Guild Wars 2

Just give it a shot, let’s see what happens?

I’d be fine with that, it would mean I could ignore the season completely.

Might be a nice change of pace and the season is only four weeks so why not just try it out? The terrain in EotM is much more dynamic than the BL’s I imagine it would lead to some interesting fights.

+5 for trading eotm and wvw maps for a season.

Huge NO.

EotM terrain leads to nothing but massive blobs and some trolling people off the ledge.

It would be like if the ToG was to played on skyhammer only.

….no it doesn’t. If anything the terrain deters large blobs because it’s harder to traverse and a much longer and dangerous run back to a commander.

EotM is already a huge organized karma train. With sometime players killing off mindless zerglings.

EoTM with its… siege (red side), stupid movement debuff (blue side) and condi clear (green side)?

Yeah… no. It’s a horrible map for any competitive WvW because of the inherent imbalance of the map. It just lends itself to long drawn out siege wars if it makes it into actual WvW and fights will be near non-existent cause of the terrain

Why would they bring a PvE map into WvW for seasons? What is next? Using heart of the mists?

It’s only so because you’ve trained yourselves to think of it as a karma map. Think about it competitively for a second before you just rattle off nonsense.

You seem to be getting things back to front. It’s not a bad pvp map because it’s a karma train map, it’s a karma train map because it’s a bad pvp map. Remove the karma trains and it’s still a bad pvp map.

EotM is an amazing map that is underestimated by people who have no clue how to play it strategically. It would balance itself quite well if players bothered to defend it for PPT. With a team rotation between the 3 sides every day I don’t see what the balance problem would be.

The only reason it is used as a karma train is because it rewards you more for PvE events than for PPT. It has nothing to do with the map design.

Xillllix.3485:

EotM is an amazing map that is underestimated by people who have no clue how to play it strategically. It would balance itself quite well if players bothered to defend it for PPT. With a team rotation between the 3 sides every day I don’t see what the balance problem would be.

The only reason it is used as a karma train is because it rewards you more for PvE events than for PPT. It has nothing to do with the map design.

If you really think so, why don’t you enlighten us “clueless” people why EotM map design is so great.

Note: I have worked as game designer and programmer and teaching the topic for over 10 years at university.

In my analysis EotM has:
- way too much verticality
- way too many chokepoints
- way too many edges where you can fall into void
- way too many distracting visual effects (flying sand)
- unbalanced overpowered NPCs and buffs for the different colors
- completely lacks the element of water (some players enjoy underwater)

Plus it also looks ugly to my eyes, but that is only an opinion. You have to understand that there is a large variety of WvWvW players who enjoy different play style. EotM only caters few of those play styles, mainly zone wide blob zerging. It is an absolutely horrible map for small scale and solo roaming as you are often forced to walk along the narrow bridges, where you are surely going to be spotted without any stealth. Professions have very unequal access to stability and means to knock off other players off the ledge. Heavy armors are already overly abundant in WvWvW, now replacing the real WvWvW maps with EotM failure design, would mean we would have even more of them as they have the best access to stability. Necromancer is also part of the GWEN meta and I can easily imagine that spectral wall would be the perfect trolling skill in EotM, but does that make it a better map? NO.

I don’t think a season is the best point in time to do so, but maybe once as an experiment, and if the experiment was liked by the people maybe once a month or 1 in 10 weeks or 1 in 20 weeks could be cool, not because the eotm-map is somehow better,
only because it something different and not always the same, that we have now since over 100 weeks

And concerning balance: There is nothing balanced in WvW, why should the maps be balanced. The map-imbalance could even be used to counter the man-power imbalance. FB is probably weakest, give it to the team with highest Rating (as they are strongest, they have fewest gain from easy inner-keep defense), OG is probably strongest, give is to the team with least Glicko, BL has the strongest offensive boosts give it to the middle team.

Another aspect is: Just EotM-map and EB-map halves the total map-capacity from 400 to 200. If I got it right over 50% of all WvW-teams have trouble filling more than 2 maps. Could be an opportunity for them to be more competitive.

