Guild Wars 2

Puck.9612:

Ansau.7326:

Basically, capping camps in DBL requires map knowledge, takes just a bit longer and no way is the drama some of you pretend. Most of you complain about needing to learn the paths to be nearly as good as before, and sorry but that is a lame argument..

It’s not about learning the paths, it’s about being restricted to them, as I already explained above…

Every structure has at least 2 paths, and most 3 or even more. Defining paths is a way to incentive fights, which is what most people is seeking.

So, some complain they don’t find fights, others complain about paths and want a more open map, which doesn’t promote more fights.

The thing seems to be to get complains from anywhere, because there must be complaints.

Ansau.7326:

Puck.9612:

Ansau.7326:

Basically, capping camps in DBL requires map knowledge, takes just a bit longer and no way is the drama some of you pretend. Most of you complain about needing to learn the paths to be nearly as good as before, and sorry but that is a lame argument..

It’s not about learning the paths, it’s about being restricted to them, as I already explained above…

Every structure has at least 2 paths, and most 3 or even more. Defining paths is a way to incentive fights, which is what most people is seeking.

Except it clearly doesn’t work on this map.
Look at EB vs. the desert bl, EB is pretty darn open but it actually does funnel people together. For example, If you are trying to head south towards bravost or umberglade you have choke points at the ogres, or the bridge in front of durios. Most of the map is set up like this. Open areas to allow fights with strategic choke points where you know you can ambush the enemy.
In the desert the paths restrict travel without funneling people together. You can have zergs run past each other without ever seeing each other. If you do happen to run into a much larger group you are screwed because you are stuck in a corridor together with no room to outmaneuver them. You end up pirate shipping and hoping they are just really bad players because they have every advantage in that situation. If you get a call for action across the map you can’t just head in that direction, you have to make detours to find the path that leads to that area, and hope the fight isn’t in an area with some annoying PvE mechanic like stealth sandstorms or constant cripple.

Just baddies blaming the new game mechanics imo. I like both.

Jana.6831:

It takes longer than 10s for the ring
Maybe you should stop the time again , although it’s completely irrelevant in this case.
And: If you count the times for your BL then assume that nothing on the map belongs to you – that were my conditions every day

ETA: I couldn’t flip the camps on enemy BLs (all 6) that fast because I was missing the WP but that was maybe 2-3 mins more.
ETA²: And yes this was without enemy players trying to save their camps.
ETA³: Just found an old video of me capping SE camp on the BLs – was 1 min 10 s (the ring took 30 s – don’t think it has changed but haven’t really paid attention to it since June).
So, it’s 6 camps on the Bls – 7 min – it took me 8 mins to get around. From citadel to NC it was ~30 s max, from citadel to NE/NW camp it was around 1,5-2 mins.
Unfortunately there’s so many small things that really annoy me on the DBLs that I don’t have the patience to try to find the optimal ways – but if nothing on the map is yours you’ll have a problem with all the PvE elements.

If nothing on the BL belongs to you (on your own BL), then the routes to the north side camps from spawn or north camp will be longer. That’ll add about 1 minute to your time since you only have to make the trip once in the circle. After that, barricades will not impede your progress. Whether or not that minute is a big deal is a matter of opinion—one we may disagree on, but that’s fine.

What PvE elements are you talking about, exactly? Just barricades? Or is there something else?

hypehype

This is such and easy answer i can’t believe it needs explaining.

people want to fight OTHER people with the builds they have spent months making.
The desert is so big you hardly see anyone to fight and when you do they are behind a pve wall or a pve siege defence(that ship bombardment is kittening ridiculous, kitten whoever thought that was a good idea) or a pve shrine or a pve op lord or a pve event(which is gone now). people come to wvw to pvp NOT pve.

dont understand how you can not understand your own game.

The airship isn’t on the desert BL. Also, your view of wvw is shamelessly one-dimensional.

Puck

To add to that:
If you were a lone roamer trying to avoid the enemy zerg, you could criss cross the map almost anywhere. You weren’t stuck running along a funneled path or forced to take the long way around which will triple the distance.

If I was trying to annoy the enemy I would do things like hit SE camp, tap hills, tap garri, tap bay, tap bay, flip NW. Travel times included that would take about 5-7 minutes. I don’t even want to think about how long that would take on the deserted bl.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gw2wvw.net%2Fimage%2Fdesert-borderlands-route-map

That doesn’t show every path, but it does show that you aren’t locked into any paths like a funnel.

Also, two zergs will never run past each other without knowing unless they’re both really, really dumb. Between sentries and general visibility, there’s no excuse for not knowing where a nearby zerg is.

Ansau.7326:

Well, you exaggerated quite a bit with those 8 minutes, as capping the 6 camps already took 6-7 minutes.

Jana.6831:

I’m just throwing in that I’ve been able to flip all camps on our BL (citadel WP as only WP) within one tick ( = 15 mins).
Try that on the new BLs.

