Guild Wars 2

This is the question. Personally, I’m not really interested in the Alpine BL so long as the center of the map feels like it is missing meaningful objectives. Borderland Bloodlust doesn’t even work with the new system.
Of course, maybe the Alpine BL really does mean everything to other people, so I’d like to know that, and I’m sure the devs would too.

That depends on how the map will be presented to us. If the waypoints are permanently closed and the HoT autoupgrade + gimmicks in place, I don’t see a reason to play there.

What Alpine had as advantages were more open space and (possibly) closer objectives that could interact with each other in siege scenarios.

It’s supposed to be better for roaming as well, but I found it was a lot easier to find enemies on DBL because I knew they’d be funnelled through certain parts of the map in order to get to others. So I don’t understand that one.

I’ll go there occasionally but in my tier you have to go to EB because there’s not enough population to spread across 4 maps. So unless we get a population boost it’s going to be much the same story.

alpine is sooooo much better because it is manageable in turns of travel and it is valuable in terms of ppt and strategic locations. Whoever earned the wp’d keeps controlled the maps most efficiently.
e.g. if a big zerg comes in to take a wp’d bay from the home team you could almost guarantee a huge 90 vs 90 assjam of guilds fighting in multiple locations over that keep and then the cupcake server would siege hills while that was all happening. It was GREAT!

I still have 8,754,233,450,111³ of Flax and Elder wood to gather for +5.
See you in 2023!

<grumble.. grumble.. dev’s… grumble>

Though the I’m honestly thrilled to get Alpine back. I very much dislike the Desert map, theme and all.

It might bring me back for a bit. However, it’s still probably gonna feel stale since we’ve used that map for 3 years. Many people have already moved on to other things, so it still might feel empty. The game seems like it’s had a content drought in general. Anet should be commended for having to guts to admit their mistake and change back to the Alpine map, however they’re really just working their way back to zero. They’d still need to find a way to add new wvw content that ppl like in order to retain ppl for the long haul.

They’re appeasing remaining players, all DBl did was not bring people back

Yes me and some friends will return the day the old maps are back

It will get me a bit interested in the game mode again, but Anet still have to address the damage and CC issues in WvW if they ever hope to make combat in this game mode fun again.

It’s convinced a few guildmembers of mine to return once it comes out.

A reversion of lost guild upgrades which we will never hope to achieve and the removal of the new BS in terms of banners/levers would likely bring everyone back from my guild.

Kraljevo.2801:

That depends on how the map will be presented to us. If the waypoints are permanently closed and the HoT autoupgrade + gimmicks in place, I don’t see a reason to play there.

This ^^. I just hope ANET keepss the HoT junk out of it.

I said this on another topic, figure it’s fitting here as well.

STIHL.2489:

No one wants the Alpine back really. They got stale, but what people really want is:

• Swift Direct, Easy Travel, which the Alpine provided and the Deseret did not.

• They don’t want a map full of Gimmicks. WvW for most intents is more a War Zone not a Theme Park. There does not need to be any distractions there to keep us entertained. Thus the Alpine was simple and direct, the Desert is not.

• Distinct Wall Lines for the Buildings. The Alpine map made it easy to know exactly where the walls where, and the layout could be seen from the Mini-Map. The Desert has this convoluted set up where it’s not all walls, and you can’t see the distinct outline from the Mini-Map.

So it’s not that anyone wants the Alpine back, it’s that the Desert fails to preform so badly they would rather go back to the Alpine then continue to deal with the Desert.

Truth is, I would rather they fix the Desert, and learn how to do it right, so they can make more maps.

No, the map is quite irrelevant.

I want competitive matches that involve fights for victory, neither just a pvd-race nor fights for nothing (scrims).

I will come back.
But I don’t want to see the HoT crap…
And Anet need to work on other stuff (class balance issue, wvw reward, …) to make me stay.

I am very sceptical a new (old) map is going to cut it.

