Guild Wars 2

Make it so a single person can have an impact or fun on low populated maps. There are some days I swear I am the only person on a map and not sure what I could do by myself.

Starting Point: remove all JP’s from wvw maps, make it a separate map with it’s own rewards.

All maps would have the EB set up with each having a keep at their spawn and a castle in the middle with various themes.

1 map would be city like. Ruins actually ascalon ruined city and keeps are build with ruins in mind. Basically the area around blue keep in EB only over the whole map.

1 map would be mountainous and snowy with lots of tunnels.

1 map would be farm land like. Maybe some good expanses of open terrain.

1 map would be swampy. Kind of like the area around green keep in EB.

Various “castle” in the middle would take on a theme of the map. Mountainous area for example could have rather large hills with walls built around the hill.

Not sure how balanced this would make it but it would add some fun and variety.

Remove jp, remove pve elite mobs, double the size of the current maps and thus the distance between points. Leave yaks but make it so you can deliver supply to a keep and that you can drop said supply when downed lootable by enemy. Make it easier to get a way point. Rework RI to be complete immune for 2 minutes.

That’s my start, spread people out and make supply very important and easy to lose. Zerg would still be needed to take towers/keeps but you would have small groups always fighting for supply routes.

I like the borderlands as they are now, but they need to be bigger in my opinion. You can run from one corner of the map to the other relatively quickly. I’d like to see more land to defend, with maybe some more supply camps scattered about.

Same for EB – make it bigger. Some of the towers/keeps are way too close together.

I like the concept of each server having an identical borderland to defend. That takes away any arguments of “your server is winning only because you have XX borderland this week!”. But some variety would be nice. Maybe 3 sets of borderlands that rotate weekly, or randomly… so each server has the same BL, but each week’s match is different.

I would make it so that each server had a unique borderland map based on their server name (e.g. Crystal Desert borderlands is actually in the desert). Not only would it make fighting new servers unique and fun, but you might see players transferring to lower population servers just because they have a cool map. Of course it would be a lot of work to make 24 unique maps, but I’m a workaholic so it wouldn’t be a problem.

Somewhat like Waffler’s idea. I would make the borderlands maps not copy-pasta’s of each other, and make each one different terrain or something. The most northern one could be reminiscent of wayfarer foothills or lornar’s pass with green landscape in the foothills of the map and snowy landscape in the higher altitude areas. There could even be a keep at the most northern point (I’m thinking kinda like Helm’s Deep from LotR, except with another layer of walls/gates to fit in with the keeps in WvW as they have an outer and inner – Helm’s Deep only had a outer wall, then a main door into the stronghold).

Make 3 unique borderlands, not just 1 repeated 3 times. I don’t think it needs to be built to the server, like they suggested above, but I would like at least 4 unique maps to play on.

logistics.
what is needed to keep the army moving.
i like oldrodks’s idea but maybe more static…
give each server a unique borderland.
remove the borderlands entry points.

connect the three server maps around a center map. eternal battle grounds.
connect them via a keep on the map edge. the keep is split in half. half on one map half on the other at least for how this game works.
both halves have to be taken and there is a space between the portal entry and the other half of the keep so that a fight can take place to take either half.

widen the spaces between keeps.

add more smaller objectives that have specific WvW effects that are interconnected.

Make sure to name things with easy to shorten names or allow custom naming of points.

moreover add a new level to the game. a strategic view.
earn command points being a commander.
spend those command points in the strategic view to create strategic quests and commands.

EB would be about 4-5 times bigger. No more of this trebbing from tower to tower garbage. You want to set up a treb, you better learn to defend it open field or from some other defensible position like a hill side. BLs would be about 3 times bigger. This would help break up the zergs some as it would force response times to be much longer meaning you will need to have roaming scouts and other smaller groups taking other vital objectives.

Increase camp defenses. Make these more of a 5-10 man objective as opposed to being a 1-5 man objective now.

Adding another objective called a sentry post. Think of these as more what we have for camps now. They would be placed near major road junctions and have the ability to stop enemy yaks from passing through.

Yaks have to travel a longer distance. Force servers to guard them or face never having anything upgraded.

