Guild Wars 2

So, I’m hardly a hardcore WvW player, and I was actually a pretty big fan of most of the desert borderland and HoT changes, but I’m very clearly in the minority of this.

So I was just wondering why you, actual WvWers, like the Alpine Borderlands so much more than the Desert Borderland.

Please keep your post simple (no walls if you can avoid it), just a simple, what’s good what’s bad sort of thing, I’m just trying to figure out why everyone hates the Desert Borderlands so much, I mean hell, maybe it could help anet redesign it too so that we could potentially have 2 borderlands!

Thanks!

More compact made for more fights, and none of the gimmicks. I honestly kinda liked em though some were just ridiculous, specially th stealth storm.

I think the desert would’ve been better as an EB map rather than 3 huge borderlands. They were way way too big for borderlands maps.

Because it’s not the desert borderlands.

I wasn’t exactly a huge fan of the Alpine, but it was generally more straightforward to navigate and defend while the Desert Borderlands has the problem of being too noisy yet too boring due to its size and random annoyances like shrine effects or whatnot.

The biggest killer is the waypoints.

Easy to get around, right size, worked well

- Scout can control how to upgrade the keep
– No sentry to give information about ennemy move > players need to roam on the map and to talk each other
– You have to make choice between upgrading or storing supply or building siege
– More supply limit in the keep
– No stupid guild upgrade who are for pve and not for pvp
– more compact
– more big area to fight and less choc point
– Keep are easier and not so big, and look like keep
– Tower can treb keep > tower have tactical value
– WP only at T3 and for everyone who is able to upgrade the keep.
– WP is hard to get, then people want to defend it, and ennemy want to destroy it.
– WP on the home BL help to defend the map
– Easy way to go from one keep to another, no maze
– no kittening central event

I don’t love the alpine bl. The center of the borderland was poorly designed and badly fixed, and it takes too long to get out of the spawn of your own bl.
However, aside from that, it is generally better than the Desert bl. This is because it is much easier to navigate, and the towers, while bland, are better designed than the ones in eb for the most part.
I still want Tengu guards though, so I will choose to be optimistic about the changes to the desert bl. If Alpine bl must be redone, I would at least like to see the middle revamped again (there isn’t any borderland bloodlust anymore, and it should stay like that).

…actually now I think about it the size of DB does make sense IF HoT had been successful in pulling people into WvW.

Easy for Choo-Choo, good for small scale I guess aswell, better Waypoint mechanic if they bring that back aswell, but always preferred EB when it’s dead quiet for roaming.

Hope they change the layout a little, make it so you can just k-train a border with 5-10 golems in about 20~ mins, but of course, night capping can’t be fixed that easy.

Well…. People forget there were many complaints about those BLs as well as they were old and static.

That said, I prefer bay/wk, hills/ek, and garrison for keep design. I prefer north west/east towers having strategic value (sw/se as well). It was indeed smaller and faster to get back to a location as well.

The DBL would be much better if towers held some significant strategic value, shrines weren’t so OP (sand stealth specifically), wall traps were removed, center area redone removing oasis permanently and maybe just removing the land of the lost npcs, and fire/air were made a little less complicated.

TheLastNobody.8319:

…actually now I think about it the size of DB does make sense IF HoT had been successful in pulling people into WvW.

The size would have made sense if they added more camps and structures.
In the alpine map you had incentive to hold the keeps and towers. The keeps provided wp’s for faster travel and the towers were in treb range of the keeps.
In the deserted bl all they were was ppt, and you’re one wp was given to you as soon as you flipped the structure back.

@op
It’s not so much that the alpine is loved, it’s just that the deserted bl fails as a wvw map and is full of annoying mechanics.

Editing this to be less inherintly negative:

Most of the things that people seem to think were so great in the alpine borderlands. I have memories that tell me they weren’t that awesome.

Roaming felt meaningless much of the time. Just as much as it does now. But instead there was alot more risk for the roamer in question. If a zerg wanted to chase you down and you were in combat? You were dead. End of story. (unless you could stealth for long periods of time). Atleast the desert borderlands gave ENOUGH exits to any given situation that you could get away from a group.

Also when it came to defending objectives. The only classes that are actually gonna have an easier time here will be the melee train.

Does NO ONE remember trying to defend a wall only to get pushed off by dozens of aoes? Or by continuous arrow cart spam?

