Guild Wars 2

Instead of reinventing the wheel why not just reskin Alpine borderlands to a desert theme? And it the centre they could be “creative” with a different mechanic.

Then make a third reskin as some other theme, again with the centre being a different mechanic.

Would work as a 100% rotation every 3 months or a mix of all 3 always. In fact it would be nice as I am kinda weak and forget which borderlands I am on once in a while without going to the map and reading its name ;-)

I dont know just a thought.

Edit:
Made a mockup today, using skyrim creation kit, in ~1hr, ~2hr total to make it/reskin it twice and get some ingame footage. Is nothing fancy/professional but its just a demonstration of what I mean by reskinning.

I prefer the Alpine skin. I may be one of the few people who think the DBL is ugly. Everyone goes on about how beautiful it is but I don’t like it. Its a barren waste as someone defined above. Its all brown and beige and neutral colors, blech.

And I also don’t think they should waste a second of dev time to simply reskin Alpine into anything.

You must not work in IT

That sounds easy but it wouldn’t be cheap at all.

I like the alpine art design its just so cozy, but I always love snow and stuff lol. Someday I would really like to see a fiery volcanic theme map, that would be cool.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

You must not work in IT

That sounds easy but it wouldn’t be cheap at all.

I don’t think it’s the implementation that would be problematic, it would be the art assets. And even if they just changed the terrain from green grass/snow to desert theme ground, would be like 90% there for just the reskin portion. There really isn’t alot of trees and whatnot for much of the borderlands despite being called Alpine. And the cliffs, well those are rock so…

And just because I’m not “IT” doesn’t make me not understand what I suggested nor does it make the idea of what I suggested invalid as a suggestion.

Productivity is sometimes invoked as a definition for deserts

Websters Dictionary? an uncultivated region without inhabitants; a wilderness; a dry, barren, sandy region, naturally incapable of supporting almost any plant or animal life. Synonym ? waste. The Middle English root of the word means ?forsaken? or ?abandoned?.

Coincidence? I think not

Akkeros.1675:

Productivity is sometimes invoked as a definition for deserts

Websters Dictionary? an uncultivated region without inhabitants; a wilderness; a dry, barren, sandy region, naturally incapable of supporting almost any plant or animal life. Synonym ? waste. The Middle English root of the word means ?forsaken? or ?abandoned?.

Coincidence? I think not

I actually suspect that has something to do with the dbl feeling/being so empty frequently. Subconsciously anyhow, who wants to defend a patch of sand, sorry to anyone who lives in such an area ;-(

Oddly, I prefer the desert landscape despite never having lived anywhere near one. But it’s not just the theme that I prefer in DBL, it’s the entire layout (aside from the glitchy bits).

Justine.6351:

And just because I’m not “IT” doesn’t make me not understand what I suggested nor does it make the idea of what I suggested invalid as a suggestion.

Why did you put IT in quotation marks? Do you even know what it means? No offense, but your original post makes it sound like re-skinning an entire map is a 5 minute job. It isn’t.

The problem with a lot of people’s ideas is often not the idea itself but the way people always seem to think that their ideas don’t take time to properly scope, plan out and implement. That sometimes implied, sometimes explicitly stated “you can do this in 5 mins”, no you often genuinely can’t.

Nate.3927:

Justine.6351:

And just because I’m not “IT” doesn’t make me not understand what I suggested nor does it make the idea of what I suggested invalid as a suggestion.

Why did you put IT in quotation marks? Do you even know what it means? No offense, but your original post makes it sound like re-skinning an entire map is a 5 minute job. It isn’t.

The problem with a lot of people’s ideas is often not the idea itself but the way people always seem to think that their ideas don’t take time to properly scope, plan out and implement. That sometimes implied, sometimes explicitly stated “you can do this in 5 mins”, no you often genuinely can’t.

It was a suggestion, not a "why arnt you doing it this way!?! the way that I think it should be done ! ". You are going white knight in the wrong thread.

Justine.6351:

Instead of reinventing the wheel why not just reskin Alpine borderlands to a desert theme? And it the centre they could be “creative” with a different mechanic.

Then make a third reskin as some other theme, again with the centre being a different mechanic.

Would work as a 100% rotation every 3 months or a mix of all 3 always. In fact it would be nice as I am kinda weak and forget which borderlands I am on once in a while without going to the map and reading its name ;-)

I dont know just a thought.

No, they shouldn’t. People who want DBl back don’t want it because they prefer the skin that the map has. They prefer it because they believe it to be a superior map design. Reskinning Alpine doesn’t change the map design, it won’t solve any problems there. Its just a waste of time

Justine.6351:

Instead of reinventing the wheel why not just reskin Alpine borderlands to a desert theme? And it the centre they could be “creative” with a different mechanic.