More supply camps.

Towers/Keeps would need more supply to upgrade.

Tower/Keep walls and doors would have more HP. Taking an objective should take some effort and feel like you accomplished something in the end and should not be done in 2 mins with a golem rush.

More scenery. (forests, deserts, city ruins, etc)

Make the guards actually mean something as opposed to “Oh look, an NPC guard. Just run past….”

I would really like to see Waffler’s idea be put into play for it is both lore-abiding and unique.

Lots of these suggestions are great.

As a start I’d like to see much larger maps. Within those maps we could hopefully have more advanced terrain like the ruins in southern Borderlands, ruins (and tunnel) outside Valley keep, hill outside Anzalias, quarry-like craters in the ground (Faith/Arah’s/Gods) only with a tunnel system. etc.. Stuff that encourages creativity.

Though I guess there would be something awesome about an entirely open and flat map.

Oh, and less water in Borderlands.

DaBleuberry.1780:

I would really like to see Waffler’s idea be put into play for it is both lore-abiding and unique.

As do I. Making all unique maps based on server would be a pain in the kitten, but at the same time very, very, very epic.

Drain the middle lake

Humanpony.4921:

Drain the middle lake

Then it’s just a giant pit that we can’t get out of….

each server gets their own unique homeworld map

Towers that ford rivers/canyons. The fastest way across said-canyon would be to take the tower and use the bridge within.

Otherwise your zerg will have to take the long way around.

I love the idea of every server having a unique map. But realistically 2 new maps would add a similar effect, leave the bl map for one bl, keep eb, and create 2 new unique maps. One could be desert as someone suggested and the other jungle?

Ambush holes at every choke point with another ambush hole just meters away….

1. Unite all 4 WvW maps into a single WvW map roughly 4 times the size of the current Eternal Battleground.

2. A Portal to the EB Jumping Puzzle is only accessible from inside Stormmist Keep.

To be honest, that’s the only significant change I’d undertake because that alone solves many of the issues I have. Towers and positioning become more important, Siege can’t fire from one Tower to the next if the map is big enough and in general things slow down a bit.

I’d also limit resurrecting to “out of combat” only but that doesn’t really have anything to do with map design.

I might also get rid of some of the Guard posts and instead increase the number of patrols.

I think mobs and a little bit of PvE is actually quite good since that’s a big part of what sets WvW apart from regular PvP.

Take out JPs from WvW.

Make a Gigantic PvE/WvW Jump Puzzle map. Has tons of different paths, tons of chests, VERTICAL MAP (More up and down then length/width). No siege activated, no capp objectives. (Maybe some traps)

Only Jumping and Killing.

Roamers, and kill-centric WvWers have a place to play. PvEers can try and farm their badges.

And WvW population will be slimmed down to only WvWers truly WvWing. Instead of the guild of 25+ people partying in the JP causing a queue for anyone.

I liked Burls ideas the most.

I would add the following:

1) npc’s upgrade to 83, and the camp super, lord, and lord’s room guards all upgrade as well.

2) supply camps have 2 additional upgrades: 1 stationary cannon post, and a third yak escort that gives periodic speed buffs.

3) towers and keeps have 2 additional upgrades: telescope(really narrow but long magnification), guild guards(a few elite guards that have to be bought by the guild owning it).

4) find a way to encourage more open field battles. Maybe have a few set battle sites that give really good rewards to the victor like karma, silver, rares, rare mats, sup siege blueprints etc. This one is hard to figure out.

5) get that darn JP outta the map.

6) most importantly, either fix culling or find a new game engine.

Combine all the maps and double the size. Make it open PvP instead of server based. Each guild can create their own city/keep. Declare war by dropping your statue on the guild you wish.

Cities/keeps take months/years to upgrade and create. For example 1 million mithril bars for tier 2 walls. 1 million ancient planks for tier 3 buildings and such. Do not make it easy at all.

This bolsters your PvE content and turns it to a PvP focus which lets be honest is the end game. Good for casuals and for hardcore. Have rich nodes or mining areas throughout the PvP map so small groups can fight and scrap over them. This promotes small scale PvP as well as guild vs guild.

