Guild Wars 2

A lot of people have said there is too much PvE in the map, meaning that the PvE events on the map have far too much of an affect on the game than most PVP focused players care for. Having the map shoot fire balls, knock people off cliffs, spawn barricades, stealth groups of players, open gates, etc. means you are fighting the environment more than you are the players.
When I’m fighting someone or groups of people I want the outcome to be determined by skill and the choices we have made. I don’t want to be fighting and suddenly see my opponent get knocked off a cliff by some turret. These kind of gimmicky mechanics are a big part of what is ruining the map for PvP focused players and are part of the reason why it is doing so poorly.

The question is why was it designed this way?

I can think of 2 reasons. Either anet thought that by including all of these PvE gimmicks onto the map they would attract some of the PvE population to WvW to help fill out the servers.
This would be well intentioned but poorly implemented. Players that strictly PvE do not enjoy fighting other players and are definitely not going to play in a game mode where the rewards are so much worse than what they are used to. For them the new map would be a large tedious dungeon that actually costs you money to play.

The second possible reason is they are purposefully trying to alienate the players that strictly WvW/PvP in order to make the game mode more casual. If they are successful in making it more casual they could finally implement the mega server in WvW and devote less resources to the game mode, saving them time and money.
This would also explain why they thought auto upgrading was a good idea and why the new map seems to be designed for k-training.

I think it was the first one plus a bit of a third option. They thought they could create one map that would please everyone with every different kind of play style and in doing that tried to anticipate it being ultra popular by designing it in such a way that the most effective way to control such a map was spread everyone out.

It feels like the devs were actually trying to help us break up the zergs and yet somehow failed to get any zerg to even show up. Right now I can’t say why exactly it is not working as intended but it seems like it was meant for much higher population caps if only the engine could support that. I’d love to try and play that map with all three sides full (never going to happen in T5) just to see how it works then but for now it has only been an exercise in frustration (or pure exploration and awe for the scenic value) whenever I visit there.

That feeling of the map needing more bodies to even be functional is problematic when T1 wasn’t filling all its borderland maps at reset 6 months ago. The last thing we need is more people thinking they can only enjoy this game when they are in the top tier.

PariahX.6970:

They thought they could create one map that would please everyone with every different kind of play style

That’s very possible. It’s like a parent asking their kids what they want for dinner, 1 kid says fish sticks, 1 says pizza, 1 says ice cream, instead of picking 1 the parent tries to please them all and tosses all the food into a blender with a bunch of vegetables (pve) that they didn’t ask for but the parent wants them to have. What you end up with is an inedible mess that no one enjoys.

Jim Hunter.6821:

PariahX.6970:

They thought they could create one map that would please everyone with every different kind of play style

That’s very possible. It’s like a parent asking their kids what they want for dinner, 1 kid says fish sticks, 1 says pizza, 1 says ice cream, instead of picking 1 the parent tries to please them all and tosses all the food into a blender with a bunch of vegetables (pve) that they didn’t ask for but the parent wants them to have. What you end up with is an inedible mess that no one enjoys.

They(Anet) might overreacted wrongly with some stuff on the new BL’s but that migh be fixed/changed, that doesn’t means BL is that bad as many make it look, isn’t just a hide zerg in tower while getting beated on, and then push the other zerg to the clastle and get pushed back again into tower.
IF players really wanted fight they have more open spaces, more clever choke points more places to drop enemies form cliffs, with some changes the new bl could be really really good, it is bad because people cant karma train it or hide back to tower if getting beaten.

The purpose of the new BL was about (lets forget the central weapon and some other stuff like auto upgrade for a moment since i dont like them either) give more importance to fights more creative tactics, less cheap place to cap stuff were players could not do anything when being blobbed, more open field , they have lower paths that can help reach the north parts more sneaky but they have map elements (similiar to gvg fire isle with the fire lord in the lava pool), and this is the adversaries players don’t like well.. because means more effort.
They wanted to make BL’s more valuable and less farmable than they were, even EB is a sad place full of gimmicks to cap towers w/o much effort., the BL should be the opposite better for defense and bit harder to the opposing party.

just a fast note
We even had on GW1 gvg map quicksands…it is nothing new from gw2, as map elements have nothing to do with being pve or pvp only, that is an excuse…

I think it is because there were a lot of post over the years asking for variations in keeps, new maps, and making it easier for defenders and harder on attackers.

The problem is that most of those were demanding and random complaint threads thay only made those demands, while avoiding ever going into any explanation as to how to accomplish it. When they get spammed with angry complaints that have no real substance on how to solve what they are complaining about, then you get whatever solutions they dream up.

This is why you see a lot of posters now, starting to get onto random complainers, demanding that they elaborate on issues and discussion on what changes to make. Because random complaining with no comprehensive solution creates this type of issues.