Guild Wars 2

Make that extremely dissatisfied.

I stayed with this game mostly because of WvW. But you have gone off your rocker and destroyed it.

It was prime time today, and I was looking at four maps, three borderlands and EB, and 80% belonged to a single server. They had us backed up to our own spawn in our own borderland. 50 players sitting outside that wonderful gate in the desert borderlands, you know, the one with none of those legendary warriors sitting on top of it to stop you from spawn camping, You see they owned everything else worth taking, and I guess they were bored so spawn camping seemed to be the thing to do, well that’s just a guess.

ONE major difference between the desert and alpine maps is that the alpine maps are smaller, everything is closer together. So if you put a watch tower in your towers and in your keeps, well, you can keep a pretty good eye on most of the map, leaving only the center section, the ruins, and the ruins have a couple of sentry’s. However, the desert maps are larger, with large sections that remain unseen even if you put watchtowers everywhere. Which means even large enemy squads can move reasonably freely and unseen until they are right on top of their objective.

I’m not asking for a ‘fair’ match-up, its pretty obvious between your rankings and idiot match-ups that you have no idea what ‘fair’ is, but an equal chance would be nice, but then again you don’t seem to know what ‘equal’ is either. If you are going to give one team the desert map, give them ALL the kitten map, that way you aren’t giving one group a huge advantage or disadvantage.

Oh and yes, if you criticize you should do it constructively so here it is.

1) Everyone gets the same map, alpine or desert, switch them up is fine, but EVERYONE GETS THE SAME MAP, same advantage, same disadvantage. (here is a hint, at the end of the week take a look at the people who lost in each group and see what map they had, wanna bet it was the desert borderlands? I mean yea BG probably won no matter what map they had, but the rest of us, ANET you just bent us over and didn’t even give us time to lube up.
2)Legendary NPCs need to be put outside the spawn on the desert maps, because you cant see the 50 guys sitting outside the fuzzy blurry gate before you and your five buddies run out and get wiped before you can backup through the gate. And strangely enough if they own all your keeps, that spawn is the only place you can go in your own borderland. Makes it kitten easy to spawn camp .
3)Pay to play. No freebie players in the borderlands. Freebies can play in the mists all they want, eternally and forever, but if you don’t own the game, you cant enter the borderlands. (this should suit your money grubbing little hearts). They still have the option of earning enough gold to swap for gems and buy the game, so no real cash need change hands, just get the freebies out of the borderlands, this should fix some if not quite a lot of the population issues.
4)Buy a book on how to use that abacus or whatever it is that you use to calculate population, match-ups, and the ratings, cause whatever you are doing now aint working.

Truthfully I don’t get it, the game is three years old and you are losing customers left and right to everything that is new out there. First dungeons now WvW, you really just seem to be trying to push people out. I’m seeing a major drop in WvW players and yeah I was hot heavy for it, but the nonsense with the match-ups and now the idiocy with the one desert map. I’m out, and I’m relatively a short timer, not quite a year, and I have friends in game who have been here since the beta asking me if I know of any new games worth trying because of ANET stupidity.

Oh I may drop in, do my daily’s (in PvE) and talk to a few friends, but you got your last shekel (ANET check my account if you are interested in what that means) from me unless or until something changes drastically which from past performance I sincerely doubt.

I think we all understand your frustrations. Honestly, we all have to accept none of these postings really have an outcome or affect anet in any way.

The best thing wvwers can do right now and continue to do is close up the wallet and do not make gem purchases.