So much more you could do too

OldRodKS.9758:

I like the concept of each server having an identical borderland to defend. That takes away any arguments of “your server is winning only because you have XX borderland this week!”. But some variety would be nice. Maybe 3 sets of borderlands that rotate weekly, or randomly… so each server has the same BL, but each week’s match is different.

I agree that the borderlands should be identical. If they were different or even different to the extent that each server had its own bl map, inevitably one server would have a tactical or blatant exploit advantage over another.

Well you could have a couple of different Borderlands maps. Just randomize them between match-ups. So one match-up has Borderlands map X, next week everyone gets another Borderlands map Y. That way you’d have variety over a period of time and match-ups will still be equal in terms of map layout.

1) Put towers and keeps further apart from each other, so no more castle to castle sieges.

2) A underwater battle map, with both caves and open areas.

3) A city urban warfare map, with houses that you can enter and roofs to climb onto.

To start, I’d make the outmanned buff provide a significant stat boost (Precision, power, vitality etc.) that would scale higher or lower depending on the discrepancy between the outmanned party and the other servers. Of course I’d do the math to make sure it simply helps make the difference without making anyone too outright overpowered. I’d take into consideration the varying factors like character levels, and all that. (Cause nobody wants to see level 5s soloing full 80s because of a buff.) Outmanned buffs would also be paired with some new buff for outmanned servers (I’d probably call it Zealous Fury or something) that would cause attacks from outmanned characters to apply a debuff to their opponents that completely disables downed state healing when applied.

I’d also probably look into making new siege equipment. Probably I’d look into some kind of a high-hp turret that could pulse cripple/chill in a radius that could be placed in choke points to help prevent stealth siege rushes. (I’m sure I am going to get yelled at for this, but it feels like zerg gets too much of a free ride against good siege placement by simply meat wall rushing its way through rains of arrows and ballista shots or sending a lone stealthed mesmer to portal bomb 60+ people into them.)

For starters…

- I’d reskin the Borderland map, so that there were 3 versions of it. The versions would remain structurally identical, they’d just have different visual themes.
- I’d get rid of most/all precipitous drops in the BL map. I don’t see the point of them, especially when the EB map doesn’t seem to have them.
- I’d create 2-3 new master BL maps (with 3 versions each) to rotate thru the tiers.
- I’d reposition a lot of the critters. Many of them are just kinda there, and don’t really bring anything to the experience, save annoyance. They could be better utilized. I’d also wanna find more ways for players to use them tactically.
- I’d try to make controlling supply lines more interesting (decoy dolyaks that explode come to mind…)
- I’d completely revamp the Break Out event. I think such a thing should be about the players, not an NPC. I’d rather see player buffs than dependence on a ubermob.
- I’d try to extend benefits to playing defensive roles. Maybe a slowly increasing buff while you’re stationed in a holding? Maybe a bonus to siege usage, additional power unlocks based on how long you’ve been using it?
- There are some big, empty spaces on the BL map. I’d want to do something with those. One idea is to add an event that triggers only if there’s enough battle unfolding on the field. I like the idea of opposing forces having to temporarily sorta-kinda work together to quell a sudden disruption, so they can get back to smishing each other.
- I’d make the JPs their own maps. You’d still have to go thru WvW to get to them, but once there, you wouldn’t count against a map’s player cap. It’d be a good environment for people who want to duel and so forth.

…for starters.

remove borderlands lake and quaggan nodes and replace it with a shallow death pit that players can drop into but can’t get out of. in the center of the death pit, there is the revamped orb on its altar. this time, it is stationary. instead of moving the orb, the team controlling the death pit tags the orb to gain its bonuses, which only apply to that map. tagging the orb involves a channeling animation similar to the one used for skill points, perhaps a bit longer. stealthed characters are unable to interact with the orb and thus cannot tag it. siege cannot be built in or around the death pit. the death pit has a large diameter, about the same as the lake’s.

the death pit itself is designed to look like a dried-up lake bed. the dirt has patterns of large cracks running all through it, with some greenery poking through the cracks here and there. there are skeletons of aquatic animals stuck into the lake bed, including krait skeletons. at the foot of the altar is a single quaggan skeleton. whatever the heck that looks like.

