Guild Wars 2

@Naithe

+1 You got my approval hands down.

ANet also still needs to fix the broken Base Map Mechanic imho, but the points you’ve made are totally true in my book.

Diku.2546:

@Naithe

+1 You got my approval hands down.

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ANet also still needs to fix the broken Base Map Mechanic imho, but the points you’ve made are totally true in my book.

Thanks Diku <3

I agree. My only addition would be that changing the map is probably more labor intensive than going back to Alpine. Alpine wasn’t a favorite of mine but it is a superior WvW map even if the Deserted map is changed.

I agree with a lot of this, Finality. The new maps have made blobbing far worse than it was. And as for the laser event? I’ve literally said, “break time, folks, we’ll move out again once the slide show is over” when it starts.

Not to mention when I get a call out for swords on a keep, running the hamster maze to find out where the assaulting force is is annoying – you end up splitting off too many people to run the maze and find the assaulting force, and some always get lost trying to get back to tag.

I miss hills.

+1
Completely agree.
Great job

+1. 100%. 10/10 would agree with that post again.

ANet, you’re killing us.. Show us a little lovin’! That’s all we want, because we love you back. Look at your queues on resets for the desert borderlands, and maybe check out some of the map chats.. For some of us Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 have been the only MMO’s we’ve ever known, and care to know. You’re choking a population of your game that probably buys the most gems because we’re broke (just kidding). You want input for a new map? Post up some devs in WvWvW reset nights and take some notes from map/team chats. Unless you’re doing that already.. Then never mind I guess.

Thanks for the obviously well thought out post, Naithe.
I have to say that I agree 100% with what you have said. We have not spent a lot of time in the new maps however, because we are one of the small guilds you spoke of.
The air keep having a broken waypoint that allows an enemy that is holding it to constantly waypoint in without any delay is an issue as well. Add that to the broken supply drop that happens every 15 minutes if a guild has it, and the fact that the drop is 1000 supply each time. Game over….
The vertical immensity of the new maps is also a large issue. I have heard many say “the new maps are about the same size really, not any bigger”. Maybe not in a flat layout, but add vertical layers and it’s rather large, imo.
I came here to see if anyone is addressing a lot of the issue’s that are plaguing the “end-game” that I loved so much.
Thanks again for the post.

~Heing~

+1, well said.
Couldn’t agree more

I agree with some of this.

It is not chokes that promote blobbing, but rather the waypoint system. Because enemies that capture keeps not close to their spawn, they don’t own the waypoint. Also, now that they properly implemented their no waypoint while contested system, we can no longer get back to a fight quickly. Because of this, we need to bring as many people to a fight as possible to ensure there are people still alive to kill the enemy / res dead allies. Basically, if you wipe, game over. That only promotes blobbing.

The lack of bloodlust promotes blobbing. The center of the map is irrelevent and there’s no reason for anyone to be there.

Auto upgrades promotes blobbing because there’s very little reason to have scouts. Camps and yaks have no importance, so there’s no need to split forces up to defend them. Since all those people no longer need to be in other parts of the map, they’re with the commander(s). There’s more, but it’s been said a ton in other posts.

Chokes do not. If you’re having a problem with chokes, that’s on you.

I’ve played with you many times. Frankly, you haven’t adapted to the meta of the new classes and the stability changes back in march. I play with many other commanders, and I command occasionally as well. Basically, there are some great frontline classes that can wreck enemy zergs. Scrappers and reapers immediately come to mind. When playing with more bold commanders that are more frontline centric with proper squad set-ups and are able to read the enemy movements properly, we wade in and destroy them. Sustain is the keyword.

You tend to be much more cautious and timid, and when you do push, it’s usually ill timed. You blame your allies for not being with you, dying too much, or sniping. You say that whoever pushes first usually looses. I find that to be just the opposite. Whoever pushes first, usually wins. If you have a group split into two, yes, often times the large zerg will run over one, then the other. But that is a lack of communication and co-ordination between the two commanders. When you get two commanders that work and communicate well together, it is devastating.

Look more inward, not outward.

Thanks for the post Spurn, I definitely have room to improve, though I disagree that I am timid Go ask my guild mates, we push a lot and we die a lot. We also run scrapper/reapers. Not sure why you’re attacking me here and being accusatory.

That being said, I never said chokes were an issue from a “they should never exist and let’s scrutinize other people over it”. I said it promotes pirate-shipping. For small groups in particular, too many chokes limits options for escape. Pirate shipping was happening before, this just promotes it. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

I have been a long time player and WvW commander. I used to play at least 7 hours a day and now I only play about a few hours a week. WvW was all I had and now that the game has taken a turn for the worse I just don’t see myself playing as much as I used to.

+1 Naithe knows what he’s talking about.

Aquachills.9013:

I have been a long time player and WvW commander. I used to play at least 7 hours a day and now I only play about a few hours a week. WvW was all I had and now that the game has taken a turn for the worse I just don’t see myself playing as much as I used to.

+1 Naithe knows what he’s talking about.