Jana.6831:

ETA³: Just found an old video of me capping SE camp on the BLs – was 1 min 10 s (the ring took 30 s – don’t think it has changed but haven’t really paid attention to it since June).
So, it’s 6 camps on the Bls – 7 min – it took me 8 mins to get around.

Ansau.7326:

I’ve now run all camps in home and enemy bls. With my mesmer it takes around 11-12 minutes to reach all camps plus around 50s to take each of them, which makes around 16-17 minutes to flip all camps from a bl.

From what starting point? Are the shrines yours?
How many npcs in the camp do you kill? Just curious – it doesn’t really matter.

Ansau.7326:

- Had to deal with barricades and surround the north towers. Owning garrison in home BL and a north tower in enemy BL reduces easily 1-1.5 minute the entire journey.

Ok, still don’t know what the “base” of your estimation was – I don’t really care about the rest of what you wrote as I’m not really arguing pro or con DBLs – I just told how much time it took me to get around and actually do stuff on the APLs.

I’m now checking your “but the ring is only up for 20s” ;)

Dzagonur and Augury Rock, I’m coming for your camps.

Oh, expect a ETA
Oh and: Please read what I write when you refer to it ;)

ETA: Camps:
Alone EB: 28 s until the ring was filled
With 3 players from my server on EB: 24s
With Dredge as a help: 24s

Alone DBL: 28s.

So you guys might want to re-check the times you need for everything ;)

Puck.9612:

Except it clearly doesn’t work on this map.
Look at EB vs. the desert bl, EB is pretty darn open but it actually does funnel people together. For example, If you are trying to head south towards bravost or umberglade you have choke points at the ogres, or the bridge in front of durios. Most of the map is set up like this. Open areas to allow fights with strategic choke points where you know you can ambush the enemy.
In the desert the paths restrict travel without funneling people together. You can have zergs run past each other without ever seeing each other. If you do happen to run into a much larger group you are screwed because you are stuck in a corridor together with no room to outmaneuver them. You end up pirate shipping and hoping they are just really bad players because they have every advantage in that situation. If you get a call for action across the map you can’t just head in that direction, you have to make detours to find the path that leads to that area, and hope the fight isn’t in an area with some annoying PvE mechanic like stealth sandstorms or constant cripple.

You’re implying DBL is just a labyrinth, which is plainly wrong.
On both sides of northern and southern camps there are big open areas. Same between south towers and respawns. All upstairs of fire keep is an empty open area. All the area around north towers is also open space. And around the center there’re also open places. Only structures and nearby keeps have more defined paths.
But you also fail to see that these more defined paths are a key design of DBL to, in fact, disincentive the blob metagame. It’s like you’re complaining about a ferrari not doing well offroad…

And the rest is just a show of how badly you interpret the new borderland. The worst thing you can do is to play like if it was Alpine, and that’s why you fail so much.
- In desert you don’t cross all the map to defend, you should have covered the map so there’s people all around. And even if a full blob map shows to take a keep, with the new keep designs and with such strong walls there’s time for everything.
- In desert you should pay attention on map flips, enemies movements through sentries and get your mind skills to predict where a zerg is going to. Not I go wherever I please without thinking the consequences.
- And please, don’t tell me you’re not skilled enough to scape from some dudes you see at range 5000-7000 with such close gaps, map levels and structures covering such large space…

Sorry, but this argument about how badly tunneled is desert doesn’t hold itself by any point.

@Jana, my time calculations are timed from base respawn until I reach all camps. Shrines only affect you in earth keep, but the proper route doesn’t involve going through it, unless you own earth keep, in which case you won’t be affected.

Ansau.7326:

@Jana, my time calculations are timed from base respawn until I reach all camps. Shrines only affect you in earth keep, but the proper route doesn’t involve going through it, unless you own earth keep, in which case you won’t be affected.

Just tried it on my main who is a thief and runs with signet of shadows and has got swiftness on his steal and I needed 11 mins. (He was the one with the 8 mins as well).
I pretended that nothing on our BL was ours – so I ran the long route around the towers.
Route was: NW, SW, S, SE, NE and N. I’m not so sure the eastern route is equally long, I think it might be longer, will try again at some point.
The Earth shrine is the one that’s the most annoying, but the air shrines are also pretty bad. And this is for only one person. 5 to a small zerg won’t have bigger problems on the DBLs but large zergs to blobs have. Also roamers; you said that the DBLs take some brain – not really. I was once capping “all” camps on all maps for 6 hours (was the only one of my server online) – and 30 enemies were chasing me. Guess what kind of mindgames that were (they didn’t manage to get 695 points btw) – I wouldn’t be able to pull the same off on the DBLs as the sentries will always give my position away – or I’m being held by a barricade for 5 mins.
I get that some people like the DBL but it’s not a wvw map – you could basically make a guild vs guild guild mission map out of it. That might actually be fun.

