Guild Wars 2

Obsidian Sanctum, once the only alternative PvP game mode, to several sPvP maps that all have the same play style- “conquest,” and differing secondary map objectives, that are unfortunately ignored by the vast majority of players, is dead. This isn’t news at all- in fact it’s been dead for a long while. If I were the dev (or devs) that made Obsi, I would be incredibly disappointed with what has become of it.

I’ve put off posting this until now because I figured no one would care, but I realized if I never posted, I would never know. As someone who once spent 15-hour days in Obsi (a lot of you veterans may know me as “Magic Power,” a mesmer from SBI/SoR/BG), I would love to see it return to its heyday. It was an entire game mode for me and I would like to once again refer to it as “The Hunger Games”.

What Went Wrong and Why:

As the veterans also know, Obsidian Sanctum/WvW has seen many updates since release. Here are a few that I blame in particular for the map’s demise and why:

• Obsidian Sanctum was taken out of the Eternal Battlegrounds.
  My understanding was this was to end the drama/people complaining about players inside Obsi rather than helping around EB. Supposedly taking Obsi out of EB would lessen queue wait times because less players would be in the map. (This is particular ironic now that Obsi is completely dead). Being in EB helped Obsi, mostly because of map chat, it was easy to get more players interested in coming inside by advertising portals because of the free siege and badges.

• The chest in Obsidian Sanctum was limited to being opened once a day, per account, instead of per character.
  This de-incentivized and cut out the steady stream of players farming siege/badges for legendaries or whatever.

• Obsidian Sanctum was edited to include “an arena for GvGs.”
  For a while after this was released, this distracted a lot of players from the actual puzzle and many players would just harbor in that new arena. Then when “GvGs” died down people started using it for dueling (something that was easily done in the puzzle anyway before the arena was added). And then ArenaNet added custom arenas in sPvP to the game and people go there to duel now. So in essence this update was pointless, and it is as dead as the rest of the map it helped kill.

• Obsidian Sanctum was edited to remove spots in the map that allowed players to complete the jump puzzle much more quickly.
  A lot of spots that made it possible to skip large/error-prone portions of the jumping puzzle with teleports/leaps were taken out. Sure there are still some there, but for the most part you now have to run the entire puzzle. This has de-incetivized many players who do not want to invest 5+ minutes into running a long jumping puzzle.

• Consumables (most of them) were blocked inside WvW.
  This was a huge issue. Consumables added new elements to game play and were extremely fun to use. Planks could be used to strategically launch people from ledges or to play hockey with corpses. Grawl Ritual Totems could be used to strategically fear people from ledges. Consumable light sources could be used in the dark room so that you had access to your skills without fearing your map-provided torch would respawn and you’d have to backtrack and get it again. You get the picture.There was an issue where certain consumables could stunlock people. Such as Spiky Fruit to permanently knock down people. Or Gears for a spammable, ranged AoE stun. I didn’t mind when these were taken out even though I did use them myself because they were incredibly silly (super funny, but silly). Though when you consider stun breaks, dodging, obstructing (in a JP there are quite a number of obstacles and obstructing projectiles is easy), stability, reflecting, etc, they really aren’t that big of a deal. Additionally taking the summoning-stone like consumables out wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Fighting someone who decides to use an Ogre Pet Whistle, Fire Elemental Powder, Hounds of Balthazar, and then zoo-building skills like necromancer minions, ranger spirits, or elementalist elemental summons is incredibly silly.

• Siege usage was disabled inside Obsidian Sanctum.
  This was/is not a huge issue, but it was fun for some players.

How Obsidian Sanctum can be Fixed:

There are a few options that could fix or improve Obsidian Sanctum, which I believe are relatively simple to undertake:

• Swap Obsidian Sanctum over to the match making style that Edge of the Mists currently uses.
  Currently Obsi separates players by the server their account is assigned to- like the rest of WvW. What this does is spread out the player base across an already dead map. Swapping to the match making style used by Edge of the Mists would make less instances of the map, bringing interested players together in more populated maps. I imagine this shouldn’t be too difficult and would actually require less resources since it would create less instances.

• Put Obsidian Sanctum back in the Eternal Battlegrounds.
  This isn’t ideal because the drama about it being in EB will just return. But if using EoTM style match making is impossible, this may be the only way to save the map. I imagine it shouldn’t be too difficult since looking at the map for EB, the portals are still there, and Obsi still exists on the visual map.

