Guild Wars 2

I thought the changes to existing maps were meant to make them easier to navigate?
The changes make them more difficult to navigate and have added a number of “blind” drops that are too far to fall and survive.
The changes around fire keep and ramps were completely unnecessary and make play far more difficult.

Just boycott the kittenty things until they bring back the alpine. No amount of tweaking is going to fix those disasters.

Puck.9612:

Just boycott the kittenty things until they bring back the alpine. No amount of tweaking is going to fix those disasters.

There was nothing wrong with them until this update and I’d rather play borders normally – they are more fun than EB and you don’t spend time sitting in a queue.

So we are going to play ebg until abl is back, like always xD

The only reason to go to dbl is the queue on ebg or to kill yb.

IMO there isn’t anything wrong with new BLs. I actually really enjoy them. The south of fire is AMAZING, same with air. East and West of garri is awesome and open. its easier to navigate, just will take time getting used to again

Just getting rid of the barricades has made my life so much easier, and makes the map feel so much bigger.

yes barricades are gone that was my biggest pet peeve. it opens the map somewhat

Mezmere.3241:

IMO there isn’t anything wrong with new BLs. I actually really enjoy them. The south of fire is AMAZING, same with air. East and West of garri is awesome and open. its easier to navigate, just will take time getting used to again

I agree. The changes are great imo.

I’m neutral on the removal of barricades.

I knew my way around them any way

:P

I still think that Desert is flawed to the point of being unfixable and that it break fundamental WvW mechanics that was common to EB Alpine… but the changes they have done now are pretty darn good.

Of course, as expected they still managed to completely bug the only class I play at the moment, the gyro scrapper.

10 steps forward, 3915 steps backwards straight off a cliff and into the sea.

Why am I not surprised?

Dawdler.8521:

I still think that Desert is flawed to the point of being unfixable and that it break fundamental WvW mechanics that was common to EB Alpine… but the changes they have done now are pretty darn good.

Of course, as expected they still managed to completely bug the only class I play at the moment, the gyro scrapper.

10 steps forward, 3915 steps backwards straight off a cliff and into the sea.

Why am I not surprised?

Same can be said for the ranger changes. Whirling defense received a nice power boost but it still roots you in place making it worthless in most situations.
After being nerfed into oblivion the shortbow finally receives increased damage on some of the skills, unfortunately the auto still hits like a wet noodle making it worthless as a power weapon and the bleed still requires flanking making it a mediocre condi weapon.
The sword is finally fixed! …..except they added after casts to the new animations resulting in a damage nerf.
Search and rescue took a double nerf which once again makes it useless.

The very basic design theme of a Desert makes them uninviting. Life flocks to and flourishes in the blue and green zones of a planet. If Anet wants WvW to flourish, it needs to use themes that support it.

DeWolfe.2174:

The very basic design theme of a Desert makes them uninviting. Life flocks to and flourishes in the blue and green zones of a planet. If Anet wants WvW to flourish, it needs to use themes that support it.

I don’t see anyone in the Oasis these days. :P

these changes are amazing , i don’t think that bringing back the ALpine BL it’s a thing now

you know explore it first , test it out and then complain, its not been out for a day yet.

Btw the sensible idea would be to go and add a real map-rotation for all borderlands , that way not all the maps would be desert not all would be alpine and add the good stuff they’ve done now. it would remove the daily and weekly drag of having to do the same over and over.

I think this is a good start on a lasting solution for wvw!

The only thing i’m not agreeing on is allowing EOTM to access the reward tracks, in the end it will be quicker and easier just to go there, instead of playing the game like it should be played on the borderlands.

what I have seen so far is going totally in the right direction!

You could very much fall to your death in the old BLs aswell if you didn’t know your way.
ie. around NE tower, the cliff towards old gari or hills

The new maps have one big advantages over the old: all Towers have a back entrance!
good for defenders to get in,
good for attackers so maybe you will get a fight while taking a tower, especially for smaller groups its an interesting and good thing.
So if you do bring the old BLs back: pls add some more doors to the towers.

What I like about the changes:
you can navigate around firekeep in an almost direct path N/S towards Rampart.
you have wider options to fight at S-Undercroft (we already used that yesterday for nice extended fights)
found only one haybale so far, but its fun to use.
Airkeep inner has more surpriseoptions for access and outeraccess and navigation is much improved.

What I like to be done still:
The backtracking for defenders and attackers alike inside Undercroft inner is still uhm under optimal – I still wonder who would ever build a keep like that…to keep yourself out?
The stairs towards the “rabbithole” (which has no roof now) at S Undercroft need to be walkable in one go. Why do we need to jump there to get up? It is only annoying in the long run.

You could have broadened the walkways south of airkeep.
I like that we got another option to go up and down there.

I am not done exploring yet, but like the changes a lot.

The changes have just happened, you are not used to them yet. To be honest I didn’t notice any big changes except for waypoints for the first hour or so, then I visited Fire keep

Serious.6940:

The changes have just happened, you are not used to them yet. To be honest I didn’t notice any big changes except for waypoints for the first hour or so, then I visited Fire keep

YUP – totally agree. People would rather whine and complain than actually go and try, w/o any pre-conceived notions.

