Guild Wars 2

Hi!

I played on Alpine Borders maybe 3 times. Mostly did EBG. My wvw rank is below 100.

In every topic on this wvw forum people mention that it takes very long in the desert border to travel between objectives. From spawn it takes ~3 min to reach any keep.

I really dont have any estimates how long did it used to take in the “old border”. I would really appreciate if somebody could tell how long it took to get from Alpine border invader and defender spawn to:

1) Bay
2) Hills
3) Garrison

For the home BL – they are about the same time. – They really are (about 1 minute to 1:20 my guild has times this) from Hills or Bay from Gari. Home base to Gari is a little longer but not too much but you need to know where you are going.

Going from enemy spawn, only hills is the long one (up and down ramps).

The new maps take a bit of getting use to too but once you do it is easy to get around and there are shortcuts if you know where you are going.

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

hence the importance of earning wp’s and keeping them for your own bl.
If bay was attacked and you had garri wp’d you could get there in time to save it maybe.
New map, wp’s are useless and nobody cares to save it anyway so why bother.
But yes, it was shorter.
Plus you can’t forget, the new east and west keeps are so big, just because you make it to one gate, you still have 1 minute to 2 minutes just to get around to see what is going on.

I made a comparison image (alpine overlaid on desert with some 3D walls drawn on) before, but I am not on my computer now so wont bother posting it again. Maybe tomorrow.

The short story is that the alpine circle that is east bay/nw tower/south garri/ne tower/west hills/se tower/sw tower is pretty much the circle that is desert oasis.

To make a direct distance comparison, the sw sentry on desert (by spawn) is about as far from the sw tower on desert kitten bay is from sw tower on alpine.

Yeah. Alpine is alot more compact.

Simply looking at the time, is not the best way to measure the convenience of traveling around. The Alpine map was much easier to navigate, it was simple, flat, and had a lot of open space. The desert map has a lot of layers, dead ends, maze + jp like feel to it, physical obstructions, its just a pain to move around in.

Not long, it had it’s advantages too like dropping off the cliff at Garrison into the water to help you get to hills and bay…

Bay btw, was still the best keep design to me, followed up by hills and garrison… They were so perfectly made.

MomentofWeakness.1246:

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

They the same, with swiftness, as I said my guild has timed the whole thing. You didn’t use the special cutoffs (the portals) that Gari owners have. We have timed it and it is the same. It is not hard to get to either – in fact Bay in the new BL is even easier to get to since there is a cutoff through the wall right by the west gari shrine. There are videos on youtube that show exactly what I am talking about.

That is why understanding the maps is important, as the DBL are not hard to get around once you really understand them. Even if it was a little longer, so what, people were sick of the alpine BL because it was so one dimensional and WvW because the map never changed. Now that the map is changed, people are complaining.

Dusty Moon.4382:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

They the same, with swiftness, as I said my guild has timed the whole thing. You didn’t use the special cutoffs (the portals) that Gari owners have. We have timed it and it is the same. It is not hard to get to either – in fact Bay in the new BL is even easier to get to since there is a cutoff through the wall right by the west gari shrine. There are videos on youtube that show exactly what I am talking about.

That is why understanding the maps is important, as the DBL are not hard to get around once you really understand them. Even if it was a little longer, so what, people were sick of the alpine BL because it was so one dimensional and WvW because the map never changed. Now that the map is changed, people are complaining.

That only works if you are trying to get from 1 point to another that happens to fall along the funneled path. It doesn’t work if you are trying to cut across the map to join in a fight. You either have to go way out of the way to get to one of the paths or spend 10 minutes breaking through a barricade.

Dusty Moon.4382:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

stuff

They the same, with swiftness, as I said my guild has timed the whole thing. You didn’t use the special cutoffs (the portals) that Gari owners have. We have timed it and it is the same. It is not hard to get to either – in fact Bay in the new BL is even easier to get to since there is a cutoff through the wall right by the west gari shrine. There are videos on youtube that show exactly what I am talking about….

Today I ran from SW spawn to earth keep and it took me around 3 minutes, would be really cool to be able to it in half time, so I tried to search for youtube video that you talk about here but couldn’t find them… If you have the link to them somewhere can you post it?

Dusty Moon.4382:

people were sick of the alpine BL because it was so one dimensional and WvW because the map never changed. Now that the map is changed, people are complaining.

People just wanted greener grass. But noone expected that new map made for servers to fight in will be full of pve obstacles and corridors.
Some guilds told that it will be much more harder to fight in the new maps but pve players were louder.