Since the June 2015 patch the quality of the combat has suffered a lot. Too much power creep, too much damage, too many unplayable builds, too many dumbed down mechanics. HoT made everything worse. Elite specialisations became the only way to play. The power creep got pushed to a whole new level. The combat degenerated to blowing up or getting blown up. Powerful abilities with low cool downs. Skills combining offense and defense. Intelligent play is a thing of the past. It’s all about spamming harder. Worst of hall, playing with a core build feels like being “upscaled” all over again.

That said, I actually believe that the Alpine map will highlight the many problems even more. Visions of hammer Revenants and Dragon Hunters spamming their CC and damage on Hills choke points (the bridge on inner and the bridge from water camp for example) give me a cold sweat. It’s going to be a lot of “fun”.

It can’t bring me back because I’ve never been gone. However, I might start roaming and scouting again.

if they keep the hellish hot crap out

I would also come back, not for the map itselfs, but alpine offers so many other ‘jobs’ you could do like scouting or roaming like volpennieh said. I would give it a try again, maybe just for the memories, maybe just for couple a weeks – depends on the HoT stuff and how they will be played from other players.

Too little, too late.

After 8k hours in WvW I finally had enough and went to BDO, and I won’t be coming back. If they had brought these changes in before BDO then I’d probably still be living in WvW

I haven’t left the game, just returned to being a pve scrub.

Starting 2-1/2 years ago, when I first wandered in, I spent all my time in wvw. I never tired of the map, just the opponents (stale, lopsided matches).

DBL is geared towards large scale, which is fine, if you’re into that sort of thing and you have enough pepole to support it. Personally, I could’ve gotten used to the size, but what I could never get used to is the lack of love for the solo artist. Very few things are doable on this BL alone, which was the appeal for me on Alpine. Sure, you’d get ganked if you weren’t sneaky enough, but you could see it coming in Alpine, you knew roughly how long you had or in most cases what size force was around the corner. With DBL, if you’re able to successful build a cata by yourself on the side wall of a tower before it gets destroyed by something in or around the tower by the time you come back with the remaining supply from the camp that’s miles away, there could now be 25 people inside a tower, either home defense that ran in through the gate you can’t see or the other server attacking on the opposite wall you can’t see.

I never tired of the simplicity of Alpine, the solo artists were gods there. DBL just punishes smaller servers and antisocial people, both from an attacker and defenders standpoint imo and promotes the notion that unless you run as a group, nothing gets accomplished.

So yes, bringing back ABL alone will get me back, whether or not I stay, depends on what has changed in regards to enviroment and gameplay mechanics.

I never was gone, but only roamed on EB. I think it’s great for us solo/smallscale roamer to get Alpine Borders back.

No, it won’t matter at all. Until scoring and population balance issues are resolved WvW is dead. After that it will still need a significant balance pass to undo the stability changes and power creep and some sort of reward structure as well. Everyone screamed murder about an alliance system, so now that is off the table, good luck figure out another way to fix this mess… There is no vision, everything now is crisis mode/scrap everything/do something now. Who thinks that is going to lead to anything good.

I’ll play on it. ABL is a functioning WvWvW map and bringing it back is just one step on the road to salvaging the mode, but reverting the map alone won’t be some kind of Christmas miracle.

I never stopped playing WvW…just played it less.

Suggestion – Google search “Reboot Base Map Mechanic”

I never left.

This might help some people come back, however, I am sure there’s many other problems that also need to be tackled in tandem such as combat balance, guild upgrades, game changing gimmicks , waypoints, and wall/siege design. But I’m also sure either map would be fine if those were dealt with. So would population— I mean, what’s the point of balancing a population if nobody plays?

As a staunchly small-team/solo player, I vehemently disagree with the statement that Alpine is better than desert for my playstyle. However, since I doubt I can convince anyone otherwise with mere talk, would people mind condensing their complaints so that I can investigate them and, perhaps, bring numbers into it?

For example, I see people complaining about the distance between camps and objectives As someone who spent (and still spends) a lot of time putting up solo catas on objectives, I haven’t noticed much difference. Thus, I’m going to go time myself moving between camps and objectives and then compare those times with videos of Alpine or myself on Alpine once it returns.

