Desert Borderlands, why don't they work?

Desert Borderlands, why don't they work?

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Posted by: Mizhas.8536

Mizhas.8536

Well i’m not a fan of the new borderlands but i must first say that i don’t want the old ones back either.

I’ll try to make it as clear as possible:

1- Towers have lost their strategical value. In old borderlands, towers used to be like the first step into a keep siege. They felt like the first step in order to atack with a fairly safe advantage the next objective (aka the keep next to it. ) Nowdays, towers are just another objective reather than beeing the key for a sucesfull keep siege.

2- To many PvE stuff around. Turrets, walls, banners, hound… all theese are nothing but pure kitten to most WvW players. (Banners need a cap per map btw. 1 per map tops.) However, the sanctuary mechanic idea is not entirery broken. The mist, the lava portals…. those T3 “buffs” are not a bad idea in order to give a siege a bit more of variety.
Perhaps if you guys would rework it and lets say give another kind of function to the T1 and T2… something like: “1 sanctuary= doors +%HP, 2 scantuarys = 2x cannon and mokittenamage” or so.
There could be thousends of possibilities here. Just no more automatic PvE things plz.

3- The oasis event: FIX THE LAG. After you’ve done that you could consider reworking the way you obtain the cores. I would suggest that you could remove the NPCs and add some kind of altars where you have to channel for lets say 5-7 secs to get he core. Then the player who gets it should be snared so other players should have to protect him.
This kind of mechanic could encourage players to really fight across all the map. I also suggest that you may reduce the time between events so players actively take part in the event and also repairing or atacking the towers. I really think that you should try theese things in something like “special weekend events” or so like in the past.

4- The barricade thing is not that is a gamebreaker but its overall a nonsense. They just hurt roamers cause zergs just melt them and keep their way. If you want them to be an advantage for the owner just make them invulnerable. However as I already said, the main problem is for roamers so just removing them could also be a good thing.
Test it and listen to the community again.

5- About the map design… well, too many narrow spaces, too many clifs. I suggest you check games like warhammer online where maps like Praag, Reikland or Dragonwake were examples of how to mix narrow and wide spaces where to fight.

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Posted by: Subversion.2580

Subversion.2580

I’d say you’re pretty spot on and I’ll just add to it: Alot of people tend to sum up that the DBL’s are similar to EOTM, or built on the same ideals, and has as such inherited many of the same issues even though they are clearly different maps. The reasons for the comparisons are similar to those Mizhas already listed:

1. Objectives: In the betas someone posted a very well put map overview and forecast of content where the objectives were laid out as a circle. It was a good example of how the map is more akin to cap wars, rotations and objective races than map control where lines (and thus content) is pushed forward or backward.

2. Fluff: There is alot of fluff in the overall design that has little long-term tactical appeal. It feels more like it was temporarily put in to be cool than to be fun or good. It doesn’t really add to the overall vision of the game mode, regardless of scale. It adds to interrupt more fights than it adds to enhance them and even superior positioned defenders can find their own defenses annoying and disruptive of content.

3. Verticality and bottlenecks: I can see the idea behind them, the problem is that the idea was not properly investigated and missed its mark. Some verticality adds variety to fights (the areas aroun old Bay and it’s camps, with drops and bridges etc.) but too much of it just becomes tedious obstacles that hinder fights. It is good as an exception, not as a norm. The idea of alot of bottlenecks was probably to help guerilla style defenses against larger groups, but miscalculated how bottlenecks in a range-meta tend to reinforce it and mostly ends up helping larger groups keep smaller groups pinned and/or crush through and box in smaller groups’ attempts to not be overwhelmed. It has had the opposite effect, at least in existing balance of size, movement and control.

4. Size: The obstacles, size and rotating pace of the map combines to create an issue that makes finding both friends and enemies difficult. The idea may have been to break up unified groups and regroups, but making finding players more difficult is generally a bad way to incentivize splitting groups apart – especially not when it is coupled with worse micro content and small-large balance. The map design could be interpreted as encouraging small groups setting up ambushes but the large structures and cap-race oriented objectives certainly does not encourage small groups to snub micro-content.

The end result is largely negative.

Like Mizhas, I’ve also suggested looking at other games for how to handle map development. The examples I’ve used mostly come from World of Tanks, where they have been really good at map-rotation development: Where only small changes in texture, objective positions and verticality or obstacles are used to freshen up recognizable maps, to be churned out at steady pace on low development effort. They’ve done that very well.