I think the most important is the new WP-system.
The alpin-citadel-WP wasn’t on the very top of the map so you were able to get easily to north-, west- and eastcamp + keep and west-/easttower. In DBL it’s only northcamp + keep and west-/easttower.
The linear distance from keep to bay/hills is probably nearly the same but as you know the DBL are not linear unlike the alpin-BL. Further reaching DBL’s bay/ hills doens’t mean knowing what’s up while it is contested. So you have to travel to the entire building to investigate where the enemy is. In alpin BL you just needed 10 secs after reaching bay/hills to locate the aggressors. In DBL you need almost 1 min. Too much sneaky stuff.

To sum this up, on the alpin-BL (On homemap + all WPs) with old WP-system you could reach north-, east-, west-, southwest-, southeastcamp + west and easttower and both enemy’s spawntowers + bay and hill in no time. While on DBL with current system it’s just west-, east- and nothcamp + west-/easttower + bay and hills ( but without knowing what’s up).

One last thing: On alpin BL the exact distance between keep and bay is the range of a treb (as many of you know ).

I miss the old BLs – so many cool fights at Hills and Bay.

Still recall a fight we had between all 3 servers at Hills – lasted about 20 mins. It was awesome.

MomentofWeakness.1246:

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

You are horribly and terribly wrong. Here, have a video that shows you how to get around.

Sviel.7493:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

They are not the same, on the Alpine map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to Bay or Hills keep lords room was 1 minute and 15 seconds +/- 10 seconds. On the newer Desert map with swiftness from Garrison lords room to the Fire or Air keep lords room takes between 2 minutes and 30 seconds +/- 10 seconds depending on the route.

This is one of the first things I tested when I played the new maps during beta and again at HoT release because as someone who’s been a commander for 3 years in WvW I care about response time when I am making a judgement call about whether to defend something or let it flip.

You are horribly and terribly wrong. Here, have a video that shows you how to get around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CENlFEHyea4

FROM LORDS ROOM TO LORDS ROOM…Your video doesn’t demonstrate what I was saying. As a commander, I care about how long it takes me to get from one lords room to the other not outer walls but actually the core of the structure. If you take those timings you will see that even leaping around on a warrior with swiftness is 2 minutes +/- 10 seconds. A point of order here though.. necromancers and other classes like that cannot leap so as a commander you don’t just stack swiftness and leap all over the place because its not practical and you will create a large tail between your front line and back line. I did watch your video but it has no relevance to what I said in my first post…

The video was just to help with pathing—it just helps to know that we’re both on the same page in that respect.

I haven’t timed lord’s room to lord’s room specifically so I won’t dispute that just yet. I did gloss over that in your initial post, for which I apologize.

May I ask why you use that metric, though? I can’t imagine the scenario comes up often, but if I’m around then I’m usually preventing the enemies from reaching the lord’s room, so perhaps it happens more outside of my experience.

Sviel.7493:

The video was just to help with pathing—it just helps to know that we’re both on the same page in that respect.

I haven’t timed lord’s room to lord’s room specifically so I won’t dispute that just yet. I did gloss over that in your initial post, for which I apologize.

May I ask why you use that metric, though? I can’t imagine the scenario comes up often, but if I’m around then I’m usually preventing the enemies from reaching the lord’s room, so perhaps it happens more outside of my experience.

No worries, so first you want to plan worst case that way anything less than worst case = a manageable situation.

Why I use that metric:

1. If I am on another map and I port to home BL and Garrison is open and Fire Keep is being hit then I know exactly how much time I have to get there and based upon the enemies position within the Fire Keep and/or the health of the Keep lord (if it’s already being attacked) I can determine whether or not to even run there or prioritize something else.

2. If I am being hit by both servers on home BL and Garrison is open and I just finish defending Air Keep and I have to run to Fire Keep from Garrison lords room (where the waypoint is) again, I know whether I have time to react or not based on what scouts at/near the Fire Keep tell me.

There’s lots of scenarios obviously and the two I presented are based on the Keep’s being contested and Garrison not being contested but it’s a useful metric. Far more useful than knowing how long it takes to get from Garrison lords room to the outer walls of the Air or Fire Keep… you aren’t most like encountering the enemy at the Northern points of the Keeps, you need to actually move south or towards the lords room to encounter the enemy.

I logged on to time the walk and, after helping to take back the BL since it was all the wrong color, finally got some times. Running between Rampart and either side keep, lord room to lord room, took me about 2:10. I used only swiftness—no jumps. Running Rampart WP to mid-inner is faster, of course. It seems the cause of the extended trip is due to the larger keeps moreso than the necessary path or any obstacles.

