Guild Wars 2

List of changes that seems to be welcomed from the threads I’ve read

(1) The new sentry detection system is great. It mades sentry more useful and allows players to not lose time going where the ennemy is not (it goes well with point 2). This new sentry was also suposed to kill yaks and get people to go flip the sentries… sadly… yaks are useless so on that part it failed to hit the mark. Maybe the duration of the sentry scouting players is slightly too long, small reduction of that debuff could be a good improvement (feel free to share your thoughts on that point).

(2) The map calls when a structure is taken by X server is also great. It might only be a solo roamer, but it will still improve the information network. This combined with a sentry that scouted a group of players earlier allows you to walk directly to where you think the group will be in the next few seconds.

(3) The fact that lord HP scales up with the number of players. It gives people a better response time to gather enough folks to get a good fight instead of getting structures flipped without a good brawl in the lord room.

Here is a list of things that could have potential, but in their current form they are not welcomed in WvW from what I’ve read

(1) Auto upgrades seems awesome on paper… Here I think that simply making it so upgrades are forced to be in a specific order would of solved the troll problem. Make it so that yaks count! Yaks are useless now. This will also bring back the supply management that many defenders loved to take care of. Should I start the waypoint upgrade now or wait for the supply depot to fill up a little more in case this structure get attacked and we need the supply to defend? Spamming map chat asking for people to grab supplies elsewhere since the structure is about to get into an upgrade phase and such (maybe it did bring some unhappy moment when siege troll appeared, but the upside were well worth the downside of the change). Also, waypoint on T0 keep makes WvW lose its touch. I remember when we did map calls on every map to get our people to defend our T3 keep with a waypoint. Those were fun fights in the lord room. Now? Keep flips and it doesn’t matter since we will grab it back while gaining access to the only upgrade which truly did matters as a welcome gift. Also, removing Bay and Hills waypoint on the new map just bring less fights (less incentive to actually go defend it since it will never get a waypoint).

Things that I’ve read that are truly disliked in the other threads

(1) The non players automated things in the Desert borderland map. I’m talking about those slow turrets, those flame turrets, those winds turrets and those earth walls. They are annoying more than anything. As to replace those things, I would simply take them off and get the blessing of the element when near that area (no more need to actually go and click the shrine to get the move speed boost). I would also take back the combat boost that those elemental buffs gives, environement should not give such a potent stats boost which vary depending on the region you are playing on (same with the imune to burning in fire keep). Also, invisible zergs is simply a bad concept, but I got no idea how to replace that buff without imbalacing the fights (need help finding a solution so I can edit that part later on).Finally, since earth keep have 2 automated things, (turrets and walls). I would simply give them a detector (like a sentry would if it spotted an ennemy) all over the keep so it can detect any hiding ennemies inside that keep and in the close periphery of that keep.

(2) Fortified gate… Those are new and they are slow to take down. Also guild catapults got nerfed to the ground so breaking a fortified wall takes an army or will simply take forever if you are a roaming squad. But gate is now also fortified… So it just means more time raming or catapulting those objectives…which in the end me and my roaming friends just leave them be since it’s too much of a chore.

(3) The pathing of the map seems to be worse than what Alpine borderland offered. Zigzaging and going up and down makes the map that is slightly larger to feel like walking from point A to point B to take much more time than what it used to be on Alpine borderland. Or atleast it feels less straightfoward and more about dodging the ennemy than to engage them. Those keeps are just so vast with so many pathway. Keeping it simple is not always a bad thing.

(4) Reset on saturday night… Bring back friday night reset. This night was crazy, even more than saturday night reset. Get back from work, install yourself and play with your friends on a friday night was amazing.

(5) Guild upgrades being locked behind a PVE farm fest and high guild level of guild hall + big gold per use of the guild buffs.