• Re-evaluate and re-allow the use of a selected list of consumables in WvW or just in Obsidian Sanctum.
  Disabling things like Spiky Fruits and Gears may make fights more even and healthy, but I refuse to believe that simple consumables like Planks and Torches are harmful. Consumables are incredibly useful, fun to use, and the vast majority require strategic use. It may be difficult to turn on consumables in JUST Obsi, because it’s a part of WvW and I imagine it’d have to be separated out of that, which is why I said, re-evaluate the use of consumables in WvW in general. This however is not a top priority, right now we simply need larger numbers in the map.

• Allow the end chest in Obsidian Sanctum to be opened once a day, per character, per account.
  This is how it used to be. This will incentivize coming to the map for a lot players.

• Make completion of Obsidian Sanctum a daily achievement option.
  I’m not a fan of the new dailies but I know how effective they’ve been in revitalizing the various activities- Keg Brawl sure isn’t dead anymore when it happens to coincide with a daily. Perhaps Obsi would benefit from people looking to complete their dailies as well.

Flawed/Irrelevant Arguments:

• “I just want to do the jump puzzle. I shouldn’t have to fight people. I don’t want to deal with griefing.”
  Obsi has always been a part of WvW. In WvW you fight people. It’s that simple. Additionally, ArenaNet forsaw that griefing might have been an issue which is why they made 3 stealth fountains that players can use, each placed at a different location in the puzzle, that gives players a 5 minute stealth. This allows players to do the puzzle completely while being invisible to other players.

• “Camping is stupid and makes completing the puzzle frustrating.”
  Obsi was designed to be camped and was designed to be challenging to complete. This is plainly obvious considering the player-activated traps that were built into the map, to allow enemies who were futher ahead of you, to slow you down and/or kill you. If this frustrates you, consider playing Tetris.

• “I’m just trying to make my legendary, I shouldn’t have to fight people.”
  It’s called a Gift of “Battle” for a reason.

• “Having Obsidian Sanctum inside the Eternal Battlegrounds makes it difficult for my server to compete in WvW because we’re out-numbered when a lot of our players are busy completing the jumping puzzle.”
  The other servers are also able to go into the jumping puzzle and chances are they do. This means that each server should have a proportional amount of players missing from typical Eternal Battlegrounds activities and you should not be out-numbered.

Hopefully this can open up some constructive discussion about the state of Obsidian Sanctum and possibly get an official response.

Thanks for reading.

Beautifull jumping puzzle, never done it because I hate grieving during any JP.
And I love WvW, just not the idea of fighting and jumping starting over. I cant imagine why this would be a good idea.

sooo THATS what obsidian sanctum is

i tought 1st its a realy broken jumping puzzle looooool

Don’t care about the rest, but

Power.2957:

• Allow the end chest in Obsidian Sanctum to be opened once a day, per character, per account.
  This is how it used to be. This will incentivize coming to the map for a lot players.

Yes please. The bonus WvW stuff you get from completing the puzzle makes it nowhere near worth the extra time it takes to run the JP. 10 Badges of Honor and a couple pieces of siege; whoopdedoo. You can get both of these things, as well as ranks and money, by training in EOTM.

Also putting OS in the same matchmaking style as EotM might undercut the arena’s value as a GvG arena.

Mostly it just boils down to being bad loot for time invested.

The badges that you get from the chest were the best thing, but once Edge of the Mists was introduced, that became irrelevant.

“PvE care bears” just don’t like PvP. “Serious PvPers” don’t like their Pvp contaminated by jump puzzles. Games like Aion that have highly rewarding PvE in PvP zones are really fun, but a significant % of the forums would erupt if that were ever implemented.

If anet cared to revitalize the zone, it would have to (1) turn the zone ino a mega server and (2) increase the loot.

Couldn’t agree more, and I’ve posted very similar posts to this several times in the past. Give it the same system that EOTM has, and make the loot more like a world boss chest. That’ll make it much more alive, and enjoyable for the people like me who like to spend a lot of time there fighing.

aspirine.6852:

…never done it because I hate grieving during any JP…

Obsidian Sanctum has 3 wells that grant players a 5 minute stealth. You can do the entire puzzle in stealth and not have to fight other players or deal with “griefing.” Unfortunately, I believe this is the same attitude that’s killed a lot of great things in this game. Anet listens to people who complain about things being difficult and then makes them trivial to do. Currently as dead as Obsidian Sanctum is, it might as well not even be in WvW, just an open world jumping puzzle.