This strikes me as pretty fair since, with sentries to mark enemies and wall guards to contest before siege is built, there’s earlier warning than before.

However, I can see why it would concern you since what would have been a close save on Alpine is now a loss. I welcome this nudge towards having scouts (and I don’t mean wall sitters) and more mapwide presence, though I imagine it’s not what everyone wants. I think it’s a fair trade-off for the keeps being somewhat easier to defend—or easier to slow attackers down, at least.

In a word, it was shorter. A few things about Sviel’s youtube link:

- NE side spawn to garrison: 5:35 to 4:27, that’s 1 min 8 seconds, before it was 45 seconds from spawn to outer garrison and the keep was MUCH smaller, meaning the path to lords room was shorter in time.

- NW side spawn to garrison: 4:15 to 3:09, that’s 1 min 6 seconds, again longer, before was again around 45 seconds to outer.

- Additionally your path to Air keep didn’t even get close to an entrance and it was at 50 seconds. I don’t even.

- 57 seconds to fire keep, but again, you don’t get to the wall or even get close to an actual entrance.

Using warrior with speed and leap. Not going lord rooms to lord rooms.

Just from the spawn to garrison path, it’s already longer and I’m betting if you did it to the lords room, it would be even longer compared to the old alpine lord rooms of garrison.

It’s longer.

/end thread

Old BL let me auto run while I cleaned my bags, TP’d, talked on guild chat, rearranged parties etc.
Now BL will kill me if I auto run.

Naithe.4271:

In a word, it was shorter. A few things about Sviel’s youtube link:

- NE side spawn to garrison: 5:35 to 4:27, that’s 1 min 8 seconds, before it was 45 seconds from spawn to outer garrison and the keep was MUCH smaller, meaning the path to lords room was shorter in time.

- NW side spawn to garrison: 4:15 to 3:09, that’s 1 min 6 seconds, again longer, before was again around 45 seconds to outer.

- Additionally your path to Air keep didn’t even get close to an entrance and it was at 50 seconds. I don’t even.

- 57 seconds to fire keep, but again, you don’t get to the wall or even get close to an actual entrance.

Using warrior with speed and leap. Not going lord rooms to lord rooms.

Just from the spawn to garrison path, it’s already longer and I’m betting if you did it to the lords room, it would be even longer compared to the old alpine lord rooms of garrison.

It’s longer.

/end thread

That wasn’t me in the video, nor was I posting it to mark the times. The purpose was just so that there wouldn’t be any confusion over pathing. The person making the video was only interested in showing paths as well; hence the lack of actually going into an entrance or into lord’s room. Since you brought it up, though, the time to get to lord room is about the same since you enter Rampart right outside of one of the inner entrances.

Either way, is this enough to justify the outrage? I can sympathize with wanting to be able to run lord’s room to lord’s room, but I don’t think that an increase in travel time of this magnitude warrants such a vehement response.

Actual bl travel times between Garri and Fire and Wind keeps are not long and could provide great fights if terrain wasn´t so broken we have to add too the shrines buff with those kitten gargoyles and blocking stones.

The problem comes when we talk about paths from respawn, they are simply annoying, If enemy just close wp (now is pretty easy) we find that walking around the map to find a battle is boring.

Try to time the run from the bottom left corner respawn to Air Keep inner and bottom right corner one to Fire.

I played 1 hour yesterday´s reset and we fought more than 30 mintues, that is fun, but this was possible due to both of enemies had keeps WP available most of the time if not we spend 75% running 25% fighting even knowing where the enemy is.

DBL could be amazing if this issue is fixed and provide wider terrains to big clashes.

Wasn’t just the time it takes, but traveling on Alpine Borderland could be done using the auto-run, with very few jumps along. You could even relax while running.

On Desert Borderland you can die easily if not extremely careful, also you have to constantly maneuver around all kind of obstacles, you have to solve complex jumping puzzles and pass a gauntlet test (depends on path, from SE corner towards E keep is the worst, but the others aren’t better either).

Even knowing shortcuts and pathing, I can say the Alpine was a pleasure to travel compared to Deserted, which makes you hate your life for getting constantly in a maze, that does everything to slow you down or stop you from reaching your destination in time and have to fight it and takes a lot of effort from start to finish. You can even die if you take a peak at the map while using the auto-run or lag prevents you from stopping before some PvE trick… now you can start over.