(6) The new event in the Desert borderland map, at the moment it is not receiving much positive feedback. This event could of been great and all. But I still think that a big area with a cap point (like a capture point of pvp but scaled in size for WvW) could of been a better choice than to kill those PVE monsters. Imagine a large cap where there is a timer ticking down for every second your server control the point. I feel like it would be more appropriate for a players vs players environment. King of the hills kind of tournament would of been amazing I think. At least the event as it is is not so fun, it’s just that those Dinos don’t really belong to WvW if you ask me (my opinion, sorry if some people love those Dinos XD). A king of the hill tournament could of been one big platform or up to 3 big platform where each platform control gives you -1 second on the total timer. Once it reach 0, the canon is yours. Also, a in game message should be given on all 4 maps prior to the event.
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Basically, I think a tweaked Alpine would be a good way to solve the problems with the current state of WvW. Alpine had its flaws, but people still loved that map after 3 years (sure they asked some fix there and there, but a total revamp of the map doesn’t seem to get us to a better place, fixed some problems only to make new ones arise).

I was about to say "Three times the charm." in the other thread, but this is the fourth time you posted this ? :p Anyways, here are some of my thoughts (and personal opinions, my condolences):

A) Sentries. Haven’t noticed the tagging so much, but I like the beating the dead horse, and love the medikits for near constant swift.

B) Objective Messages. My main issue with them is that I’d like to be able to turn it off, or move it to somewhere else than middle of screen. Don’t mind the messages themselves, but don’t like the presentation.

C) Scaled-Champions: Finally

D) AutoUpgrade: I actually like it (Digs his own grave). Granted, I’m a filthy roamer that just likes to run around and fight a bit, frustrate a bit, and ninja about a bit in enemy borderlands. So I never really bothered that much with upgrading. But love that it doesn’t take gold or supply any-longer, and like that I actually see some of the other upgrades other than WP and walls/gates (though they are useful, I get that).

D-2) Way-Points: Mixed. For EBG I think it is fine atm, with free WP on same color keep, and the SMC, and no WP on other color keeps. Gives you local mobility, but gives the other colors a bit easier time to come-back and take back their corner. And leaves SMC somewhat desirable.

For Desert BL: Don’t rightly know yet, still need to learn the map more (been busy with other things). But I’m starting to think it might be nice to not have WP’s at the keeps at all, but all 4 towers, making them important to hold for mobility and to deny enemy reinforcing keeps (Random idea of the day).

E) Dino-Hammer: Well, don’t like it. "You must build additional pylons" is all I can think of when doing that event. It’s long, it’s fairly boring, and it might as well completely reset the map for all the good it does (make everything neutral, remove colors). The few times I’ve seen my server do it, is when we’re controlling the map, and just want to deny it to the enemy, so they can’t send in a roaming group to use it against us.

On idea, instead of having it destroy all gates. Since people dislike the auto upgrade, perhaps it temporary nullify the upgrades of one structure ? Or multiple over a small period so you could ninje 1-2 structures ?

E-2) Anyways, I’m an old Dinosaur fan since my childhood, and can’t stand watching these Mutasauruses being called Dinosaurs ! *fume*

F) Auto-Turrets: Can’t really comment yet, mostly stayed away from keeps, as I like learning the rest of the map first, and leave the keeps for last. They’re too much of a bother to take on alone or with small groups (we’ve taken Fire keep a few times with 5 man groups, goes a bit faster).

G) Fortified Gate: The few times I’ve seen a siege in lower tiers I thought they where nice. But as for taking them out, I’ll grab a cata and go for a wall. The gates are horrible to take solo or small team, gates takes forever, guards respawn also on the wall, and a single defender can toast you with those cannons + oil. It probably takes about the same time to cata down a wall, as it takes to ram down a reinforced gate now, but it’s so much easier taking the wall so something is a bit wrong here.

H) Pathfinder: Still learning all the paths, so can’t really comment. I do avoid the keeps though, but I did that in old Alpine as well when I started.

I) Reset-Saturday: I don’t really mind, I’ve always avoided reset anyways and done something else that day, so will just shift that anyways. Hoping we might get more silly/casual server events on Fridays now.

J) Guild-Upgrades: A pain. I don’t like the new system at all (Hey, I’m allergic to grinding, so sue me!), but I think the worst could have been staved off by putting the claim camp/tower/keep very low, and made +5 supply the first upgrade. Most WvW guilds probably won’t care about the rest anyways, but would be willing to work towards it as a long time thing as long as they had the +5 supply.

Ahah yes! I indeed posted this in multiple threads, and updated the multiple version on numerous occasions. At first I had about 3-4 points. I simply collected data from the numerous threads and as I was doing so, I figured I could simply post this here as a sum up for people to look at and comment on the global situation instead of looking up the 6-7 threads I used to finally come up with this.