Sarrs.4831:

…putting OS in the same matchmaking style as EotM might undercut the arena’s value as a GvG arena…

…It’s dead for GvGs already

Power.2957:

…It’s dead for GvGs already

Fair enough. I don’t bother going to obsidian sanctum anymore because there’s noone running portals to farm the JP chest. B^)

nekretaal.6485:

…“Serious PvPers” don’t like their Pvp contaminated by jump puzzles. Games like Aion that have highly rewarding PvE in PvP zones are really fun, but a significant % of the forums would erupt if that were ever implemented.

I’m r80 PvP and had a stint in the top 100 for a while … and I like Obsidian Sanctum. The problem with sPvP is it’s the same thing over and over- conquest. They tried to make maps with new objectives but they’re ignored by most players so it’s still conquest. Obsidian Sanctum has many different tactics/ways to win and the fact that it’s a jumping puzzle makes being in combat, chasing people, pushing and pulling all that more interesting. Though I do agree about Aion, I briefly played it and their PvP was incredibly fun.

Power.2957:

…It’s dead for GvGs already

I’m afraid you’re wrong with that. It may not be active in your timezone or tier but the GvG scene is still very much alive. In fact, my guild has a scrim scheduled for tomorrow and possibly a gvg Friday if their driver gets home in time

As for your other ideas and points, I agree with most except putting OS back in EB. It contributes virtually nothing to WvW and can in fact be a detriment. With EB being generally one of the most popular maps, this would potentially create or extend ques for people that don’t want to contribute to WvW but just do the JP.

Not to mention this could be counter-productive to your intent and cause OS to be more empty. Why would people want to do OS when they have to wait in que to get in or get yelled at in map chat when EB objectives are under attack?

Power.2957:

Obsidian Sanctum has 3 wells that grant players a 5 minute stealth. You can do the entire puzzle in stealth and not have to fight other players or deal with “griefing.”

Except that the stealth breaks if you take damage from an enemy, and trap skills and such can be used to achieve that easily.

Re: the rest of the thread, I think there are a great many things that I’d rather see fixed before this.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

Power.2957:

…It’s dead for GvGs already

I’m afraid you’re wrong with that. It may not be active in your timezone or tier but the GvG scene is still very much alive. In fact, my guild has a scrim scheduled for tomorrow and possibly a gvg Friday if their driver gets home in time…

I’m in T1/EST and I check at many random times of the day, the morning, the middle of the day, the afternoon, primetime, and there are rare times I actually find one other person in the arena, other than that it’s empty. Interesting to hear that there ARE some people still trying “GvGs” but at the same time “GvGs” could really take place anywhere on the map and that extra space just spreads out players more.

Kaos.9162:

Power.2957:

Obsidian Sanctum has 3 wells that grant players a 5 minute stealth. You can do the entire puzzle in stealth and not have to fight other players or deal with “griefing.”

Except that the stealth breaks if you take damage from an enemy, and trap skills and such can be used to achieve that easily.

Re: the rest of the thread, I think there are a great many things that I’d rather see fixed before this.

Yes and enemy damage is all avoidable. Afraid someone is gonna auto attack cleave? Don’t stand next to enemies, run with some distance between you. Someone casting AoE? Don’t stand in the red circles. Traps? People generally don’t place traps unless they’re looking for someone/know someone is in stealth. If there are traps that you see someone place, evade past them.

I agree there are a lot of things in the game that could use fixing, but the majority of the problems with Obsidian Sanctum are updates that were performed on it. I doubt a large software company like ArenaNet does not employ some sort of version control and doesn’t have the ability to rollback changes.

I think the put it into EotM mode would work well, both for adding more players to it so you could actually fight people there as it was designed/intended for, but also for easier access to play against guilds on different servers for the GvG’ers.

I think that your assessment of the main reasons why OS has been abandoned is totally off. It has to do with factors external to the puzzle, not changes made to it. Basically, loot. Without loot to attract players in the first place, there’s no critical mass to support an active PvP environment.

