Guild Wars 2

I’ve run into one thing that annoys me greatly about the desert borderland, hopefully some others share this annoyance.

Running into the random plant, or small stone, or stone chip on a stairway or ramp, or tree root or even bigger stairs should not make you stop.

No other map have I encountered in GW2 where the random little things make you stop in your tracks and you need to go around them. I think these things should be made to walk through or walk over. Anyone remembers the little stone clip that sticks out in north tunnel of dredge tunnel in ebg? it’s like that but 10x more present in the desert map.

Almost nowhere does that exist on the alpine maps, whereas on the desert bl it’s an everyday occurrence for me. I know Anet wanted to make an interesting and detailed map, but I think they may have gone overboard and took away the smoothness of a wvw map.

I’ve lost count the amount of times I’m in a fight and get hung up on a random plant, having these random none passable objects breaks momentum in a fight. Environmental factors should play a part in fights, walls, posts, gates, bridges, stairs, not a random plant on the ground that you can barely see because it’s a half desert.

So please Anet I would ask that you go in and give the map a good cleaning, there are plants you have that are passable, please use those more if you need to. I’ve attached some screens to show examples. Thank you.

Hell yes! Autorunning while checking the map & you’ve been stuck behind a root or on a stair the whole time. Fix it. Fix it now!

Thanks :p

Don’t forget the root right in front of the stairs of the south-west tower :P

kitten.7492:

Don’t forget the root right in front of the stairs of the south-west tower :P

That kittener has caught me at least a dozen times

I would like to see these fixed too. Yet, if the Alpine maps are returning in few weeks, it is probably not worth the trouble to fix up these small details on the maps that may be never used again.

goodness thats why im jumping al;l the time while looking at map and autorunning but yes i agree need to iron out those thing and random drops where there is no way down still running into those

FogLeg.9354:

I would like to see these fixed too. Yet, if the Alpine maps are returning in few weeks, it is probably not worth the trouble to fix up these small details on the maps that may be never used again.

The alpine map is coming back, but that doesn’t mean the desert map is going to be trashed, they’ve put too much time into creating it and trying to update it according to our needs they won’t just kick it to the side for long.

They just implemented fixes with the april update, why do that if it’s going to be kicked to the curb permanently? Once it’s been taken out it should be polished up with like the suggestion to remove or change those plants, and then brought back for rotations, whenever they can get that implemented.

kitten.7492:

Don’t forget the root right in front of the stairs of the south-west tower :P

You should be able to burn that kitten ed thing down.

And then jump on its ashes.

Great post OP.

Totally agree with you for those slightly annoying things
I did indeed get stuck on those many times while looking at map for enemy activity while running ahead…

Great points OP! It always happens to me as I salvage while running along…

The desert bl have really improved with the beta changes and my guild has spent way more time fighting in the bl since the patch but if the maps could be polished to remove these annoying toe stubbers they could almost be great.

I actually lost half my group trying to get out of a bomb on those stairs. My commands in voice chat included jumping afterwards lol.

A very important post. Thank you for documenting this for Anet.

Oh yea….I have to jump over small roots and such all the time, yet can walk through much larger bushes in the bls…..I have gotten used to it. Fortunately, I have been lucky enough not to have been killed in a fight because of it……yet.

So yes, OP is absolutely correct with the original post and pics.

Good post and good examples given. Creating player conflict and obstruction is a part of game design. I usually just label it “trolling” though it’s not intended to be malicious. Unless of course you’re Drooburt! <shakes fist> Anyways, on the desert map, the dev’s certainly went a bit too far with the trolling aspect of designing.

Can we also add the fact that we’ve occupied this area for over 5 months already. You’d think any military force would have construction crews fortifying and repairing our forward bases of operation.

DeWolfe.2174:

Can we also add the fact that we’ve occupied this area for over 5 months already. You’d think any military force would have construction crews fortifying and repairing our forward bases of operation.

We obviously have really sucky groundskeepers.

Thanks, Tyler

The shrubs don’t bother me so much, nor the stairs in the screenshots you provided. The most annoying thing for my guild and I are the stairs south of fire keep going up to the slit (now a gaping maw) on the way to the camp where you can usually place catapults. It is soooo easy to get stuck on those stairs for no obvious reason.

Chaba.5410:

The shrubs don’t bother me so much, nor the stairs in the screenshots you provided. The most annoying thing for my guild and I are the stairs south of fire keep going up to the slit (now a gaping maw) on the way to the camp where you can usually place catapults. It is soooo easy to get stuck on those stairs for no obvious reason.

Sadly all these stairs have been constructed by the United Brickerlayers of Tyria. Union has been on strike right after the HoT release. Scabbies were hired but they weren’t licensed contractors

Anywho, there’s a branch at one of the southtowers that I get stuck in at least 90% of the time. We need to hire better landscapers!

GJ OP!

This is relevant matter and with those screenshots and quick notes you explain the problem clearly and efficiently.

I hope we see more posts like this from other forum users too!

I thank you very much OP to put some of it together.
there are many more examples unfortunatly (around outside firekeep, stairs, around north camp a lot of stones and crevices to get stuck in or on) and I would really have a gardener/landscaper employed to smooth out most of those annoying growth.

Alpine is totally not free of it, but desert took this to a whole new level of obnoxiousness.

Off-topic, but I like how this Tyler guy has been answering many threads in this subforum lately.

Don’t forget the broken step at the top of the stairs leading up to the area above the northern outer gate on air keep. Those get me every time.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Those shrubs are dynamically generated in the map editor, which is why they aren’t always logically placed. I’ll talk with the map artist about potentially removing them or replacing them with something less obstructing though.

The unusually steep steps in the fire keep lord room are there to prevent players from pulling the keep lord off the platform and thus circumventing some of the fight mechanics. Maybe this could be a single step though, like in the air keep.

Thank you Tyler! I really appreciate the communication you’ve given us the past couple months and the work you guys are putting into WvW.

Thanks to the rest of the posters here for the support, I thought about getting as much examples as possible but then it probably would take me forever to get them all, so I just put up the ones that I ran into multiple times in the past couple days. XD
But if anyone else has a particular annoying plant or shrubs like these please feel free to post a screenshot of it in here.

those shrub things are rly annoying.

theres also the general uneven terrain that causes obstructed issues where even though an enemy is like 600r directly in front you cant hit them with ranged attacks.

trying to use a movement skill but it catches on the seam of two different terrain types so I end up just running in place until the skill ends.

jumping over the many tiny lumps with chill or cripple is as bad as immobilize.

theres a thing I call Charr toes, because it seems to be the worst on charr models and I imagine it to be their big claws tripping them up. best example for this if you want to experience it, try climbing the rock steps to the vista above lowlands keep. if you run against the step and try to jump forward the terrain wont let you pass. you have to back off the vertical face and arch the jump over the step.

Just take the collision mesh off the shrubs. They can be there without that right?