(edited by Subversion.2580)

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Posted by: DeWolfe.2174

DeWolfe.2174

Well i’m not a fan of the new borderlands but i must first say that i don’t want the old ones back either.

Ok, so let’s just shut WvW down until next year then???? It took them over a year to make EotM and the Desert Map. So even if you talked them into creating a new map, we’ll need Alpine back until this new map is ready.

[AwM] of Jade Quarry.

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Posted by: Serious.6940

Serious.6940

I would limit the time an oasis event is active to 10 minutes, that means you have to go and do it immediately. Replace the laser blasts with a buff to player luck. At the moment it just empowers the already powerful. Preferably, as it is a PvE event, it should be removed.

Get rid of random PvE mobs.

Keep effects, especially the rampart dust effect, do little to help owners and much to cause problems. Often I can barely see myself in the dust.

Provide ways of getting around faster.

These things could be done on the present map.

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Posted by: Mizhas.8536

Mizhas.8536

Well i’m not a fan of the new borderlands but i must first say that i don’t want the old ones back either.

Ok, so let’s just shut WvW down until next year then???? It took them over a year to make EotM and the Desert Map. So even if you talked them into creating a new map, we’ll need Alpine back until this new map is ready.

I’m not suggesting them to make a new one (wich wouldn’t be something crazy in the future). What i’m saying is that they should fix the actual one AND revamp the alpine one so they inlcude on it all the good stuff from the new one (just the good ones ofc).
A fast, easy rework for the Desert BL would be changing the santuary bonuses, revamping the oasis event to encourage more player interaction and perhaps the barricade thing.
The rest of the problems would require a larger process wich would take far too long.
Fix the new map as much as they can and then focus on upgrading Alpine borderlands.

Lets be honest. Many people ask for the old maps to come back but the reality is that the old ones also lacked a lot of stuff. f.e. The shrines. No one cared about them. The actual event has a more meaninful impact in map control. It forces players to fight for it wich is a good thing (if they could fix the lag ofc).
Alpine maps also had too many open empty spaces. Its like if they could not find the right combination on this. Having walls, stairs, statues….any kind of decoration adds strategical components on fights/sieges.
If you ask players for they most favourite spots in WvW maps i’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t say “You know that giant open field with nothing around but a bunch of NPCs? Yeah, that’s my favourite”.
In my opinion there must be a balance between open and narrow fields.

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Posted by: erKo.9586

erKo.9586

1) There are to much PvE
2) There are to many levels/distractions/cloudy terrain
3) There are to much lag for me and alot of players (Spec at the event in the middle)
4) The maps are to big and complicated.
5) To few people on the maps – all in EB.

Good: I love the skins of towers/lords etc & would love them into the old maps, also thee camp design. I do not like the keep-skins tho.

[WvW] Thanks Anet for listening to your players during 2016.
Far Shiverpeaks – EU – Since release.

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Posted by: Sinbold.8723

Sinbold.8723

4- The barricade thing is not that is a gamebreaker but its overall a nonsense. They just hurt roamers cause zergs just melt them and keep their way. If you want them to be an advantage for the owner just make them invulnerable. However as I already said, the main problem is for roamers so just removing them could also be a good thing.
Test it and listen to the community again.

While I agree that they are annoying, you can go around the far sides of the towers to avoid them. Easier for roamers and scouts like myself. If you’re a decent sized group they can be taken down in under a minute.

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Posted by: Trajan.4953

Trajan.4953

So far this thread has hit the nail on the head for me. Removal of a lot of the “fluff” would probably populate the BL’s again.

CCCP….

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Posted by: Dusty Moon.4382

Dusty Moon.4382

Well, I think the design of the desert BL’s is fine, I would just get rid of the ‘Oasis’ event and put more focus into how can the minor towers be used better for example, trebbing Gari or Air and Fire keeps. This would make for more tension and cause more fights for keeps. As they are right now, they are just there for PPT and nothing more.

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Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

Well, I think the design of the desert BL’s is fine, I would just get rid of the ‘Oasis’ event and put more focus into how can the minor towers be used better for example, trebbing Gari or Air and Fire keeps.

For the first part, removing oasis… OK, simple. Remove it and done deal, nothing would be changed.

For the second part, you are talking about a complete redesign of the entire border from the ground up!

So clearly, the design is not fine. It wasnt fine when HoT released and its still not fine.

kitten if I had a gold piece every time a commander tried to save a keep but had to run from spawn in such a godawfull maze that the enemy is in lord room by the time you arrive I’d be rich now.