ETA: And this is just the map layout without towers and keeps that also have got layout problems. The fights in all ABL keeps were a lot more fun than what I’ve encountered on the DBLs so far. We have been from 5-80 and none of the fights were somewhat memorable.

Regarding Puck/Ansau discussion: I have to agree with Puck when it comes to lower tiers (that we’ve both been used to). We don’t have the people to spread out for those maps. A few roamers could easier control larger areas in Alpine.

I can see Ansau’s arguments better in a tier with more people. I haven’t been in a high enough tier for that since way before HoT, so can’t really comment.

joneirikb.7506:

Regarding Puck/Ansau discussion: I have to agree with Puck when it comes to lower tiers (that we’ve both been used to). We don’t have the people to spread out for those maps. A few roamers could easier control larger areas in Alpine.

I can see Ansau’s arguments better in a tier with more people. I haven’t been in a high enough tier for that since way before HoT, so can’t really comment.

1 of my accounts is on T3 and no one there has the man power or inclination to station people around an empty map on the off chance a zerg is going to come karma train.
Maybe If defenders had something to do, like upgrade their bl so they could build wp’s in their keeps they might stick around, but currently the map is running on auto pilot and most roamers are sticking to EB.

Was actually thinking more in terms of attacking-roamers, you where talking about running zig zag earlier to tag and capture different objectives. This was very easy to do on Alpine with small groups or even solo sometimes.

Desert map seems to lock you more into the area you’re on, save a few spots where you can run over Oasis to get to another place somewhat quickly.

Ansau plays on Baruch Bay, which is probably the most stacked server in EU. Currently BB and SFR are the only “very high” status servers in EU. Both in EU and NA most servers are so called “medium” population, meaning that their WvWvW population is actually really low.

I am sure the experience would be different if the number of players per border is 1/10th of BB has. For example we have already been for many weeks being outnumbered on 3-4 maps pretty much all the time, except circa 5 hours at night when the Deso night crew is on. Having just 1-2 players on the entire map means you simply cannot afford to have scouts, but 1-2 players is enough to flip all the keeps and towers if those objectives are undefended by human players. This also assumes that those 1-2 players are running good builds, especially air keep lord can be tricky with all the CC. Side note: I find that the earth keep is the easiest to solo, you can take both the inner and outer wall down with just 1 catapult and the earth lord is easiest to kill with just 1-2 players. This is probably just bad design as I think the earth keep should not be the easiest.

Side note: You could flip all the keeps in the Alpine border with 1-2 players. I don’t have timings, but I am sure it took shorter time to flip a fully upgraded keep in the old border. I used to do sneak captures in the prime time, just me and some random Desolation player or two, while our zerg was keeping enemy “busy” and back then there wasn’t the power creep from HoT, so the pre-HoT did less DPS. Now there is usually no zerg, so it is just those few players on the map. And the new map just suck when you have so few players. The new maps are designed for much larger number of players than most servers can now muster. And calling that “a learn to play issue” and telling that most players are too lazy or dumb to learn the new mechanisms is just plain dishonesty.

Scouting is dead for many reasons. One main reason is that scouting is now so boring with too little things to do. Upgrades run now automatically, while before HoT they required human interaction. And enemy comes to attack once in a blue moon, so you are just wasting your time and getting no rewards, no action, no fun. Arenanet should increase the rewards for successful defense and in general make WvWvW give as good rewards as world/map meta events in pve.

The fact is that numbers still matter in defending. I haven’t seen any small numbers, like 1-3 players, being able to defend vs much higher enemy force, like 20+ for a significant amount of time. I consider many of the German servers really pro with Arrow Carts and other siege. Yet a good commander can take a keep defended by them if the attacker has larger numbers. Can you prove me with wrong with some video footage and where the attacker, which is outnumbering the defenders, is using solid tactics?

I remember just one occasion where I was alone able to defend fire keep vs 5 enemies. I managed to kill 3 of them solo couple of times in a row, because I was playing a reaper and enemy wasn’t smart enough. I was constantly using the the terrain to my advantage to avoid being focused fired by many and retreating through portals.

If Arenanet strategy was to make the BLs to make enemy split the zergs, they failed miserably. Now the borderlands are empty besides 1-2 border hopping zergs, which flip everything vs not much any defense. If majority of the players don’t want to play on the new borders, Arenanet should draw the conclusions and bring the old borderland back as quickly as possibly. By forcing the players to adjust to something they don’t like is a recipe for making the game dead!

Puck.9612:

joneirikb.7506:

Regarding Puck/Ansau discussion: I have to agree with Puck when it comes to lower tiers (that we’ve both been used to). We don’t have the people to spread out for those maps. A few roamers could easier control larger areas in Alpine.

I can see Ansau’s arguments better in a tier with more people. I haven’t been in a high enough tier for that since way before HoT, so can’t really comment.