In fire keep if someone tries that I can go up onto teh ramparts and shoot down from there. Be they arrows or fireballs. I could still contribute to the defense. One thing I am NOT Looking forward to with the return of alpine borderlands is the days of “well your less useless in open field but once we get behind walls you might as well just wait outside. Youl hurt our team less than when you rally the enemy during a wall push.”

It was also possible for one or two people to completley shut down the entire borderlands for the defending team. Does anyone remember the days where two or maybe even only one condi thief simply stopped all supply generation for a map? With the new upgrade system escorting yaks is gonna be even more mandatory than it was. Simply because all of the yak travel paths are so EASY to intercept.

When it comes to towers its as I said in my original form. Itl go from 2 people being bored pressing 2 repeatedly. To four. As with the new shield generators theres just gonna be 2 more people stuck on a wall than there was previously. Whichever side has the more numbers will be able to destroy the other teams siege. And the other team wont have anything they can do about it.

I am not convinced the old BLs are gonna be an improvement. I may be wrong. And ill keep an open mind going into it. But nearly EVERY good memory I have of the old BLs ultimately has a bad one with it.

And I would like to reiterate what I said in the first version. The roaming fights I might as well have gone to the PvP maps for. Fighting the same people on the same type of terrain over and over again wasn’t interesting after the sixth month of it. Especially when one of the biggest deciding factors was “Is he running condi food or not”

I will make it simple, though you can search using Google and read many about this, all around the web, but here it is: the only good part of Desert Borderland are the assets; the plants, architecture, rocks, and also the lighting effects, particle effects, sounds – the artists at Anet did well. That’s it.

What went wrong: exaggerated verticality, environment that fights back and difficult to handle even when does not, huge impractical maze-like buildings, almost completely useless map-view because different levels, very long one way paths, dead ends and traps, no open spaces for fights without constantly getting that “obstructed” and “you can’t see that” messages, and more.

On top of that, all that wrong brought by HoT: requirement to play on PvE maps for different things (gear, guild unlocks, others), unbalanced classes, stability change overpowering mindless zerging (large groups are fine, but when mindless large groups can CC to death smaller groups with no counterplay that’s a game fail), siege versus players kept just as bad as ever.

All these happened when WvW was already dying. Instead of proper changes, these were brought in – as a “surprise”, by unknown experts (they aren’t allowed to acknowledge anything). Same time was made a promise that WvW will be the main focus next… Which wasn’t kept so far.

P.S. – Alpine Borderland won’t bring “salvation”, it’s just a bit better map, because it’s not as bad as the DBl. But WvW needs real changes to survive, not just a few maps, though bad maps make things worse.

It actually served as a HOME bl to secure then move to EBG to fight for the rest.

I also really really loved borderlands not for defending our own, but for attacking the other servers. My guild often went on a ‘raid’ in enemy borders where we went to ninja a tower during primetime and then fought hours over it. I think the enemy servers really liked this too, because they always kept coming back for fights, sometimes we lost, sometimes we won. Good fun anyways.

Also SO MANY fights we had over the Orchard, Vale and Water camps, not even mentioning fighting at Godsword and fighting off wave after wave.

I wouldn’t jump and shout yes, till you see how the updates have changed it.

Alpine was better for scouts/small guilds and small servers. But, mostly scouts and smaller groups. With DBL, we not only got bigger, higher, PVE maps, we also got automatic upgrades, basically ending most of a GOOD scouts duties and desire to hang out in the BL.

They said, yes, we’ll bring it back, WITH UPDATES. Now, I suspect they aren’t going to scrap auto upgrade, which might please some because, not everyone had good scouts capable of ordering the right upgrades, but including auto upgrades will still leave others out in the cold and possibly away from the BLs still. There’s also no guarantee what additional upgrades from DBL will be included in the re-release of Alpine, which means what we get back may not be even close to what we left in October.

Either way, it’s still a waiting game just to see when it comes amd how it’s received.

In a single line (well, not really):

Alpine border is about fighting between towers and keeps and defending your home.

Yep, that’s it. The entire way its designed is that fights happen in a line from tower to tower, keep to keep. When you took SW tower and wanted to take bay, the battlefield was at outer south bay. When you took NE tower and wanted to take garrison, the battlefield was NE outer garrison. That’s where you went and that’s where the enemy came to meet you. It also felt like it was your battlefield. On your home border, the line south of bay, south of hills was like a “dont go here, this is our home” thing. You wanted to protect it – the waypoints at T3 was a clear boon and goal, further strengthening this view of the the entire border. If you got that, you could hold the line. Add small touches like an easily defended “second line” with NW tower, garri and NE tower and the design of Alpine become clear. You attack or you defend. That is your purpose. Keeps where even designed to be easily overlooked by scouts and thus easy to rush to defense, while at the same time you could offensivly scout them easier.