As for the argument about auto upgrade. I’m a roamer at heart… Hell I’m not the one who did the upgrades on any strucutres, I probably upgraded less than 25 strucutres in all my 3 years of WvW (Shame on me, I know!). Props to those who did this job on my server. But! As a roamer, I had many fights with the people who tried to keep control over their camps/yaks in order to upgrade their structures! They would call out to their roamers from their servers in order to get me down (or me and my friend). We had many good outmanned fights because of that! Now… people don’t bother escorting yaks or defending a camp since all they do is increase the speed of the upgrade… the structure will get upgraded anyway. You can’t rotate between S, SE and NE camp to stop the upgrade at Hills and force them out (same with Bay with S, SW and NW). So in the end… people let you flip all the camps and then they will recap once you are long gone. I think auto-upgrades hurt more than just the people who loved to upgrade and prepare their server for the prime time, it also hurt the roamers…

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts, greatly appreciated!

A1 – The new sentry detection system.
Yep, I love it. Also, all the guards around the structures should have same detection system. Specially those huge keeps are horrible to figure out which side is under attack and then how to find your way without falling.

A2 – The map calls when a structure is taken by X server.
Its fine, I was able to live without, I dont mind the messages either. My main problem is with the over-complicated naming system. Academy of What? Ah, its that North-East Tower. Why dont they call it the North-East Tower then? There are 3 keeps too: Garrison, East and West keeps. Dont care what names anet uses, those are the real names.

A3 – The fact that lord HP scales up with the number of players.
Its good. What I do find annoying is how anet never actually explained the defiance bar mechanics in the game. What does it mean when its green? Or empty? Brown? Which skills reduce it by how much and why should anyone care? Its not directly related to wvw but it is confusing in lord fights.

B1 – Auto upgrades.
Hate it. The removal of gold requirement is good. Everything else is bad. Nothing should ever upgrade without player interaction, at least someone has to stay and hold the structure. And there should not be any upgrading without dolyaks.

C1 – Oasis.
I dont like it. If there is no enemy, its plain boring. If enemy shows up, its the group with more people who finishes event and gains way too strong effect of destroying ALL THE GATES. So it only helps server who has most people.

How to fix oasis event?
Remove it.
If it should stay, make it happen at random times with much shorter event timer and much less drops required to finish it. Lets say it happens every 30-45 minutes, you get 5 minutes warning that oasis is about to happen, it lasts for 3 minutes and you need 5 items to complete it. So roaming group of 3 people can do it even when enemy zerg is there in time. Last, it should only shoot at 1 random enemy structure, destroying 1 random wall or gate.

D1 – Shrine bonuses.
I like the basic idea that defending structure is boosted if they also control points outside the keep. So its better to push out and fight instead of sitting behind the walls whole day. Then again, if attackers have much more people, you wont be able to take and hold any of the shrines since you are busy defending the keep itself. Its all fairly confusing atm, each keep having 3 different levels of boosts and they all being different kinds.

How to fix shrines boosts? Replace 3 levels of boosts with just one ON/OFF system. All the current bonuses are turned ON when defending keep controls ONE shrine (one of 3, doesnt matter which). All boosts are off when defenders control NO shrines. Stealth fog needs to be removed.

D2 – Amount of time to take down gates/walls.
Takes too long and is really boring.

D3 – General map design and paths.
Way too confusing and overly complex.

D4 – Reset time.
I dont care about that.

D5 – Guild upgrade grind.
Its horrible and doing more damage to wvw then any design flaws of new maps.

And this is my own addition – no gliding. Turn if on already!

Love the Sentry mechanic and wished all towers/keeps had it. It is the most sure fire way to find a fight.

The capture messages are in the wrong spot and should have a toggle.

NPC scaling… gah. I really don’t care to have an NPC lord and would be fine with a circle that has to be held for a couple minutes.

I don’t really care about auto-upgrades. Making them manual or leaving them is fine by me.

Reset should be moved back to Friday night. I am pretty sure most WvW players were happy with the Friday reset and not sure if anyone asked for it to move.

Guild leveling should be a by-product of playing WvW. The old system was better.

