one you want is contested, you’ll be given a 30 second swiftness boon. That would at least make up a little time I have to waste travelling to the area got kicked away from.

The original design of Orr intended to give the impression of a warzone: high densities of mobs, contested waypoints, and hardly any ‘safe’ havens. I try to look at it as a region with a tiny number waypoints and it’s a nice surprise when ‘extra’ waypoints become available.

Similarly, I view contested waypoints in Harathi as a tool to let me know which events are up (and where to go to help the Seraph).

There are half a dozen or so waypoints that are actually broken, as part of the Living Story: mordremoth has sucked the magic out of them. This includes the one in LA that you mentioned.

As to movement speed: I think it’s fine. If it gets much faster, then travel time would be reduced to a trivial amount and I would want it reduced even more, allowing instantaneous travel to any coordinate (outside of combat).