I would get rid of the borderlands maps and just keep EB. Why? and this has been my complaint since beta. The amount of players who are allowed to enter a WvW map at the same time is too low compared to how much real state there is. So get rid of borderlands maps and boost the cap for EB (prob 2.5x).

Next is a three part fix.

1) Make it so that there IS a point to play WvW. Meaning that there is an actual winner at the end. Just because I have higher number than you is not winning. Wiping your server COMPLETELY off the map is winning. This makes WvW more competitive and serious.

2)I would take a look at if keeping the current 3 server system works. My guess is that it probably wouldn’t. Alliances will ruin the game mode. So only have a 2 server system where they directly face off. This also has the indirect impact that you can allow more players per server in a match up using the same server capacity.

3) Take a long hard look at how long I would want the match up to last. The current 2 weeks would not work. I would make it so that match ups could not last longer than a couple of days, though match ups can finish as short as a couple of hours if a server dominates the other. Once a match up finishes, a new match up will start in about an hour or so, so that servers can get ready.

At this point, I would probably play around with having parallel match ups if the amount of players who want to play WvW exceeds the capacity of current servers.

This is just a broad overview of my idea. There are a ton of details and stuff that needs to be tweaked and changed for my idea to work. I would not put it here as it would be too much writing.

Great thread! We know every nook and cranny of the present maps and desperately need new terrain. There is almost no room for new strategies because its all been done. So I think we need NEW MAPS.

Great ideas so far. I’ll throw in a couple ideas of my own.

- Mountain range terrain with a more vertical battlescape and choke-point passes where we can live out the movie 300 against zergs. Areas of thick forest.
- New structures other than camps/towers/keeps, including smalls structures worth 1 or 2 points that can be solo’d.

Remove any form of jumping puzzle in WvW
1 badge camp
3 badge tower
5 badge keep
7 badge stonemist castle reward

reduce all badge bought items by a factor of 2 except the legendary weapons.
Implement Ascended accessories with the cost of the original accessories.

Reviving contributes to defense events.
Damaging walls or gates via ram/catapult/treb etc. contributes to structure capture rewards.
Increase Quaggan capture reward.
Quaggan raid groups attack all camps rather than keeps.
Remove storm nodes ability to damage structures and up the frequency rate of the lightning strikes + make them aoe.
Remove Overgrown Grub, Giant Spiritmoss thing and Mega Shark whatever that is.
Upgrade costs being able to be splitted.

Replace Catapult 4(gravel) with AoE cripple
Replace Boiling Oil 2 with AoE immobilize
Half Arrowcart damage but increase the number of shots fired by a factor of 2.

Hire Patrol adds guards to inner tower defense group as well as lords room.
Raise Guard level increases Lords level by 1.
Raise Guard level also changes “Veteran Guards” to have Hammers equipped.
Outfitter will include re-trainer.

Remove ability for Trebuchet shots to be blocked by profession skills
Add a new siege weapon “Pact Cannon” 75 supplies
~Blocks siege projectiles (ballista/catapult/trebuchet) shots for 4 seconds every 25 seconds in a 175 radius.
~Requires to be manned.
Superior Version blocks every 20 seconds.

ndrangles.5183:

remove borderlands lake and quaggan nodes and replace it with a shallow death pit that players can drop into but can’t get out of. in the center of the death pit, there is the revamped orb on its altar. this time, it is stationary. instead of moving the orb, the team controlling the death pit tags the orb to gain its bonuses, which only apply to that map. tagging the orb involves a channeling animation similar to the one used for skill points, perhaps a bit longer. stealthed characters are unable to interact with the orb and thus cannot tag it. siege cannot be built in or around the death pit. the death pit has a large diameter, about the same as the lake’s.

the death pit itself is designed to look like a dried-up lake bed. the dirt has patterns of large cracks running all through it, with some greenery poking through the cracks here and there. there are skeletons of aquatic animals stuck into the lake bed, including krait skeletons. at the foot of the altar is a single quaggan skeleton. whatever the heck that looks like.