Thanks Aqua, appreciate the support. Let’s push a choke sometime together.

Sound like OP try to take casual game mode too seriously.

Naithe.4271:

Please stop telling people to just “try the map and you’ll like it”. It’s insulting. We have tried it, we don’t enjoy it and yet every week we are not on EBG, we’re on Desert Borderlands because EBG has a queue of 50.

You and your guild are outliers. The vast majority of people who were griping about the maps didn’t bother learning them. That has been changing over the last 2-3 weeks.

- As has been said over and over, towers and keeps are not strategic: owning one does not help you progress to the next (see northern towers on alpine borderland)

Agree about towers for sure. They are pointless strategically for both attackers (can just break down the barricade and go around) and defenders (you can’t, afaik, launch siege attacks on keeps from the tower).

- The huge amount of chokes promotes pirateships, which amounts to two groups looking at each other for minutes sometimes 5-10 minutes at a time with each knowing that if one pushes the other, the one that pushes loses. “But Finality, that’s why you use two groups and split” – But if you do that, the bigger group just pushes the group that didn’t move around to pincer, and it’s game over. Again, overall this does not provide an opportunity to have some sort of fight to enjoy the engine.

- Remove some chokes, for example the west earth shrine had three channels out to the west from it (where you can be invisible, that area). Just remove the landscape causing the chokes and open the area up! It would provide a large field for open field that I think would be welcomed. Now X times that all over the map.

If chokes are really a major problem for everyone, then this seems like a good way to alleviate that. I personally don’t think the layout of the maps promote pirate-ship too much, but that’s just me.

- The new classes and builds promote pirateshipping too! (along with the change to talents which amounted too: backline damage is now insane, and now more insane due to CoR and other forms of cheese abuse).

Agree here.

- Guild upgrades are gated but once unlocked are just crazy. Huge rule in MMOs: If you are going to give people upgrades they worked for, do not take them away. Add to them. Once you do get the upgrades, it’s out of control. Between siege only doors/supply drops/emergency WP/temporary invulnerability, the upgrades get crazy. Which promotes siege play, which at least for our guild, gets boring pretty fast. If I wanted to play Scorched Earth I’d go back to the 90s.

Holy crap, agree totally. They have gone way, way too far in the other direction from the Alpine maps and made “turtling” inside a keep and repairing siege damage too easy. This whole upgrade system skews offense/defense balance way too far to the defense.

- The keep lords are too strong for small groups, meaning they do not die fast enough for a larger group to come in and wipe them.

Ok, IMO the only keep lord that is stupid as hell is the garrison keep lord. Way too much HP. Like, an order of magnitude too much. That needs to get tuned WAY down. For air & fire keeps, I think the power/abilities/complexity of the lord fight and the layout of the various lord room is fine.

Small groups have a hard time due: Fortified gates/guild upgrades/guild cata nerf on supply/+5 supply being taken away. You’re HURTING small group play when you wanted to promote it.

These three factors combine to make the biggest eff-up in the new map. Introduced lots of annoyance for groups of 10 or less. Made taking a tower tedious & boring. Putting guild catas back to 25 supply would make a huge difference.

- The middle event causes lag and promotes a zerg. In tier 1, we’re at the point where we take a break when the event happens because, what’s the point.

Ditto, I AFK during this event if there are a lot of people on the map. THis is a huge problem. But even a huger problem is that ANet has allowed this BS to fester for so long. This specific thing should have been fixed immediately. The fact it’s been, what, 6 weeks or something? since the HoT release and this event is still broken makes me upset.

—

Overall I’m way less irritated by the maps than by ANet’s lack of communication around the various problems. Total fail.

edit: Also, lol @ Finality being “timid”.. c’mon.

Robot, thanks for the post. I’m not saying that chokes shouldn’t exist, they definitely should. I’m just saying that more open field areas should exist on the map, more balance if you will. That being said, they just seem to be everywhere except down in the south and some of the higher elevation areas. Usually places you do not spend a lot of time at. Keeps are generally more tight too.

For keep lords, I think that the high end life bar for large groups is tough but helps the defenders. The problem is that smaller attacking groups should be able to burn down the lords quickly to promote sneak attacks that get results.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Naithe.4271:

- As has been said over and over, towers and keeps are not strategic: owning one does not help you progress to the next (see northern towers on alpine borderland); this limits the opportunity to actually enjoy the FANTASTIC game engine that GW2, no joke, it’s the best in an MMO now in my opinion.

Can’t agree with them not being strategic. They, combined with sentries, are essential to keeping track of enemy movements. Additionally, they are a large part of PPT gain as two northern camps feed into each one.

It’s true that you can’t directly hit other objectives from them but I say this is a positive change. It means that sieges happen in the field, as they should, instead of siege firing behind walls. Especially with the new bonuses to defending, it’d be nigh impossible to retake a tower with a zerg sitting in it and destroy the siege before losing your wall.