With Desert border, this is all kittened up beyond recognition. Towers are too far between each so that the battlefield between them no longer exist. And if there is just a hint of them there… its 3 canyon obstacles deep. Without T3 waypoints, the defensive lines become blurred and non-existent. Garrison is much further away from the spawn compared to Alpine and NE/NW tower is far away and above it, completely removing the second line of defense. Then add the fact that the keeps and towers are kittening huge, scouts cannot get a grasp of the enemy anymore. You can round a corner and oh look, 50 kittening people inside your garrison.

My answer is simple. I had fun on the Alpine BL, I don’t have fun on the Desert BL.

It was a simpler map that made it easier to fight people.

Of course it had flaws, after all it was the first map used, but we spent 3 years learning every inch of it. Those days we spent 6 hours trying to take or defend a keep. it was not about the keep, it was about the fights it brought on. Even if we lost it, we had fun. A simple thing like taking a camp, could evolve into an epic fight. Every structure had a strategic value.

Then HoT came along, they threw in a bunch of untested, unbalanced gimmicks, buffed siege like arrow carts for some stupid reason, added a giant gold/pve grind for guild upgrades while also taking away unlocks your guild previously had, made a bunch of bad changes (for example the new wp system), and a map so terribly designed for wvw its hard to imagine what the devs were thinking. And at the same time did nothing to actually improve the mechanics of wvw, scoring, rewards etc. Then they went silent for months while so many players left the game.

I dont know if this will be enough to bring players back, especially if they are just going to put all the HoT garbage in the alpine map.

I would imagine they will be like EBG as far as HOT features go – tactivators and all. The one thing we can’t guess is the WPs on the side keeps….

There were good parts of ABL, don’t get me wrong, played many hours on them and found them fun, but they did get stale. Was on the side of make sure your home is secure versus must go EBG. Fear people are using rose tinted glasses on this. That said they also:

• Promoted zerging, smaller map so people thought, why not go as a blob even if one person alone could take a T3 camp
• Encouraged k-train farming, quite often the k-train and PPTers would just circle around each others maps since the design flowed well for that kind of thing
• Encouraged groups to port since the LoS meant you could tell you were about to be zerged down
• Had open but limited number of travel paths, if a side had enough people they could block someone into their spawns rather easily, aka spawn camping
• Had a number of unresolved terrain exploits
• Roamers were at a disadvantage with little terrain to be able to use or were encouraged to spawn camp
• Were where a lot of people went while they waited on EBG queues

But it is, what it is, will have to see, at least while things are being developed.

Most people just want a place to fight. We don’t care what the map looks like. Alpine is simple and wide open. It’s easy to see/find other zergs, easy to navigate and there are lots of open fields to engage each other in.

I believe the DBL was designed to prevent zerging and to encourage small group play but due to WvW’s current state, the overall lack of players, it’s simply not what WvW needs.

There’s also the aspect of mechanical gimmicks that a lot of people dislike. Again, most just want some where to have large scale battles. The DBL has places for that, sure, but mostly it’s a complicated maze that prevents other zergs from being able to easily find each other all the while placing new map mechanics between them.

The appeal is for the times experienced on the borderlands more than the maps themselves. Though, the people that stuck it out in WvW were mostly whittled down to people that liked what Alpine had to offer. The scoring system had a few devotees but not many. Meanwhile, the GvG scene developed and did a better job of attracting players than the game mode itself. Thus, while it isn’t necessarily the best for WvW, there’s a chorus of players that want to keep things at a point that resembles the GvG prime of WvW at any expense.

To be fair, that’s what the game was for a while and it’s a totally legitimate thing to want.

I feel like this is going to be an unfortunate situation coming down the pipe. The DBL map was certainly not layout as well from a strategic standpoint as Alpine, but bringing back Alpine alone is no where near enough to bring people back into WvW.

The stability changes mean that groups still won’t be able to push even on an absolutely open and flat field, and a lot of the ‘for the fights’ players have long since moved on or are all to happy to run around in a huge blob in zerk gear (knowing that a melee train will get obliterated trying to push/pressure them). There are flat places to fight in EBG and we still see glass blobs don’t break up to fight; just wall to wall blobs in glass gear (at least in the only two remaining tiers that can queue a map in NA).