1 of my accounts is on T3 and no one there has the man power or inclination to station people around an empty map on the off chance a zerg is going to come karma train.
Maybe If defenders had something to do, like upgrade their bl so they could build wp’s in their keeps they might stick around, but currently the map is running on auto pilot and most roamers are sticking to EB.

T3 NA or EU? I’ve been doing plenty of scouting on SoS and, lately, several people have been stepping up to help out. There are also still some old mainstays that do amazing work. Scouts on SoS actually left well before HoT (they were mostly in one scouting guild that transferred), but there was no disproportional decline after HoT dropped. If anything, our scouts have been some of the most resilient folks.

Deniara Devious

Having just 1-2 players on the entire map means you simply cannot afford to have scouts, but 1-2 players is enough to flip all the keeps and towers if those objectives are undefended by human players.

If there are 1-2 players on the map, they better both be good scouts or nothing is going to last long. That said, there’s only so much they can do…I’ve been in that situation quite often during off hours—both as the scout and the player flipping everything.

The new maps are designed for much larger number of players than most servers can now muster. And calling that “a learn to play issue” and telling that most players are too lazy or dumb to learn the new mechanisms is just plain dishonesty.

You’re absolutely right about this. However, if WvW is to thrive, we need maps that work best when they are full. Thus, I don’t think that’s a reason to scrap the whole thing, though it is a valid reason to postpone it.

Scouting is dead for many reasons.

Queuing upgrades was never the fun part about scouting, at least for me. I do enjoy the times where people are attacking more, but there’s still plenty of that going on in my tiers. Again, I think that’s a population issue, not a map issue—neither Alpine nor Desert is fun alone.

The fact is that numbers still matter in defending.

Numbers should matter in defending, but as it stands, they are the only factor. I’ve been able to defend 1 or 2 v 20 a couple of times on Desert, but only because the enemy comms were too busy whispering smack talk and death threats to try any sort of intelligent assault. They also gave up if their siege was destroyed even once. I’m hoping that addressing this is something Anet is looking at, but they are characteristically silent on the issue.

First of all, server status also counts EoTM, so the result is a bit skewed.

• Baruch is mostly a pve server, the “very high” status is not the best representation of the actual wvw population we have, as a lot of people only show whenever a tag is up, there’s no roaming culture, and a lot only play for 1-2 hours per day to kill the time and do the dailies. SAB came and Baruch population has decreased considerably. And whenever an international server gets stacked they beat us easily, like it can be seen nowadays with Piken.
  Then, Baruch has a very volatile coverage along 24 hours. While it is true at night we are the server with the highest coverage, it is also true in some timezones we’re outnumbered even against mid table servers. Coveragewars2 is not updated, but I remember Baruch being 14th or 15th in mornings or late afternoons, while being 2nd or 3rd at nights for several weeks.
  But also, I’ve been playing during those offtimes of my server. Yesterday, as an example, there was just a 25 man zerg in EB, while borders were completely deserted.
  So my experience and opinion aren’t based only on high population situations.

• I’m not calling people lazy or dumb because they’re not successful when playing alone in these borderlands. I’m doing it to those who criticize DBL just because it involves a different mentality than Alpine, it is taken as an easy target for issues of WvW not related to the map, overexaggerate travel times and do all these from the ignorance, showed by how little people know how the new map works.
  Sorry, but people saying new borderlands are bad because you cannot longer flip it in 12 minutes or you need to pay attention to the map geography is silly and ridiculous.

• Any map will fail if there’s no population there. Alpine was extremely boring during 3-6am and EB before HoT, when pretty much everybody (at least on my tiers) was on Alpines fighting each other while waiting for HoT in hopes of a new WvW experience.
  Even pve maps are horrible if there’s no population. I remember back in the first days when Cursed Shore was insane due to event farming. Later they nerfed it and the map became unworthy to step.

• Scouting and roaming purpose is entirely anet’s fault with auto upgrades, guild upgrades impossible for small guilds, gimmick central event (and now lack of it).
  This, the exaggerated verticality in some places and the excessive pve stuff present are the only things that can be complained with solid arguments. Everything else needs personal preference or biased opinion to be held.

• Well, you cannot expect to be able to defend anything against +20 people with just 1 or 2 guys. That would make defense OP and WvW would become boring as hell. There’s a point where numbers prevail, and should do. But 1-2 against 10? That’s easily possible.
  I don’t have the precisely footage you’re asking me, but here is something similar. 2 mid-size guilds and some randoms vs a german blob with like 8-10 arrow carts if I remember well:
  https://youtu.be/bTvC5aMHrSM?t=503

Bringing back Alpine BL neither is a solution. Half of 2015 wasn’t fun at all, and people had a lot of hopes in HoT to bring a new and fresh map that stopped the OPness and boredom of karma train and golem rushes (how many have you seen in desert?). It seems people have forgotten that.