• PvE players looking for badges can now just go to EotM
• PvErs don’t even need to EotM, they can get enough badges from achievement chests to finish a legendary.
• Since blueprints can now be sold on the TP, this actually means the siege drops are trivial, so it’s not even worthwhile for WvW players to go here.
• Badges aren’t worth much for anything, period. If you’ve been playing WvW for a long time, you have more than you know what to do with.
• Loot in the rest of WvW has been improved quite a bit, I don’t know if there have been any improvements to loot in OS.
• Most players have the puzzle achievement by now.

There were also some stealth (unannounced, pardon the pun) nerfs that made the puzzle harder to run through. You can’t use the active rune bonus on centaur runes while transformed, and backpieces with lighting effects (e.g. Mad Memories) aren’t useful in the dark room anymore.

I used to do the puzzle pretty much daily, but I haven’t bothered with a long time. I went there for the chest, but I enjoyed the encounters with enemies too (preferably after I already obtained the chest). I do agree that it’s sad to see it so forlorn.

Bertrand.3057:

I think that your assessment of the main reasons why OS has been abandoned is totally off. It has to do with factors external to the puzzle, not changes made to it. Basically, loot. Without loot to attract players in the first place, there’s no critical mass to support an active PvP environment.

• PvE players looking for badges can now just go to EotM
• PvErs don’t even need to EotM, they can get enough badges from achievement chests to finish a legendary.
• Since blueprints can now be sold on the TP, this actually means the siege drops are trivial, so it’s not even worthwhile for WvW players to go here.
• Badges aren’t worth much for anything, period. If you’ve been playing WvW for a long time, you have more than you know what to do with.
• Loot in the rest of WvW has been improved quite a bit, I don’t know if there have been any improvements to loot in OS.
• Most players have the puzzle achievement by now.

There were also some stealth (unannounced, pardon the pun) nerfs that made the puzzle harder to run through. You can’t use the active rune bonus on centaur runes while transformed, and backpieces with lighting effects (e.g. Mad Memories) aren’t useful in the dark room anymore.

I used to do the puzzle pretty much daily, but I haven’t bothered with a long time. I went there for the chest, but I enjoyed the encounters with enemies too (preferably after I already obtained the chest). I do agree that it’s sad to see it so forlorn.

These are some interesting insights. It’s probably all valid but personally I can’t bring myself to accept that people care that much about loot and not having fun =/ The rewards in Obsi have always been unimportant (at least to me) and there have been many times I have gone there to do everything BUT open the chest.

Also, in typical inconsistent Anet style, the Fires of Balthazar backpiece still illuminates the dark room xD

You’re pretty wrong about GvG being dead, but that aside, I support most of these changes. I think just having a megaserver’d OS would go a long way towards encouraging activity.

That said, I completely disagree with putting it back in EB. Your rebuttal is a straw man because it completely misrepresents the reason people wanted it out of EB in the first place. The reason is because you had to own your EB keep to be able to access OS, and often the outnumbered servers rarely owned their keep (see T3 NA matchup), denying them access to the map altogether.

in my experience, prior to the addition of the arena… the borderland windmills were the preferred dueling spots. not the jp proper. because you were very likely to get interrupted by some pve scrub pushing 1 for a free kill with all chats off.

eotm was far more detrimental to the population of the jp than just about anything. all the pver food went there instead of the jps because more badges faster.

mango.9267:

You’re pretty wrong about GvG being dead, but that aside, I support most of these changes. I think just having a megaserver’d OS would go a long way towards encouraging activity.

That said, I completely disagree with putting it back in EB. Your rebuttal is a straw man because it completely misrepresents the reason people wanted it out of EB in the first place. The reason is because you had to own your EB keep to be able to access OS, and often the outnumbered servers rarely owned their keep (see T3 NA matchup), denying them access to the map altogether.

I know you had to own your keep to get into the Jumping Puzzle but I’m not aware that was ever a big issue o_O In my experience that gave puzzle players a reason to contribute to WvW- they were all aligned with the goal of getting back the keep so they could go back to Obsi and it was often very fun pushing to get back the keep when outnumbered. Then again, in T1 I don’t think we’ve ever really had long periods of being keep-less.

Power.2957:

These are some interesting insights. It’s probably all valid but personally I can’t bring myself to accept that people care that much about loot and not having fun =/ The rewards in Obsi have always been unimportant (at least to me) and there have been many times I have gone there to do everything BUT open the chest.