1) Symmetry discourages competition. It works for the maps to be unequal but balanced. Desert Borderlands is poorly made. Objectives do not interact because they are too far apart, Towers are too big and tall to scout easily, and the middle of the map is currently a void. If Desert Borderlands were adjusted with those things in mind, it would play a lot better.
2) There aren’t? Seems like it should be a thing.
3) This game is buy to play. There are many worse types of pay walls they could use. Also, I feel like a very small number of WvWers are still even in the no expansion boat. I don’t really care either way with this one. The expansion is worth buying for the most part (balance still sucks imo), so there isn’t much reason to not get it if you enjoy this game.
4) The only way they can fix the problem with servers that are more than full is by redistributing the population. Nothing will make those people leave everything to go to a server like Darkhaven.
Guild Wars 2 has a problem with breadth and depth. Expansions and new content is breadth. Balance of existing content is depth. Breadth makes money, but depth is what keeps people playing.
WvW is almost 100% depth. When balance in WvW is broken, the whole system starts to feel weak. It doesn’t help that WvW receives little to no direct profession balance, and adjustments to objectives almost never happens (Why is Anz still the worst tower in WvW?). The only way people will continue playing WvW is if more resources are put improving what already exists in a way that makes the game more strategic without becoming rock, paper, scissors.

Rod, I completely agree. ANET placed these forums here as a chance for players to vent and for players to commiserate in misery, not as a tool to actually use it for the betterment of the game.

Cecilia Im sorry to have to disagree with you.

First, check the website. This game is free to play, and has been for a while. And while I know that quite a number of items such as guild hall buffs and other things require the expansion pack, I do not think that wvw does (however I have no proof of this as I paid for both the game and the expansion)

I do know I was arguing with a guy in LA who flat out said he had free accounts on all servers that were in his tier. When in doubt trying to figure out where the opposing team squad was going or doing, he would just login to one of those accounts go into the map and find out where the squad leader was. Maybe he was trolling me, whatever its always possible. However removing any free players from the BLs would increase the money in ANETs pocket and decrease the population of the BLs if nothing else of spies

As for symmetry and competition

15 guys running track doing the 100 yard dash, do not do it over different terrain, they do it on the same track, at the same time and it does not discourage competition, it actually improves it. The only differences between the 15 guys is that they are running in different lanes on the same track (as in very slight difference).

The maps are not required to be symmetric in themselves, having hills, bay, and Garrison (or earth, air, and fire) in different terrain on each map adds to the game, having them the same on all maps allows that no team has a great advantage or disadvantage over another. Slight changes in symmetry over a map, such as the blue, red, and green keeps location in the EB map can be allowed because they are SLIGHT changes, not drastically different and while some allow varying degrees of advantage or disadvantageous over others (such as the red keep), these are not tremendous advantages (or disadvantages) and can easily be overcome.

I started WvW on the desert borderland maps, and person I love them. The keeps and towers are too far away from each other for players to just setup a treb inside them and lazily sit and treb something until a wall comes down. While any map can be subject to mob rules and tactics, the desert borderlands maps require more strategy (such as open field trebs) to take and or hold than the alpine maps in my opinion. In other words, all things being unequal, it will be the highest population group that owns and keeps the desert maps, however all things being equal, it will be the group with the smarter players and commanders that hold and keep those desert maps. Yes I agree that the middle of the desert map is void of any purpose other than allowing a path for people to run through it, much the same as the ruins in the alpine map (at least the ruins have some value as in ‘bloodlust’) But that’s about the only part of the desert map we agree on.

I wont argue your definition of depth and breadth, we each are allowed our own opinions as to what makes this game and what is the most important part of it, each to his own in other words.
As to your comment about ANZ still being the worst tower, please, EB is the worst map of them all. You can sit in a one tower and treb, not one tower, but two? In some cases you can treb three separate objectives in different directions, all safely behind NPC guards and walls. So 3 guys can wreak havoc, destroy objectives, with little or no risk to themselves? This is strategy? EB was/is designed for quick turnover and big mob fights and that is its only function.

However this isn’t about arguing over how bad EB is, or the merits or disappointments in either the alpine or desert maps. Giving one team a map that differs so drastically from the home borderlands of the other teams, will either give them a huge disadvantage, or a huge advantage. The same could be said of giving red and blue teams the desert map and giving the green team the alpine map. These maps are too diverse from each other, from their size to the distance between objectives to the strategy to hold and keep them. It offers too much of a disadvantage to one side and an advantage to the other, and I for one wont put up with it.