Naithe.4271:

- The huge amount of chokes promotes pirateships, which amounts to two groups looking at each other for minutes sometimes 5-10 minutes at a time with each knowing that if one pushes the other, the one that pushes loses. “But Finality, that’s why you use two groups and split” – But if you do that, the bigger group just pushes the group that didn’t move around to pincer, and it’s game over. Again, overall this does not provide an opportunity to have some sort of fight to enjoy the engine.

You’re right about the pirateship, and that is truly a silly balance situation. The number of chokes should be fine since there’s generally an alternate path but right now, in the pirateship meta, its a problem. I’d argue it’s a balance issue rather than a map issue.

Naithe.4271:

- The new classes and builds promote pirateshipping too! (along with the change to talents which amounted too: backline damage is now insane, and now more insane due to CoR and other forms of cheese abuse).

Very, very true. And very, very not fun.

Naithe.4271:

- Guild upgrades are gated but once unlocked are just crazy. Huge rule in MMOs: If you are going to give people upgrades they worked for, do not take them away. Add to them. Once you do get the upgrades, it’s out of control. Between siege only doors/supply drops/emergency WP/temporary invulnerability, the upgrades get crazy. Which promotes siege play, which at least for our guild, gets boring pretty fast. If I wanted to play Scorched Earth I’d go back to the 90s.

Siege play is much, much easier to make work when populations are in flux as they are in WvW. Designers can have a general idea of how much siege will come into play—they cannot predict how many players each team will field and must account for it fluctuating greatly.

Personally, I like it, but I understand if you don’t. I think this change is better for WvW balance in general but perhaps not what the current crop of WvW players actually wants. I’m not sure there’s a way to accomplish both goals.

Naithe.4271:

- The keep lords are too strong for small groups, meaning they do not die fast enough for a larger group to come in and wipe them. Small groups have a hard time due: Fortified gates/guild upgrades/guild cata nerf on supply/+5 supply being taken away. You’re HURTING small group play when you wanted to promote it.

It takes 3 people to kill a lord, 2 if you juggle aggro, and doesn’t take any longer than if a zerg tried to roll over it.

Small groups definitely struggle with fortified walls but, again, this is a good thing. Small groups shouldn’t be able to drop guild catas and ninja keeps with comparable speed to a zerg. They can get in, but it takes longer.

Meanwhile, with the changes to scoring around yaks, small groups can still make a huge impact if they focus on taking camps and harassing keeps to create weak points rather than trying to just bash their heads through the walls in one go. Whether they ultimately take it or just soften it up for a large group, they get stuff done.

Admittedly, this means that objectives are changing hands less often. Again, this is a good thing. Flipping something should have meaning…it shouldn’t just mean that the enemies happened to be somewhere else.

Naithe.4271:

- Lastly, on the note of auto-upgrades, increase the time. Right now, Ramparts can go from being paper to tier 3 in about 80 minutes. 80 minutes!!! Due to the lack of engagement from small groups and roamers (chokes hurt them!), there is no one on to keep the yaks pinned down.

With a little yak sniping, that time goes up to 6 hours. If that’s not an opportunity for a small group to make a difference then I don’t know what is. If they don’t show up…that’s a different problem.

It’s a 0/10 map anyone not seeing this is either on dat ANET sack or are some outlier group of W3 players. The VAST majority hate it and frankly it’s currently destroying the game mode (along with other things like insane fast auto upgrades). W3 players are really ape folks who are pretty simple minded and you’d think it would be easy to make us happy. Like give us EZ access to RvR and we’re happy. LITERALLY nothing else matters. It seems like they tried too hard actually. I’ve said it before i wonder what it’s like to be the team head that made this map. Imagine spending ALL that time on this massive map and when you release it literally 99% of people hate it. Does he look at his bank statements and be like “Yo the checks went through I didn’t waste my life or anything on that map?”, Or is he like ,“ANET stole my skills and used them to ruin an entire gamemode” as he’s sitting on a couch with his therapist crying into a pillow like a kindcade victim in Jessica Jones.

Excellent original post.

I command and play on EU rank #1 server. Despite we are receiving new players, the total player base is slowly diminishing. There is rarely any queue to any map. Only Points per Tick (PpT) type of guilds and players remain. I can just imagine how dead WvWvW is on lower tier servers. Long gone are the days of epic borderland defenses and fights.

Sadly I don’t think Arenanet will listen. They will be forcing the remaining players play on the Desert borderlands with the existing upgrade system. Most players simply don’t like the new BL map and hate the central oasis event, which can make the entire map lag very badly.

Upgrading structures doesn’t require any human interaction (bad) and guild upgrades require massive pve grind (bad). You can still hit through the gates. Revenant hammer #2 (CoR) skill is still totally dominating the meta. Many objectives are still being contested by the guards attacking pve creatures around them. WvWvW rewards are still a bad joke. Experience Points (exp) in WvWvW doesn’t count for anything!