Those awesome and protracted fights that were precipitated by having objectives that mattered are likely going to be diminished by the upgrades granted to large guilds that can PVE grind extremely strong buffs. Who is looking forward to fighting inside a fish tank that is the lord room of each of the Alpine keeps with the extremely oppressive guild claiming tactics buffs? The guy posting about the perma paper gate at garrison forgot that we now wvw with Invulnerable fortification buffs, and perma uptime of coordinated shield generators usage, and of course siege disablers (if needed). And the best part is that Anet made scribing so unbelievably expense they can’t possibly remove or over neuter these buffs without hosing over the PVE’ers that farmed these upgrades in the first place.

On the positive side, I’m interested to see how the Alpine map layout is going to interact with some of these oppressive guild upgrades. The DBL is laid out with such a huge advantage to the defenders (before factoring the guild buffs/upgrades) that it promotes a very uninteresting ‘turtle up and siege hump’ type of play. Alpine doesn’t offer so many untouchable defensive siege locations, and the size of the map and increased effectiveness of catas (i.e. hitting multiple walls from one build site) makes havok play more effective.

And finally, the PVE heros were never interested in wvw to begin with. So on top of wvw being neglected for so long, and then further beat down by poor design choices (stability change, massive power creep of guild upgrades, auto upgrades) that the veteran wvw population has been absolutely decimated. In NA where I play, servers in T3 (aside from Maguuma who is actively buying guilds to push for T2) can’t queue a map during NA prime. On top of this, the content drought timed (and its gonna be a drought for another ~6months) in PVE land, perfectly timed with new shinies in the mmo world like The Division or Black Desert AND the poor reward structure for wvw (if you play competitively its a gold sink for food/nutrition, gear, siege) means probably right around zero PVE’ers will head into WvW.

I honestly feel bad for the dev team on this. The change back to the Alpine map (I don’t think Desert should be tossed in a bin, but reworked/massaged) is a step in the right direction and certainly a good show that Anet does still remember that the WvW gamemode exists, but the extensive amount of damage done to the player base that primarily play WvW likely means WvW’s glory days are squarely in the rearview mirror. I’m concerned that the dev’s are gonna grind to get Alpine back in WvW only to have players continue to focus on the other negative elements plaguing WvW and then the dev’s go back to completely ignoring the gamemode again for another year or more.

simply put it was great for roaming (open land) and they were fun keeps to either defend or attack. The appeal was that it was just simple. No gimmicks. The fun of those maps came more from the creativity of the player base finding different strategies and siege spots, etc to try to take/defend a keep.

Size matters… In this case DBL is just TOO big & inconvenient to run because of gimmicks.
Alpine: Spawn to first objective to attack or defend was 10-15 secs? Second objective was another 10-15 sec, third objective was another 10-15 sec, 4th objective from attacking spawn was long ways and at maybe 1 min of running MAX.
DBL: I fall asleep trying to count.

underwater bay battles
see each side flounder and panic when they dont know what their skills do
praise be to ah-lawl

Dana.8721:

simply put it was great for roaming (open land) and they were fun keeps to either defend or attack. The appeal was that it was just simple. No gimmicks. The fun of those maps came more from the creativity of the player base finding different strategies and siege spots, etc to try to take/defend a keep.

Hills was a nightmare to defend. So was Bay. So were all of the towers. Garrison was alright in terms of inner, though outer was a lost cause.

Also, there was 0 creativity in siege spots. You either trebbed from inside a tower or abused the double (outer+inner) cata spots. If you were at Hills, you cata’d with impunity by hitting the rocks on the southern switchback or just went to the one wall and took it and inner down before anyone could stop you. It took less time to get on the map and break outer at a side keep than it did to run from Garri WP (or worse, spawn) to the keep.

The result was that defending a keep was only possible through repeated lord’s room fights. It worked well enough during prime time but was brutal if there was ever a brief mismatch in coverage. I don’t know how you remember it differently but I’m super interested in finding out.

Luvpie

Size matters… In this case DBL is just TOO big & inconvenient to run because of gimmicks.
Alpine: Spawn to first objective to attack or defend was 10-15 secs? Second objective was another 10-15 sec, third objective was another 10-15 sec, 4th objective from attacking spawn was long ways and at maybe 1 min of running MAX.
DBL: I fall asleep trying to count.