I have tried to like the border and have played tons and tons of hours there and know every single centimeter of it, every godkitten nook and cranny by heart. I can walk from one end to the other with my eyes closed.

It is still complete and utter bullkitten for defenders of their home border.

It is not fun.

I’m so kittening sick of it.

If you want to know the core reason its not working, I made a comparison to alpine a while ago. Smaller size == compact fighting areas == more action == more fun. That’s what a border should be. For grand battles we got Eternal Battleground (I mean, that’s what its called right?).

Just look at it. Look at it

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Posted by: Ben K.6238

Ben K.6238

The biggest problem with them right now is … well, they’re too big. At least for the population currently in WvW. Alpine wouldn’t be much better there, though, except for easier karma training.

A lot of the OP’s dislikes are actually things I like about the desert borderland, so I have difficulty concluding that everyone thinks they don’t work. Most of my guild thinks they do, but there are too many maps for it to matter.

Towers, I feel, have gained significant strategic value because they impede movement a lot more. Taking one essentially gives you freedom of movement in its local area, hinders enemy roamers, provides means of tracking enemy zergs, and makes it easier to keep distance while scouting them. In the Alpine BLs, towers were just safe zones to run into, and occasionally set up siege in. They didn’t contribute to defending territory at all, with the exception of treb wars between towers and keeps which I’m actually happy to see the end of. If you’re going to take something, you should have to risk putting siege in the open where it can be countered.

I can’t say I get the complaints about home borderland defense either, aside from the waypoints no longer being available. It means you need more advance warning to contest a cap, but the number of tools available on the Desert BL is so much greater that there’s always time to intercept unless no-one was paying attention to them. It takes enemy zergs a lot longer to break into keeps, scouting them is a lot easier, and sentries do most of the work for you.

The one thing I’m not keen on is the shrine system. A bit gimmicky in general, and it seems like complexity for complexity’s sake. Garrison is particularly egregious in this regard with cripple traps and walls appearing all over the place. The other two are slightly better, where their effects are providing little advantages to the defender rather than making the map annoying for the other two servers.

(edited by Ben K.6238)

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

I could be wrong, but I think this map was voted out for hot maps so they retrofit it for wvw.

We don’t need mazes with overdone verticality for wvw.

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.

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Posted by: donkey.1653

donkey.1653

After learning my way around I think they are fine.

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Posted by: ShadowCatz.8437

ShadowCatz.8437

Been playing in PUGs on all three BL maps and it seem that we do well enough even as regular PUGs on our server. It can be confusing to find the right path in some parts of BL maps, but after some time one learn where to go. For my part BL isn’t that bad as most ppl here seem to want to make it, at least not if you are playing as roamer and join smaller groups up to zergs on occasions.

I wouldn’t cut down laser event to only 10 min as that would be a too short time frame to first go to WP (from what ever place you where on map) and start kill NPcs and collect those items. Even without enemies interrupting you, there is that distance to run from NPCs and to where collector are standing.

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Posted by: Caliburn.1845

Caliburn.1845

There are plenty of problems with the DBLs, but primarily the problem is that WvW is dead, losing players every day. The remaining players in WvW don’t want to have to work to learn a new map, nor work to find fights or things to do. They want that stuff handed to them. Hence the queues on EBG down into the lower tiers.

Caliburn.1845, Monsters Inc.
Darkhaven>Dragonbrand>Blackgate>Maguuma>Yaks Bend>Stormbluff Isle>Yaks Bend

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Posted by: AxOw.3820

AxOw.3820

I have no fun playing the new maps really, it is pushing me away from the game, in old maps there were always scouts etc. always had a feeling that there is something going on, now its to boring and fighting on the cliffs, being pushed off by winds etc. makes me not fulfilled like i hadn’t contribution into a fight, it is already hard to deal with cc’s by stability nerf, it is annoying not fun.

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Posted by: Mizhas.8536

Mizhas.8536

Towers, I feel, have gained significant strategic value because they impede movement a lot more. Taking one essentially gives you freedom of movement in its local area, hinders enemy roamers, provides means of tracking enemy zergs, and makes it easier to keep distance while scouting them. In the Alpine BLs, towers were just safe zones to run into, and occasionally set up siege in. They didn’t contribute to defending territory at all, with the exception of treb wars between towers and keeps which I’m actually happy to see the end of. If you’re going to take something, you should have to risk putting siege in the open where it can be countered.

Gained strategic value??? OMG

The only thing new about the new towers is the addition of the barricades. Yeah, lets say that barricades may help tracking the enemies when they get orange swords tring to break them but….anything else?