Let’s be real and clear, playerbase has taken DBL as the culprit of the issues of WvW, when the reality is the map is not that badly designed, and with some tweaks it can actually become very good.
There are far more irritating issues, like population and class balances, which haven’t been targeted because they already existed before HoT and people already complained about them. Doing it now to them wouldn’t be as louder as DBL, which is a completely new thing.
It’s like the new guy in school being bullied because he’s new.

Ansau.7326:

First of all, server status also counts EoTM, so the result is a bit skewed.
* Baruch is mostly a pve server, the "very high" status is not the best representation of the actual wvw population we have,

Liked and agreed to a lot of what you wrote (and some I don’t agree with), but quoting this small bit just to point out that the population calculation changed (was it last year? time flies).

So the server status now only count WvW, not pve or pvp or anything else.

While I can’t say it for a fact, I’m fairly certain that it doesn’t include EotM either, believe a Dev answered that one specifically.

I’ve seen both pros and cons of the Alpines and Deserts and I think it would be nice if the server could just vote-choose what BL they want as their BL for the next week at reset (like in PvP). It’s their BL after all. Besides you can release more BLs later and have them in the BL pool.

Just don’t worry, they will add rotation… They just bring back ABL before the rotation system is readly. But DBL will not be removed….

Yeah I guess they would. My point is for people to have an active part in selecting their current BL, rather than passive approach.

Remake both into Battle Ground maps, and add both. Just remove the Border Lands system, 3 copies of same map is just boring as heck. Then people could go play on whatever map they wanted to.

Bit late to be jumping into this, and i’ve wanted alpine back since december. BUT. I’ve been giving these bls a solid try over this week and they’re really decent. sure, it has its issues, but thinking about it, i don’t want to go back to vanilla alpine map.. this one is just more entertaining to play on, better to defend, better to attack, and i know it’s not relevant to wvw, but it’s nice to look at too. + the terrain is fantastic, easy for a smaller group to move around relatively unseen, unlike old map where you’re scouted as soon as you leave spawn.

I’d rather they just replace the towers/maybe get rid of one of the levels of the new desert bl (by level, i mean height, the maps is layerd) so that from the towers you can treb keeps, and such like in the old map. other than that, remove the barricades, and i’d be content with this map.

Edit, if you are bringing alpine back, at least rotate the maps, 1 month alpine, 1 desert, or something.

I liked many parts of the Desert Borderlands – the vertical terrain, a lot of the tricks / traps and terrain obstructions, and of course the graphical improvements.

The main problems I saw were:
1) way too big (hard to find people to fight)
2) confusing terrain, especially in keeps, made it hard to know how to get from point A to point B. This created a learning curve that doesn’t really add to the gameplay, it just separates those who know the convoluted map from those who don’t.

Space. All the space i want to kitte around all the red circles as a mesmer. Blink acctuly works for the most part. No shrine effects(ty for not including them in alpine). Thats generaly it. Oh and green/white is much more relaxing for the eyes.

The appeal?

The map being open instead of full of choke points. There are as many roads to an objective as you care instead of 1 or 2.

The map is also a lot more agreeable to navigate. A lot… The new one was made as if gliding was going to be part of it but isn’t. If you want to go from A to B on alpine you just do it. On the DBL you have to pass D than go down to Q and back up to E before getting to B. kittening annoying.

The objective have a real strategic value as opposed to the DBL who are merely PPT objects.

The maps are not saturated with pve gimmicks.

The map size is more suitable to the game we like to play.

Much easier to scout too.

And this is someone who doesn’t like EoTM and karma train who say this.

The Alpine border is only great when you compare it to the desert one. Its decent but has its own problems however i’d prefer to play it every single time.

The DBL is a karma map, nothing more, made purely for PPT’ers to cap/recap/recap ad infinitum. No structure is strategic and nothing other than keep is generally worth defending. They are all independent towers and have no relation to each other unlike ABL where at least towers and keeps were worth something.

The DBL WP system is just kittening shocking and whoever came up with it needs a boot in the nads.

It’s also too gimicky a map however at least they acknowledged how bad the laser event was and disabled it, pity they still insist we all want oodles of pve in our wvw. The shifting rock barricades and stealth channels serve no purpose and just irritate and interupt fights.

It had snow and it had a wp system that wasn’t stupid and broken. Other than that it wasn’t anything special…..it was pretty much just a flat fighting field with a giant lake nobody ever wanted to go near….that’s why we wanted a new map to begin with lol.

Decado.9304:

The Alpine border is only great when you compare it to the desert one. Its decent but has its own problems however i’d prefer to play it every single time.

The DBL is a karma map, nothing more, made purely for PPT’ers to cap/recap/recap ad infinitum. No structure is strategic and nothing other than keep is generally worth defending. They are all independent towers and have no relation to each other unlike ABL where at least towers and keeps were worth something.

The DBL WP system is just kittening shocking and whoever came up with it needs a boot in the nads.

It’s also too gimicky a map however at least they acknowledged how bad the laser event was and disabled it, pity they still insist we all want oodles of pve in our wvw. The shifting rock barricades and stealth channels serve no purpose and just irritate and interupt fights.