The positives with the HoT WvWvW were these:
- faster moving dolyaks
- sentries finally make sense
- synthesizer nodes (ya! you can do something while scouting inside a keep/tower besides refreshing siege)
- limiting condition duration foods to +/- 20% (but now the addition of 15 % boon duration + -10% damage received foods once again players overpowered food)

Super Kruegs.8967:

It’s a 0/10 map anyone not seeing this is either on dat ANET sack or are some outlier group of W3 players. The VAST majority hate it and frankly it’s currently destroying the game mode (along with other things like insane fast auto upgrades). W3 players are really ape folks who are pretty simple minded and you’d think it would be easy to make us happy. Like give us EZ access to RvR and we’re happy. LITERALLY nothing else matters. It seems like they tried too hard actually. I’ve said it before i wonder what it’s like to be the team head that made this map. Imagine spending ALL that time on this massive map and when you release it literally 99% of people hate it. Does he look at his bank statements and be like “Yo the checks went through I didn’t waste my life or anything on that map?”, Or is he like ,“ANET stole my skills and used them to ruin an entire gamemode” as he’s sitting on a couch with his therapist crying into a pillow like a kindcade victim in Jessica Jones.

what

The new maps made me plays SPvP. Enough said.

Sviel.7493:

Naithe.4271:

- As has been said over and over, towers and keeps are not strategic: owning one does not help you progress to the next (see northern towers on alpine borderland); this limits the opportunity to actually enjoy the FANTASTIC game engine that GW2, no joke, it’s the best in an MMO now in my opinion.

Can’t agree with them not being strategic. They, combined with sentries, are essential to keeping track of enemy movements. Additionally, they are a large part of PPT gain as two northern camps feed into each one.

They aren’t strategically placed at all, the separation that has been put between them has completely removed the strategic ‘flow’ of the map. Look at EBG and how the towers ‘protect’ the keeps, thats strategic placement.

robotempire.2451:

Super Kruegs.8967:

It’s a 0/10 map anyone not seeing this is either on dat ANET sack or are some outlier group of W3 players. The VAST majority hate it and frankly it’s currently destroying the game mode (along with other things like insane fast auto upgrades). W3 players are really ape folks who are pretty simple minded and you’d think it would be easy to make us happy. Like give us EZ access to RvR and we’re happy. LITERALLY nothing else matters. It seems like they tried too hard actually. I’ve said it before i wonder what it’s like to be the team head that made this map. Imagine spending ALL that time on this massive map and when you release it literally 99% of people hate it. Does he look at his bank statements and be like “Yo the checks went through I didn’t waste my life or anything on that map?”, Or is he like ,“ANET stole my skills and used them to ruin an entire gamemode” as he’s sitting on a couch with his therapist crying into a pillow like a kindcade victim in Jessica Jones.

what

Simple: Give us RvR. A place to fight where we don’t have to run super long to get back into the fight if we wipe/die. It’s actually quite EZ to please W3 players ANET doesn’t need all the gimmicks (vertical maps, shrines, barricades, center events, jump pads, etc. etc.) They simply need to make a map with some flow and some objectives and people will be relatively happy. Alpine was not a complicated/large map and lots of people loved it. EBG is not some super immersive map you come out of your keep and most the time there’s fights right outside leading into SMC. They swung for the fences (and struck out) and all they needed was a single. If they had just tweaked Alpine into 3 different(ish) maps they would have made the community happy AND probably saved tons of time and effort.

Super Kruegs.8967:

robotempire.2451:

Super Kruegs.8967:

It’s a 0/10 map anyone not seeing this is either on dat ANET sack or are some outlier group of W3 players. The VAST majority hate it and frankly it’s currently destroying the game mode (along with other things like insane fast auto upgrades). W3 players are really ape folks who are pretty simple minded and you’d think it would be easy to make us happy. Like give us EZ access to RvR and we’re happy. LITERALLY nothing else matters. It seems like they tried too hard actually. I’ve said it before i wonder what it’s like to be the team head that made this map. Imagine spending ALL that time on this massive map and when you release it literally 99% of people hate it. Does he look at his bank statements and be like “Yo the checks went through I didn’t waste my life or anything on that map?”, Or is he like ,“ANET stole my skills and used them to ruin an entire gamemode” as he’s sitting on a couch with his therapist crying into a pillow like a kindcade victim in Jessica Jones.

what

Simple: Give us RvR. A place to fight where we don’t have to run super long to get back into the fight if we wipe/die. It’s actually quite EZ to please W3 players ANET doesn’t need all the gimmicks (vertical maps, shrines, barricades, center events, jump pads, etc. etc.) They simply need to make a map with some flow and some objectives and people will be relatively happy. Alpine was not a complicated/large map and lots of people loved it. EBG is not some super immersive map you come out of your keep and most the time there’s fights right outside leading into SMC. They swung for the fences (and struck out) and all they needed was a single. If they had just tweaked Alpine into 3 different(ish) maps they would have made the community happy AND probably saved tons of time and effort.

hyperbole

Mostly agree, but disagree on two points.

1) The keep lords are not too bad for 5-10 people to kill. It shouldn’t be super easy to kill a keep lord anyway, IMO.

