Guild Wars 2

I’m stoked that we got new maps, so why is everybody in an uproar about them?

Did Anet not provide all the new maps and new aspects to WvW that was advertised and promised?

Seriously, I’m not trolling, I just want a quick simple answer. I’ve been spending most of my time in PvP and PvE exploring the new jungle. But I was really looking forward to the new updated WvW that was promised. What happened?

The new maps were advertised as having areas with strategic relevance and towers you couldn’t just sidestep or ignore entirely. However, the areas have even less strategic relevance than they did on the old maps, which wasn’t even really a whole lot then either. The towers are in isolated corners of the map, which is something they specifically advertised the exact opposite of.

All of the sudden drop offs, and corridors severely inhibit fights, rather than encouraging them. All of the gimmick mechanics, such as the shrine buffs and the center event cheapen the overall experience as well. The center event also causes a great deal of lag.

What happened? You will have to experience that and come to your own conclusions. If you read enough of the posts in here, I would say the new BLs are currently around 45% or lower in terms of acceptance. Your mileage may vary, however.

I’ve been on the new BLs a dozen or so times. In that time I have seen one enemy, and a small zerg…once. That’s it. Might be different for you.

Phantom.8130:

The new maps were advertised as having areas with strategic relevance and towers you couldn’t just sidestep or ignore entirely. However, the areas have even less strategic relevance than they did on the old maps, which wasn’t even really a whole lot then either. The towers are in isolated corners of the map, which is something they specifically advertised the exact opposite of.

All of the sudden drop offs, and corridors severely inhibit fights, rather than encouraging them. All of the gimmick mechanics, such as the shrine buffs and the center event cheapen the overall experience as well. The center event also causes a great deal of lag.

I was very excited about the mechanics, bit it is irrelevant if nobody is playing. Could the low population be due to everyone playing the new PvE jungle maps and earning masteries?

Is there gliding in the new WvW maps?

Zephyron.7081:

Phantom.8130:

The new maps were advertised as having areas with strategic relevance and towers you couldn’t just sidestep or ignore entirely. However, the areas have even less strategic relevance than they did on the old maps, which wasn’t even really a whole lot then either. The towers are in isolated corners of the map, which is something they specifically advertised the exact opposite of.

All of the sudden drop offs, and corridors severely inhibit fights, rather than encouraging them. All of the gimmick mechanics, such as the shrine buffs and the center event cheapen the overall experience as well. The center event also causes a great deal of lag.

I was very excited about the mechanics, bit it is irrelevant if nobody is playing. Could the low population be due to everyone playing the new PvE jungle maps and earning masteries?

Is there gliding in the new WvW maps?

In part, yes, people are playing PvE. See, HoT kinda…. stole the upgrades all of the guilds had unlocked, and relocked them behind a massive PvE grind and paywall. So guilds have been grinding like mad in PvE to get those upgrades back. However, quite a bit of time has passed, and there’s only a slow trickle coming back.

However, that’s only a portion of the issue. If you look across every server, the vast majority of people are in EB, and barely anyone is in the new Borderlands. People were very excited at the prospect of new maps, so logic would denote that if they actually liked the new maps, they would be flooding them right around now. However, most players are trying to cram into EB. So while some of the people are away doing PvE, many more are actively avoiding the new Borderlands like the plague. Because of all the negative changes that occurred. If they had been positive changes, the new borderlands would be overflowing, regardless of the PvE grind for guild upgrades.

I would add that defending 2/3 of the map is near impossible as it takes several minutes to navigate from a WP to a tower/keep.

It is also so spread out that two big groups could completely pass each other without ever knowing they were near each other.

Absolutely nothing about the map is straight forward so running to a place will often find a player stuck behind a barricade, chasm, cliff, etc that they often have to backtrack to find a way around.

Oh and with the auto-upgrade system most structures become fortified requiring a massive amount of supply to get through which keeps most small groups without a lot of patience completely off the map.

Seriously, I thought the new maps are great… only if you are doing guild missions. Even in T1, no zergs at borderlands. Hardly anyone to fight against 3 people doing guild missions. Isn’t that amazing enough?

In my opinion a fundamental issue with the new maps is the auto-upgrades. This has caused two issues:

1. When I played on the old maps (lower tier, quiet times usually) there would be a few dedicated players either roaming to flip recently lost camps or checking on upgrade progress. I enjoyed being part of this. It meant a lot of running around but that was ok because you could see opponents coming a way off and report their location (scouting) or just run the direct route between places and start the next upgrade.
The problem is this is no longer a viable play style as far as I can see, and these players were the dedicated people who spent hours in game and would call for help if an enemy group turned up.

2. With auto-upgrades there is no need to have players on the map to progress the state of the map. Players now know this so why bother staying to defend an upgrade? For attackers (or flipping stuff back) it means unless you can get to the objective before the first auto-upgrade completes your job is made much harder. Again this has had a much bigger impact on roamers, small groups and for times of lower map population (most of the 24 hours that WvW is available for).

If I had to summarise it I would say that someone set out to produce a map that would provide a more intricate game play for larger groups and a higher level of map population, and completely missed the quieter stuff that goes on in the background.

As a final point, the side keep waypoints are designated for nearest spawn use. This makes every map like EB. You can’t take these keeps to gain a faster response time to an incoming threat, at best now you can take the keep to deny your opponent a waypoint – that’s a very different feeling. Personally I preferred the diversity of play that EB and 3 BL maps gave rather than having the four EB style maps we have now, so for me this waypoint allocation is also something that went wrong: spreading any defenders between 3 maps and making my home borderlands feel much less home like.

I know this is just my opinion, but I hope it helps answer your question.