Constructive complaints are great—they lead to improvement. However, it irks me when things aren’t true…so I intend to put the debate to rest, one way or the other.

If they fill it up with HOT garbage and keep the HoT mess in WvW, then of course it isn’t going to bring players back. What most were asking for was to remove HoT crap from WvW. the entire point of bringing back alpine was to " roll it back Pre HoT" while they go back to the drawing table on the direction of the improvements since they were so far off what players were actually wanting. If instead of removing HoT from WvW they ruin Alpine with HoT, RIP WvW, as most have already lost all hope that Anet would ever listen anyhow.

Yes there are " solo players" who like the DBL, but it would be a terrible business decision to cater to the " solo player and ignore the massive amount of players who want large scale PvP. Why would a business who is trying to make more money, not less create a game mode for those who want to play alone and Pvd, while ignoring the thousands who do not? LOL

Sviel.7493:

As a staunchly small-team/solo player, I vehemently disagree with the statement that Alpine is better than desert for my playstyle. However, since I doubt I can convince anyone otherwise with mere talk, would people mind condensing their complaints so that I can investigate them and, perhaps, bring numbers into it?

For example, I see people complaining about the distance between camps and objectives As someone who spent (and still spends) a lot of time putting up solo catas on objectives, I haven’t noticed much difference. Thus, I’m going to go time myself moving between camps and objectives and then compare those times with videos of Alpine or myself on Alpine once it returns.

Constructive complaints are great—they lead to improvement. However, it irks me when things aren’t true…so I intend to put the debate to rest, one way or the other.

You do realize that catering to the " solo" player and ignoring the massive zergs ( which happen to be thousands of players queuing the maps) is not a sound business decision. If the maps are queue’d you are not going to need to worry about those solo players going off to play single player rpgs.

I don’t really see what that has to do with anything I said? I’m not advocating for more focus on catering to solo players over zergs. Rather, I’m talking about what currently exists and how it affects solo players.

When not in guild raids, I ran around solo/small man on alpine a lot. Some of the best fights I’ve had were on my shatter Mesmer on alpine playing survivor at an enemy’s north camp and harassing small pug groups trying to take back the southern towers. DBL didn’t offer that because auto upgrades and convuluted pathing so no one would show up for a fight so I just avoid because I’m not there to PvE.

lil devils x.6071:

Sviel.7493:

As a staunchly small-team/solo player, I vehemently disagree with the statement that Alpine is better than desert for my playstyle. However, since I doubt I can convince anyone otherwise with mere talk, would people mind condensing their complaints so that I can investigate them and, perhaps, bring numbers into it?

For example, I see people complaining about the distance between camps and objectives As someone who spent (and still spends) a lot of time putting up solo catas on objectives, I haven’t noticed much difference. Thus, I’m going to go time myself moving between camps and objectives and then compare those times with videos of Alpine or myself on Alpine once it returns.

Constructive complaints are great—they lead to improvement. However, it irks me when things aren’t true…so I intend to put the debate to rest, one way or the other.

You do realize that catering to the " solo" player and ignoring the massive zergs ( which happen to be thousands of players queuing the maps) is not a sound business decision. If the maps are queue’d you are not going to need to worry about those solo players going off to play single player rpgs.

Practically everything in this game sans pvp and raids caters to zerglings though. It has gotten worse in HoT.

gennyt.3428:

When not in guild raids, I ran around solo/small man on alpine a lot. Some of the best fights I’ve had were on my shatter Mesmer on alpine playing survivor at an enemy’s north camp and harassing small pug groups trying to take back the southern towers. DBL didn’t offer that because auto upgrades and convuluted pathing so no one would show up for a fight so I just avoid because I’m not there to PvE.

Do you happen to have any videos? I’m trying to determine run times on the Alpine BL for a proper comparison, but it’s taking forever just using random youtube videos.

As an aside, every WvW video seems super outdated…

The return of the old map would not be enough to bring me back. To be honest I don’t dislike the new map that much either.

A re balancing of profession skills, massive reduction of guild buffs and guild hall banner effects, and redesign of routes and the keeps might influence me far more.