Good post by OP. I hope devs read it.

Seems there’s 2 Phantoms now. We’re gonna have to have a dance off at the rec center to see who gets the crown.

Anyway, on a more serious note, the overall layout is the core issue. While, yeah, the auto upgrades and laser event and all of the other things that have been mentioned are problems, they’re more along the lines of the flesh, while the layout of the map is the skeleton. If the foundation is built properly, all of those other things can be adjusted to make major improvements. If the foundation itself is faulty, however, those adjustments are like sticking a bandaid on a broken leg.

Int he attachment below, I’ve done a quick draw up of what the overall layout should be like. It’s based around the dimensions of the Alpine maps. The keeps are behind the towers. The towers block the roads. The roads lead to the towers. People are funneled to the objectives. Fights happen either at the objectives or on the way to the objectives. The objectives relate to each other. The towers help defend the keeps, and the camps support the structures. There’s room for roamers to get to the camps, so roamers are not only viable, but important.

Combine this with upgrades needing x amount of yaks to get in, waypoints being in the keeps and only once they’re upgraded, and manual upgrades, and things become even better.

If you notice, I put an Asura gate in the center. This should work very similarly to the old orbs. A server has to go there, and activate an NPC. The NPC then runs to their keep, and the players have to defend him along the way. The other servers can kill him, and if they’re smart, they’ll try to. If the NPC makes it to the keep, he opens an Asura gate to that center area. This acts as a 2 way waypoint between that keep and the center of the map. If the keep is contested, it wouldn’t work. If the keep is taken, the Asura gate is destroyed inside of it, and the center event resets. This event makes holding a keep on each borderland important for sustained presence there.

Now, as far as the breakout event from the old borderlands go, have him go to that server’s keep instead of to a tower. Ideally, servers should be trying to hold their keeps in their thirds. This would also help minimize lopsided scores, since the keeps are worth the most points, and most of what would be getting flipped would be the towers and camps. Which reduces the effects of nightcapping, and people giving up when the scores are out of reach.

The overall design allows servers to minimize the areas they need to assign defenders to, which helps mitigate the effects of population imbalance. It won’t completely negate the effects of nightcapping and population imbalance, but it will lessen them to more manageable levels, and allow matches to remain fairly competitive. Especially since there will be clear areas to fight over, and clear paths to get to those fights, which will lure people to them naturally. All in all, a very positive step forward for all of the various types of WvW players.

That is a very bad design in my opinion. There are very clear differences between the green area and the other 2, when it comes to pathing, spawn area routes. There are proximity issues that favor one color over another.

I mean, I guess I can see what your trying to do, but it is so rough, unsymmetrical, out of proportion, and lacking information on how far things are apart in relation to siege range.

One thing I do not understand, is that in your post, you tell us where fights will happen. What is that about? No offence, but it feels a little hard to have an honest discussion about, when you go as far as to tell us what players will do, when in reality, you do not have a clue.

As many post as their are throwing out PvE hate in WvW (you have some yourself) what possessed you to believe a PvE escort quest is what anyone wants?

dancingmonkey.4902:

That is a very bad design in my opinion. There are very clear differences between the green area and the other 2, when it comes to pathing, spawn area routes. There are proximity issues that favor one color over another.

I mean, I guess I can see what your trying to do, but it is so rough, unsymmetrical, out of proportion, and lacking information on how far things are apart in relation to siege range.

One thing I do not understand, is that in your post, you tell us where fights will happen. What is that about? No offence, but it feels a little hard to have an honest discussion about, when you go as far as to tell us what players will do, when in reality, you do not have a clue.

As many post as their are throwing out PvE hate in WvW (you have some yourself) what possessed you to believe a PvE escort quest is what anyone wants?

The set up is actually very close to the current and previous borderlands setup, so the very clear differences are already present. These are Borderland maps. They’re supposed to be a bit out of proportion in favor of the home server.

Nitpicking about the quality of what I called a “quick draw up” is pointless. I’m not trying to win an art contest. I’m trying to convey a concept.

Fights happen at objectives. They happen on the way to objectives. Those would be the paths that are on the maps. Granted, people could always just go off into an empty area and start fighting, much like people did south of the windmill for GvG’s. However, those who are actively trying to capture objectives will always fight at them or on the way to them. If you’ve ever tracked a zerg’s movements on the map, you’ll see these patterns emerge.

