My two thousand cents on issues on the map, making this thread as a suggestion and appeal to the devs about the current state of EOTM.
Currently, in EOTM, in my humble oppinion, there are several problems that prevent it being “a instant access to competitive gameplay” as it states.
Green player accumulation: The fact that the green side is filled by the top PPT servers in each matchup (PPT = attendance), results on a massive accumulation of players on that side. That alone is bad as green just steamrolls its way to karmaheaven, but there’s a even worse sideeffect I’ve noticed, green ends up creating more numbers of overflows than ACTUALLY needed for the number of overall players in EOTM, which makes the smaller blue/red sides SPLITTING on those overflows so the map isn’t deserted for green alone. And there’s no way to choose which overflow you land into unless you “taxi” yourself through party members. That ends up having 20 players per overflow, and by the midst of the matchup’s duration there’s about 3-4 overflows perhaps? Unnecessary.
Possible solution: Define a different solution to which side your server is assigned to, be it set rotation (Example: Piken Square red on week 1 blue week 2 green week 3), lottery, whatever, the current system clearly doesn’t work.
Karmatraining in EOTM: Issue that arose from the problem above, green can steamroll whatever they wish on the first two/three overflows with ease, and they’ll be the only side than can actually afford to HOLD (defending a keep is different, can be done with siege and 5-10 people, but they won’t hold forever) a defense successfully. On the other hand, blue/red sides will RARELY bother to defend at all as avoiding the green crowd and capping objectives behind their backs is WAY more profitable, specially with the outmanned buffs they’re on half of the time. There is tension between the few people that want to defend objectives and people that want those same objectives to be taken so they can recap it back and keep the karma flowing.
Possible solution: Same as the one for the solution above. Even zergs would create more balance, “karma trains” wouldn’t be as effective depending on the person commanding mostly, outmanned buffs would be a thing of the past in most of the time.
EOTM PPT (point per tick) system: Clearly a issue, imo. The fact that the only reward players get at playing ppt (defending a tower with siege for example) is a certain ammount of supply dropped on their homeworld’s borderland is clearly insufficient to incentive people to get off their zerg trains and defend objectives for the PPT system.
Possible Solution: Create a reward similar to the way dungeons/daily metas are delivered, a small chest by the end of each matchup, with either a certain ammount of either gold (the three greens and a blue item thing just doesn’t cut it) T6 materials, ascended materials, or even a mixture, depending how well your side did PPT wise. Again this would only work if the green/blue/red lack of balance in attendance would be fixed, as green as it is now would clearly get more incentive and reward for being just more massive.
Green keep lord mechanic: A good idea to try and implement a different mechanic (killing the two earth element adds by separating them and make the lord vulnerable), a bad idea to add it to one keep only (and oddly, the keep with the strongest zerg). Red keep lord has lingering fire aoes, blue keep lord has ice storms and iceshield depending how many special objectives the attacking force doesn’t own. A whole different thing, and easier to deal with comparing to the green lord’s mechanic (still consider that a good idea)
Possible solution: Make the blue/green lords have the EXACT same mechanic, or abolish it overall, preferably imo, my first suggestion, as the mechanic is well thought.
I fervently wish this topic to be read by our wvw devs, as EOTM is taking the road outside wvw and towards pve. Truth, it is only a map created just so people do wvw while waiting to get into other wvw maps, but it has gone out of hand for months now, and it is a shame.
Thanks for the attention.