Quells.2498:

It’s only so because you’ve trained yourselves to think of it as a karma map. Think about it competitively for a second before you just rattle off nonsense.

We can think of it whatever way we want. The players over there are using it as a karma train. And can be pretty organized about it.

If you want you can try to disrupt that karma train, but in the end except getting into an argument with them, it won’t change anything since there are multiple copies of EotM and more people interested in doing karma trains than disrupting them.

RedStar.4218:

Quells.2498:

It’s only so because you’ve trained yourselves to think of it as a karma map. Think about it competitively for a second before you just rattle off nonsense.

We can think of it whatever way we want. The players over there are using it as a karma train. And can be pretty organized about it.

If you want you can try to disrupt that karma train, but in the end except getting into an argument with them, it won’t change anything since there are multiple copies of EotM and more people interested in doing karma trains than disrupting them.

EotM as a stand alone game mode will be as it is.
Please distinguish between EotM-game mode (4h matches with overflow maps and random-teams without TS) and EotM-map.

But if the EotM-map is used (additionally) by the WvW player as replacement for the 3 borderland-maps (and the eotm player keep their own eotm-map for karma train) as part of the WvW-matches things will look very different.

Another interesting experiment would be to setup EB-map in EotM-mode. Either every 2nd overflow-instance will be the EB-map instead of the EotM-map over people choose in EotM-mode, if they want EotM-map or EB-map.

If both experiments (EotM-map used in WvW-Mode, and EB-Map used in EotM-Mode) where done, we know better, if different player behavior in EotM-mode and WvW-mode is due to map or mode-setup.

I think some of you are missing the simple beauty of this idea. Seasons suck, EOTM sucks, why not put them in the same place and keep that garbage out of WvW? Only thing that would make this better is if eotm was the only place this crappy new golem mastery would work.

“If you really think so, why don’t you enlighten us “clueless” people why EotM map design is so great.
Note: I have worked as game designer and programmer and teaching the topic for over 10 years at university.
In my analysis EotM has:
- way too much verticality
- way too many chokepoints
- way too many edges where you can fall into void
- way too many distracting visual effects (flying sand)
- unbalanced overpowered NPCs and buffs for the different colors
- completely lacks the element of water (some players enjoy underwater)”

Most of those reasons are exactly why it’s a good pvp map. I am having a hard time believing your assertion that you’re a designer based on these comments as you should be the one person that I don’t have to explain why they create interesting decisions.

Quells.2498:

“If you really think so, why don’t you enlighten us “clueless” people why EotM map design is so great.
Note: I have worked as game designer and programmer and teaching the topic for over 10 years at university.
In my analysis EotM has:
- way too much verticality
- way too many chokepoints
- way too many edges where you can fall into void
- way too many distracting visual effects (flying sand)
- unbalanced overpowered NPCs and buffs for the different colors
- completely lacks the element of water (some players enjoy underwater)”

Most of those reasons are exactly why it’s a good pvp map. I am having a hard time believing your assertion that you’re a designer based on these comments as you should be the one person that I don’t have to explain why they create interesting decisions.

“- way too much verticality”
I do not perceive this as something negative nor did most the community.

“- way too many chokepoints”
We all agreed in the discussion thread that it is the best way to prevent server blobbing, people have been asking for more choke points on the original WvW maps.

“- way too many edges where you can fall into void”
Your not being serious. It actually make some skills like Fear interesting to use.

“- way too many distracting visual effects (flying sand)”
You can disable them, turn post processing or shaders off.

“- unbalanced overpowered NPCs and buffs for the different colors”
Just alternate server colors every time it resets or every day.

“- completely lacks the element of water (some players enjoy underwater)”
Water was also removed from the original WvW map because it’s simply not interesting and not balanced.

Glad you got a good job however.

Yeah, let’s put eotm in the rotation for a month so you people can see how horrible it would be in a real wvw situation. I volunteer to man one of the thousand sup ACs that will make you rethink your ideas.