2) It’s pretty easy to slow down the auto-upgrading by just flipping camps. 1-2 people can slow it down by hours, and it happens quite a bit in tier 3.

Maybe some of the issues are just more pronounced in tier 1 — there generally aren’t big fights in the BLs in tier 3.

Appreciate all the comments, a few things:

- Never said the lord was hard, I’m saying it’s not FAST with a few people and it should be. The mechanics can be unforgiving, but for small groups speed is everything (before you get caught).

- I agree 100% that yaks are easy to snipe, guess what, no one is sniping them because, well see above on small groups. People aren’t showing up.,

True, chokes can promote pirate shipping. I equated that to blobbing because pirate shipping is typically a blob mentality. My bad on that.

The lords are easy to kill with small groups. A group of 10 should be able to kill a lord in 30 seconds or less. The problem is the scaling with large groups. It’s way to kitten high. The really kittened up thing is that while a large 3 way fight may take forever to kill the lord, it only takes seconds to res him. This needs to change.

But really, why are we talking about this? Yanniell said that he got sick of it and started playing PvP. But even that’s screwed up. They come out with leagues before any serious class balance changes which are desperately needed, and when there are issues, they are fixed in pvp and pve very quickly.

They did reduce the frequency of node spawns, and a few tweeks to proof of heroics, but that’s about it. While they improved the waypoint system in one way, they made it worse in others. It’s clear they still have their head up their kitten and are not going to significantly change things. Doing so would require a ton of resources that I don’t see them committing to. The map needs a major rework to improve the flow towards the center rather than just a circle round the outside, and removal of the oasis event and bringing back bloodlust or any kind of mechanic that makes the center more relevant. I used to command small ops stuff about every other afternoon. I haven’t done that once since HoT came out.

If they haven’t gotten it by now, they will never get it. I don’t see a point in hoping anything will change soon. One of the reasons I haven’t logged in for a week and a half.

Edit: Oh, and btw, if anyone from Anet IS reading this, I’m a customer who did buy HoT, and shelled out an extra $40 buck to buy another character slot, some utility things, extra bank tab, and some shinies off the TP. WvWers spend money.

morrolan.9608:

They aren’t strategically placed at all, the separation that has been put between them has completely removed the strategic ‘flow’ of the map. Look at EBG and how the towers ‘protect’ the keeps, thats strategic placement.

Strategy is not limited to being able to treb other objectives from their position.

Sviel.7493:

morrolan.9608:

They aren’t strategically placed at all, the separation that has been put between them has completely removed the strategic ‘flow’ of the map. Look at EBG and how the towers ‘protect’ the keeps, thats strategic placement.

Strategy is not limited to being able to treb other objectives from their position.

No, but thats not the only thing now, is it?

The towers on EB and alpine control paths and let scouts easily spot troop movements, giving them a reason to be there in the first place. Same with keeps. This is one of the basic reasons for them even being in that location.

Take the SW tower on alpine. It dominate the area. Clear view of the field up to bay (including bay), a chokepoint in the bridge and it can see anything coming out of spawn except the eastern path.

Take the same SW tower on desert. It doesnt dominate jack kitten. The door choke is too wide, you cannot see players coming out of spawn because the distance from the tower to the closest sentry is almost the distance from alpine tower to bloody bay! Entire zergs just slip past it.

So yeah, you are right. Its not limited to that. Which is why they suck even harder.

Sviel.7493:

morrolan.9608:

They aren’t strategically placed at all, the separation that has been put between them has completely removed the strategic ‘flow’ of the map. Look at EBG and how the towers ‘protect’ the keeps, thats strategic placement.

Strategy is not limited to being able to treb other objectives from their position.

Good thing that wasn’t what I was saying then.

My own guild and I have been running on the desert borderlands 3-4 nights a week since HoT release. And we’re having a blast on it. The primary problem with the map is a lack of people. It isn’t the mechanics, or the geography, it is simply that people refuse to play on the map, which has led to EBG queues during primetime all the way down to T3 NA. It isn’t a perfect map of course, it has bugs and problems. But I enjoy it far more than EBG currently.

So lets look at your points.

1) The northern towers are strategically unimportant. Unfortunately that is not something that is easily fixed.

2) There are a lot of chokes, and pirate-shipping is a problem. But there are various ways to deal with it. Turtle banner is actually quite effective for pushing a hard choke.

3) The amount of ranged damage and CC is too high, it is not a good time to play as a melee.

4) I’m not terribly concerned about the cost of upgrades, but I can understand why smaller guilds find it difficult. The main problem to me is that the vast bulk of upgrades favor defense and defending. Add some upgrades that help with attacking to balance things out.

5) Small groups can actually kill keep and tower lords quicker than big groups. It is just a matter of getting to those lords. What needs to be adjusted is lord scaling from the number of BOTH attacking and defending players.

6) Just fix the lag when the Oasis event hits, and it should be fine. It certainly doesn’t promote zerging more than anything else in WvW. I’ve actually seen a lot of groups split into small groups to kill the creatures and move the cores faster.
As to your suggestions,

7) In regards to chokes, just get rid of the earth spikes that pop up everywhere. I’d be fine with that.