I’m not saying that everyone goes to OS for the loot, but I think what made it interesting was that there was this traffic of people just trying to get to the chest. There probably aren’t too many people who regularly hang around OS, and going there just to interact with the same people would get boring fast. When there were more people overall in OS, there were more opportunities for spontaneous encounters.

Power.2957:

• Obsidian Sanctum was edited to include “an arena for GvGs.”
  For a while after this was released, this distracted a lot of players from the actual puzzle and many players would just harbor in that new arena. Then when “GvGs” died down people started using it for dueling (something that was easily done in the puzzle anyway before the arena was added). And then ArenaNet added custom arenas in sPvP to the game and people go there to duel now. So in essence this update was pointless, and it is as dead as the rest of the map it helped kill.

At the moment in T2 NA, it’s a struggle to find a time-slot that the OS arena isn’t being used. We’ve been having to switch off with other guilds nightly.

I disagree with your “Flawed/Irrelevant Arguments” section.

Power.2957:

• “I just want to do the jump puzzle. I shouldn’t have to fight people. I don’t want to deal with griefing.”
  Obsi has always been a part of WvW. In WvW you fight people. It’s that simple. Additionally, ArenaNet forsaw that griefing might have been an issue which is why they made 3 stealth fountains that players can use, each placed at a different location in the puzzle, that gives players a 5 minute stealth. This allows players to do the puzzle completely while being invisible to other players.

Others have pointed out above that the stealth fountains are not a cure-all solution. For starters, what’s to stop players from simply camping the stealth fountains themselves? Taking damage from traps/marks etc. also deactivates your stealth, and given the number of choke points in the map, this is incredibly easy to pull off. A Necromancer, for example, could just drop marks in the dark room, which last a long time and are easily recast. You could even use some of them as early warning systems for when a stealthed enemy is approaching.

Also on the dark room, you more or less have to deactivate your stealth for that portion, because otherwise you can’t pick up the torch and you won’t be able to find your way through the section.

Power.2957:

• “Camping is stupid and makes completing the puzzle frustrating.”
  Obsi was designed to be camped and was designed to be challenging to complete. This is plainly obvious considering the player-activated traps that were built into the map, to allow enemies who were futher ahead of you, to slow you down and/or kill you. If this frustrates you, consider playing Tetris.

Yes, the design of Obsidian Sanctum does lend itself to be camped, and it obviously was expected to some point, as evidenced by the traps. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it fun to be on the receiving side of it. Unless you have a marked superiority in numbers, you’re not going to be able to dislodge a player camping the traps and backed up by marks/traps to hinder you from getting up there to stop him.

It’s just like how most match-ups tend to end up with the two stronger servers ganging up on the weakest one. It’s the easiest, most logical route in war, but it sure as hell isn’t fun for the server being beat up, usually resulting in players from that server just quitting WvW en masse until the next reset.

Power.2957:

• “I’m just trying to make my legendary, I shouldn’t have to fight people.”
  It’s called a Gift of “Battle” for a reason.

Need I point out that players can now get all the Badges they need for their Gift just from AP chests and EotM? Not very “battle-like”. Anyway, I will grant that this is a non-issue now thanks to the multiple ways of acquiring Badges.

Power.2957:

• “Having Obsidian Sanctum inside the Eternal Battlegrounds makes it difficult for my server to compete in WvW because we’re out-numbered when a lot of our players are busy completing the jumping puzzle.”

The other servers are also able to go into the jumping puzzle and chances are they do. This means that each server should have a proportional amount of players missing from typical Eternal Battlegrounds activities and you should not be out-numbered.

Not necessarily true. If one server has all 100 players out in EBG dominating the battlefield, why would they waste their time and advantage going after the guys in Obsidian Sanctum? If anything, they’re probably thinking, “HAH! Look at those cowards in Obsidian Sanctum. They’re hiding in there because they can’t fight us in open field. gogo our PPT!”

Power.2957:

How Obsidian Sanctum can be Fixed:

I’ll respond to a few of your ideas here.

Power.2957:

• Re-evaluate and re-allow the use of a selected list of consumables in WvW or just in Obsidian Sanctum.
  Disabling things like Spiky Fruits and Gears may make fights more even and healthy, but I refuse to believe that simple consumables like Planks and Torches are harmful. Consumables are incredibly useful, fun to use, and the vast majority require strategic use. It may be difficult to turn on consumables in JUST Obsi, because it’s a part of WvW and I imagine it’d have to be separated out of that, which is why I said, re-evaluate the use of consumables in WvW in general. This however is not a top priority, right now we simply need larger numbers in the map.