The match ups are idiotic, and the rankings and population numbers seem to be drawn up by an 8 year old not doing very well in his/her algebra class. And those items are bad enough to deal with, I’m not going to try to play with a 50 pound disadvantage tied around my characters ankles as I run through the borderlands.

Darlloch, that’s the point of wvw, to interact with each other and that’s why EB and ABL are great maps as they require you to be active – you think otherwise but you’re wrong. If you want to keep blue keep, you better make sure to hold bravost and langor. You don’t need to worry about all of that on the DBLs.

Jana.. There really is no right and wrong, what we are discussing is strategy. EB was designed to be the place where the three teams met to have big blob battles, that’s the reason SM is there. As you said the strategy in EB is simple, if you want to take SM you need to get tower XY2 and QB4, if you want to hold onto your keep, you need to maintain ownership of towers A83, and QR3. In other words, not a lot of strategy, just take the towers, treb the keep, and bash, smash, and grab.

The ABL is designed pretty much the same way, with a few less objectives that are closer to other ones, so it requires a bit more strategy, but not that much.

DBL on the other hand does require more strategy in placement of your resources and how you use the objectives. It requires a lot more strategy, it can be taken in the standard mob glob of 50 like any map, but for a smaller group to take it, you cant just sit a few people in a tower and treb it till the walls fall down and then run in and take it. You actually have to fight the defenders, deal with objectives as a true ground siege battle would.

There is not a lot of difference between the NWT in ABL and in DBL. The main difference is simply that in ABL the NWT is close enough to the spawn and Garrison that you can probably count the number of enemy in the tower before you even get close to it, in DBL you actually have to deal with defenders as you would in a siege, without knowing exactly how many are inside.

Strictly in my opinion, a teams borderlands should be used as its foundation. An area to work from, grow from, launch campaigns against other teams borderlands or into EB. Even if you lose your keep in EB you can pull supplies from your borderlands to work to regain your foothold in EB. Your teams borderlands is your foundation, both in strategy to campaign against other teams but also in PPT.

But again, trying to keep the thread on point, this isn’t about the merits or non merits of ABL vs DBL. This thread is about giving two teams a map that is smaller, easier to maneuver, easier to maintain, easier to watch over, and easier to keep control of or regain control of. While at the same time giving a third team a larger map, that is much harder to defend, control, and maintain. The disadvantage is too much. In any example, given that the population of the teams would be roughly the same, the disadvantage of having the DBL while the other teams had the ABL would be (in my opinion) impossible to overcome. Using your own borderland as your foundation in WvW, given this scenario, anything you attempt to build on that shaky absurd foundation of the DBL would fail, falling apart like a house of cards, while the other teams stood rock steady on their ABL foundation.

The only reasonable way to implement the DBL is an all or nothing scenario. Switching out the BLs is a great idea, every two or three months everyone changes to the ABL or everyone changes to the DBL. It gives variety, makes people change up their strategy, its a great idea. However giving one team such a huge disadvantage (or advantage) by only giving the DBL to one team is so absurd its ridiculous.

Yes and ABL are strategic wheras DBL is not – no matter what you say – the strategical part of DBL is to know where to place your treb/cata so it can’t be destroyed from inside – that’s it.

And that is the point why wvw is dying – I don’t care about your other points, tbh, sorry, I just read that and thought “he’s so very wrong about his perception of wvw” and that’s why I picked that point.
Btw: The maps are equal in size.

None of the OP’s problems would be solved by the OP’s propositions.

Jana.6831:

Btw: The maps are equal in size.

Lol…yeah, I was looking at that, too. ABL is actually taller from North to South, but narrower from East to West. DBL is more square, a bit less N/S than ABL but a bit more E/W than ABL.