Wut? Alpine is the perfect map for karma train. A map you can flip in 12-15 min without any issue.

Alpine is more appealing in just about every way. I don’t agree with everyone who says Desert BL is beautiful, I think its ugly.

Alpine is green. And snowy. Its reminiscent of actual human civilization, and human history. Like medieval Europe or China. It has keeps that look like castles. And towers that look like towers. Walls that look like walls.

Desert is all beige and tan and barren. Its got Asuran type architecture. The keeps look like… I don’t even know what they look like, some Asuran crap.

Oh and I forgot to mention the “gathering nodes”; why am I harvesting plants from some lever in a keep? Lame. Put the plants growing out in the wild. And the minerals as exposed veins.

Then there’s everything else that others have said. Especially the maze like structure of Desert – that’s the biggest turn off to me.

Ansau.7326:

Wut? Alpine is the perfect map for karma train. A map you can flip in 12-15 min without any issue.

K-train as in no defending, solid rotation pvd capping of structures as per EotM.

Ansau.7326:

Wut? Alpine is the perfect map for karma train. A map you can flip in 12-15 min without any issue.

But that was possible only because gates could be max reinforced.
Make gates on Alpine to go Fortified too and its much harder.
Btw you can flip DBL in 20 minutes.

DBL is a bit harder to K-Train because you can’t reuse catas on the side keeps and those keeps are also a bit further towards the edge of the map. However, when comparing how hard it is to take undefended structures, it’s never going to be much of a difference.

What does help is that it is easier to delay attackers on DBL since they’re not trebbing from spawn/towers, there are fewer places for proxy catas that are truly uncounterable and there are chokes which make it easier to use supply traps. Some of it is just the foolish stubbornness of old guard players to adapt to new situations, but either way it makes putting the brakes on the K-Train a feasible goal.

On Alpine, if they brought 15-20 people in the off-hours, you could only mildly annoy them unless they were really, really dumb. In Desert, you can make them work for it a little bit.

Hule.8794:

Ansau.7326:

Wut? Alpine is the perfect map for karma train. A map you can flip in 12-15 min without any issue.

But that was possible only because gates could be max reinforced.
Make gates on Alpine to go Fortified too and its much harder.
Btw you can flip DBL in 20 minutes.

There was more than just only fortified walls and doors.
- You could take down both outside and inside with the same catas.
- Travelling between camps was a bit shorter and between keeps much more than DBL.
- Lords with joke health pool.
- Sentries didn’t spot you.
- Structures were much smaller and simpler = less time spent between outside walls and lord.

When you spend 99% of your time on EB, you don’t want to have to learn another map just to rush back and defend hills or bay then it’s back to EB.

@Ansau
some points are valid.
- taking down outside and inside walls was bad, but not as bad heigh advantage at air keep where you basicly have zero chance to get enemy catas down. It also allowed defenders to build balista at inner and shoot down the catas before they breached outer. Or just use canon. Inteligent people also used canon splash damage as prevention against bubbles.

-traveling between camps is about the same time as on DBL,same for keeps, different is time needed to run form center of one keep(lord room) to center of other keep, but to walls and gates at outer, DBL is faster

-Lords will be adjusted

-sentries, on Alpine it will make sense if sentries will spot you, on Alpine they are strategically positioned, not so much on DBL through

-smaller structures helps defenders actually, having to run 5 minutes around the keep to be able to scout which sneaky wall/gate is enemy hitting is annoying. On Alpine Hills scout can be at outer wall and easily in 10 seconds be able to scout south/north.

its not a kitten maze

the only thing that could be halfway confusing about alpine is how you get to the top of the cliffs to attack the two north towers and Garrison keep

in dbl you need to hire a local to get anywhere

i don’t think that’s even that bad, dbl can be fun once you learn the tricks and secrets, but it’s not that fun when it’s the only option

@Sarrs. Agreed (In my first post I misunderstood what you were trying to say so I remade this)

Its pretty easy to learn DBL. Theres multiple routes to each location so your movements aren’t as predictable for the enemy to guess. But theres multiple places scouts can go to check those routes giving scouts something to do.

Remember how when you were going to nw camp and EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE ENEMY TEAM knew how to funnel you into a kill box (victory worm) or where to go to head you off? (south entrance of the camp or the switchback to the east.) It really didn’t take much effort to figure it out. And since the entire area was one massive field up to that point you could have one guy sitting* on the wall of bay and hed have a hand free to press the push to talk to say “Oh there going NW camp”.

Anyone that says alpine was great for scouting has probably never scouted it before. It was EASY to scout. It was by NO means fun. Spending 45 minutes of your 2 hour gaming session on a wall HOPING the place your “Scouting” gets hit wasn’t hit wasn’t entertaining and certainly wasn’t PvP. Theres a reason most people started watching movies. Becuase you didn’t even have to pay attention to notice the giant ball of red names out in the middle of the open.