Much easier now…..

Desert BL is much better with this update. I think this patch was a very positive improvement and shows that devs are listening to the players. The Alpine map was fun when it was new but it got old and tired at the end. I think most of the people that want it back will actually be disappointed if it ever returns. I am personally having a ton of fun on the new maps and with the upcoming population matching it will only get better.

Had fun in the Desert maps last night. Helps when people are there. Still too big though, just too much running to get to the action.

I like what they did with them… Unless it was a bug I was able to use my own side keep wp last night which was my only complaint before with the DBL.. Barricades never really bothered me… Over all it’s a leap in the right direction IMHO

Step in the right direction for those maps, but they’re still not “WvW ready” to me.

Still too many bad choke points and they even added some with some of the path ways they added. The annoying earth things that pop up in your face around earth keep that also cripple and give people stealth are still there. It is already REALLY hard to see anything on the screen in that area. They need to do a lot of work there to remove all of that stuff.

I want Alpine back still. I gave that map another chance last night and roamed with my 3 man group for 2 hours in the map. We got several fights, all on my stream (in my forum sig), but it still doesn’t seem like its fully ready to be a primary WvW map. I’ll be super excited to have Alpine back where roaming is much more viable.

Agree with others above, I like the desert BL changes. Map feels a bit more open now, and it’s still a fun place to have fights which is what matters most to me. We had the alpine BL for a long time, I’d really prefer to keep the desert BL for a while longer.

The changes were in process prior to the decision to bring back alpine maps. Designer decided to go ahead with them anyways until Alpine drops again. Won’t have to deal with them too long.

Better, yet not WvW ready. Still lots of extra gimmicks that have no place in a WvW scenario.

Once Alpine BL come back around, the hype and the brawl will be glorious!

They are already better at the moment, looking forward to server-matchmaking this friday!

ANet sure knows how to polish a kitten well! They really added some sparkle and flair to that heaping pile of dung!

edit: really, kitten is censored? c’mon now.

The change to the barricades and the new logic that WP will be available to a side holding the keep is already making moving around much faster. Saw even more people in the DBLs last night and were getting a lot of action.

I think the changes have really made the Borderlands a lot better. Before, my entire havoc guild wouldn’t even touch those maps. Yesterday, all our raids and roaming parties were solely in the borderland maps! Deleting the barricades and simplifying the map makes it super easy to get from point A to point B. You can actually get to places fast enough to defend now. Is it perfect? No, but as far as I’ve read, neither were the Alpines.

As for those people STILL complaining about falling off cliffs… You’re doing something REALLY wrong. Stop putting your character on auto-run and LOOK at where you’re going; it really isn’t that hard.

I like these changes. You can go from point A to B now without all the zigzag bullcrap. Also waypoint change is amazing. Gives me the home bdl feeling back again.

Well players won’t have to suffer Alpine for too long they are working on a real map-rotation:-)

“suffer Alpine” ?? It is by far better than the new map and bringing it back is going to be bringing a lot of the old players back that quit when HOT came out because of the new map. I didn’t fully quit the game when it happened, but I quit WvW for a good 2 months or so until I decided to return to just playing in EBG.

New map is a lot more playable after the changes on 04/19, but it still isn’t WvW ready. There are several more things they need to fix before it should touch a rotation.

I like the changes made to DBL but still prefer Alpine. Judging from queues, I’d say DBL still has a way to go. Now that the event is gone from the central valley, I’d like to see a huge sand storm blow in and just fill the whole space in with gently rolling dunes.

Please, no central event, no pve stuff…
Keep that kitten removed…

I wouldn’t mind if they did the ruins like they had in Alpine there. The daily ruins capture was really nice for roamers to get fights without getting blobbed. It also promoted people running around solo or with smaller groups because of it.

Currently, the DBL maps just have a ton of wasted space for no real reason other than to make me walk around longer looking for a fight lol.

“We want alpine back because all we like to do is run around in mindless zergs and don’t want to have to deal with places where we can actually get ambushed or have any kind of tactic other than mindless blobbing we can see from a mile away.”

Alpine offered zero tactics other than blobbing people just need to learn to adapt, use scouts in choke points and blind spots. I’m extremely disappointed they are getting rid of the DBL and are going back to the bland map that facilitates zero kinds of tactics and only blobbing.

Great changes to DBL.
Much better map than the boring Alpine.

I find it funny that some people keep saying that the Desert BL’s are still not wvw ready, like the Alpine BL’s were wvw ready??? Please.

You found a strategy in the Alpine maps that do not work quite as well in the Desert maps. That is all. Now I can agree that navigation was a pain to get around, but trying to suggest to Anet to change the Dbl’s into been more like the Abl’s is absurd.

I guess Anet can open up more paths to make the map more easily to travel from different points and some other good suggestions, but please don’t get rid of all the gimmicks that the map has just because some people don’t care for them. You can adjust them or whatever, but don’t get rid of them completely

Alpine BL had special magic most people didnt understand.