8) What do you suggest specifically? You’d need to nerf a lot of classes/weapons/abilities to bring melee parity with ranged.

9) Try killing a tower lord with 5, then with 30. Use a stop-watch, see which is quicker.

10) Shrinking the map is a pipe-dream, you’d have to change a bunch of hills, cliffs, walls and other things to bring the old SWT trebbing west keep, or NWT trebbing Garrison stuff back into the game.

11) I’d get rid of auto-upgrades myself, but slowing them down is a step in the right direction. Also need to find a way to make dolyaks relevent to strategy again.

@Dawdler

On Alpine, zergs could go to south camp or southwest camp without being spotted by SWT. They couldn’t hit Bay without being seen, though, if SWT scout was on west side of tower instead of at the gate.

On Desert, they can still get to either camp undetected and can’t hit Firekeep unseen due to sentry on far path and visibility from tower on the overland path. Desert has the same choke within cannon range as Alpine SWT but is even more restricted, forcing people to go through a kill box or take down a barricade—neither of which should go unnoticed. Add to this that towers will eventually mark like sentries and things get even better.

There’s more, but it’s fairly intuitive if you look at guild upgrades and how barricades obstruct pathing.

@morrolan

Can you be more specific then? ‘Flow’ doesn’t tell me much—especially since you then mentioned ‘protecting’ keeps.

robotempire.2451:

- The keep lords are too strong for small groups, meaning they do not die fast enough for a larger group to come in and wipe them.

Ok, IMO the only keep lord that is stupid as hell is the garrison keep lord. Way too much HP. Like, an order of magnitude too much. That needs to get tuned WAY down. For air & fire keeps, I think the power/abilities/complexity of the lord fight and the layout of the various lord room is fine.

The keep lords are really easy if you know the mechanics. Break the shield and they get huge damage. The shields breaks with cc’s. Control effects like knockdown (example: Flesh golem- charge) work better than soft cc like fear. Most of the players don’t use cc’s on keep lords, because they don’t know it yet. You wonder how fast a keep lord can die, after telling this your zerg or group.

Sviel.7493:

@Dawdler

On Alpine, zergs could go to south camp or southwest camp without being spotted by SWT. They couldn’t hit Bay without being seen, though, if SWT scout was on west side of tower instead of at the gate.

On Desert, they can still get to either camp undetected and can’t hit Firekeep unseen due to sentry on far path and visibility from tower on the overland path. Desert has the same choke within cannon range as Alpine SWT but is even more restricted, forcing people to go through a kill box or take down a barricade—neither of which should go unnoticed. Add to this that towers will eventually mark like sentries and things get even better.

Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).

Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.

Respectfully, no where in my post did I say that keep lords were difficult or that big zergs should kill them quicker. I did say that it should be quicker for small groups. Yes, I know how a break bar works. We always shred the break bar, small or big group. Please read my credentials.

Caliburn:

- There are options for chokes, always have been. We’ve won choke fights, just saying there should be more balance on the map. Turtle banner is an option, we just feel that overall the banners are up there with 1000 supply drops on SMC and air ships: complete cheese.

- Great point on offensive upgrades, would be a nice balance.

- Again I’m aware that small groups kill lords faster then big groups, I’m recommending it be sped up even more.

- Oasis event lag should be fixed, BUT I think if fixed and kept, it should do more damage to doors or flat % damage regardless of upgrades. Make it worth it. As it is now, if Server A’s home border land is fully owned by Server A and Server A has presence on the map, even if server B gets the event won, it will barely scratch fortification. Also, you obviously split up in the event but it’s easier to split with 40 then 7!

- For overall balance, gosh that’s another post. It’s just out of hand. I’m just saying that we’ve literally logged out or left maps because we’re just like “Well, this is boring, we’ve stared at each other for 5-10 minute increments at a time, boooorrrrinnnnggggggg”.

- They can shrink the map, I believe.

On the note of strategic structures, some people here get it, some do not. Try to assault a fully fortified, fully guild upgraded air keep with a ton of siege and equal numbers. They ALWAYS have the high ground, you’ll never get in. Like ever.

Appreciate all the thoughts.

Dawdler.8521:

Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).

Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.

The only way to avoid the sentries is to go over the top and then down the staircase to the middle of the keep. If you do that, you can be seen from the tower.

Naithe.4271:

- Oasis event lag should be fixed, BUT I think if fixed and kept, it should do more damage to doors or flat % damage regardless of upgrades. Make it worth it. As it is now, if Server A’s home border land is fully owned by Server A and Server A has presence on the map, even if server B gets the event won, it will barely scratch fortification. Also, you obviously split up in the event but it’s easier to split with 40 then 7!

In Beta I asked that Skysplitter destroy all gates fully regardless of level. And I still think that would be the best option.

