Guild Wars 2

The New Maps are FAR too Big, but that’s OK
So I’m from a guild that takes pride in specializing in smaller group World vs World teams that can do things that usually takes 20+ players. Since Heart of Thorns Release the new WvW mechanics have kind of killed off what we do. There are plus sides however.

Since release of the expansion my desire to WvW has been kind of killed off due to the new maps. Don’t get me wrong, they’re gorgeous. The variance in towers and keeps and their lords are a great idea and creates for a different experience every raid night. My biggest problem however with the new Borderlands have been the size.

Due to the size of the maps it’s hard to keep party members together. If someone falls behind they have to waypoint then they have a good 3 minute trek back to us, or if someone logs on late for raid time and we’re already off on a keep or camp far from spawn. Now this size also helps out our smaller groups, by staying on the other side of the map from the enemy server. This gives us plenty of time to attack a keep or tower and down the lord before the enemy has a chance to get in and stop us.

Idea Time.
Me and a friend were talking about how World vs World just felt dead in our tiers. We’re on Maguuma which has been fluctuating between Tier 3 and 4. I’ve heard Tier 1 and 2 are better population wise in WvW, but I can’t imagine how it feels in the lower tiers. In our guild we’ve always had this discussion come up about how WvW could be better, if ANet would bring back or take away from features. The most we’ve talked about is Gliding.

Of course gliding in Eternal Battlegrounds would be a stretch, but imagine gliding in the new borderlands. Gliding through the canyons around East Keep. Or flying in the lava caverns of West Keep. Now imagine by passing a wall by gliding over it with your guildies? Now there’s the problem that always kept coming up. It would just kill off using siege to break into a keep and small groups could just take keeps and towers in a minute.

How would you fix this issue? Make the walls bigger? That would just make some towers look absolutely funny. Use invisible walls? Ok take the lazy way out devs and do that… Here was the genius idea, Flak Turrets. This would create an interest in defense, using 1 or 2 people on turrets around the keep or towers to defend against groups from gliding in. Now I’m not saying a single shot from a turret would kill a player gliding in, but maybe knock them down out of the air.

Introducing gliding into the new Borderlands would also allow for gliding abilities/ranks in WvW. (Can we say WvW Masteries yet?) Possibly defense against flak turrets, i.e. taking more than 1 shot to get knocked down, or being able to drop bombs on enemies bellow. This would also create free advertising for players that don’t own Heart of Thorns just yet.

Anyways this was just one idea I had about how to create a more lively and unique WvW experience. I know I would defend a ton more if I had the opportunity to shoot down an entire raid out of the sky.

This would be spectacularly fun,! …which is why we’ll never get it.

Right?? This was such an amazing idea I had with a friend I really wanted to get it out into the open. So I posted here and on reddit.

This would make the new borderlands actually enjoyable. Gliding is FUN! Running up to a ledge and realizing that you can’t jump down and you have to run another 3 minutes in the opposite direction is the opposite of fun.. and those new borderlands are absolutely full of ledges like that.

It sure looks like gliding was something they were going to put in there, but they probably decided they didn’t want the headache of people who have HoT gliding and those that didn’t buy the expansion. Gliding would make the BL more tolerable.

I’ve been wanting this too. It was also brought up at the launch of HoT. And predictably shot down by other players because of stealth gliding and players gliding into the keeps over walls. There was also the difference of non hot accounts (core and ftp) being unable to do it. These seem like easy things to fix to me, but I’m not a programmer.

OP, many of us said the same thing when HoT launched. In fact, some of us feel Gliding should be game wide. There are always curmudgeons who don’t want fun things and will find any excuse to say no to an idea. But, Gliding would be a great addition to the whole game.

The Dev’s should set up a public testing server that’s a clone of the entire game. I’d gladly spend a week Beta testing it for them.

This is something I would absolutely love to see happening (but my excuse for a falling death would be gone haha). Would spend so much time gliding in the borders <3.

Maybe remake that center event so the side controlling it gets access to a platform from where you can glide out of the Oasis (with some tweaks so you can’t glide into Garri F.I.)

I did like the gliding system in ArcheAge if anyone played that. Now that watercombat died I think air combat is a good replace

They could just put some “air turrets” on the walls that blow away gliders once they come too close, like a horizontal up draft which shouldn’t be too hard to do. You don’t wanna lose all your pretty HP just because you come too close to the walls.

I have to say I like this idea – especially since I also suggested this a while back too although the thread is currently 25 pages back!

I still think it’s worth looking at, and I wonder if it would actually be easier to do than expected – there must be a gliding enabled switch in our profiles somewhere since I can’t use my glider in non-HoT maps so just turn this on for everyone in WvW… simples!

Even if only HoT owners can glide making the gliders targetable with damage coming off the glide endurance bar would allow non-HoT players to enjoy shooting them down.

A permanent updraft over keeps would keep aerial attackers out (or at least make it very hard to drop in undamaged), or give a 1 second on-landing skill lock penalty. I’d be happy enough with flak turrets instead.

Just delete the map. It’s trash.

Non-HoT players wouldn’t be able to glide on the new bl’s, which would give HoT players an advantage. I’m sure Anet wants to avoid that.

Yuffi.2430:

A permanent updraft over keeps would keep aerial attackers out (or at least make it very hard to drop in undamaged), or give a 1 second on-landing skill lock penalty. I’d be happy enough with flak turrets instead.

Just make a permanent downdraft in a ring around all structures.

Sinbold.8723:

Non-HoT players wouldn’t be able to glide on the new bl’s, which would give HoT players an advantage. I’m sure Anet wants to avoid that.

So what’s the difference in a non HoT player going against a HoT player with Elite specs?

Sinbold.8723:

Non-HoT players wouldn’t be able to glide on the new bl’s, which would give HoT players an advantage. I’m sure Anet wants to avoid that.

In my opinion game changers like these should be available to anyone entering in WvW (and yes, I also think this should be applied to the elite specs in WvW only).

One way to implement it is through making it a part from a WvW mastery line, but that probably will split the player base as well (unless Anet decides that WvW actually can be treated as a third game mode instead of a PvE/PvP mix).

Those new maps are garbage and the main reason why I completely stopped playing wvw. They are way too big and too varied in terms of terrain. I feel more like playing GW1 Nightfall campaign because it looks as if I was running through Kourna fighting npcs.

Too much running too little fight. I’d rather have a plain simple flat ground with few bushes and trees but more fighting.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

It sure looks like gliding was something they were going to put in there, but they probably decided they didn’t want the headache of people who have HoT gliding and those that didn’t buy the expansion. Gliding would make the BL more tolerable.

well glide in wvw would be fun even if was only for HoT users imo, but thay had to limit the gliding path, classes and number of glidders in wvw, if not we would ending with mesmer glide directly inside to towers or groups glididng directly to lords, and by this WvW would have to change alot to allow glide.

in t1 a few days a go there was a 61 man queue on ebg the other maps were empty and it wasnt even reset night

Gliding would not solve the issues with the earth keep nor fix the issues that the keeps are simply too big. Gliding would also bring a lot of potential exploits, but aerial combat isn’t exactly the strong selling point of GW2. Why to waste so much energy and time trying to fix a map which is NOT fun to play in?

Just bring us the Alpine borderland back (with lake and everything).

Agreed that I’d love to see gliding in wvw/desert map specifically.

Suspect that having something in a supposedly "competitive" mode that others can’t access, is probably one of the reasons we will never see it happen. Pity, would have been the best sales trick to get wvw’ers to buy HoT.