To first objective is ~10-15 seconds. The south towers are closer to spawn than on Alpine. To second is ~30 seconds, assuming you mean the side keep. To third (north tower?) is ~45 seconds, though Alpine was around ~30s since you had to walk aways and then climb a switchback for the shortest path. Fourth (Garri/Rampart?) was ~1:30 on Alpine for Watergate and Suicidegate, 2:30 for the others. On Desert it’s ~1:45 if you run through Oasis.

Alpine BLs: Can leave any tower and be in a fight, be it 1v1 or zerg vs zerg in under a minute.

Deserted BLs: Leave a keep, fall a lot, takes 30 minutes to run into someone else and have a good fight, even when zerg vs zerg!

A lot of us on non-national servers enjoy fights, if it takes 30 minutes of running around looking for one, you aint gonna have fun!

Not forgetting the HoT features like auto-upgrades killed scouts and the new guild system made small guilds useless in WvW, well you see a lot of players asking what’s the point in them playing if the only option is to play with the zerg.

Can’t wait for all the old threads about how horrible the alpine BL’s are come back.

he old map was intuitive.
A castle is a castle, a path is a path.

The new are as confused dreams. Portals lead up to vertical walls, in some regions it is permastealth, sometimes you can all jump down, sometimes not. Sometimes you can walk through fire sometimes sometimes not; you can dive through Lava to other places..

As a confused dream in fever

Knob.6835:

Can’t wait for all the old threads about how horrible the alpine BL’s are come back.

Counter with…hey remember that desert bl? Main issue with alpine bl was that after 3 years anything will be stale and boring, I think that was the main issue, and that’s perfectly understandable, there were other flaws ofc. However the alternative proved to be unpopular in a far different way, for many its simply not a fun map, for a variety of reasons, and that’s what matters most. If people are not having fun, they will move on.

The appeal is that it’s not the Desert BL. That’s how bad the Desert BL is.

Sviel.7493:

Hills was a nightmare to defend. So was Bay. So were all of the towers. Garrison was alright in terms of inner, though outer was a lost cause.

Also, there was 0 creativity in siege spots. You either trebbed from inside a tower or abused the double (outer+inner) cata spots. If you were at Hills, you cata’d with impunity by hitting the rocks on the southern switchback or just went to the one wall and took it and inner down before anyone could stop you. It took less time to get on the map and break outer at a side keep than it did to run from Garri WP (or worse, spawn) to the keep.

The result was that defending a keep was only possible through repeated lord’s room fights. It worked well enough during prime time but was brutal if there was ever a brief mismatch in coverage. I don’t know how you remember it differently but I’m super interested in finding out.

You’re wrong on this.
We had hour long fights around objectives, sometimes even for days because everything could be countered. Bay couldn’t counter Briar though – that was the only case.
The ABLS were a lot more strategical than DBL not only when it comes to siege, also camps.

Jana.6831:

You’re wrong on this.
We had hour long fights around objectives, sometimes even for days because everything could be countered. Bay couldn’t counter Briar though – that was the only case.
The ABLS were a lot more strategical than DBL not only when it comes to siege, also camps.

Listen to yourself. Carefully.

Jana.6831:

You’re wrong on this.
We had hour long fights around objectives, sometimes even for days because everything could be countered. Bay couldn’t counter Briar though – that was the only case.
The ABLS were a lot more strategical than DBL not only when it comes to siege, also camps.

You had fights because they were the only way to defend. The walls were barely an obstacle—especially since getting them to fortify is nigh impossible under pressure. The fights were not because everything could be countered but because there was no other choice. Also, people like fights. Every encounter on Alpine was just a fight with a few walls for scenery. It was great for about 3 hours when everyone had the maps queued and then it was awful depending on who had the most pop at the moment.

Now, I don’t want to diminish fights. No matter what happens, fights are going to be the best way to defend because they don’t cost supply and don’t incur supply damage. However, since even in prime time the home team is potentially outnumbered 2:1, fights should not be the only way to defend. To be clear, fights should be the only way to defend indefinitely, but not the only way to defend at all. A good server should bring enough people that it can fight and focus on whichever part of its map needs to recover supply from holding out until the fight can happen. This has the added bonus of letting off-hours players hold out better against the Karma Train.