This idea has some merit, and I agree that re-evaluating the use of Consumables as a whole in WvW could use another look at by ANet. At the same time, balance is a tough call. Getting perma-stunlocked by Spiky Fruit with no real way to retaliate should never be allowed, anymore than you not liking players who use pet-summoning consumables to have an entire army at their beck and call, again tilting the balance highly in their favour.

Power.2957:

• Allow the end chest in Obsidian Sanctum to be opened once a day, per character, per account.
  This is how it used to be. This will incentivize coming to the map for a lot players.

I would support this change, but unless the loot from the chest itself is improved, I guarantee you would not see any increase in the number of players doing the JP. Currently all the chest gives is Badges, siege and some blues and greens. No smart player is going to spend 10 mins (and that’s if you’re completely unopposed) to 30 mins (if you’re trying to fight your way through) for that kind of measly reward.

Power.2957:

• Make completion of Obsidian Sanctum a daily achievement option.
  I’m not a fan of the new dailies but I know how effective they’ve been in revitalizing the various activities- Keg Brawl sure isn’t dead anymore when it happens to coincide with a daily. Perhaps Obsi would benefit from people looking to complete their dailies as well.

I would love to see a “Daily Puzzle Jumper” option, but drawing attention to Obsidian Sanctum in this way could actually backfire. The core issue is that there are very few players who enjoy doing both JP’s AND PvP at the same time. The people who love doing JP’s generally don’t want to be bothered while doing it, and the PvP’ers usually hate “having to play Mario” while killing other players. Attempt to draw both these crowds into Obsidian Sanctum, and you might end up with more calls for nerfs to the place.

I once accidentally went to Obsidian Sanctum

Add rares to the chest.

The only fix it needs is a rare chance for unique loot from the end chest. The tears from the PvErs would be unbelievably sweet.

Doesn’t need to be anything powerful. Rather, something unique and neat cosmetic stuff, such as the queen bee from the VineWrath chest.

Tom Gore.4035:

The only fix it needs is a rare chance for unique loot from the end chest. The tears from the PvErs would be unbelievably sweet.

Doesn’t need to be anything powerful. Rather, something unique and neat cosmetic stuff, such as the queen bee from the VineWrath chest.

An exclusive drop would definitely bring back the numbers if the people farming the Vinewrath are any indication, but I doubt Anet will do that =/

bring back the chest being able to be opened up by all toons that reach it.

Attach the Sanctum back to EB

Put sentry’s and capture points in the Sanctum.

Add supply depo to the Sanctum.

Add underground towers deep within the jumping puzzle, and have a backdoor into Stone mist at the end of it protected by a mighty door.

I’m 100% behind bertrand and like 5% behind the OP. The only reason no one goes to the puzzle is because of the loot. Rarely are people griefed at the puzzles because they’re so far out of the way from normal WvW few waste their time checking on them. Even if they had a similar design to EotM to try and get more people on a single map, they’d still be just as empty because of no reason to do the puzzle.

People in MMOs do things once for fun, a second time to see if anything changed, and a third time for sentimental value. Any other time beyond this is done for loot.

Now as to the changes brought up in the OP? I don’t care. Changing OS to act more like EotM will open up further GvG oppurtunities so that’s positive. All the rest isn’t going to have an impact unless the loot is improved so it’s a complete waste of time.

Honestly, we’re better removing OS from WvW entirely and just making it some underground map. Throw in some random NPCs and call it a day.

Replace it with some random PvE zone that is ‘cloned’ and has all the normal worldserver rules like a PvE zone does. The only difference being anyone who isn’t in your guild is flagged as an enemy.

testpig.5018:

bring back the chest being able to be opened up by all toons that reach it.

Attach the Sanctum back to EB

Put sentry’s and capture points in the Sanctum.

Add supply depo to the Sanctum.

Add underground towers deep within the jumping puzzle, and have a backdoor into Stone mist at the end of it protected by a mighty door.

Haha cool (but far-fetched?) ideas. Unfortunately I don’t think Anet would go that far :P

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m 100% behind bertrand and like 5% behind the OP. The only reason no one goes to the puzzle is because of the loot. Rarely are people griefed at the puzzles because they’re so far out of the way from normal WvW few waste their time checking on them. Even if they had a similar design to EotM to try and get more people on a single map, they’d still be just as empty because of no reason to do the puzzle.

