Guild Wars 2

The Desert borderlands map layout has been updated with a large number of adjustments to improve navigation and create better spaces for fighting, especially around the three keeps.
General

Barricades have been removed entirely.
Added hay bales in some locations to negate falling damage when players land on them.

With the removal of barricades, towers are sorely lacking in immediate strategic advantage. The upgrades that can be put on them are still nice but what is the point of taking them now? The scout tower upgrade would be nice if it were automatic.

I haven’t seen any hay bales anywhere, yet. Perhaps they’re not on my usual paths?

Fire Keep

Reduced the number of fireball turrets in and around the keep.
The lord room now has more of the lava covered and additional bridges leading into it.
Widened many of the pathways outside the keep, leaving less lava exposed.
Opened new routes leading to the keep.
It is now easier to navigate around the outside of the keep due to the removal of some barriers.
Half of the sand dunes above the keep have been removed.
Moved some creatures, like the Veteran Sand Wurm, to compensate for this change.

These changes seem mostly good, though I’m worried about the significant elevation disadvantage the keep has now. Due to the elevated assault positions and low ceiling over the keep proper, it seems largely impossible to counter enemy siege. A ballista will be out of range. A treb/cata will hit the ceiling or some overhang while an enemy projectile will slide under it.

I haven’t seen the inner keep yet because I can’t stay connected long enough to retake it, but I’ll edit once that happens.

Air Keep

Reduced the number of wind turrets in and around the keep.
Changed many locations that were accessed via jump pads to be sloped terrain or staircases instead.
Added additional staircases leading up to the lord room.
Improved the layout of certain walls that were difficult to defend.
Widened many of the bridges outside the keep.
Opened new routes leading to the keep.
It is now easier to navigate around the outside of the keep due to the removal of some barriers.
The bamboo bridge area south of the keep has been simplified, and the terrain has been raised.

On the north side of the keep, the top jump pad no longer pushes a player high enough to get onto the bridge. It doesn’t serve any function, actually, so I assume it wasn’t intended.

Also on the north side of the keep, the western rock outcropping was scaled back to allow more access to the keep…but the mortar wasn’t moved. The mortar now floats in mid-air, totally useless.

On the northern outer wall, there’s a staircase that now allows players to get up onto the wall…and that’s supposed to make it easier to defend? There’s no room to place any defensive siege that can cover the area without being instantly killed. It’s now slightly easier to get a disable off, maybe, but being pulled is certain death. Unless there were more changes in the pipeline, the stairs did not come close to accomplishing their stated goal.

South inner is no better. It’s still a pain since targeting something placed in the corner of the wall/rock is super difficult, but it’s at least possible, now. Unfortunately, there’s no place to build siege that isn’t in elementalist/ranger range. It’s also easier to use an outside AC to clear inside siege than it is to use inside siege to clear an outside AC. Again, the changes did little towards accomplishing their stated goal.

That said, thanks for trying. I’d rather you acknowledge and attempt to solve the problems than do nothing. Unfortunately, your efforts didn’t pan out this time…I hope there’s a repass before the next quarterly update.

Doing something about proxy catas would be a more judicious use of time than reworking individual walls so that they have a chance of repelling groups that don’t contain a single ranger or elementalist.

The layout changes outside of the keep seem ok. That’s something I’ll have to play around with more

Earth Keep

Added additional staircases leading up to the lord room.
Widened the canyons outside the keep.
Removed many of the teleporters that were in the canyons.

The layout changes seem great so far. Not sure what the note about teleporters is for, though. Some were removed since the area was flattened, but that only seems natural. None of the others seem to have disappeared.

Of note, the Northeast wall on Rampart is even harder to defend than the walls on Airkeep that you changed. Also, due to the diagonal hitbox bug, the catas there can take down both inner and outer. Are there plans to do anything about that?

WvW Skill Changes

Most of these are just adding caps onto walls and what not. It’s nice, but only affects groups larger than 10 and only in fights. If the wall effects are lumped together, there were only 5 skill changes. 2 for guardian, 2 for warrior and then walls. Only the wall change really seemed WvW specific and, to my knowledge, none of the skills were split from their PvP/PvE counterparts. I know this isn’t everything, but can we have an idea of what else is coming? And how soon?

On a related note, are there any ideas about changing how AoE maps onto walls?

Other Changes

The UI stuff is nice, though it still doesn’t communicate how scoring happens very well. As in, at all. Being able to see how long objectives have been held and what their upgrade status is at a glance is nice. Reducing the maximum health scaling is ok, though it seems like a zerg-oriented change. It depends on the cut-off for maximum scaling, I guess.