It’s essentially the same event that the original Orb event was, only with an NPC carrying the orb instead of a PC, so that a hacker can’t get it and flyhack, like what was happening with the original orb event. (yes, the hackers were also wall jumping/fly hacking into keeps to get the orbs afterwards, but this system completely avoids that since there’s no orbs in the keeps once the event is accomplished). And this would also have quite a bit of PvP involved with it as well, since the orb carrier would need to be defended. So it would be two (or three) servers attacking each other while an NPC is present. Very similar to a battle in the Lord’s Room of a tower/keep currently.

Phantom.8130:

It’s essentially the same event that the original Orb event was, only with an NPC carrying the orb instead of a PC, so that a hacker can’t get it and flyhack, like what was happening with the original orb event. (yes, the hackers were also wall jumping/fly hacking into keeps to get the orbs afterwards, but this system completely avoids that since there’s no orbs in the keeps once the event is accomplished). And this would also have quite a bit of PvP involved with it as well, since the orb carrier would need to be defended. So it would be two (or three) servers attacking each other while an NPC is present. Very similar to a battle in the Lord’s Room of a tower/keep currently.

I do not see how this justifies adding a PvE mob and therefore PvE event in WvW. One of the most common and largest complaints is that Players do not want PvE in WvW. Simply because you can find another PvE mob to liken it to does not make it a good idea, it makes it a bad one.

Dealing with the middle is fairly easy to wvw-ify. Remove the mutie-sauruses and make the temple thing a “soul collector”. Kills charge the laser. People want to avoid it? They avoid it. People want to fight? Seems like a good area for scrims.

Edit: or even a slow cap objective with kills speeding it up, if you want to force fights shrug

coglin.1867:

Phantom.8130:

It’s essentially the same event that the original Orb event was, only with an NPC carrying the orb instead of a PC, so that a hacker can’t get it and flyhack, like what was happening with the original orb event. (yes, the hackers were also wall jumping/fly hacking into keeps to get the orbs afterwards, but this system completely avoids that since there’s no orbs in the keeps once the event is accomplished). And this would also have quite a bit of PvP involved with it as well, since the orb carrier would need to be defended. So it would be two (or three) servers attacking each other while an NPC is present. Very similar to a battle in the Lord’s Room of a tower/keep currently.

I do not see how this justifies adding a PvE mob and therefore PvE event in WvW. One of the most common and largest complaints is that Players do not want PvE in WvW. Simply because you can find another PvE mob to liken it to does not make it a good idea, it makes it a bad one.

Fair enough. That center area could be redesigned then. however, the key part of the map isn’t the center event. It’s the layout of the keeps, towers, and camps, and the paths leading to it.

Since the bloodlust ruins were pure PvP, they could replace the orb carrier, and a server has to cap and hold a ring, or multiple rings for x amount of time to successfully complete the event.

The removal of bloodlust was one thing I never understood. It appeared to be that it was fairly unanimous among players, that anything that gave a point for killing (even if it was restricted to spikes only) was a good thing. As far as I am concerned, they should have expanded it to any kill and not just spiked, and not removed it.

Thanks for sharing opinions!

I do agree that bloodlust is the more balanced middle event there ever was on Gw2, even if we rarely had big fights around them, there were often a few little skirmishes when you saw all the nodes in your borderland being assaulted. This is why I took out the mutie-sauruses event from the things that people could accept and simply pushed it towards the thing that the WvW community dislike.

Bumping.

Because I see a lot of new threads coming to life with the same content that could be found in this thread.

Valentinus.3412:

Dealing with the middle is fairly easy to wvw-ify. Remove the mutie-sauruses and make the temple thing a “soul collector”. Kills charge the laser. People want to avoid it? They avoid it. People want to fight? Seems like a good area for scrims.

Edit: or even a slow cap objective with kills speeding it up, if you want to force fights shrug

That sounds awesome. Please consider this. I was really really disappointed when I finally saw a couple enemies set off that “giant laser event” I sat on the wall at my garrison and watched a few bolts of red lightning hit the gates. It cycled a few times then poof gone. I was expecting to at least see fire raining down from the sky obliterating everything in its path. What a joke.