Can you expound on how Alpine had more tactical depth in terms of siege/camps? I’m not sure what you mean by the first and have no idea what you mean by the second, so I don’t want to make assumptions.

Durzlla.6295:

So, I’m hardly a hardcore WvW player, and I was actually a pretty big fan of most of the desert borderland and HoT changes, but I’m very clearly in the minority of this.

So I was just wondering why you, actual WvWers, like the Alpine Borderlands so much more than the Desert Borderland.

Basically, WvW is boring as hell when there is no enemy to fight. A lot of servers were slowly dying away months before HoT release but people stayed around because HoT was going to change many things anway so there was chance things will get better.

Now the HoT got released and all WvW guilds lost their upgrades. To get upgrades back, all the guild memebrs had to grind in new PvE maps for several months. This meant the time they were wasting in PvE they did not go to WvW. So WvW was empty.

Of course the major WvW problems that were actually causing it to die were not solved with HoT – population balance, nightcapping, scoring etc.

Empty WvW with much less players then before meant pretty much everyone left was able to join one single map now – EB. So the BL maps were left even more empty and boring. There was no enemies so there was no reason to go into BL so many players never bothered to learn those maps. Instead, they simply decided new BL maps were the cause WvW had less players now. WvW players did not “like” Alpine maps, the maps itself were bad too, they just like to fight enemies and because they remember fighting enemies before the HoT they think bringing old maps back will magically bring all the players back too.

Again, most people hanging on these forums are not even playing the game anymore. People who play the game, and enjoy it, have no reason to post in the forum. So, after the current maps are replaced, again, there will be many players who enjoyed current maps, get upset and come to forum to post angrily about this change. So it has to be changed back because “everyone hates Alpine maps”. And the circle continues.

FogLeg.9354:

Durzlla.6295:

So, I’m hardly a hardcore WvW player, and I was actually a pretty big fan of most of the desert borderland and HoT changes, but I’m very clearly in the minority of this.

So I was just wondering why you, actual WvWers, like the Alpine Borderlands so much more than the Desert Borderland.

Basically, WvW is boring as hell when there is no enemy to fight. A lot of servers were slowly dying away months before HoT release but people stayed around because HoT was going to change many things anway so there was chance things will get better.

Now the HoT got released and all WvW guilds lost their upgrades. To get upgrades back, all the guild memebrs had to grind in new PvE maps for several months. This meant the time they were wasting in PvE they did not go to WvW. So WvW was empty.

Of course the major WvW problems that were actually causing it to die were not solved with HoT – population balance, nightcapping, scoring etc.

Empty WvW with much less players then before meant pretty much everyone left was able to join one single map now – EB. So the BL maps were left even more empty and boring. There was no enemies so there was no reason to go into BL so many players never bothered to learn those maps. Instead, they simply decided new BL maps were the cause WvW had less players now. WvW players did not “like” Alpine maps, the maps itself were bad too, they just like to fight enemies and because they remember fighting enemies before the HoT they think bringing old maps back will magically bring all the players back too.

Again, most people hanging on these forums are not even playing the game anymore. People who play the game, and enjoy it, have no reason to post in the forum. So, after the current maps are replaced, again, there will be many players who enjoyed current maps, get upset and come to forum to post angrily about this change. So it has to be changed back because “everyone hates Alpine maps”. And the circle continues.

regardless if you like DBL you have to agree that maps are bigger then needed for current population levels and the mechanics like dust storm etc that helps ‘defenders’ or holders of shrine are pretty and sound awesome logically but don’t really translate well into live game. Maybe if all maps were full 24/7 and queued so people actually saw opponents without running across the whole map we could have DBL bls as is but it’s not the case.

Sviel.7493:

Jana.6831:

You’re wrong on this.
We had hour long fights around objectives, sometimes even for days because everything could be countered. Bay couldn’t counter Briar though – that was the only case.
The ABLS were a lot more strategical than DBL not only when it comes to siege, also camps.

Listen to yourself. Carefully.

We had fights = We fought with siege, we ran up to the enemies with siege, without siege, we called in reinforcements, we capped their BLs so they would leave ours and so on – do you now know what I mean with fights or do I have to listen to myself very carefully again?

ETA: And well, I guess I can’t convice you that your memories are wrong – but there’s good news for that: The ABLS are coming back and then you can see yourself that you can counter almost everything with siege and don’t have to run out of anything if you don’t want to. If you have people who know that on your server that is.
Btw: If you dislike the strategic aspect that much: EBG still is like it – you can counter most stuff from other objectives – and hey it works.