The new merchants and WvW spec are all good too. Fluff like that is totally appreciated—and necessary for quality of life.

Absentees

-The only siege update was a nerf to Shield Generators, which was warranted. There was no change to, perhaps, make siege a meaningful part of gameplay rather than a tedious formality. Most siege placements are still to minimize the amount of interaction your opponent can have with it (very successfully, I might add) while also maximizing damage output. As long as those two goals can be achieved concurrently, there’s no point in doing anything interesting with siege.

-Server rewards weren’t addressed either. Personal reward is necessary and a great addition, but without a reason for servers to want to win matches, we’re still sort of dead in the water.

-Killing enemy siege still doesn’t give credit for a defense event.

-The guards in Southeast Camp still do not aggro when the supervisor is approached from certain angles. They are still not in the ring, either. I imagine the other camps where this was the case are the same.

Don’t complain, these changes were all good.

Most people do not even care about any Desert BL map changes since they never been in those maps other then falling to death in first day and then never coming back.

The barricades severely limited movement for small groups and solo players, it didn’t really slow large groups down. Towers are just about as important now as they were before.

There are undoubtedly options, but those can wait. I would rather have a conservative update than one that goes all out and causes even more grief.

Serious.6940:

The barricades severely limited movement for small groups and solo players, it didn’t really slow large groups down. Towers are just about as important now as they were before.

There are undoubtedly options, but those can wait. I would rather have a conservative update than one that goes all out and causes even more grief.

The new BL size is really excellent but the game lacks for its size in several stuff, awfull balance team(Anet wont get rid of this bad balance title), castles design and sorrounding effects looks and feels to much exagerated in a way that turns unpleasent to play trough it.
It should feel natural not forced like it does.

GW2 should be much more guild centred game, not PVD skrit based.
Towers can be captured just for the chest from lord and mats grind for GH, thats how much guild centered this game is…..1
What is strange is that Anet refuses to improve the game, and choosed to be a pretend effort game cause skrits love it.

This does not seem to merit an official bug post, more of a “was it an oversight or is this design?”

Sharing participation with squaddies. Seems to work on map. Doesn’t seem to work across maps. The main foreseeable use for this new system seemed to be throwing a bone to scouts and sentries who may not see as much “action” as the rest of the squad, and often commanders are going to be asking for volunteers to keep an eye on some objective off-map, just like they always have. Maybe this was changed overnight though, can’t say, just something we noticed as soon as we started experimenting with new systems in the hours post-patch.

@Fogleg

I’m not saying that the changes were bad, just that they were nowhere near the ‘big wvw update’ I was expecting. It sounded like they had been hearing criticism from the beginning and were working on several fixes that would all be rolled into one mega-patch…but instead, they made overdue quality of life changes that seemed more like a month’s work than 3 years. Part of that is because they’re releasing things in pieces, they’ve said, but since there’s no info on what’s yet to come it is becoming harder to hold out hope.

This update was in response to a poll of these forums and reflects that in that it is more of a QoL and GvG update than any sort of WvW thing. Perhaps they just didn’t have time to address things (which is a hard pill to swallow), but I’m not stoked about waiting several months to a year just to get hints about whether this is the sort of game I want to play going forward.

I don’t know the answer to a basic question of if defensive fortifications are supposed to be a defensive force multiplier or a speed bump. I can wait if it’s the former…I’d rather spend my time elsewhere if it’s the latter.

Well, to be honest, I am still surprised they bothered to fix Desert maps at all, knowing that Alpine maps are being restored within few week. As such, considering all the work they did on Desert maps is going to be forgotten shortly, they did very good job on making Desert maps better.

And no, as far I understand, this was NOT the big WvW update they have been working on. The leaked notes that can not be mentioned in these forums have been spot on so far, just look through those to see what to expect next.

Is it stated somewhere that their going to remove DBL? I only heard them saying their going to bring back Alpine borderland. I think their going to rotate those 2 maps around. Their never going to throw away a uear of work because some people doesn’t like change scenery. Yes DBL had his flaws ( long walking times, lot’s of chokepoints, difficult to navigate etc. But the map itself is nice and when you get used to it. It’s not that bad.

Try to remember when you first came to Alpine borderland. Then add a few weeks even 2-3 months. Could u say you knew Alpine borderland as good as you knew it just before it got exchanged by DBL? imo if they set up a rotation everyone will be happy to have another different map to fight on to. Especially with the changes they implementen with the patch