I LOVE the direction of this idea. Lose the water (does anyone in WvW care about the water/want it?), and install something creative in its place.

Bring back orbs, but in a free-for-all death pit. The orb can’t move and can only be channeled/activated once a server has control of the ring around it. Ideally there’d be a bit of terrain to work with (think underwater krait/quaggan village dried up? What if the dried up theme made it a giant desert-like sand pit?) so that it’s not an entirely straight up zergfest.

Being able to manage control of the Orb while maintaining zergs outside to defend/attack would put some awesome flavor into WvW.

unique borderlands per server would make for unbalanced play. There is no way they could balance that correctly, which is why it is the way it is.

1. Get rid of the quaggans. They are too easy to kill off and really add no value to a map other than buggy issues. Cute as they are, they have to go. Perhaps BL quaggans can be harvested for these new backpacks. Replace storm island with a 15 storey tower in the middle of the lake that first has to be sieged and broken into, then run up the stairs and finally take (this tower would be a pure stamina attack/defense because it’d be next to impossible to get bodies in if you’re defending, and attackers would be forced to deal with siege, stairs, etc and final brute force to win it. Of course if left unattended, it’s a cakewalk).
2. Put a 24 hour timer on siege — to feel like you get your money’s worth. Have a mouseover ability to know when that siege is set to expire. Of course siege killed by the enemy is still fair game. Otherwise this ticking/reticking/magically disappearing siege issue is tiring and really needs to go — I realize there’s some game mechanic that makes it necessary, but I would bake cookies for any dev who can solve this. I can’t think of one single person who enjoys this.
3. Make dolyaks harder to kill. Whether that means you have to kill the guards first (if purchased) before the dolyak, or the poor beast wears armour and takes longer to die, either option is fine. Have an option at supply camps to add a speed boost as an upgrade so your dolyak trots to your keep, not plods along.
4. Fix any area that has been diligently reported by players as exploitable terrain. Ban players that abuse this (no, not the ones who take the time to make the videos and send them in or post on GW2 to give devs a heads up). First time for 14 days. Second time caught, permanent ban with ability to petition. Third time, you’re out forever, no petition, no recourse.
5. Increase the rewards you get in WvW. Give PVErs a reason to come into WvW. Something simple as this would do a lot.
6. Keep the waypoint “bug” the way it is. 1 second of chance to portal into a keep is nothing compared to hours of griefing that is often done by a solo player keeping a keep contested. (I’m looking at you perma stealth thieves, lol).
7. Allow titles and rewards for players that do the less than glorious grunt work. A person who gains a Siegemaster title, gets siege at a discounted price. A person who gets the Supply Runner title, gets a speed boost any time they’re in WvW. A person who gets the Defender title (defending x many towers and keeps during attacks, I’m thinking specifically of the people who play sentry and aren’t out running with the zerg) gets a defensive boon when their health reaches 10%.
8. Map wise .. bear with me, I know folks will object, but I think it’d be cool if there were three different terrains for the BL’s that rotate week after week, but randomly so you never know what map you’ll get — swamp, tundra, desert, etc … This would force different strategies on different maps, and make the game more interesting. Your position as blue, green or red would not change, so you’d still occupy the same “map space” with the same vistas and POIs, just you’re subject to a changing terrain and you never know what you’ll get each week. Have a fourth map in the rotation, so that 3/4 maps are used each week. Leave EB as it is. It’s an entity unto itself anyhow.

Any of the 4-player SC2 maps that have seen significant tournament play can be adapted to WvW. Just use 2nd/3rd/other base locations as guidelines for supply camp/tower locations and spawn positions as keep positions. Maps with rotational symmetry easily allow for random spawns every reset, also shutting up the PvEers whine endlessly about being the same color just so they can get their map completion.

The unused 4th player spawn and its associated towers/supply camps can either be removed for that cycle or left as secondary objectives aside from control of the center.

each borderland will be thematic depending on the server.