Unless there is a rotation between maps there is going to be a lot of angry players. The people who liked the alpine BLs will soon realize the game has changed and the HoT changes are coming with them. They will be back on these forums complaining. The people who actually took the time to learn the Desert BLs & grew to like them will be complaining. This is going to be a lose lose situation for anet. Hate to be in their shoes… Good luck

The lack of details makes it hard to understand you…but let me know if I’m close.

Jana.6831:

We had fights = We fought with siege

You used siege to repel enemy attacks? What did you do for Hills/Bay cata spot after LoS changes?

Jana.6831:

, we ran up to the enemies with siege,

This sounds like open field siege but I’m guessing that’s wrong?

Jana.6831:

without siege,

A straight fight?

Jana.6831:

we called in reinforcements,

Zerg vs. Zerg, yeah.

Jana.6831:

we capped their BLs so they would leave ours and so on -

Karma Training, got it.

Jana.6831:

do you now know what I mean with fights or do I have to listen to myself very carefully again?

I’m not a mind reader and you’re very stingy with details. I figured that when you said ‘fights’ you meant the same thing that everyone else was using the word for. Now, I’m not really sure what you mean at all.

Jana

ETA: And well, I guess I can’t convice you that your memories are wrong – but there’s good news for that: The ABLS are coming back and then you can see yourself that you can counter almost everything with siege and don’t have to run out of anything if you don’t want to. If you have people who know that on your server that is.
Btw: If you dislike the strategic aspect that much: EBG still is like it – you can counter most stuff from other objectives – and hey it works.

Can counter rams, open field trebs/catas.

Can’t counter proxy catas after AC LoS changes. Can’t counter tower trebs or spawn camp trebs without a zerg to face their zerg.

I think the counters to rams are too strong and the counters to proxy catas are too weak. Tower trebs are a silly Karma Training deal that unfortunately is inseparable from the map. It’s not strategy—it’s snowballing.

Sviel.7493:

I’m not a mind reader and you’re very stingy with details. I figured that when you said ‘fights’ you meant the same thing that everyone else was using the word for. Now, I’m not really sure what you mean at all.

I assumed that you knew the ABLs when you commented on them, I’m sorry, you obviously never experienced typical ABL fights around Hills and Bay – everybody else knows what I mean with it when I say it.
Other than that you’re not fun to talk with – so just leave it at that =)

sviel, what can i say i guess one persons nightmare is anothers fun fight. Can’t say I hold it against you if all you saw was the usual plays, and no doubt there were a bunch of predictable seiging ill give you that. I will say during the 2-3 years living in the alpine bl’s I saw a lot more creative mind games then the usual ninja catas. There were some great ninja havoc groups and coordinated multi zerg moves. Some great mind games. Getting nostalgic just thinking thru all the great now defunct guilds, friend and fo. rip retired players.

What I don’t understand is why people continu to think that the new DBL is fine until you learn it ? Sorry, I have learned the new map, and I hate it… Sorry I have learn the new mechanics and I hate it….
Before HoT was out I have say here on this forum that the auto upgrade and the WP change will kill a big part of the game…

Sich.7103:

What I don’t understand is why people continu to think that the new DBL is fine until you learn it ? Sorry, I have learned the new map, and I hate it… Sorry I have learn the new mechanics and I hate it….
Before HoT was out I have say here on this forum that the auto upgrade and the WP change will kill a big part of the game…

Some people just have the attitude where they convince themselves that a person is simply against change, any kind of change and is unwilling to even give it a try because they are so dead set against any kind of change. This is not very accurate for most people when it comes to the dbl, while there are some that started to like it after awhile, most dont essentially because those like you and me tried it and didnt like it, and no matter how much time we spend on it, we will not like it period, bad change is bad change, and its not the same as disliking the concept of change. Its not just a matter of opinion, anet can measure the metrics for activity levels for the dbl, and wvw pre/post hot, so there is data that can back up claims of it being a dead/unpopular. Of course for any player, nothing will ever beat firsthand experience.

Dana.8721:

sviel, what can i say i guess one persons nightmare is anothers fun fight. Can’t say I hold it against you if all you saw was the usual plays, and no doubt there were a bunch of predictable seiging ill give you that. I will say during the 2-3 years living in the alpine bl’s I saw a lot more creative mind games then the usual ninja catas. There were some great ninja havoc groups and coordinated multi zerg moves. Some great mind games. Getting nostalgic just thinking thru all the great now defunct guilds, friend and fo. rip retired players.