Remove WvW, make it Color vs. Color. Everyone still has a home borderlands that can be assaulted. Different servers are in different color groups. Removes the likelihood of OP servers crushing the other servers. Population at that time will be little factor.

The only part of EoTM I would like to see in wvw is the somewhat destructible environment. Being able to close of certain paths(bridges) could be interesting for regular wvw play. I don’t like the constant falling off or the silly buffs. Siege could also become altogether too powerful. There are areas where 1 sup ac and a bali would make it impossible to do anything.

No EoTM for a season, but 1 week every couple months might be interesting.

People on this thread are misunderstanding me. And remember: Please keep it less personal.

If added verticality is a great thing, then Skyhammer must be the best pvp map ever. Just check the pvp subforums and you can enormous amount of players complaining about that map. E.g.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Should-Skyhammer-Be-A-Tourny-Map
Quote from that thread by sirnibb.4709:
“This is the biggest troll map, and it’s going to encourage troll builds, and pigeonhole people into run mass fears and kds, pulls. If you think necros are bad now wait till you have three or four of them fear locking you off a cliff.”

EotM added verticality has exactly these same problems: encouraging the troll builds and pigeonholing players.

Choke points are not an effective counter against zerging without massive sieging. Most AoE skills in this game have a 5 player limit and those which don’t are usually countered by retaliation. Thus this game is encouraging a huge zerg players to stack into a small pile, even when there are no choke points. I definitely would not want to turn this game into Siege Wars 2. Certain siege related traits are already overpowered e.g. the cow ammo which drains supplies and poisons with treb has way too good effectiveness and radius.

A good WvWvW map should be balanced. Adding more imbalance to an already imbalanced game mode can easily skew it even further. In worst case we are talking about 99%-1% blown outs.

More versatility is better than forcing just one play style. A good map should have fair share of choke points, upper and lower positions, walls, cliffs where you can fall to your death, but also open areas and everything in between. There should be balance of things. EotM pushed things too much into one direction. In other words: am NOT against a map to have cliffs or choke points, but there should not be too much of them.

Just a side note: Nobody was forcing to enter the lake in the original borderlands. Now the borderland middle part ruins area is empty outside the tournament. Players are not even using for duels, but choose to duel in other areas of the map.

1) Fear, push and pull are a strong weapons in EotM. You have to look for a Necro around the next corner at some places. But this concerns mostly “Schleichwege” (approx. sneak routes), the main pathways are fear-secured. But what’s wrong with that? “Troll builds” add to build variety and thats a good thing. And I always enjoy, if a well timed and placed fear-wall send 20 “brainless zerglings” (sometimes incl. me) back to spawn.

2) You may get a position war at choke points with many sieges on both sides (happened from time to time in EotM), but whats wrong with that? Just send out a coordinated group to go around using the Schleichwege to fall in their back. Or you blow the bridge and go elsewhere (haha, I love the bridge-war scene in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060196/ ). I think repairing bridges is a bit to cheap and fast compared to blowing bridges.

3) WvW is totally imbalanced, No man-power balance, no coverage balance, more blow-out matches then close matches. Why should the maps be balanced? They rotate that’s fair enough. An imbalanced map can in fact be used to counter the man-power imbalance.

Add: What I really miss is a “prepared-bridge-trap”: if 20+ people are at the same time on a prepared bridge (sum all sides incl NPCs) it collapses and sends these 20+ to spawn.

a few tweaks and it can be viable, make wvw comprise of 3 maps : 1 bl, 1 ebg, 1 eotm.

and BRING BACK THE ORBS!

I hear they actually play it as a pvp map in the EU servers. Is there any truth to this outlandish tale?

Telemin.7380:

I hear they actually play it as a pvp map in the EU servers. Is there any truth to this outlandish tale?

Depends commander. Enemy probably would wanna karma train, but we won’t let them.

Deniara Devious.3948:

People on this thread are misunderstanding me. And remember: Please keep it less personal.