Sea of Sorrows will have a lot of underwater!
Jade Quarry is in a jade quarry etc etc

-Give WvW points based on how long a position was held rather than when the clock resets. Currently GW2 rewards offense far more than defens
mentioned by Straegen in another thread
that and a really long time where points/minute increase like
1point/minute for first 15 minutes ……… 1,5 points for next 15 minutes …….. 20 points after 4hous defending and so on; so that defending something is a really good thing.

another nice add imo:
make borderlands meaningfull to eb. for example more objectives conquered in borderlands = more buffs in eb. make sm castle double/tripple points but almost not conquerable without good borderland buffs.

sm rewards:
with the above mentioned additions smc could spawn some drop bags for players at starting zones (even in borderlands) with random loot inside it every 15 or whatever minutes. but only when character is not afk and participates
furthermore those dropbags will get better the longer smc is conquered. with chances of dropping exotics or even ascended stuff after 24/42h defing smc.

just my 2c, it should be important/rewarding to attack/def smc, but borderlands should be important to conquer smc.

Making diferent borderlands for each server would generate QQ about how team X is winning because they have Y borderland… I hear that kind of thing since 2005 when Alterac Valley was implemented on World of Warcraft.

However i would change how the Borderlands currently are… Let’s see if i can make you people understand my idea.

This is how i see the WvWvW in general: http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h39/Jeknar/WvWvW_zpsfa61509c.png

With that vision, I think the borderlands maps need to change, as if you were actually being attacked by two differents worlds one at each side (yes, a 2v1 feeling, because it is what its suposed to be defending your homeland).

I did some paint-made sketch of how i think the maps should be… I don’t really care about the terrain, maybe some hills or more water… But not making some lowground useless place like the Bay Keep (which can’t counter treb anything but colorbriar).

Borderlands: http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h39/Jeknar/BorderlandMapSketch_zpscb7849bf.png
Eternal Battleground: http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h39/Jeknar/EternalBattlegroundSketch_zpsffde2289.png

K stands for Keeps
T stands for Towers
C stands for Supply Camps
S stands for Sentry Stations

I think EB stayed pretty much the same with some minor changes on routes and 3 extra camps.

And for Sentry Stations, i don’t mean that lone guard sitting on the road waiting for the next noob to come pummel him… I’d turn it into a Small Tower (like the ones the dredge use on Lornar Pass and Dredgehaunt Cliffs) with a few guards who can actually stop undefended supply caravans (and give a little more trouble for solo roamers/escorts).

I’ve also removed Skritts, Centaurs, Quaggans, Hyleks, Dredges and Ogres from the sketchs and added a few more Camps and Towers (Maybe that would make PvP’ers happy, since they call it PvE stuff).

It’s funny how many of these suggestions are so resoundingly similar.

ANet, please read this page up and down and please try to take note of some of these!

Jayne.9251:

1. Get rid of the quaggans. They are too easy to kill off and really add no value to a map other than buggy issues. Cute as they are, they have to go. Perhaps BL quaggans can be harvested for these new backpacks. Replace storm island with a 15 storey tower in the middle of the lake that first has to be sieged and broken into, then run up the stairs and finally take (this tower would be a pure stamina attack/defense because it’d be next to impossible to get bodies in if you’re defending, and attackers would be forced to deal with siege, stairs, etc and final brute force to win it. Of course if left unattended, it’s a cakewalk).
2. Put a 24 hour timer on siege — to feel like you get your money’s worth. Have a mouseover ability to know when that siege is set to expire. Of course siege killed by the enemy is still fair game. Otherwise this ticking/reticking/magically disappearing siege issue is tiring and really needs to go — I realize there’s some game mechanic that makes it necessary, but I would bake cookies for any dev who can solve this. I can’t think of one single person who enjoys this.
3. Make dolyaks harder to kill. Whether that means you have to kill the guards first (if purchased) before the dolyak, or the poor beast wears armour and takes longer to die, either option is fine. Have an option at supply camps to add a speed boost as an upgrade so your dolyak trots to your keep, not plods along.
4. Fix any area that has been diligently reported by players as exploitable terrain. Ban players that abuse this (no, not the ones who take the time to make the videos and send them in or post on GW2 to give devs a heads up). First time for 14 days. Second time caught, permanent ban with ability to petition. Third time, you’re out forever, no petition, no recourse.
5. Increase the rewards you get in WvW. Give PVErs a reason to come into WvW. Something simple as this would do a lot.
6. Keep the waypoint “bug” the way it is. 1 second of chance to portal into a keep is nothing compared to hours of griefing that is often done by a solo player keeping a keep contested. (I’m looking at you perma stealth thieves, lol).
7. Allow titles and rewards for players that do the less than glorious grunt work. A person who gains a Siegemaster title, gets siege at a discounted price. A person who gets the Supply Runner title, gets a speed boost any time they’re in WvW. A person who gets the Defender title (defending x many towers and keeps during attacks, I’m thinking specifically of the people who play sentry and aren’t out running with the zerg) gets a defensive boon when their health reaches 10%.
8. Map wise .. bear with me, I know folks will object, but I think it’d be cool if there were three different terrains for the BL’s that rotate week after week, but randomly so you never know what map you’ll get — swamp, tundra, desert, etc … This would force different strategies on different maps, and make the game more interesting. Your position as blue, green or red would not change, so you’d still occupy the same “map space” with the same vistas and POIs, just you’re subject to a changing terrain and you never know what you’ll get each week. Have a fourth map in the rotation, so that 3/4 maps are used each week. Leave EB as it is. It’s an entity unto itself anyhow.