People in MMOs do things once for fun, a second time to see if anything changed, and a third time for sentimental value. Any other time beyond this is done for loot.

Now as to the changes brought up in the OP? I don’t care. Changing OS to act more like EotM will open up further GvG oppurtunities so that’s positive. All the rest isn’t going to have an impact unless the loot is improved so it’s a complete waste of time.

Honestly, we’re better removing OS from WvW entirely and just making it some underground map. Throw in some random NPCs and call it a day.

Replace it with some random PvE zone that is ‘cloned’ and has all the normal worldserver rules like a PvE zone does. The only difference being anyone who isn’t in your guild is flagged as an enemy.

Mentioning that they should revert the chest back to being open-able by multiple characters was a reference to loot.

If Obsi had a match making style similar to EoTm it wouldn’t be empty “because of no reason to do the puzzle.” When I go in there, if I’m lucky I can expect to see 4 other people. 1-2 from each server. I imagine this is proportional across all match ups. If they were combined like EoTm, suddenly the puzzle would be active again. If not because of people motivated by loot, but because of people who actually go in there for fun.

You complain about my suggestions, most of which are reverting changes back to their original form, and call them a waste of time, yet you say “remove Obsidian Sanctum from WvW and make it some underground map” then make all these further new changes like implementing a new combat system. How is that not going to take/waste significantly more time than rolling back the map?

Because investing time into something that will have a noticeable and direct impact on the game AND provide something new and refreshing is worth the time and effort.

Doing the same for a jumping puzzle most can’t be bothered with is a waste.

The only time I ever saw anyone at any of the WvW jumping puzzles was when they were part of the daily/monthly/tournament achievements. Beyond that they’ve each been ghost towns and I’m at OS quite a bit for GvGs.

ANets got to have metrics to determine how often these chests are openned. If they came back with a number even close to triple digits on a day-to-day basis I’d be shocked.

Atherakhia.4086:

Because investing time into something that will have a noticeable and direct impact on the game AND provide something new and refreshing is worth the time and effort.

Doing the same for a jumping puzzle most can’t be bothered with is a waste.

The only time I ever saw anyone at any of the WvW jumping puzzles was when they were part of the daily/monthly/tournament achievements. Beyond that they’ve each been ghost towns and I’m at OS quite a bit for GvGs.

ANets got to have metrics to determine how often these chests are openned. If they came back with a number even close to triple digits on a day-to-day basis I’d be shocked.

You’ve clearly jumped on the Obsi bandwagon since they added the “GvG” arena. If not you would know how active it was in 2012-mid13

Just make the chest a guaranteed exotic. Easy. Who could afford not to come and play then?

Also, I have to disagree with the fourth point. People still use mesmers to skip more than half of the puzzle. Glitch shortcuts are irrelevant. The main downfall of OS was that it became it’s own instance so mesmers couldn’t advertise their porting services to those playing in Eternal Battlegrounds.

Loot so not worth it. If I want to kill peeps, I want it to count….. Even though I don’t gvg, I would like to see it made eotm style for those that enjoy that mode – potentially different guilds to fight for them and they aren’t forced to transfer chasing that scene (which is why it won’t happen)

Power.2957:

Bertrand.3057:

I think that your assessment of the main reasons why OS has been abandoned is totally off. It has to do with factors external to the puzzle, not changes made to it. Basically, loot. Without loot to attract players in the first place, there’s no critical mass to support an active PvP environment.

• PvE players looking for badges can now just go to EotM
• PvErs don’t even need to EotM, they can get enough badges from achievement chests to finish a legendary.
• Since blueprints can now be sold on the TP, this actually means the siege drops are trivial, so it’s not even worthwhile for WvW players to go here.
• Badges aren’t worth much for anything, period. If you’ve been playing WvW for a long time, you have more than you know what to do with.
• Loot in the rest of WvW has been improved quite a bit, I don’t know if there have been any improvements to loot in OS.
• Most players have the puzzle achievement by now.

There were also some stealth (unannounced, pardon the pun) nerfs that made the puzzle harder to run through. You can’t use the active rune bonus on centaur runes while transformed, and backpieces with lighting effects (e.g. Mad Memories) aren’t useful in the dark room anymore.