And why would one want to endure all this? There’s nothing on that map worth fighting for, the keeps are horrible, no space for fights, it’s just chokes and 10 level verticality. Not a single building worth taking or defending… except the PPT it gives, which is all wrong, but off-topic here (a meaningul scoring system is needed that leads and revolves around fights, not capping empty objectives)

Yes Aeowia, it was more relaxing. I don’t like maps where my run is stopped to often by a pebble or a sprig on the road. As far I can remember around 1 minute from garri to bay, and less than a minute from sw spawn to bay outer gate. It was the thrill: Will we make it or not? To get on the right time there either to defend or to capture (Sneak attacks). Cheering when we had luck, mumble and seeking for revenge when not. It was these emotions in ts and map chat, which had make fun to me. Now the walls and gates are thicker and and the ways are longer. It isn’t a dynamic game anymore in my view.
Sure, on the one side the alpine where boring to see with the time, but if the alpine map would have been had seasons like autumn (pick a apple at the mill for a shorttime buff) or winter with a frozen bay, there would be no need for another map too soon so far. Every quarter of the year the map would have been a little bit different.

Menaki.6329:

Sure, on the one side the alpine where boring to see with the time, but if the alpine map would have been had seasons like autumn (pick a apple at the mill for a shorttime buff) or winter with a frozen bay, there would be no need for another map too soon so far. Every quarter of the year the map would have been a little bit different.

Or they could have just made variations on the same map, for example:

Jungle border (just alpine with HoT assets).
Frozen border (again just alpine but now with Kodan designed keeps and ice all over).
Desert border (alpine with sand and keeps like the silverwastes).

They could have done all these quickly in probably 1/10th the time it took to make DBL from scratch.

Sviel.7493 Do it without shortcuts, if your server dont have them.

Shadow.3475:

Sviel.7493 Do it without shortcuts, if your server dont have them.

Which path do you want me to do w/o shortcuts?

Forget the travel time, most maps have insane vertical levels and knockback PvE terran mechanics in them that can instant kill you is insane. Who the heck thought it was a good idea? Most competitive folks hate Skyhammer due to cheap kills and A-Net learned nothing and threw em back in WvW. WvW was always about outplaying your opponent with skill not just getting some CC and kill em by knocking em off the ledge because there’s ledges at every inch of the map.

I laugh because I can tell you that it’ll be at least 1 year till A-Net does anything about it, by then the game mode WvW at the very least will be completely and truly dead. The best they can muster is to let the players that they will revert reset time and even then how long did it take them to even acknowledge that they might of screwed up. The US congress is running laps over A-Net in getting anything done. That is sad.

Sviel.7493:

Shadow.3475:

Sviel.7493 Do it without shortcuts, if your server dont have them.

Which path do you want me to do w/o shortcuts?

Every portal you run in and out off to get up down Cliffs.

Alpine was a much faster map mainly because players didn’t have to intricately know the map to traverse it. Another major advantage of Alpine at least to the defender is that keeps were easier to check so when swords popped it didn’t take a particularly long time to figure out how serious the attack was. In the new BL finding the location of an attack can be a real chore as the keeps are massive, multi-leveled and the map has dozens of relatively hidden attack spots any of which can easily be missed by a scout.

Add those two together and basically by the time a scout spots the attack and a server responds, a keep can be flipped. In Alpine that was incredibly difficult and took great timing along with a superior force.

I won’t even get into the fact that defenders could portal from map spawn to just in front of inner garri allowing for a near instant reinforcements with one mesmer. Also traveling from map spawn to lords room in hills or bay wasn’t a much longer distance than garri spawn unlike the new BLs.

@Shadow
I need you to be more specific. At any rate, those portals only exist around Earthkeep and I only use them as a shortcut when running to Airkeep. They wouldn’t affect either path I already posted.

@Straegen
The bigger keeps does make it harder to spot attacks, though I think that’s an interesting advantage to give to offense. It rewards people for making dual-pronged attacks.

On defense, I usually run through the keep listening for impacts and checking walls/gates for damage from afar. Since most people insist on using the same handful of spots, it doesn’t take me too long to find them. The only time they make it through outer is if I somehow miss a large group hitting the map or if the objective is paper and I’m preoccupied elsewhere. For keeps, I don’t think anyone’s made it through inner even if I had to run from spawn to check what popped the swords.

On Alpine, I had far less success because groups could hit the map and set up on Hills/Bay then knock both walls down with one set of catas. If I wasn’t in the keep when they started, there was no hope. I had no sentries to help and they could use more siege.

Takes longer to run them, but the walls take longer to get down now too. Most are still stuck on the old map method that if you see swords, it’s already too late to run and defend. Not the case anymore.