Guild Wars 2

Genocide.1524:

Get use to them, learn them, and you will love them.

Tell me more about myself.

I gave it as good a try as I could. I gave as much time as I needed (me, subjectively) to conclude I will not love them. That assessment will not be substantially affected by the number of people on the map. As Dawdler says: the design flaws are too many and too severe.

Ivarr Wolfsong.2986:

Now I want to go watch the Flash movie “Dem Hibbies”…

The ancient Hibernian glares at you.

And stay out of Emain.

So perhaps Selwyn, Fannwong and others of our ilk are operating in a more intuitive space (we’re not ‘feeling’ it) and that approach does not provide sufficent factual issues to address. Fine. But I would have hoped that the designers would have had a design philospophy beyond just coding.

So, specifics. When I look at the new elements introduced in the Desert map, I want to see the value add of the addition. Is it to fix a weakness (percieved or otherwise) in the Alpine map? What it to provide a different play space? A kitchen sink?

The autoupgrading mechanism would seem (I’m guessing) to be an answer to the problem of ‘coverage’ – an equalizer for population timezone imbalances. If that was indeed the rationale, then does it solve the problem and are there unintended consequences?

Map size: Was Alpine too small? Did we need more objectives and more speedbumps?

Verticality and Complexity: Alpine too homogenous and needed more spice? And more speedbumps? (I’d have argued for map size or complexity, not both)

Is it just me or are those two waypoints in the south permanently contested?

Terrain Forcing the Breakup of Large Forces: I don’t want the terrain to do it. I want us to come up with ways to exploit the terrain to do it. Or not, if we’re in the mood to run screaming into each other like orcs and well, other orcs.

Map Objectives with Consequences (that aren’t keeps): Remember the Orbs? Removed almost immediately. The quaggen island and bloodlust points were available, but optional. The Desert shrines and lasers (ugh tech) et cetera only make me ask the same question I asked on Alpine: if the camps and shrines are so bloody important, why aren’t the keeps built on them. What are the Desert fortifications defending? They just exist for the sake of being there.

Edge of the Mists is huge, difficult to traverse, and exists only as a special arena hell where people can happily slaughter each other. With loot. (I love loot.) Eternal Battleground is similar, but there are enough differences to make them distinctive. What does Desert provide that distinguishes it from the other two arenas? I’m not seeing it, and I’m certainly not feeling it.

PvE, size, terrain complexity, events, rewards, have all become a blur. I have spent time in the new borderlands. I’m not educated enough in game design to contribute to the conversation.

I can say this: I don’t want to live there.

My background is similar to Selywn’s, and got me thinking back to DAoC , Chorazin made it worse (though sentimental rose-coloured specs, to be sure). I’m not a PvEer or a WvWer, I’m a roleplayer. I want a land I can belong to and feel engaged with. DAoC provided that. Guilds held keeps for weeks. Our banners flew from the turrets. Captures took planning and organization and time. I knew every inch of the land (including the dangerous parts) and there wasn’t a location I hadn’t died defending.

The Alpine land may have had its issues, but it was home. There were farms and houses and people. I could make my small contributions to defense, scouting, blobbing as needed. Yes, there were some bad neighborhoods (skrit, centaurs, the occasional harpy) but they were relegated to the edges. Our banners flew from the turrets.

The new borderland, while certainly a great place to visit and explore, is not ours. It is a hostile landscape packed to the walls with violent critters, impersonal rambling ruins, and weird stuff.

(Seriously, kill your darlings when it comes to the clever tricks. It would be a great playfield if I were a pinball trying to conquer the Winchester Mystery House.)

Like Heart of Thorns, it is beautiful, mysterious, alien, indifferent, it runs on its own, I am extraneous to it, and at best I am but a transient invader. That is not a homeland I can feel invested in.

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past.
Supply runner. Build siege, stand watch. Scout where needed, join the vanguard when required.

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds.
I rarely leave our homeland. My rare visits to EB were following a tag.

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
Compared to Alpine: No siege to build, no positions to guard, wandering around is dangerous and not rewarding. (Dangerous due to environmental hazards. Not people. Haven’t seen any people.)

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past.
At least the Alpine fortifications looked like something we ourselves had built. The new constructions appear to be Escheresque warrens built like the Winchester Mystery House.

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
Insufficient examples. One session with a group of five taking a tower took longer because we got lost in it.

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past?
Not to sound precious, but the reward was the activity, participating in the defense of the realm, working alongside the other defenders. The loot was sufficient to pay for arrow carts and armor repairs, more or less. I would like to be making progress on my equipment upgrades, but apparently that is all compartmentalized.

How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
Given the current state, there won’t be any long sessions.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
Beautiful, lots of work, but seriously overdesigned. This was a clear case where ‘kill your darlings’ needed to be ruthlessly wielded. I personally don’t like tech invading my medieval magic world, but giant lasers? Force fields? That is well beyond my ‘willing suspension’. In short, convert to adventure zone, start again with a more organic design plan.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
Day One: Port to main keep. Fall to your death several times. Day Two: discover the exit to the main keep, begin exploring. Fall to your death several more times, now with lava! Day Three: Learn to use map. Bonus points for determining what is inside a keep and what is outside. Die to random critters finding vistas and points of interest that apparently no longer have a purpose. Day Four: see another living person! Die by falling trying to get close enough to kill each other. Day Four: discover the nice crafting area, so not a total loss.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
As stated by others: Not at all. Other than the crafting area.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
Pre-HoT: SoR WvW map, defending the homeland. After HoT: Doing map completions elsewhere, with an amount of forced effort to do the tedious HoT Jungles, also overengineered.

In sum:

Look, I tried. Am still trying. But just adding a couple of zergs won’t change the nature of the map, which to my view is just vastly cluttered and entirely impersonal.

It is a great advanced adventure zone. A great place to visit, but I don’t want to live there. I want a homeland that feels like ‘home’, not an unwelcoming barely habitable alien landscape we’re attempting (and failing) to colonize. There was some wasted space in Alpine borderland. The area between the Citadel and North Camp, for example. And note what was there: People. Houses. A Moot Hall. The stuff we were defending. To be sure, there were issues. Who was responsible for permanent mortar placements? How about a one-way portal door from Citadel to Garrison? If supply camps are vital, why aren’t the towers built on top of them? Why no Starbucks upgrade (at least in the north towers). But I could live there, and I had a place. I could park myself in Woodhaven or Hills, build the siege and work the upgrades, listen to the vanguard in the field, give reports, and feel I’ve done my duty for a time. New map: I am a transgressor in every part of it. And extraneous.

<salutes!>

Now I’ll remember to save a special vista for last.

Ah, forgot to put that in. My results are when running as Admin. (I tick that on by default these days. Games are bossy.)

So Cal, 10:25, Verizon

165.254.24.142 is from United States(US) in region North America

TraceRoute from Network-Tools.com to 165.254.24.142 [assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 1 0 0 8.9.232.73 xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net
2 Timed out 0 0 4.69.145.204 ae-4-90.edge2.dallas3.level3.net
3 1 1 0 4.68.63.10 –
4 2 0 1 129.250.3.27 ae-1.r08.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
5 0 0 1 165.254.24.142 –
Trace complete