I used to do the puzzle pretty much daily, but I haven’t bothered with a long time. I went there for the chest, but I enjoyed the encounters with enemies too (preferably after I already obtained the chest). I do agree that it’s sad to see it so forlorn.

These are some interesting insights. It’s probably all valid but personally I can’t bring myself to accept that people care that much about loot and not having fun =/ The rewards in Obsi have always been unimportant (at least to me) and there have been many times I have gone there to do everything BUT open the chest.

Also, in typical inconsistent Anet style, the Fires of Balthazar backpiece still illuminates the dark room xD

I’m still doing OS jumping puzzle daily for few months now, and i must say that loot at OS jumping puzzle is kitten… I’ve done JP over 200x and there was:
- 0 exotics
- 0 rares
- few greens
- tons of blue
- tons of siege weapons

(by tons i mean almost every time i’ve done jp I got that item)

How i would fix OS jumping puzzle:

• Option A: I would add capping on top, who ever control it, would get a lot of WvW points per minute. This would force people to fight for it.*
• - Option B: I would add box to drop T6 material so that JP’s would be actually worth doing it, and put it back to 1 box per character and not account.*
• Option C: make new EOTM style of map, capture the flag on top where chest stands right now*

If any of this points doesn’t apply, no one would ever be interested to do this JP besides those people that are similar to me, who just do it, because we are bored of other things in GW2 already. IT’S JUST SHAME THAT WE HAVE IT IF WE DON’T HAVE INTEREST IN IT.

These are all great points. You left out these two things, which had some of the greatest impact on the death of OS:

1) tradable siege. No more siege drives or running the puzzle as a guild
2) handing out badges of honor in pve achievement chests. Before that, OS was the primary source of BoH for legendary weapon crafters who didn’t want to play wvw.

Siege and BoH gave players an incentive to loot that specific chest, which in turn gave the griefers and white knights a reason to be there too.

BUMP waiting for action from anet, nothing was shown in the January patch.

IMO, main reasons are:

1. - Siege became tradable. Players who needed siege prints could just spend a couple silver instead of go to the JP. the prints on the TP are 1/10 of the price of them from merchants.
2. - Badges of honour come so easily now, you can get 60 from 30 minutes of WvW, and all the achievement chests.
3. - Disconnecting it from EB disabled communication to say that there were portals going to and from the chest.

This all resulted in it becoming ice frozen dead.

Obsidian Sanctum is, without a doubt, my favorite place in this game. SO LITTLE could be done to do SO MUCH in incentivizing it, though. I still zone in several times a day just to see if there’s any action going on.

I’ve thought about them making it a daily, a slight increase in precursor droprate, better loot in general – ANYTHING would help.

Bump…12 chars….This is a serious issue

As much as I like jumping puzzles, they’re still pve. There should be less pve in wvw, not more.

KcB.6890:

Power.2957:

• Obsidian Sanctum was edited to include “an arena for GvGs.”
  For a while after this was released, this distracted a lot of players from the actual puzzle and many players would just harbor in that new arena. Then when “GvGs” died down people started using it for dueling (something that was easily done in the puzzle anyway before the arena was added). And then ArenaNet added custom arenas in sPvP to the game and people go there to duel now. So in essence this update was pointless, and it is as dead as the rest of the map it helped kill.

At the moment in T2 NA, it’s a struggle to find a time-slot that the OS arena isn’t being used. We’ve been having to switch off with other guilds nightly.

Yeh, OS gets filled up and guilds have to share the arena with other guilds. Those that don’t feel like waiting can go to a borderland, but OS is preferable to many, I think.

Making OS an overflow would help a lot.

Brainless Skinner Box zombies will do what brainless Skinner Box zombies do, even for the most worthless of “rewards”…

zinkz.7045:

Brainless Skinner Box zombies will do what brainless Skinner Box zombies do, even for the most worthless of “rewards”…

Some of us play this game to have fun, not to farm the virtual currency and flaunt our (albeit inflated) kitten around.

IMO this is not a serious issue.

They made a trolly jumping puzzle. People like it. Therefore, people don’t do it. Making it more trolly will not bring people back.

IMO the only reason did the obsidian sanctum was for the badge rewards to make a legendary. Now everyone who plays WvW has tons of the things and if you don’t EOTM is a much friendlier way to get them.