(Alpine was great for scouting my human female meta behind)

Hule.8794:

@Ansau
some points are valid.
- taking down outside and inside walls was bad, but not as bad heigh advantage at air keep where you basicly have zero chance to get enemy catas down. It also allowed defenders to build balista at inner and shoot down the catas before they breached outer. Or just use canon. Inteligent people also used canon splash damage as prevention against bubbles.

-traveling between camps is about the same time as on DBL,same for keeps, different is time needed to run form center of one keep(lord room) to center of other keep, but to walls and gates at outer, DBL is faster

-Lords will be adjusted

-sentries, on Alpine it will make sense if sentries will spot you, on Alpine they are strategically positioned, not so much on DBL through

-smaller structures helps defenders actually, having to run 5 minutes around the keep to be able to scout which sneaky wall/gate is enemy hitting is annoying. On Alpine Hills scout can be at outer wall and easily in 10 seconds be able to scout south/north.

It is pointless to talk about defending when we’re discussing the time needed to flip a map, as it mostly happens when there’re no enemies to defend structures.

Topography more conducive to fighting. ABL movement is pretty much straight line between 2 points, and since the BL is so flat and open, you can usually see enemy forces and intercept. There’s multiple paths between DBL points, and all of them are in channels that can be used as chokes. And then you have all those stupid stealth gimmicks around garri. Basically, you have many more places to hide on a map that is much less populated. Size is an issue too, especially the size of towers and keeps. ABL keeps took about 15 seconds for one scout to check ALL doors and breakable walls. You need a party of 5 to watch DBL keeps. That means more people doing boring stuff. Heck, you could fit the entire ABL Hills keep INSIDE the Fire keep lord’s room.

I’m honestly ok with the banners and airstrikes and other gimmicks. I really just two things from anet for wvw: 1) bring back ABL and leave it as close to pre-HoT condition as possible, and 2) stop making big changes to wvw and start making smaller, incremental changes that address player wants.

Why desert bls are bad:
- Desert BLs are a pain to navigate. Always a cliff, wall, barracade or PvE garbage with things popping out of the ground or crippling you to contend with.
- Desert BLs are too big, it takes 3x longer to get around the map and when you’re a roamer like me, it makes finding fights impossible.
- Desert BLs have WAY too many choke points that screw up larger fights.
- Walls are too tall in some places making it nearly impossibly to kill enemy siege.
- Too much PvE aspect to the map with things blowing you off high cliffs at one keep, again with the crippling stuff, the walls that randomly pop up in your face.
- The map looks built to have gliders, yet we don’t have those either.

Now, the reason why Alpine:
- Alpine map worked for open field combat, not as many choke points.
- Alpine map was more open and flat which made for better navigation, less confusion or aggravation.
- Objectives in the Alpine maps were harder to defend, you had to actually try.
- The ruins made roaming VERY interesting, especially on days where the daily was for ruin capture. It promoted smaller fights.

I think the Alpine maps were well thought out with a WvW play in mind. The Desert maps were thought out as if there were going to just be a lot of PvE players there. The CEO of the company said WvW players really just like PvE, he was wrong and the MASSIVE population drop when they released these new maps has to have proved that. I know many people who are coming back when the Alpine maps are brought back. There is another pro of Alpine, it will bring back WvW players.

It really annoys me to see people make blatantly false claims about DBL. There are legitimate reasons to dislike it and some people hit on those—but there are also gross exaggerations. Worse, there’s the idealistic and false claims about Alpine, as if people have already forgotten it. And then there’s all these zerglings and wall ornaments claiming to represent scouts.

Why can’t we consider things with some semblance of objectivity? Why all the drama?

Sviel.7493:

Why can’t we consider things with some semblance of objectivity? Why all the drama?

We will see soon enough how good the Alpine maps really were. And yes, I expect lots of moaning and whining when people understand they are not that good. And then they start another campaign about some feature removed 3 years that could magically fix EVERYTHING.

FogLeg.9354:

We will see soon enough how good the Alpine maps really were.

How soon? To my knowledge Arenanet still hasn’t given any date when the Alpine borderlands would be back. The next big update will bring us “improved” Desert borderland and many other changes, but not the Alpine border. Correct me if I am wrong.

I think Arenanet has gotten their priorities wrong and players like you are really not helping. I know a LOT players who used to play WvWvW crazy hours every day and pretty much vanished from WvWvW after the HoT fiasco or come back once in a blue moon to check how things are but leave soon. I know it is not just the new map, it was combination of many things, crazy power creep with the new elite specs + revenant, new upgrade system, annoying gimmicks (tactivators, air ship at SMC etc), grindy guild upgrade system etc. All that together killed WvWvW. Activity levels are low all over.