Then make a third reskin as some other theme, again with the centre being a different mechanic.

Would work as a 100% rotation every 3 months or a mix of all 3 always. In fact it would be nice as I am kinda weak and forget which borderlands I am on once in a while without going to the map and reading its name ;-)

I dont know just a thought.

When I saw the thread titled I lol’d and then I thought about it and it actually sounds like a decent idea, I think most people would agree the layout of Alpine map just works a treat, so yeah, why not just reskin it to add a bit more flavour, I like your idea, it’s fun.

i would rather see 3 different theme maps as the borderlands, keep alpine, keep the desert, and add 1 more

Vavume.8065:

Justine.6351:

Instead of reinventing the wheel why not just reskin Alpine borderlands to a desert theme? And it the centre they could be “creative” with a different mechanic.

Then make a third reskin as some other theme, again with the centre being a different mechanic.

Would work as a 100% rotation every 3 months or a mix of all 3 always. In fact it would be nice as I am kinda weak and forget which borderlands I am on once in a while without going to the map and reading its name ;-)

I dont know just a thought.

When I saw the thread titled I lol’d and then I thought about it and it actually sounds like a decent idea, I think most people would agree the layout of Alpine map just works a treat, so yeah, why not just reskin it to add a bit more flavour, I like your idea, it’s fun.

I used the skyrim creation kit to make a mockup of a small piece of ABL with the current green theme, a desert theme and finally a flooded/underwater version. Ya I was bored.

took me ~an hour to make the first mockup trying to get it to look somewhat right (iteration!).
converting took ~8min.
converting to water took me ~30min. Had to figure that one out.

Because the ABL is relatively barren, the difference between it and a desert theme would be changing the grass/snow to sand/rocky material. That is achieved merely by a fat “paint brush” that lays out the appropriate textures. The skyrim creation kit has terrible desert textures merely because skyrim doesn’t have deserts.

Beyond that, changing/adding a few static items like green trees to deadish looking trees, some deadish looking bushes and of course some bleached bones !

Of course that is simplifying it as they wouldn’t just paint some grass to sand and say “good days work, time to go home!”. But it certainly isn’t the time consuming impossible task people make it out to be.

Its not the color of the landscape that made people want a new map. One of the reasons that they had grown bored was the same old same old. We lost people pre-HoT because they had been there done that. People move MMOs because they want new experiences.

Why is scouting so easy in ABL even outside its size. Because there are predictable attack paths that people would take after years of the same map. Are they at the gate, nope, cata spot, yup. Are they on cata wall, nope, switchback splash spot, yup.

We needed variety then, we still do. You need new challenges for people else they grow bored. The players are what make the fights dynamic unless the map encourages them to be predictable.

Its funny they have open world changes via living story. They could have even done something similar on the borderlands. Leave a partially burned out tower where one was and put up a new one near it. A small change like that alone would have changed the flow of combat for a period of time as people had to adjust to tactics. Have differing changes to the different ABLs over time would have made them different and therefore differing tactics.

Why do sandbox games persist as long as they do, because the world evolves and therefore changes the conflict.

Now there were other things that caused player decay as well, but the lack of map variety was one of those factors. Changing something from brown to green isn’t going to change the fact where you might try and chokepoint a zerg with your havoc, or where the driver might run the zerg thru at or where the solo hunter might wait to pick on the tail.

Anyway, good gaming to you.

TheGrimm.5624:

Now there were other things that caused player decay as well, but the lack of map variety was one of those factors. Changing something from brown to green isn’t going to change the fact where you might try and chokepoint a zerg with your havoc, or where the driver might run the zerg thru at or where the solo hunter might wait to pick on the tail.

Well, except that would be fairly easy to change.

When people say “reskin alpine” I dont think they mean go into the texture folder and change the colors of the textures. For example you could change a chokepoint on “jungle alpine” by making a jumping mushroom below nw tower that bring you up just south of the tower.

Hell it could even have entirely different chokes. A “reskin” uses alpine as a general template. It doesnt necessarily use the exact same heightmap or statics.

If only DBL was narrower with the towers within treb distance of keeps, it would have been a decent reskin of alpine.

What I love about the alpine is the medieval feel to it. The DBL is a barren wasteland of filth and copy and pasted silver waste. It was quick and dirty, I’m sorry. No effort was put into that doo doo butter map.

Alpine for life.

Nah, in all seriousness wvw is about battle, glory, and epic battles. I really believe that is why the wvw community loves the Gothic architecture of the alpine. It just feels homey.