STIHL.2489:

I said this on another topic, figure it’s fitting here as well.

STIHL.2489:

No one wants the Alpine back really. They got stale, but what people really want is:

• Swift Direct, Easy Travel, which the Alpine provided and the Deseret did not.

• They don’t want a map full of Gimmicks. WvW for most intents is more a War Zone not a Theme Park. There does not need to be any distractions there to keep us entertained. Thus the Alpine was simple and direct, the Desert is not.

• Distinct Wall Lines for the Buildings. The Alpine map made it easy to know exactly where the walls where, and the layout could be seen from the Mini-Map. The Desert has this convoluted set up where it’s not all walls, and you can’t see the distinct outline from the Mini-Map.

So it’s not that anyone wants the Alpine back, it’s that the Desert fails to preform so badly they would rather go back to the Alpine then continue to deal with the Desert.

Truth is, I would rather they fix the Desert, and learn how to do it right, so they can make more maps.

no, I do want the alpine bl back, i want it back ALOT don’t speak for me you kittening kitenning kitten that swallows kittenloads of kitten.

1. They’ll put all the HoT failed mechanics into it.
2. Everyone will hate that.
3. People who do come back will quickly leave because of this.
4. Apologists will say “See, people will whine no matter what Anet does.” Everyone else will groan.

Lord Kuru.3685:

1. They’ll put all the HoT failed mechanics into it.
2. Everyone will hate that.
3. People who do come back will quickly leave because of this.
4. Apologists will say “See, people will whine no matter what Anet does.” Everyone else will groan.

1.A) Barricades on n/w n/e switchbacks. bruhhhhhhhhhh

Kraljevo.2801:

That depends on how the map will be presented to us. If the waypoints are permanently closed and the HoT autoupgrade + gimmicks in place, I don’t see a reason to play there.

Pretty much. I’ll go back if it is as it was, but if it has banners etc. then no, just a slightly less annoying map on which to have a crap experience.

If they actually bring it back without banners and the other garbage, then definitely yes.

STIHL.2489:

I said this on another topic, figure it’s fitting here as well.

STIHL.2489:

No one wants the Alpine back really. They got stale, but what people really want is:

• Swift Direct, Easy Travel, which the Alpine provided and the Deseret did not.

• They don’t want a map full of Gimmicks. WvW for most intents is more a War Zone not a Theme Park. There does not need to be any distractions there to keep us entertained. Thus the Alpine was simple and direct, the Desert is not.

• Distinct Wall Lines for the Buildings. The Alpine map made it easy to know exactly where the walls where, and the layout could be seen from the Mini-Map. The Desert has this convoluted set up where it’s not all walls, and you can’t see the distinct outline from the Mini-Map.

So it’s not that anyone wants the Alpine back, it’s that the Desert fails to preform so badly they would rather go back to the Alpine then continue to deal with the Desert.

Truth is, I would rather they fix the Desert, and learn how to do it right, so they can make more maps.

Yes, good idea, in the meantime while they figure out how to make new maps that are good, bring back alpine so people actually have a decent map to play on while new ones that aren’t terrible are being developed.

ArchonWing.9480:

lil devils x.6071:

Sviel.7493:

As a staunchly small-team/solo player, I vehemently disagree with the statement that Alpine is better than desert for my playstyle. However, since I doubt I can convince anyone otherwise with mere talk, would people mind condensing their complaints so that I can investigate them and, perhaps, bring numbers into it?

For example, I see people complaining about the distance between camps and objectives As someone who spent (and still spends) a lot of time putting up solo catas on objectives, I haven’t noticed much difference. Thus, I’m going to go time myself moving between camps and objectives and then compare those times with videos of Alpine or myself on Alpine once it returns.

Constructive complaints are great—they lead to improvement. However, it irks me when things aren’t true…so I intend to put the debate to rest, one way or the other.

You do realize that catering to the " solo" player and ignoring the massive zergs ( which happen to be thousands of players queuing the maps) is not a sound business decision. If the maps are queue’d you are not going to need to worry about those solo players going off to play single player rpgs.