Arenanet should have instead immediately acknowledged their mistakes and revert back to the original situation. New map should have never been a top priority and trying to “fix” the crazily overdesign messy map called Desert BL is just like trying to apply a plaster to a mortal wound. They should have instead of focused on:
1. Better rewards (equal to pve Silverwastes/world boss/seasonal farm + WvWvW specific unique weapon, armor and glider skins)
2. Better balance (balance the professions and skills, number of players between servers)
3. Fix glitches, bugs and get rid of lag and disconnects (everybody wants this)

The more time we wait for those 3, the more players just leave. No matter what is the map, but the map also matters.

I have no idea about World vs World or Open-map massive scale PvP really works, but…

It sounds like the main reasons for people to hate DL is the same reason why they would hate vanilla Planetside 2 or some other open-map massive scale PvP. If the fighting doesn’t happen instantly, it’s boring.

Planetside 2 was actually, in a sense, far more like Desert Borderlands than Alpine. But the game designers actually changed it around a lot so it became a lot more like Alpine. All the smaller things like transporting your troops across the map through ground and air transportation got replaced with instantly re-spawning on the same area and getting back into the fight immediately. If I remember right, their way of implementing securing and escorting supply routes (like the dolyaks) was highly unpopular. Planetside 2’s World PvP design transitioned from a few massive scale fights and mostly smaller scale fights in many parts of the map to how Alpine Borderlands sounds like now: Big fights all the time in one place.

It seems many of the people I knew and on the game’s forums, they all quit because all the cool stuff that made “realistic” or “interesting war pvp” were gone. However, many people still play it, most likely for the awesome fights you get in large scales. The only thing that stayed at all and always did was the environment. They got wide open plains to choke points to lower or higher elevation, with each different map being massive AND having differences to the other when it comes to terrain.

What I wonder now is that is there a really “wrong” or “right” way to this? I think both sides apply to different preferences of the consumers. Indeed, the way vanilla Planetside 2 and Desert Borderlands is delays or prevents massive fights from happening all the time, but people do seem enjoy having mechanical and environmental variables to consider when it comes to capturing and winning objectives. On the other hand, many people will hate this because they just want to get straight to the massive fighting, and having many mechanical and environmental variables will only delay that.

By the looks of it, it seems many people prefer the latter far more than the foremost as Planetside 2 changed drastically to appeal to the consumers who just want to get straight to large fights, and it looks the same for Guild Wars 2’s WvWvW. Is it wrong or right? That all depends on your preference. But according to the mass, it seems World PvP similar to the Alpine Borderlands is the most favorite kind of World PvP.

Uber.7623:

I have no idea about World vs World or Open-map massive scale PvP really works, but…

It sounds like the main reasons for people to hate DL is the same reason why they would hate vanilla Planetside 2 or some other open-map massive scale PvP. If the fighting doesn’t happen instantly, it’s boring.

Planetside 2 was actually, in a sense, far more like Desert Borderlands than Alpine. But the game designers actually changed it around a lot so it became a lot more like Alpine. All the smaller things like transporting your troops across the map through ground and air transportation got replaced with instantly re-spawning on the same area and getting back into the fight immediately. If I remember right, their way of implementing securing and escorting supply routes (like the dolyaks) was highly unpopular. Planetside 2’s World PvP design transitioned from a few massive scale fights and mostly smaller scale fights in many parts of the map to how Alpine Borderlands sounds like now: Big fights all the time in one place.

It seems many of the people I knew and on the game’s forums, they all quit because all the cool stuff that made “realistic” or “interesting war pvp” were gone. However, many people still play it, most likely for the awesome fights you get in large scales. The only thing that stayed at all and always did was the environment. They got wide open plains to choke points to lower or higher elevation, with each different map being massive AND having differences to the other when it comes to terrain.

What I wonder now is that is there a really “wrong” or “right” way to this? I think both sides apply to different preferences of the consumers. Indeed, the way vanilla Planetside 2 and Desert Borderlands is delays or prevents massive fights from happening all the time, but people do seem enjoy having mechanical and environmental variables to consider when it comes to capturing and winning objectives. On the other hand, many people will hate this because they just want to get straight to the massive fighting, and having many mechanical and environmental variables will only delay that.

By the looks of it, it seems many people prefer the latter far more than the foremost as Planetside 2 changed drastically to appeal to the consumers who just want to get straight to large fights, and it looks the same for Guild Wars 2’s WvWvW. Is it wrong or right? That all depends on your preference. But according to the mass, it seems World PvP similar to the Alpine Borderlands is the most favorite kind of World PvP.

Its not quite comparable, because the reason this particular kind of hate is on dbl is that GW2 had both your aspects.

You had the big square battleground and the smaller more instant skirmish focused rectangular borders.

Now, we have the big square battleground and the even bigger square border where people dont get the more focused skirmish they seek.

So to answer your question on whether it is “wrong” or “right” to have such a design?

It was right.
Now its wrong.
It does not depend on our preferences because GW2 balanced it.

Predictabilty, not having to change and learn new things. Easier. Reason for most wanting it back though they won’t admit it.