BAY was much easier to take then HILLS.
BRIAR was a first push to bay and you could use it to treb from there or sit your kitten on vale and do it from there.
LAKE on the other hand is completely useless to attack hills and hills can only be capped while either having a lot more people or being really gud.. (or ofc rush it when nobody there yet ^^ the usual way)
Notice how the green team defends bay against blue.
blue defends bay against red and red defends bay against green.
Now think about who focus who in usual matchups and this setup makes A LOT of sense (at least before they randomly assigned colors >.<). Its not only the option to siege from towers (earlier on even bay outer from garri) that give a bit of safety that made alpine so much more interesting to play, but the whole setup of the 3 maps and the difficulty of keeps were in perfect harmony. It was designed either by a mastermind of wvw or someone who got lucky as kitten! EBG is similarly well designed btw although SM still gives way too many advantages.

DBL on the other hand were designed around an event that got already removed and has no tactical depth whatsoever. The only good thing about DBL is the lords take more time so there is more time to respond.

Steelo.4597:

DBL on the other hand were designed around an event that got already removed and has no tactical depth whatsoever. The only good thing about DBL is the lords take more time so there is more time to respond.

And they could easily dump those lords straight into Alpine and we’d have the best of worlds.

DBL have a lot of issue… The recent change improve the map yes, but we are always with useless tower. And that is really a bad thing that the tower have really no value at all (except PPT).
Now keep have value again with the WP, map is easier to travel. But there is the always this issue with those useless tower where you have no reason at all to defend or to take except to make a little more PPT.

Alpine was far better. Yes I was bored from ABL after all those years and change was welcome. But DBL was not a good change at all. And all the HoT kitten have hurt the WvW community a lot. Both combined have killed WvW.
Now with more reward, soon server linking, map change and WP back we can see some improvement.

Mezmere.3241:

IMO there isn’t anything wrong with new BLs. I actually really enjoy them. The south of fire is AMAZING, same with air. East and West of garri is awesome and open. its easier to navigate, just will take time getting used to again

Agreed. I think they did a good job. The only thing I feel it’s left out is to make the towers more strategically important.

I hate narrow funneling maps. I hate the feeling of being so close yet so far. I hate worthless objectives. I hate world bosses mechanics in wvw.

All they need is to remove fire turrets, remove earth walls, clean up oasis to make a flat plane for open field if ppl want a big flat space, plus move n towers in range of outer Earth Keep.

To all who defend DBL, let me ask you something, why there is 100+ man queue for EBG and no queue for DBL, even after the changes?
And please dont start with “people dont know the map”, because i spent 2 days on DBL this week, and still annoying me as much as before. If the map is so awesome how come the majority of the WvW players still queue only for EBG and they are ready to wait hours but not to play the new map?
In my humble opinion, no matter what Anet will make / remake with this map it will never be fit for WvW.
But hey, what do I know, I’m just a WvW player.

Avit.3165:

To all who defend DBL, let me ask you something, why there is 100+ man queue for EBG and no queue for DBL, even after the changes?
And please dont start with “people dont know the map”, because i spent 2 days on DBL this week, and still annoying me as much as before. If the map is so awesome how come the majority of the WvW players still queue only for EBG and they are ready to wait hours but not to play the new map?
In my humble opinion, no matter what Anet will make / remake with this map it will never be fit for WvW.
But hey, what do I know, I’m just a WvW player.

Because of people like you, obviously.

Not that there’s anything wrong with you or your ilk, but some folks don’t like it for varying reasons. Some of those reasons make sense to me and some don’t, but it doesn’t matter in the end.

There’s a whole lot more that goes into it, of course, but there’s the simple answer.

Avit.3165:

To all who defend DBL, let me ask you something, why there is 100+ man queue for EBG and no queue for DBL, even after the changes?

I don’t “defend” DBL, I posted about the problems the BL had since the second Stress Test. But to reply to your question, I believe there’s 2 main reasons for this:

1) even if you are in a borderland, you usually keep the queue for EB up in case the fights start to dwindle after prime time. That way you’ll be already in a good position to join the eternal fights in EB

2) some people (like you) decided they don’t ever want to play in DBL. They just dislike the map and prefer EB (or maybe Alpine when it’ll be back, we’ll see). I don’t think anything can change that, if they have made up their mind there’s not even point in trying to convince them otherwise.

Personally, my guild and I had amazing fights in the “old” DBL and the changes look like we can possibly have even better fights in the “new” DBL.

Sviel.7493:

Avit.3165:

To all who defend DBL, let me ask you something, why there is 100+ man queue for EBG and no queue for DBL, even after the changes?
And please dont start with “people dont know the map”, because i spent 2 days on DBL this week, and still annoying me as much as before. If the map is so awesome how come the majority of the WvW players still queue only for EBG and they are ready to wait hours but not to play the new map?
In my humble opinion, no matter what Anet will make / remake with this map it will never be fit for WvW.
But hey, what do I know, I’m just a WvW player.

Because of people like you, obviously.

Not that there’s anything wrong with you or your ilk, but some folks don’t like it for varying reasons. Some of those reasons make sense to me and some don’t, but it doesn’t matter in the end.

There’s a whole lot more that goes into it, of course, but there’s the simple answer.