Naithe.4271:

On the note of strategic structures, some people here get it, some do not. Try to assault a fully fortified, fully guild upgraded air keep with a ton of siege and equal numbers. They ALWAYS have the high ground, you’ll never get in. Like ever.

Yup, the game is way too heavily weight towards defense right now. Especially with bugged out waypoints. We haven’t even seen the tier 3 tactics used much yet. Or emergency waypoints, or the door ballistas, and all sorts of other stuff.

Naithe.4271:

- I agree 100% that yaks are easy to snipe, guess what, no one is sniping them because, well see above on small groups. People aren’t showing up.,

But he said the yak sniping is what they’re doing in T3. There’s still players playing for PPT like that. You may not be finding them so much in T1. The word was out for months now that T1 has the best roaming. Do you think roamers that transferred to T1 for that are looking to snipe yaks?

@Naithe
Well said !

Sviel.7493:

Dawdler.8521:

Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).

Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.

The only way to avoid the sentries is to go over the top and then down the staircase to the middle of the keep. If you do that, you can be seen from the tower.

What? You cant be seen beyond the camp from the tower, that’s ridiculous. You also have a second path to go north across the desert and attack from north bay (sentry there wont see you).

If you want to see just how ridiculous the desert border tower and keep placement is compared to alpine, I have included a picture (the “walls” are obviously hastily done). On the left the alpine plane is just moved down to show the desert plane.

Chaba.5410:

Naithe.4271:

- I agree 100% that yaks are easy to snipe, guess what, no one is sniping them because, well see above on small groups. People aren’t showing up.,

But he said the yak sniping is what they’re doing in T3. There’s still players playing for PPT like that. You may not be finding them so much in T1. The word was out for months now that T1 has the best roaming. Do you think roamers that transferred to T1 for that are looking to snipe yaks?

Roamers and sniping yaks do not go together. I’m thinking more small havoc teams. Maybe it’s just that TC isn’t in tier 1 anymore and so all havocs are dead.

That being said, even with BG’s havoc teams, and we have several really good ones, we don’t see Yak sniping. I think the mind set just turns into “Well it’s going to get to tier 3 either way, so what’s the point.” Auto upgrades are fine, making them not require yaks isn’t, at least in my opinion.

Also rewards for all of this, but like the class balance discussion, is for another post.

Dawdler.8521:

Sviel.7493:

Dawdler.8521:

Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).

Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.

The only way to avoid the sentries is to go over the top and then down the staircase to the middle of the keep. If you do that, you can be seen from the tower.

What? You cant be seen beyond the camp from the tower, that’s ridiculous. You also have a second path to go north across the desert and attack from north bay (sentry there wont see you).

If you want to see just how ridiculous the desert border tower and keep placement is compared to alpine, I have included a picture (the “walls” are obviously hastily done). On the left the alpine plane is just moved down to show the desert plane.

First off the new sentries are FANTASTIC. Whoever put that in, should get a reward. That being said, they are easily countered by sending 2 people ahead and clearing them. And, as has been noted by others here, then the tower placement becomes important, which currently, it isn’t effective for strategic vision of the theater of the battleground. This is true especially in the south.

Naithe.4271:

Dawdler.8521:

Sviel.7493:

Dawdler.8521:

Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).

Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.

The only way to avoid the sentries is to go over the top and then down the staircase to the middle of the keep. If you do that, you can be seen from the tower.

What? You cant be seen beyond the camp from the tower, that’s ridiculous. You also have a second path to go north across the desert and attack from north bay (sentry there wont see you).

If you want to see just how ridiculous the desert border tower and keep placement is compared to alpine, I have included a picture (the “walls” are obviously hastily done). On the left the alpine plane is just moved down to show the desert plane.

First off the new sentries are FANTASTIC. Whoever put that in, should get a reward. That being said, they are easily countered by sending 2 people ahead and clearing them. And, as has been noted by others here, then the tower placement becomes important, which currently, it isn’t effective for strategic vision of the theater of the battleground. This is true especially in the south.

That wasnt the point. How did this argument even get into the functionality of sentries? The point was that scouts (as in players) cant see troop movements from towers because the terrain either hide them or the next objective (be it camp or keep) is waaaaaaaay off in the distance. And even if there are sentries here and there, its easy to bypass them (afaik there is only one on the map that you cant easily go around if we assume you dont want to spent 10 minutes bashing your condi build against a barricade). There are plenty of paths because the map is huge.

Naithe.4271:

Chaba.5410:

Naithe.4271:

- I agree 100% that yaks are easy to snipe, guess what, no one is sniping them because, well see above on small groups. People aren’t showing up.,

But he said the yak sniping is what they’re doing in T3. There’s still players playing for PPT like that. You may not be finding them so much in T1. The word was out for months now that T1 has the best roaming. Do you think roamers that transferred to T1 for that are looking to snipe yaks?

Roamers and sniping yaks do not go together. I’m thinking more small havoc teams. Maybe it’s just that TC isn’t in tier 1 anymore and so all havocs are dead.