If added verticality is a great thing, then Skyhammer must be the best pvp map ever. Just check the pvp subforums and you can enormous amount of players complaining about that map. E.g.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Should-Skyhammer-Be-A-Tourny-Map
Quote from that thread by sirnibb.4709:
“This is the biggest troll map, and it’s going to encourage troll builds, and pigeonhole people into run mass fears and kds, pulls. If you think necros are bad now wait till you have three or four of them fear locking you off a cliff.”

EotM added verticality has exactly these same problems: encouraging the troll builds and pigeonholing players.

Choke points are not an effective counter against zerging without massive sieging. Most AoE skills in this game have a 5 player limit and those which don’t are usually countered by retaliation. Thus this game is encouraging a huge zerg players to stack into a small pile, even when there are no choke points. I definitely would not want to turn this game into Siege Wars 2. Certain siege related traits are already overpowered e.g. the cow ammo which drains supplies and poisons with treb has way too good effectiveness and radius.

A good WvWvW map should be balanced. Adding more imbalance to an already imbalanced game mode can easily skew it even further. In worst case we are talking about 99%-1% blown outs.

More versatility is better than forcing just one play style. A good map should have fair share of choke points, upper and lower positions, walls, cliffs where you can fall to your death, but also open areas and everything in between. There should be balance of things. EotM pushed things too much into one direction. In other words: am NOT against a map to have cliffs or choke points, but there should not be too much of them.

Just a side note: Nobody was forcing to enter the lake in the original borderlands. Now the borderland middle part ruins area is empty outside the tournament. Players are not even using for duels, but choose to duel in other areas of the map.

I agree with this 110%!!!

As always anet took the suggestions made and went too far yet again….

If they just added the actual skyhammer to the map from way up top…you would have skyhammer in WvW lol.

Such a terrible spvp map…

1) If added verticality is a great thing, then Skyhammer must be the best pvp map ever. Just check the pvp subforums and you can enormous amount of players complaining about that map. E.g.

One maps lack of popularity is not a sign that verticality itself is the problem. Also, one pvp subforum isn’t either. Considering you are a designer you should understand the high relevance and popularity of verticality throughout multiplayer gaming in general right now. Lastly, as much as the players think they are design professionals they are not so quoting their opinions is of little use.

2) Choke points are not an effective counter against zerging without massive sieging. Most AoE skills in this game have a 5 player limit and those which don’t are usually countered by retaliation.

You’re not considering the possibilities of a choke point beyond a flat plane. Retaliation doesn’t counter anything.

3) A good WvWvW map should be balanced. Adding more imbalance to an already imbalanced game mode can easily skew it even further. In worst case we are talking about 99%-1% blown outs.

As much as players will hate me for saying this I must say that balance is bad design. It allows for no interesting decisions to be made as there’s a correct answer for each scenario. At that point the player isn’t playing but rather attempting to answer a quiz question correctly and in the appropriate amount of time. Play needs to feel fair but fair and balanced are not the same thing. You, the designer, should already know this as well.

I’ll apologize if this sounds crass but if you’re going to throw your credentials out there then you should expect other design professionals to challenge your opinions.

Actually Skyhammer is my favorite PvP map. Because it’s FUN. The other PvP maps are often less so, no matter how “balanced” they are.

Quells.2498:

Considering you are a designer you should understand the high relevance and popularity of verticality throughout multiplayer gaming in general right now. Lastly, as much as the players think they are design professionals they are not so quoting their opinions is of little use.

Retaliation doesn’t counter anything.

As much as players will hate me for saying this I must say that balance is bad design. It allows for no interesting decisions to be made as there’s a correct answer for each scenario. At that point the player isn’t playing but rather attempting to answer a quiz question correctly and in the appropriate amount of time. Play needs to feel fair but fair and balanced are not the same thing. You, the designer, should already know this as well.

League of Legends (LoL) is right now the most popular multi-player online battle arena (MOBA). Is it heavy on verticality?