This was an awesome post. I also still love the idea of draining the Borderlands lake and implementing an “Orb free-for-all” that has to be channeled to be maintained.

Get rid of golems. Or replace them with something else. Or nerf them so they can’t use buffs, portals, or wp. Taking a fully upgraded keep before the wp resets is silly.

Make a WvW daily so I can spend my wreaths on catapults.

Don’t make the map bigger or more spaced. I don’t want to run farther to get to where I want to go.

Trebs counter trebs.

Elementists focus ability wins treb wars. This gives a bias to that class in WvW. No clue how to balance it but if it were balanced don’t make it supply based since keeps would win every treb war.

Make eb jp a 5th map seperate from eb but enterable from eb. If people want to pile into the jp let them fill their boots but don’t let them que up the eb map.

Pre-render everything about a stealthed person except their position and make reappearance from stealth priority over all other position render (specifically for a theif). Render the full duration which they are not in stealth without cutoff.

If a mass group come out of stealth and gain a culling advantage give the disadvantaged lag quickness to offset the duration for which the stealthed group had an advantage. e.g. the stealthed group should only gain the human reaction time bonus for their efforts.

Otherwise leave well enough alone. The game is F2P. No reason to appease a minority. It is one of the reasons I bought the game. I don’t want to see it watered down because people don’t like or can’t appreciate the dynamics of WvW.

Hydrophidian.4319:

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- I’d get rid of most/all precipitous drops in the BL map. I don’t see the point of them, especially when the EB map doesn’t seem to have them.
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Aw but what then what would you call the Cliff of Derps? It would totally wreck your map and lord knows we don’t need another Starbucks there.

I’ll add to the other suggestions (for EB)

when dredge are friendly and you contest a tower. The dredge will borrow up through the ground inside that tower and attack the closest siege equipment until all siege is down or all the dredge is killed.

Quaggan’s when friendly will attack all your enemies underwater doors until they are at 50%.

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Orge’s will have small camps near all supply depots and when friendly they will attack ALL your enemy’s supply depots.

Replace SMC with a vertical JP in the same zone where everyone can set up trebs and ballistas to shoot the jumpers, making it challenging for them.

Other than the many other good points already mentioned, bring back Alliance Battles to satisfy those that hate zerging. (Although in GW1 anything more than 4 ppl is a zerg then.)

Right Toe Of Grenth.4032:

Replace SMC with a vertical JP in the same zone where everyone can set up trebs and ballistas to shoot the jumpers, making it challenging for them.
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OMG you’re a sadist, lol.

Lower the poly count on stonemist to something less fantastically stupid than it is, so people can actually fight in it.
Make each borderland unique.
Get rid of champ mobs and jumping puzzles

Well as long as you don’t make every kittening map the same then I’m sure you’ll be fine. Bring some diversity, give us a new scenario in every borderland! Change the terrain based on the theme of the servers name (ie Jade Quarry BL is sparkling jade rocks everywhere or Blackgate has every gate Black) Diversify the maps kitten

As the lead designer i would stand up, walk to the game engineers and say:

FIX THE CULLING.