That being said, even with BG’s havoc teams, and we have several really good ones, we don’t see Yak sniping. I think the mind set just turns into “Well it’s going to get to tier 3 either way, so what’s the point.” Auto upgrades are fine, making them not require yaks isn’t, at least in my opinion.

Also rewards for all of this, but like the class balance discussion, is for another post.

As you wrote, it is a mindset issue; player choice in playstyle. T3 says they have players sniping yaks. You’re not seeing it in T1. Could be a coverage thing since T3 players know they need to delay those upgrades until they have more players on who can take the objective.

Dawdler.8521:

Naithe.4271:

Dawdler.8521:

Sviel.7493:

Dawdler.8521:

Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).

Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.

The only way to avoid the sentries is to go over the top and then down the staircase to the middle of the keep. If you do that, you can be seen from the tower.

What? You cant be seen beyond the camp from the tower, that’s ridiculous. You also have a second path to go north across the desert and attack from north bay (sentry there wont see you).

If you want to see just how ridiculous the desert border tower and keep placement is compared to alpine, I have included a picture (the “walls” are obviously hastily done). On the left the alpine plane is just moved down to show the desert plane.

First off the new sentries are FANTASTIC. Whoever put that in, should get a reward. That being said, they are easily countered by sending 2 people ahead and clearing them. And, as has been noted by others here, then the tower placement becomes important, which currently, it isn’t effective for strategic vision of the theater of the battleground. This is true especially in the south.

That wasnt the point. How did this argument even get into the functionality of sentries? The point was that scouts (as in players) cant see troop movements from towers because the terrain either hide them or the next objective (be it camp or keep) is waaaaaaaay off in the distance. And even if there are sentries here and there, its easy to bypass them (afaik there is only one on the map that you cant easily go around if we assume you dont want to spent 10 minutes bashing your condi build against a barricade). There are plenty of paths because the map is huge.

Fair enough, yes the towers are not strategic from a player point of view. 100% agree.

Good Post Fin…

As someone who has also been doing WvW for close to 3 years now, has played through every tier and against every server, and level of participation has also ranged from hardcore to casual (mainly due to anets actions).

I absolutely hate the new map and all the other garbage they added, it promotes a terrible style of gameplay that has turned me off almost completely from wvw. Since HoT, seeing what they did to wvw and their complete ignorance, neglect, and amazing but not surprising lack of communications with us, I have pretty much lost any desire to do wvw. Instead I have been trying to stay busy any other way I could ingame, if not for my guild and friends I would have quit gw2 all together.

Naithe.4271:

Appreciate all the comments, a few things:

- Never said the lord was hard, I’m saying it’s not FAST with a few people and it should be. The mechanics can be unforgiving, but for small groups speed is everything (before you get caught).

- I agree 100% that yaks are easy to snipe, guess what, no one is sniping them because, well see above on small groups. People aren’t showing up.,

In my experience, I can kill a keep lord with a group of 5 people 3x faster than with a zerg. The scaling is working, the lords are super easy with a small group and take much longer with a big one. It takes longer than pre-HoT, but pre-HoT lords died so quickly they didn’t even serve a purpose. Making them take longer to kill was an intention design change that IMO was a good one (now it’s actually worth trying to go defend an objective after the inner gate is down, before it was pointless because there was no way you would ever get there in time). Try telling your guildies to spec in the guard killer line, it helps a lot (+20% damage to guards and lords).

BrickFurious.7169:

Naithe.4271:

Appreciate all the comments, a few things:

- Never said the lord was hard, I’m saying it’s not FAST with a few people and it should be. The mechanics can be unforgiving, but for small groups speed is everything (before you get caught).

- I agree 100% that yaks are easy to snipe, guess what, no one is sniping them because, well see above on small groups. People aren’t showing up.,

In my experience, I can kill a keep lord with a group of 5 people 3x faster than with a zerg. The scaling is working, the lords are super easy with a small group and take much longer with a big one. It takes longer than pre-HoT, but pre-HoT lords died so quickly they didn’t even serve a purpose. Making them take longer to kill was an intention design change that IMO was a good one (now it’s actually worth trying to go defend an objective after the inner gate is down, before it was pointless because there was no way you would ever get there in time). Try telling your guildies to spec in the guard killer line, it helps a lot (+20% damage to guards and lords).

Fair enough, I still think it should be faster for small groups only. For the guard killer line, mate we’ve been WvWvW for 3 years, we have everything maxed.

Dawdler.8521:

What? You cant be seen beyond the camp from the tower, that’s ridiculous. You also have a second path to go north across the desert and attack from north bay (sentry there wont see you).

If you want to see just how ridiculous the desert border tower and keep placement is compared to alpine, I have included a picture (the “walls” are obviously hastily done). On the left the alpine plane is just moved down to show the desert plane.

Okay, that’s farther than I remembered. Seems you can get to middle firekeep undetected with the overland route?

What northern route are you talking about, though? I mentioned the staircase that leads down to firekeep (which I’ll have to doublecheck in terms of tower visibility) but if you use the stairs up north then you have to exit the canyon next to one of two sentries.