Retalation is more or less counter towards multi-hitting skills like the engineer grenade kit (theoretically retaliation can trigger 7×5= 35 times from just one skill: grenade barrage). Retaliation is extremely easy to keep on by guardians just spamming light fields from hammer #1 and the blast with hammer #2. As long as things are like these, there is very little punishment on having your zerg being stacked into a small area.

I have several times on these forums suggested good ways to demotivate zerging, yet not punish it too hard. For example we could alter the game that all enemy forces larger than certain size (e.g. 15 or 20) are automatically shown their location at the map. Thus enemy will know their movements perfectly. This would motivate many servers to split up their forces to smaller units to do stealth/ninja capping, instead of having 50+ men facerub the gates.

I agree with you that the game should feel fair. You are probably now misunderstanding the word balanced. Game balance is one of the most difficult things in game design and it is essential. Gameplay is all about making (hopefully meaningful) choices and in a poorly-balanced game, many of the choices available to the player are essentially rendered useless or you are dealt with unfairly strong or unfairly bad hand. Players generally steer towards the easiest option, the least effort towards win. Game balance preserves game elements from irrelevance and to avoid completely unfair blow outs. Some WvWvW servers are now facing moments when there is almost nobody on the map, since is it not that much fun to play with 2-3 guys against enemy blob. In an imbalanced game, one or more “dominant strategies” quickly emerge, limiting other strategies. Balanced design doesn’t mean that the map is identical for all sides (= symmetrical design), but each side should have fairly equal resources and terrain advantages (terrain and looks can of course vary). The old WvWvW maps meet these requirements far better than EotM. All the three keeps on both the borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds are different and have their own plusses or minuses.

I feel that WvWvW would be much better if it would have a better scoring. It is obvious that that 1 vs 1 vs 1 doesn’t work as intended. In a fairly even match up the strongest and weakest server both target #2, thus making the win easier for #1 and the an uphill battle for #2 as it gets doubled focused. Ifthe 3rd server is much weaker, both the #1 and #2 prey on the weakest. In other words the strongest server has least focus on it. Now imagine such scoring where both #2 and #3 would have motivation to attack #1? For example flipping an objective has a multiplier directed to the reverse of its score (flipping a keep from winning server earns you more and flipping on objective from the weakest server will earn you less). That would lead to more even match ups.

Edge of the Mists IS KILLING WvW …..
Edge of the Mists should be closed when the 4 WvWvW maps arent full….

Boulou.4023:

Edge of the Mists IS KILLING WvW …..
Edge of the Mists should be closed when the 4 WvWvW maps arent full….

If there is ANY server without queue on all 4 maps, It is closed FOR ALL, would be fair, and can be seen as balancing factor.

However this would mean it will always be closed to everyone.

If you just do that rule server by server, you enforce further concentration of players on the top servers as these will be the only ones that can ever access EotM.

I wouldn’t mind this but I spend more time in EotM than I do the other WvW maps. It would certainly be a nice change from the redundant BLs and even EB. I’ve always been a fan of EotM since it came out, imbalances and all, and have gritted my teeth as people have turned it into a ktrain map when it was originally intended to be an experimental WvW map. It would be interesting to see how it would work if people were (God forbid) forced to WvW in it.

WvW is suposed to be casual for pve players as a intro for pvp (pvp map with friendly pve)
After watch this oldie video i think wvw is where Anet wanted it, players just want the game to envolve more than that, after playing another games i cant play gw2 as i only see graphics and low features at is actual state, reason i tend to dispite theme park mmo-s.

Deniara,

We’re dealing with a subject that is difficult to summarize and while I still disagree with you I will recognize the amount of thought you’ve put into it. With that in mind I want to suggest that you think of WvW not in terms of balance but instead how it offers something no other mode in the game can. I’m certain that it was designed with that in mind as if a player wants “balance” they can go to PvP theoretically. WvW is a place where large scale chaos needs to be possible mostly because of the absurdity of it and not because of the balance or fairness.