There, i just made the most awesome game ever, and i’ve help to improve the game more than anyone could ever do.
In all seriousness, i would remove the JP and have it so it could have its own map, with people that enjoyit, and leave the rest of us for pure WvW.
Also i would change the maps per tier per weekly matchup having a random rotation of different ones. Something like the fractals, but in WvW and encouraging GvG and not massive zerging.

Like Many people here have said, make the maps bigger, maps are currently incredibly small, while they seemed large at release, and seemed to include endless hours of running, for those of us who have been playing since BWE1, they have become very small. I personally think that Anet should look at planetside maps. Even though the system they have is very different, the maps are incredibly well designed IMO. There is a definite sense of flow to PS2 maps. You notice as you play that even small outposts can have strategic importance because the terrain allows them to. Many small objectives are situated at a mountain pass or in a valley that provides a gateway to a large facility. WvW needs to be designed around more of a progression based system. Maps should be larger, and keeps shouldn’t really be accessible from every part of the map, to take a keep, you should have to at least take the surrounding fortifications, and even then keeps and towers need to be more difficult to take.

The other thing with keeps and towers is the fact that they don’t really seem like defensible positions as much as they seem like stops on the road. The briar tower on every map is set up in a horrible position defensively, in reality, there would be no reason to put fortifications there, now i’m not advocating realism in a fantasy RPG, but sometimes things are done in real life for a good reason. The point is, fortifications need to have either a) strategic value as far as terrain, vision, or movement, such as overlooking a mountain pass, or sitting on a hill with a commanding view of the surrounding area. or b) be in a position so that they have a strategic value in and of themselves, such as set up in a defensible position so that they can be used as a staging area for other assaults. In this respect, i actually love the design of the Hills keep. it was created with defense in mind, and feels like an actual fortification. Hills has a view of the surrounding area, and although it has many possible points of attack, all of those points can be fairly easily countered, making it a matter of ingenuity and to both take and defend the keep.

Also, for some reason, i really like the idea of having a city based map, if people want to encourage small group fights, then the answer is pretty simple, make objectives further apart, but the terrain itself more compact and complex. Nobody is really going to run in a small group when there is no real terrain to support them, there is no way to hide from the mighty zerg, beyond running perma stealth. A city map with small cramped streets, along with underground and aboveground tunnels would give plenty of real estate for experienced roamers to explore and own. In the meantime, zergs would have a hard time navigating convoluted terrain, which would both break up and slow down huge groups.

Either way, i would want to almost completely redesign the maps. I also don’t think it matters if each borderland is exactly the same, just make it so that if any team has an advantage on a particular map, they have a slight disadvantage on the other two maps, and vice versa, much like how things are now.

Frankly though, as much as new WvW maps excites me, i have a feeling that there is nothing we can do about it unless we as a community step up and really begin to own the process. I’m not sure how to do that, but I think that WvW as a game mode would stop feeling so neglected if we as a playerbase took charge of it.

Khanswrath.1032:

Ambush holes at every choke point with another ambush hole just meters away….

lol, says the thief. Go fig.

@OP:
Basically what others have said:
Increase the size of the maps, make supply something that can be delivered by hand and lootable (suddenly gives those small/solo players a contribution to the war if they want it besides just random ganking). Make the maps unique, guards meaningful, anything to spread out the zergs, so on and so forth. Remove the stupid JP.

Really most serious wuvwuvers seem to be on the same page about this.

Oh and the most important part:
Remove invisibility, or fix culling.
Or fix stealth (so it’s more like the predator, think about how you see yourself via JP stealth buff, see through and shimmery but not completely invisible.

Make the maps 25% bigger with more Super Champ style PvE mobs roaming around.

I’d code in aggro range based on how many people are together… so a ‘zerg’ of 50+ would have one hell of an aggro range… which would attract the champ bosses…giving big, ‘mindless’ zergs a serious run for their money.

I’d also reduce all NPC help to improvements only. Nothing for free.