Guild Wars 2

So, since Anet said they would be dismantling the Desert borderlands and returning to the Alpine maps I have heard some grumbling. I am in a WvW guild for my server and there are more than a few people who are sad to see the Desert map go. However, I am a casual WvWer myself and I will say it took me a lot longer to learn to navigate the Desert map than it did the Alpine map. That aside, here’s my question…

How many people would be interested in unique borderlands? As in, red borderland will have the desert map (thus appeasing the people who like it), and blue or green can have the alpine map, and whichever of the two go the short straw would get an all new map.

My ideas were a Jungle map for green or an Ocean map for blue (I hear shrieks of alarm at the thought of water combat already). However, someone in my guild mentioned the set up of the Eternal Battlegrounds map. Lowlands Keep is in a swampy looking area. There is enough land for travel, but there are great puddles of water all around the keep and the towers guarding it. I would not be opposed to a swampy, marshy map. The same guild mate suggested that blue borderlands be an ice and snow map (with the SAB ice physics).

Now I understand, comparatively, Alpine is an extremely simple map. There is a lot of open space and clear lines or channels of attack. It also makes defense that much easier (or difficult). So, for Alpine to compete with the Desert map it would need to be revamped, more terrain added to give it the same edge as Desert (or the 3rd new map). I would be okay with Alpine returning, along with Desert map plus a new map, provided it got be redesigned to be as complex.

Thoughts?

Thanks to Glattt and Blaze Hawke for their opinions when I asked in guild.

Having unique maps for each BL would be difficult for balancing. If there were many maps with groups in each archetype, it might be ok to experiment with it, but I don’t think it’ll work out with Desert and Alpine.

For example, it takes over twice as long to go from spawn to side-keep lord room on Desert than Alpine. If one team has Desert, they will have a serious advantage over others in this respect. Ever since reset I’ve been thanking the six whenever I’ve helped save a side-keep—I know that on Alpine it would have been gone. Same for whenever a group fails to take Rampart; if it was Alpine, there’d be no way to defend since they’d be trebbing from tower

Thus, if there are going to be three separate maps, they need to at least be similar in core aspects.

That is why I said Alpine would need to be redesigned to match the complexity that we see in Desert. It’s a complexity I would enjoy seeing in a new map as well.

Never again should Anet make a BL similar to the Desert BL. It was too big, too ambitious and takes away the time, you could be having fun capping/fighting. Desert BL doesn’t work and wvw veterans don’t like it because it just takes too long to get from point A to point B. People log on to get into the action, not explore the map.

That being said I do agree there should be another BL. But it should replace EotM tbh. Getting tomes are much easier now hence defeats the purpose of EotM raids/farm.

Calliope.8675:

So, since Anet said they would be dismantling the Desert borderlands and returning to the Alpine maps

They never said this exactly. We are getting a quarterly rotation between the two maps. 3 months of alpine, then 3 months of desert.

+1 here, but already in favor of no home borderlands but 4 3 sides maps with variety to each. With work, ABL and DBL can both become 3 sided maps and EoTM is also a 3 sided maps. Add EB and we are good to go. But outside of that, yes always side on the side of more variety versus less.

There is a lot of people who love the home borderland concept… Why do you want to remove that ? You have EB for the 3 side map, don’t touch our home border…
Anet try to remove the home concept with the WP only for 1 faction and it was a big fail ! Now that they bring back the WP at T3 for everyone the map is alive… Because it’s our home, because with WP we can move easly on our home.
Each server have is own BL, and EB for the 3 side map. This is fine.

Sich.7103:

There is a lot of people who love the home borderland concept… Why do you want to remove that ? You have EB for the 3 side map, don’t touch our home border…

Have to admit, we have now seen EB draw the most people consistently over many years. Be that when ABL was in place as well as when DBL was introduced. To me that means there are things that make it a more desirable map. People have offered multiple reasons why that might be. Some of those are because of equal footing and more potential cap points which both might mean higher odds of multiple-sided fights. Those three alone make some of us wonder what then would happen if all maps were equal footing versus favoring a side. I was once a home vs EB person as well but those people are in the minority based on pure numbers in ques. So if that is the case, why do we have 3 maps of a type that is queued for less versus more of the type that queued more. 2 cents.

Having started playing MMOs with DAoC, I am very partial to having 3 unique borderlands. What I really wish is that all 3 were connected with EBG in the middle.

We’re never going to have balance. No matter what is done people will complain.

Green is supposed to be the highest rated server in a match and Red the lowest. Have the hierarchy of who gets what borderland map follow suit.

Desert is easier to defend? Give Red the chance to be a legitimate part of the fight. Alpine easy to flip? Make Green actually defend their turf. Add a new map for Blue, or for the short term give them one or the other.