Practically everything in this game sans pvp and raids caters to zerglings though. It has gotten worse in HoT.

The key is though that players create the zerg just by having many of them in the game mode on the map. They really do not have to add additional mechanics to that to create a zerg. It is just a bunch of players having fun together, and THAT is what you hope for with a massively multiplayer game mode. MASSIVE amounts of players enjoying the game together. Empty maps means players are not enjoying it enough to be there. What they seemed to fail to realize, for example, is that is was insanely easy to defend anything before HoT IF the zerg showed up to defend it from the zerg. Zergs are supposed to hunt enemy Zergs. If all servers in the match do not have a zerg to fight is when players feel helpless against the zerg. That is due to the system design, not the zergs being there. The solo player is supposed to tell their own teams zerg where the enemy zerg is and coordinate as server if they unfortunately get face rolled by them, not be expected to survive or fight it.. It was not necessary to make it harder or easier for the zerg because anything you can do individually you can just do much more in mass.

There was NO REASON they needed to make Towers and Keeps more difficult on smaller groups, as the game mode was already more difficult on smaller groups. Zergs STILL have no problem killing the added NPCs or their increased difficulty, it just wastes more time doing boring things rather than actually be having fun. Much of what they added just made it harder on small guilds, roamer and havoc due to them not being able to compete with the banners, airship and stupid fog nonsense that was not asked for or needed. Zergs do not need that to defend, they need extra incentive to defend. They need more actual player LOOT bags with increased drop rates of ascended and legendary items and increased XP to defend and you can be sure they will show up to do so.

The problem before was not that it was hard to defend, it was there were no personal rewards for doing so, you received chests from killing NPCs not defending, so players who wanted to earn the things they needed in the game to play didn’t see the reason to. That was what needed to be changed, not adding really lame PVE nonsense to make it harder on small groups. Everything from the NPC’s and airship to the Banners guild upgrade changes took away the individual and small groups ability to contribute to their server as they were able to before, and were not necessary or even wanted by the zerg.

The key with the rewards needs to be strategically utilized to give incentive to do more in WvW and not just blanket " participation rewards" nonsense or it just creates more problems than it solves.. again.

it would make me at least give it a try to come back, but guild upgrades have to be removed and reworked so they dont give imbalanced buffs and all the hot gimmicks and pve shrines have to go. wvw used to be a sandbox gamemode. it doesnt need invis wells, or the god awful airstrikes, or the horrrible banners. it also doesnt need pve like lords( the best time i ever had was the battles in the lordrooms and the epic ninja keep tactics, the scouting and the golemrushes and the massive battles. hot removed pretty much everything and made it ai based and pve heavy.
also wvw has to balanced differently from all other game modes. it used to be better balanced before they changed wvw balanced to spvp balance…

Ben K.6238:

What Alpine had as advantages were more open space and (possibly) closer objectives that could interact with each other in siege scenarios.

It’s supposed to be better for roaming as well, but I found it was a lot easier to find enemies on DBL because I knew they’d be funnelled through certain parts of the map in order to get to others. So I don’t understand that one.

I’ll go there occasionally but in my tier you have to go to EB because there’s not enough population to spread across 4 maps. So unless we get a population boost it’s going to be much the same story.

Pretty much this ^

I remember the months before hot were released. Me and some friends were roaming on the BLs, and it was so tedious. It was the same rotation around the map every time, unless we decided to run the other direction.

we didn’t encounter alot of enemies and most of the action were at eb.

Withotu anything done to the population problem ABLs won’t be any better.

MSFone.3026:

Yes, good idea, in the meantime while they figure out how to make new maps that are good, bring back alpine so people actually have a decent map to play on while new ones that aren’t terrible are being developed.

I believe that is their plan, but the problem is, if people just ask for the old done-to-death alpine borderlands back, without explaining why, then Anet does not realize the problem, and thus can’t fix it, if they ever make a new map, or go to revise the existing Desert Borderland.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Withotu anything done to the population problem ABLs won’t be any better.