Can you give me some examples? Also, can you show me how those examples are exclusive to the Alpine map? I don’t doubt that they happened, I just don’t see how the map encouraged it rather than the easiest path.

Sich

What I don’t understand is why people continu to think that the new DBL is fine until you learn it ? Sorry, I have learned the new map, and I hate it… Sorry I have learn the new mechanics and I hate it….
Before HoT was out I have say here on this forum that the auto upgrade and the WP change will kill a big part of the game…

How did you know about the WP change before HoT was out? Were you a beta tester? A quick look through your post history (forgive me, I must be thorough in all things q_q) suggests that you were willing to try the WP change out at first but have since soured on it.

Anyway, I don’t have anything against you for not liking the map. I don’t think you’re dumb or anything. In fact, I really appreciate that you are a more defense-oriented player.

However, when it comes to debating the merits of a map, I prefer to stick to the facts. That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing wrong with the DBL, just that I’m not going to give any weight to nostalgia. It’s still perfectly possible for someone, even someone who isn’t a GvG groupie, to not like the maps. But things like ease of navigation and run times can be looked at with more objectivity than they’re being given. I know you dislike the HoT systems like upgrades and such but I see that as a separate issue—they’re going to be on Alpine too, probably.

With the Alpine Maps, you spent more time playing and engaging in something. There were spectacular 3 way fights, standoffs, sneaky ninja-captures.
The current Deserted Borderlands: you waste time navigating stretches of nothing, and make your way up or down and can’t reach your group/objectives in time, lots of annoying collision detection running in place against bushes, or like 3" steps.

Sviel.7493:

How did you know about the WP change before HoT was out? Were you a beta tester? A quick look through your post history (forgive me, I must be thorough in all things q_q) suggests that you were willing to try the WP change out at first but have since soured on it.

It was say here that the WP was only in the south tower, and only for the team who have the nearest spawn…
After that they have change the WP and bring them back to the keep, but always only for 1 team.
And yes I have say that anet forced us to play on the 3 map and we have to try this and the map can be playable with this. But I have always say that the WP should be only at T3.

The problem with the actual WP is that you need to be on the 3 map… It’s impossible at off peak time… And defending only your home map is impossible because of those WP…
As I don’t play too much at prime time I focus on the game at off peak time. And generally on the home BL off peak time mean 5 to 10 players maximum who are not on EB… And in the morning it was not more that 5… How do you want to defend all that map with 5 guys ? How do you want to spread on 3 map at 5 ?

And I say it again, the WP change was announced before we had the map.

I’ll take your word on the WP change announcement—I probably just missed it.

At any rate, were you able to defend all of Alpine with just 5 people? One of the reasons that I prefer Desert is that it is harder to rush a side keep since you can’t re-use catas and there are sentries along the most common paths. I still can’t defend the whole map with just 5 people (don’t even want that) but I am able to put up a much better fight.

Still, the WP change is not map specific. It’s not going to get better by going back to Alpine. I’d rather have Desert with the old waypoints than Alpine with the new.

I sort of wish we hadn’t gotten the new map and the HoT stuff all at once since it makes it harder to see what’s causing what. The new mechanics should have been phased in first and in as small of chunks as possible.

My home Dawn/Crag/Cliff hade a purpose so I cod be there scouting and feel that I did something good for my server.

Now I just hope they also fix Elementals and so AOE so it cant hit everything in the tower, so attackers are forced to use Ballista, Cat, Treb or AC to clean up defense.

Yes we where able to control alpine with 5 active people. We had generally some other people running around but who don’t speak with anyone.
But eb was always called when we had too much ennemy on the map, and people joined the Alpine map because they know that we are defending, and that if we hold the map we can have the WP.
Now that we can’t have the WP and that the tower have no tactical advantage at all, no one care about jumping on BL to defend something. All is useless on the DBL, except PPT structures have no value at all.

PS : We where on T3 EU at this time. Off peak time was quiet and few people was able to do the job. But at least there where job to do, and this mean something. With all auto or no WP available there no point to have T0 or T3.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Instead we’ll launch the quarterly update with improvements to Desert, use that as an opportunity to get the community’s feedback on those changes, then we’ll swap to Alpine when it’s ready.

I could bet that the WPs are one of those changes.