Alpine BL towers were clearly much more important in order to fight for the control of the map. Capturing a tower made the next step a bit easier since you had somewhere to retreat if things got messy. Now, towers mean absolute nothing (especially north ones) since you even have portals wich literally put you INSIDE (WTF!) your garrison in no time.

If we compare both BLs there are 2 things that make all the difference between them about this subject.
1st- On Alpine, north towers + garrison were fairly easy to defend, wich since its your own bordland made sense. Now, enemies can get easily to the north and cap anything before defenders can even get to the objective. This change hasn’t been a good one.

2nd- Free WP on keeps for atackers. This is one os the reasons 1st happens. On Alpine BLs, when you wiped an enemy out of your “safezone” (aka north zone of the map) they had to run alll the way back from their respawn. This made north a bit more difficult to take for atackers since respawn was too far away. The free WP thing is a good thing since it encourages the action on the map and reduces the running across the map time. However, with the actual design of the BL, it makes too easy for atackers to keep a constant preassure on north objectives while defenders don’t have any advantage at all.

About siege: Its not like if you were able to melt a wall from +10000 distance. Trebuchets were the only choice for long range siege inside a tower and they are pretty slow at it. In addition nowdays they can too easily be countered by shields. In fact, long range siege has become useless since defenders can just build a couple of shield generators and entirely hold any position against slow proyectiles.

As i said above, i would really love to see Alpine BLs back but with all the good stuff the new maps added such as free atacking WP, more than one entrance into towers, some kind of revamped oasis event, more decoration around the map (broken walls/buildings f.e. basically reduce the size of some open spaces like the one between garrison and bay), a sanctuary mechanic (with a previous rework in some bonuses) and ofc the addition of the actual tactic mechanic (with a previous balance too).

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Posted by: Ben K.6238

Ben K.6238

Hardly – Alpine BL towers were the irrelevant ones. They provided no influence to the rest of the map aside from somewhere to put up trebs and run into if you were being chased. The sentries were a doddle to walk around, with no knowledge of the map required to avoid them. Basically the entire map was set up so you could wander wherever you wanted with minimum interruption.

Anyone looking to break into any of the three keeps could just ignore them completely. SE tower provided absolutely no advantage, SW gave a place to treb Bay open but in practice was vastly inferior to the cata spot next to the door. NW and NE tower could both be used for trebbing Garri – and being trebbed by it – but once again, were utterly inferior to just setting up catas or golem rushing it.

I don’t get how you think the north towers and garrison were easier to defend on Alpine. It takes a lot longer for enemies to reach them on the Desert BL but not for the defender – it was Alpine where I was capping towers (and Garrison a few times) before defenders could contest them effectively. The players who think they have a harder time dealing with the same number of invaders when they have better gate configurations, twice the cannons, and a tower / keep lord that actually provides a challenge for small groups… those players frankly have no idea what they’re doing.

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Posted by: Mizhas.8536

Mizhas.8536

Hardly – Alpine BL towers were the irrelevant ones. They provided no influence to the rest of the map aside from somewhere to put up trebs and run into if you were being chased. The sentries were a doddle to walk around, with no knowledge of the map required to avoid them. Basically the entire map was set up so you could wander wherever you wanted with minimum interruption.

Anyone looking to break into any of the three keeps could just ignore them completely. SE tower provided absolutely no advantage, SW gave a place to treb Bay open but in practice was vastly inferior to the cata spot next to the door. NW and NE tower could both be used for trebbing Garri – and being trebbed by it – but once again, were utterly inferior to just setting up catas or golem rushing it.

I don’t get how you think the north towers and garrison were easier to defend on Alpine. It takes a lot longer for enemies to reach them on the Desert BL but not for the defender – it was Alpine where I was capping towers (and Garrison a few times) before defenders could contest them effectively. The players who think they have a harder time dealing with the same number of invaders when they have better gate configurations, twice the cannons, and a tower / keep lord that actually provides a challenge for small groups… those players frankly have no idea what they’re doing.

Well, i’m assuming that you just capped the keep before moving against north tower (which is the normal behaviour). That, gives you a free WP from which come back in matter of a few minutes.

About the tower lord, cannons, etc… like i said, there are many things that Alpine BL should get before coming back since they have been proved pros in map design (while others haven’t like the garrison auto walls). They even should rebuild the towers in some cases to make them a little bigger than they used to be.

Sentries are also a big addition.

Finally, again the strategic value of the towers. I preffer the little and vastly inferior possibilities rather than having nothing and just being another meaningless objective with a fancy lord to kill.