True. People tend to forget that Alpine borderlands where in decline of population since 2014. Deserted borderlands didn’t hit wwvw that much, the blobEG focus was already set. And you mostly can see that new players tend to go EB as it’s easier to understand that map and you have almost nothing to fight for and no tactics involved ussually, while BLs always let you choose what to defend, what to attack or focus another bl more, though it’s hard for those who just jump out of dungeuon.

Seriously! If the waypoints were actually USABLE in the desert maps it would have made all the difference! Why in the world would you make a bl so much bigger, then make it windy, huge cliffs, and NO way to get from one end to the other other than running? Very poor idea. All this complaining is lot more about the poor design of the desert maps than it is a lost love for Alpine. I like the new maps in many ways.. but in most ways they really just suck.

selan.8354:

it would make me at least give it a try to come back, but guild upgrades have to be removed and reworked so they dont give imbalanced buffs and all the hot gimmicks and pve shrines have to go. wvw used to be a sandbox gamemode. it doesnt need invis wells, or the god awful airstrikes, or the horrrible banners. it also doesnt need pve like lords( the best time i ever had was the battles in the lordrooms and the epic ninja keep tactics, the scouting and the golemrushes and the massive battles. hot removed pretty much everything and made it ai based and pve heavy.
also wvw has to balanced differently from all other game modes. it used to be better balanced before they changed wvw balanced to spvp balance…

I totally agree with this! Especially the way they have tied so much into the Guild hall and Scribes. We lost our Scribe and are screwed… now I’m trying to level up my Scribe so I can make stuff for WvW etc. and if I get sick or go away then the guild is screwed yet again… What a total pile of crap!

STIHL.2489:

I said this on another topic, figure it’s fitting here as well.

STIHL.2489:

No one wants the Alpine back really. They got stale, but what people really want is:

• Swift Direct, Easy Travel, which the Alpine provided and the Deseret did not.

• They don’t want a map full of Gimmicks. WvW for most intents is more a War Zone not a Theme Park. There does not need to be any distractions there to keep us entertained. Thus the Alpine was simple and direct, the Desert is not.

• Distinct Wall Lines for the Buildings. The Alpine map made it easy to know exactly where the walls where, and the layout could be seen from the Mini-Map. The Desert has this convoluted set up where it’s not all walls, and you can’t see the distinct outline from the Mini-Map.

So it’s not that anyone wants the Alpine back, it’s that the Desert fails to preform so badly they would rather go back to the Alpine then continue to deal with the Desert.

Truth is, I would rather they fix the Desert, and learn how to do it right, so they can make more maps.

Totally agree with this! If they make the old Alpine maps into a Desert clone with the Alpine look it will just be a total flop like Desert is. Seriously a handful of decent tweaks and they could make the Desert maps real good. I mean jeez, make the center of the map an open field where servers can have some epic open field battles even!

People seem to forget how boring the old Alpine maps had become. Poorly populated except on the bigger servers where people spilled over into other bl’s due to size alone.

… and open the wp’s up!

(oh ya.. say hi to Katz for me eh! )

— Tim

No

It will not, that will probably be my queue to leave WvW

Nope, Auto upgrade kind of killed it for me. Also i spend the last 2,5 years waiting for the orbs to return.

lil devils x.6071:

If they fill it up with HOT garbage and keep the HoT mess in WvW, then of course it isn’t going to bring players back. What most were asking for was to remove HoT crap from WvW. the entire point of bringing back alpine was to " roll it back Pre HoT" while they go back to the drawing table on the direction of the improvements since they were so far off what players were actually wanting. If instead of removing HoT from WvW they ruin Alpine with HoT, RIP WvW, as most have already lost all hope that Anet would ever listen anyhow.

Yes there are " solo players" who like the DBL, but it would be a terrible business decision to cater to the " solo player and ignore the massive amount of players who want large scale PvP. Why would a business who is trying to make more money, not less create a game mode for those who want to play alone and Pvd, while ignoring the thousands who do not? LOL

Nailed it, i really hope they can go back to pre-hot wvw… and then attempt to slowly fix other issues like population and rewards… but ye u nailed it for me.